True grid online

Welcome to this week’s Reno News & Review.

Hey, before I get onto the world-politics topic that’s been burning at the top of my thoughts for several days, allow me to make an announcement.

I’ve been asked dozens upon dozens of times over my career here at the RN&R why we don’t put the Nightclubs/Casinos clubs grid online. I’ve never really had an answer from the people who do our Web site. Usually it’s something like, “Geez, Brian, why don’t you shut up and go wash the yogurt out of your shirt.”

Well, I’ve been assured that the impossible has finally come to pass: We are going to begin posting the clubs grid online! (Would you believe here in the office we actually call that “what bands are playing where” thing the “True Grid”? The habit goes back to our early days when we had a kind of Sun Valley vibe going on.)

Anyway, Nightclubs/Casinos will be posted in PDF format on the Web site, www.newsreview.com. You’ll be able to access it from under the Music Feature link on the default page or at the bottom of the Music section on the main table of contents page.

On to things you could probably care less about.

I’ve been thinking about the ongoing riots caused by the publication of those satiric cartoons featuring Mohammed. On Saturday in Pakistan, rioters chanted slogans against Denmark, Israel and the United States. I’m not the first person to figure out that these riots are not really about the cartoons, but because the Moslem world believes it’s under a religious attack, a New Crusade. When you think about it, we have had military strikes against groups of their religious leadership—for example, we did shake the Taliban right out of its tree.

But through it all, and especially in “retaliation” against the publication of those cartoons, I have yet to see Christian or Jewish religious figures out of the past publicly ridiculed in cartoons. Even when Moslem newspaper cartoonists attempt payback, they don’t cross that line. I don’t know what it means, but I find it interesting.