As the world watched the incredible opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the same thought was on many minds: How in the world can London possibly top this in 2012? Faced with that challenge, director Danny Boyle seems to have been inspired by the title of a Monty Python film: "And now for something completely different."

Catie and Caleb Medley went to the doomed midnight screening of "The Dark Knight Rises." It was a movie they'd been looking forward to for a year, her father said. Gunfire rang out. The bullets missed Catie, who was pregnant. Caleb was shot in the eye. On Tuesday, their son Hugo was born. Caleb is listed in critical condition, and the cost of emergency treatment for his head wound has already reached $2 million. The Medleys were uninsured.

I've never held a handgun in my life. I did some rifle target shooting with the ROTC in college. That's it with me and firearms. Does this make me less of an American? I think handguns are dangerous, and the more people who walk around carrying them the more dangerous they are. I also don't understand why civilians need to possess AR-15 assault rifles, such as the one used by James Holmes in Colorado. They fire 10 shots at a time, and are intended for combat use. In civilian hands, they are by definition weapons of slaughter. Do you need one in your home?

Wednesday, July 18, is the 20th anniversary of our marriage. How can I begin to tell you about Chaz? She fills my horizon, she is the great fact of my life, she has my love, she saved me from the fate of living out my life alone, which is where I seemed to be heading. If my cancer had come, and it would have, and Chaz had not been there with me, I can imagine a descent into lonely decrepitude. I was very sick. I might have vegetated in hopelessness. This woman never lost her love, and when it was necessary she forced me to want to live. She was always there believing I could do it, and her love was like a wind forcing me back from the grave.

Peter Jackson caused a bit of a stir by announcing that he would shoot his forthcoming "The Hobbit" at 48 frames per second. The film will be released in two parts, in December 2012 and December 2013, and he revealed recently that Part One will be two and a half hours long. One wonders how much of this burden the lovable little creatures can carry on their shoulders.

The mind of a theoretical physicist must be a wonderful place. It can consider things that for me are only words, and will always be words. It can make play with multiple dimensions. It can contemplate black holes. It can not only theorize the existence of the Higgs boson, but can devise an experiment to find it--an experiment that succeeds.

Some of the fiercest and most useful satire on the web right now is being written by a man who signs himself Smart Ass Cripple. Using his wheelchair as a podium, he ridicules government restrictions, cuts through hypocrisy, ignores the PC firewalls surrounding his disability, and is usually very funny. Because he has been disabled since birth, he uses that as a license to write things that others may think but do not dare say.