AdamSmith

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/oct/17/calvin-hobbes-bill-watterson-mental-floss-interview http://m.mentalfloss.com/article.php?id=53216 And an appreciation from a few years back: http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2010/feb/17/fantastic-authenticity-calvin-and-hobbes

A new one!

Hmm. Should I, or shouldn't I? or maybe just This new learning amazes me, Sir Bedivere. Tell me again how sheeps' bladders may be employed to prevent earthquakes.

Also some of the top handful of the Star Trek franchise might make it into the top 20 or so. Choices!

Welcome back, axiom! Hungering for all the news about your trip.

This should be entertaining. http://mobile.politico.com/iphone/story/1013/98426.html

P.S. Lucky graciously and laboriously found a way to post a pic of the rubber greenback here: http://www.boytoy.com/forums/index.php?/topic/16913-rubber-bill/#entry98468

You make a good case. Just goes to show the impossible job they set for themselves. How to balance all the judgment criteria -- cultural impact vs. pure film art, etc.? You also make me think, if the list were longer, where would they rank The Empire Strikes Back, generally agreed a better film in the absolute than Star Wars?

Agree about Dune. Again, given their general good judgment here, I would like to have seen, say, their top 20 choices. To see for instance how they would have chosen among -- and ranked -- some of the Golden Age works: Forbidden Planet (my personal favorite second only to 2001, though I can see the arguments why you might edge it out in favor of the 10 here). The Day the Earth Stood Still, though again ditto. Things to Come. Although granted Kubrick had something of a point when, after Clarke sent him to see it in preparing to make 2001, Kubrick came back and said "I will never see another movie you recommend." Arguably the first make of The Time Machine. (?)

This time around.

Thank you!

The Guardian's selection of the top 10 sf movies ever: http://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2013/oct/16/top-10-sci-fi-movies To be sure, such lists are usually tedious, tendentious, uninformed, and just plain wrong. This one, though, I think is about as close to right as it gets, in both the choices (10 being an arbitrarily too-small number) and the quite good summary and commentary.

Early details of Greenwald's new venture: http://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/oct/16/pierre-omidyar-ebay-glenn-greenwald

Somewhere in the attic amongst other juvenile jokes & novelties, I have an old dollar-bill parody which in place of "Silver Certificate" reads "Rubber Snapificate" and is of course printed on rubber instead of paper. Elsewhere in place of the standard text are several puns about how it will bounce, etc. View images of front and back here: http://currency.ha.com/c/item.zx?saleNo=34092&lotIdNo=8066 (Can't post the image directly because the image type is not supported here.) The one pictured here is issue of The Delighted States of Hysteria. Just recalled that mine is currency of The Untied States of Anemia -- rather more fitting for our times today, even though I got it back around 1972.

I was thinnin' of the at-the-time reviled substitution of greenbacks for gold.

When that which should be yellow is instead green, a brief course of tetracycline may be indicated. Unless of course you buy the bit about Frank Baum's novel being an allegory of capitalism, perils of going off the gold standard, etc.

You have never experienced a boner?

Vatican's new Secretary of State says clerical celibacy "open to discussion": http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/09/11/20433950-pope-francis-no-2-clerical-celibacy-is-open-to-discussion

Embarrassing would have been if he were not wearing underwear. (...damn! )

Two articles suggesting not Oct. 17 but rather Nov. 1 and 15 are the true, inescapable doomsday dates if the debt ceiling is not lifted: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-real-drop-dead-debt-ceiling-date-2013-10 http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/15/wall-street-debt-deadline-1-november

P.S. I can be convinced to $ay anything anybody want$ me to $ay.

Nice piece on what Banksy may really be up to... http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/15/banksy-streets-new-york-molly-crabapple

Is that what you call yours?

The Guardian reports Greenwald's departure: http://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/oct/15/glenn-greenwald-announces-departure-guardian

One, anyway.