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.

No Free Lunch is a doctor-to-doctor campaign to reduce the influence of drug company representatives on their work. As far as I know, we don’t have any medical personnel in our readership, but if anyone wants to get rid of drug company pens, we sure could use some extra pens where I work.

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.

Way back in 1899 (revised 1903), John Cotton Dana wrote in A Library Primer (now available online!):

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I think I had heard of Notes and Queries before I read Not Even Wrong, but reading that at least reminded me to look and YES!! There is an online archive of issues of N&Q from 1849-1869 online. N&Q is a newslettery repository of the research interests and results of the Victorian research nerd. The modern version has refined this to the classical research nerd, as the other nerds have made their own nests elsewhere.

Tortilla Flat’s title in Swedish is Riddarna kring Dannys bord

While I haven’t posted lately, you, loyal reader, are ever on my mind. I have some great links saved up for you for later. Until then, cutting edge cookie eating robot from Mcvities (who else?).

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!"