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The post-Barbara Walters version of The View made its premiere Monday on ABC, using Taylor Swift's "Shake It Off" to greet the new panel: "The haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate… I shake it off, shake it off."

This seems like a rather defensive posture for a show starting its 18th season.

But then again.

Other than new host Rosie Perez talking about how she learned kung fu "just in case I had to kick some ass," the hour didn't go too well. It was stiff, polite and airless, like one of those Taiwanese parody cartoons that "dramatize" news scandals.

The post-Barbara Walters version of The View made its premiere Monday on ABC, using Taylor Swift's "Shake It Off" to greet the new panel: "The haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate… I shake it off, shake it off." This seems like a rather defensive posture for a show starting its 18th season. But then again. Other than new host Rosie Perez talking about how she learned kung fu "just in case I had to kick some ass," the hour didn't go too well. It was stiff, polite and airless, like one of those Taiwanese parody cartoons that "dramatize" news scandals.

Before we get all philosophical and meditative (which we will), let’s begin by considering the many forms of the human and non-human characters in “Parliament of Rooks”. A lot of credit goes, I expect, to penciller Jill Thompson, who moves from the very thin lines of Lyta and her son Daniel, figures in a world of primarily horizontal and vertical shapes, to the rougher, thicker lines and shapes of the Dreaming, where the characters need to align with their representations from previous Sandman issues and from their incarnations in other comics. In addition to all that — enough to give even a talented artist a headache — somebody, most likely either Thompson or Gaiman, decided to depict Abel’s story of the early days of Death and Dream as a mix of anime and what looks to my eyes like some sort of Saturday morning TV cartoon show from the ’80s...

Two new books argue that the good book isn't the squeaky-clean endorsement of no-sex-until-marriage that conservatives say it is. In this week's Newsweek, Lisa Miller reports on the surprise findings.

The poem describes two young lovers aching with desire. The obsession is mutual, carnal, complete. The man lingers over his lover's eyes and hair, on her teeth, lips, temples, neck, and breasts, until he arrives at "the mount of myrrh." He rhapsodizes. "All of you is beautiful, my love," he says. "There is no flaw in you."

Related story on The Daily Beast: The History of Kissing

The girl returns his lust with lust. "My lover thrust his hand through the hole," she says, "and my insides groaned because of him."

This ode to sexual consummation can be found in-of all places-the Bible. It is the Song of Solomon, a poem whose origins likely reach back to the pagan love...