Urgh

A combination of medical checkups (just the usual, nothing urgent this time—and I’m good shape), working on taxes and screwing up a non-writing volunteer project (not 100 percent my fault, just 99 percent) has me a little frazzled so only a few links tonight:
•A look at how easy it is to hack people’s personal data. This is not news—I’ve seen similar displays of bad security back in the 1990s—but that doesn’t make it any less alarming.
•Macbeth becomes a metaphor for Tunisian politics.
•A member of the religious-right Family Research Council says the real issue in allowing people to use contraceptives is that by implication, it says it’s legal for single people to have sex! Instead of shaming and controlling them, we’re enabling them!
•At one school, music students can’t take music classes unless they play in the marching bad for football games.
•A blogger suggests the Red Dawn remake subversively criticizes the Iraq occupation. No surprise, really: in Screen Enemies of the American Way, I pointed out that it portrays the Soviet conquerors as the Americans and the American resistance as the Vietnamese.
•A look at the push for using drones in police work. Some of the interviewees assert that this doesn’t change privacy in the slightest—but as other bloggers have pointed out, if that were the case, why object to restrictions on drones?
•Slacktivist looks at Charles Dickens’ sympathy for the downtrodden.
•A conservative pundit argues that to be a success, the next Fantastic Four movie should go back to the source of the Doom/FF antagonism—it’s family vs. communism!
Of course (as several people point out in comments), Doom wasn’t a Communist—Latveria is a totalitarian state, but it’s an absolute monarchy, not Communist (and not a stand-in for communism—Silver Age Marvel never had a qualm about Red Menace stories without any stand-ins at all). And as I note in comments, Doom loved his mother so much, he put his own soul on the line to save her from hell.
•A decade ago, the Dixie Chicks criticized President Bush, and got death threats in return. Disproportionate much?