No Going Back

"Do you want to talk about something else today?" an exasperated Kristi Noem asked a television interviewer this week. The topic the beleaguered South Dakota governor preferred to avoid was the execution of her dog Cricket - by her - which she describes in her new autobiography, "No Going Back."

The Lagash Lounge

In 2023, an Italo-American archaeological team announced their discovery of a 5,000-year-old tavern in Lagash, an ancient city-state capital in southern Iraq. A cuneiform tablet found among the ruins carried a recipe for beer, which the team believed to be the bar's most popular beverage, even exceeding water. Photos of the site showed piles of broken pottery "mugs" strewn about. The Lagash Lounge must have held a heck of a party the night it closed down.