Ken C. Pohlmann

You've probably seen them outside the supermarket. You know - those big red vending machines. But instead of a soda for $1.25, you get a movie. For $1. Swipe your credit/debit card, and the disc is all yours for the night. That's Redbox, and the machines are popping up everywhere, ready to supply the masses with low-commitment, impulse-rental DVDs. With 20,000 machines, each holding about 500 discs, Redbox is making tons of money. And some Hollywood studios are going ballistic.

Well, it's official: the 1.65 million students of the high-school class of '11 have set a new record. They collectively racked up the lowest SAT reading scores ever. Moreover, their score compared to the '10 score represented one of the biggest declines in 20 years. So not only are today's kids terrible readers, they are rapidly getting more terrible.

I always enjoy logging onto The Onion. Its faux news stories are wicked funny. Their specialty is satirical stories that seem vaguely plausible, but of course are completely bogus. Occasionally, people actually believe Onion stories. Recent Onion tweets reported that armed Congressmen were taking schoolchildren hostage and demanding $12 trillion in cash.