In its five years in existence, the Black Box Theatre has gained a reputation for eclectic script choices and high production values with stellar performers. Its current offering, Motherhood: The Musical, is a fine continuation of that tradition.

“Follow the science,” we are told, especially the junk science that climate alarmists invent. I recently debunked a piece of junk-climate science whose alarmism was featured in the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, CNN, CBS, and elsewhere. The junk science was titled “Temperature and Growth: A Panel Analysis of the United States,” and was produced by the Federal Reserve. The three authors claimed that warming could cut U.S. economic growth by up to a third in the next hundred years. However, statistical analysis I published in the paper “Temperature and U.S. Economic Growth: Comment on Colacito, Hoffmann, and Phan” showed their results were within the margin of error and that minor improvements and new data flip their result.

I recently read a thoroughly enjoyable piece by Mike Caulfield at Hapgood.US on the first use of “conspiracy theory” that he discovered in a letter from the English press, published in the New York Times on January 4, 1863. In a nutshell, the letter was a critical commentary on American intrigue relative to English aristocracy interests, and expressing disdain for America as a formidable foe, therefore anxious to see our ruin. This predates all other claims of the first use of “conspiracy theory,” and as Caulfield points out, “You’ll note too something that is almost too delicious: the first use of conspiracy theory is about a conspiracy said to involve the press.”

Running at Davenport venue the Mockingbird on Main November 11 through 20, Spooky Pete is the latest blast of ingenuity, hilarity, puppetry, and sure-to-be-glorious WTF-ery by the Haus of Ruckus team of T. Green and Calvin Vo. It's the pair's first Mockingbird show not to feature, at their center, Vo's and Green's comedic alter egos Johnny and Fungus. It's also a haunted-house story, and is consequently landing, as stated on the production company's Facebook page, “Just in time to be late for Halloween.”

In conjunction with the German American Heritage Center's current exhibition The White Rose: The Student Resistance Against Hitler, Munich 1942-1943, the Davenport venue sponsored a poetry contest seeking original works inspired by the theme of “resistance.” All individuals chosen for the slam were between 13 and 20 years of age, with their poems five minutes or less in length, and the contest winners received $100 as compensation for their entries. With the kind permission of the GAHC and the authors, a selection of winning entries will be published monthly through January.

An "experienced analyst" at the National Security Agency ran an illegal surveillance project that involved "unauthorized targeting and collection of private communications of people or organizations in the U.S." The agency's inspector general concluded that the analyst "acted with reckless disregard" for "numerous rules and possibly the law." This happened 10 years ago. The inspector general's report was issued six years ago. But the public is just now learning about it, courtesy of Bloomberg. After some intrepid Freedom of Information Act work, we can now see a highly redacted version of the IG report.

My mentor was Dr. Walter Bradley, a giant of a man, who rose from humble beginnings, completed medical school, earned an MBA, and became an emergency-room director locally for many years. Before my first interview with Walter, my wife and I had decided that the Quad Cites was too far from our families in Chicago and that the interview was merely practice after so many years of medical school and residency. But then I met Walter.

A stunning landscape of some 24,000 square miles covering large swaths of northeast Iowa, southwest Wisconsin, and southeast Minnesota is being celebrated though visual art through November 25, with the University of Dubuque's Bisignano Gallery currently hosting photographs, paintings, and sculpture in its latest exhibition Driftless Art: Gail Chavenelle, Jenna Lueck, & Henry Matthiessen III.

A noted socio-political activist, journalist, author, philanthropist, motivational speaker, and grandson of perhaps the most influential peace activist of the 20th century, Anun Manilal Gandhi will speak in Augustana College's Centennial Hall as the first presenter in the college's new Global Lecture Series, the November 14 event finding Anun sharing his grandfather Mahatma's message of the transformational power of channeling anger into an agent for good.