I hadn’t ever seen the "Don’t" sign (symbol of universal hatred over a plain blue field) before we were in Iceland, and I finally decided it must mean "no parking," since I believed a plain blue field meant "parking okay." I had to take the BBC Roadsign Quiz to find out I’m wrong.

Joss has signed up to write and direct Wonder Woman!

My initial reaction to the headline " Last Star Wars to be ’emotional’" was "Oh, right, because that’s what he’s good at." But, y’know, I seem to remember American Graffiti being genuinely moving in parts. But reviewing his oeuvre on IMDb makes me wonder if maybe it’s just that I haven’t seen AG in a long time. Or maybe it’s that AG had actors in it.
Either way, it’s a sad day when George Lucas is aspiring to be James Cameron.

As if we didn’t have enough to worry about, the next Yellowstone Supervolcano is 40,000 years overdue. Give or take. The last one left a crater within which Tokyo would fit, and the effects sound about the same as the dreaded nuclear winter.

Drive a company into the ground (well, okay, mortgage its future for short-term stock price gain)? Get named President of another one. Bring along an exec who is later jailed for illegally arranging employment for a government official? Take over as Chairman and CEO. Have consensual, extra-marital sex with an opposite sex executive, though, and you’re out on your ass.
Condit was renowned for his affairs during his tenure (his second wife had been his secretary, and it was well and widely known inside the company when he moved into a hotel when his third marriage (to his cousin) was falling apart), so I can imagine only that somebody decided Harry must go. I’m able to infer some entertaining irony at the notion that maybe it was the ethics code that Harry made everybody sign that made his extra-curricular activities a bootable offense.

I’ve been watching Wonderfalls lately. I missed it in its run because I didn’t have access to a Fox station, but bought the DVDs on faith in Tim Minear (near as I can tell so far, Tim got called in to tune up Bryan Fuller and Todd Holland’s idea). I got to wondering about which of WF or Joan of Arcadia came first. According to this article, " The two shows were developed and sold to their respective networks at the same time, but the September debut of Joan of Arcadia and its status as one of the season’s few hits make Mr. Fuller and his colleagues seem like laggards, or worse, copycats."
Also of note in the article, JoA creator Barbara Hall comes off as an asshole and a bit dim: "I don’t see Joan of Arc anywhere in [WF]." And hidden in the middle of the article, where Holland and Fuller are spit-balling series pitches, "How about Rosemary’s Baby, all grown up and fighting the evil within?" Now where have I heard that before? Finally, I can’t figure why the article claims Tim wrote for Buffy.

Well, I love the obvious jokes, anyway. So I’ll join the probable chorus of geeks remarking along the lines of "Oh, sure, we have nothing against being known for genocide, but you had damned well better change the name of that carcinogenic dye!"

Google, in an attempt to further enhance the accessibility and useability of all information, has introduced the movie: keyword. My first test gave mixed results. The results page told me that "What a dump" was said by Bette Davis, but not that she said it in Beyond the Forest, despite the search beyond.the.forest what.a.dump demonstrating that Google has the original source of the quote available.
I hope it gets better enough to be useful to me and the people I know.

The WHO is using soothing phrases such as "gravest possible danger" to describe the bird flu situation. Oh, good.

I was a little surprised to see FD&C Yellow 5 was not on the BBC’s list of colorings banned elsewhere, but FD&C Blue 1 is there. Bottom line appears to be that Norway is the place to live if you’re exceptionally concerned about food-additive safety.
Update: turns out Yellow 5 is Tartrazine; the BBC just didn’t translate it, though they did translate some of the others.
Alternative bottom line: coal may not be good for you.