Free Republic

Here we go: despite receiving an order for three more episodes on Friday, the Aaron Sorkin NBC drama “Studio 60 on Sunset Strip” is about to be put out of its misery. Cast members are already confiding in friends that the end is near. It’s likely NBC will pull the plug shortly I am told by insiders. Last week, Studio 60 had 7.7 million viewers. Compare that with competing "CSI: Miami," with 17.5 million. That gap cannot be closed. But ‘Studio 60’ has trouble internally at NBC, forget its intramural rivals. According to ratings stats, the “Saturday Night Live” behind...

Syd Barrett, a founding member of Pink Floyd who wrote the bulk of the legendary UK rock band's early material, died Friday. He was 60. The exact cause of death is unknown, although Barrett was known to suffer from diabetes and had battled various forms of mental illness for years, with many fans speculating that his years of heavy psychedelic drug use had sent him over the edge. Barrett had lived a reclusive life since the 1970s, living at his parents' home in Cambridge. Word of Barrett's death spread today, and the band--David Gilmour, Nick Mason, Roger Waters, and Richard...

BURG, Switzerland -- Albert Hofmann, the father of LSD, walked slowly across the small corner office of his modernist home on a grassy Alpine hilltop here, hoping to show a visitor the vista that sweeps before him on clear days. But outside there was only a white blanket of fog. He picked up a photograph of the view on his desk instead, left there perhaps to convince visitors of what really lies beyond the window. Hofmann will turn 100 on Wednesday, a milestone to be marked by a symposium in Basel on the chemical compound that he discovered and which...