Man, oh, Mame!
I hope actress Bea Arthur, 81, of “Mame,” “Maude,” and “The Golden Girls” fame, was trying to be funny during a recent contretemps between herself and security guards at Boston Logan Airport. If not . . .

A First at MIT
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology yesterday named Yale University provost Susan Hockfield president. The Associated Press reports Hockfield is “the first woman to hold the job at the prestigious science university where men dominate the faculty and the student body.”

Skateboarding and Parkour
Oh, great. Is this what we have to look forward to? Philadelphia is still grappling with the issue of skateboarding in public spaces, most notably John F. Kennedy Plaza, also known as “Love Park.” Meanwhile, the city of Chicago is facing a new menace, practitioners of something called “parkour.”

The Wonderful World of Disney
About ten years ago I attended a conference at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla., a conference about, of all things, electric utilities (Zzzzz . . . ). I stayed at one of the Walt Disney Co.’s hotels, Disney’s Beach Club Resort, to be specific. Although I was impressed by the efficiency of the operation, I have to admit the whole thing creeped me out in ways I wasn’t able to adequately describe. Fortunately, Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University, explains it all in a Los Angeles Times op-ed piece about Disneyland, “Taking a Ride on Disney’s Dark Side.”

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