The Good: If you haven’t by now, you will soon hear of the terrorist group al Qaeda. In April, the number two leader in al Qaeda, Ayman Al-Zawahri, said that there are no women in al Qaeda. This, believe it or not, lead to an outcry among extremist women! Both in their homes and n the internet women have stepped up and said this is wrong. The claim that women are in al Qaeda is supported by the fact that terrorist actions by women have increased in recent months.

This is in good news because the women that are a part of this group are finally standing up to be heard. Many believe that al Qaeda’s reluctance to acknowledge the women in its mist is a great error. Another group, Hamas, regularly uses women in violent missions and believes that al Qaeda is missing a golden opportunity to have more members, inflict more damage, and improve itself in the eyes of the people.

The Bad: Those crazy Catholics are at it again. The Vatican has come out and yet again said women cannot become priests. It’s an order that has been put out before, but this time it was put out with an order to excommunicate all female priests. This comes at a time when male interest into the priesthood is on a steady decline with no hope of recovering. The Vatican says they are sticking to tradition, all I know is they are missing a great chance to spread the word of their beliefs.

I just had the pleasure of seeing Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull with my family and let me tell you, it is worth seeing. I have been a fan of Harrison Ford ever since I saw him as Han Solo in Star Wars when I was younger, but Indiana Jones is defiantly Ford’s shining light.

The movie begins with an open admission that Jones is much older than he was on his last adventure, and has matured accordingly. He is no longer known as Indy, going more by his “official” name of Professor Henry Jones. The plot of the movie basically involves Jones and Shia LaBeouf’s character Mutt trying to rescue Mutt’s parents, old friends of Jones’. Throughout the movie Jones is being followed by the KGB and is “of interest” to the FBI, making it an interesting piece.

When I saw the movie I couldn’t believe how it turns out. The acting was great, and the image of Indy was preserved, but wow. Defiantly watch this movie if you are in it for Indy, but don’t expect it to be like any Indy adventure you have seen before. The fedora and whip do make a few appearances in the movie, and there is enough history in the movie to make it seem semi-plausible. All in all, if you have the time, the money, and the gas, to spare go see Indy. It is defiantly an interesting way to cap off the Indiana Jones experience.

The Good: Were you at Woodstock? The epic concert of the 1969 was a cultural milestone, throwing 400,000 hormonal teenagers and 20-somethings into a messy, muddy, festival of love and music in New York. The event was so influential to our culture that a museum has been built to show those who missed out (like me) due to age or opportunity what they missed. The museum opens on Monday in the Bethel Woods lot where Woodstock took place and will be a “three-act play” about the event. The first “act” will be about the culture of the 1960’s, followed by Woodstock itself, and finally he cultural reverberations of the event. The best part? The museum has a 50-foot high screen that plays the concert as if you were there. Psychedelic dude!

The Bad: The University of Michigan, in cooperation with Reuters, takes a survey of consumers on a regular basis. The survey asks us, the consumers who keep the economy going, how we think, feel, and interact in this ever changing economy. One of the biggest things measured is confidence. Consumer confidence is how good we feel about the economy and its future, and normally ranges in the 60’s and 70’s. The lowest in history was in June 1980, when consumer confidence hit 58.7. We are not yet to that point, but we are slowly getting closer. The ranking for May 2008 was 59.8, falling 2.8 point from April’s reading. What does this mean? Fewer people trust the economy. It’s not surprising and just goes to show we need to get things under control.