A fear of things like this potential Folgers’ commercial coming true is what causes me to sleep with a belt-fed weapon and lots of ammo close at hand.

Of course, I’m not a coffee drinker.

[Via emailer Aleta Jackson]

…and Youtube. I give you: Star Trek vs Star Wars.

On the occasion of Peter Diamandis winning the Heinlein Prize, I thought some of my readers might want to reacquaint (or introduce, if they haven’t had the pleasure) themselves with some of the great man’s books.

And yes, if you’re wondering, I do get a cut (assuming that enough people purchase some to get me to the minimum). Think of it as an alternative means of tipping me, while getting in some good SF.

Lileks reviews the Da Vinci Code (book, not movie). He’s less than impressed. One suspects that he’ll leave the money in his wallet, and save himself the time out of his life that seeing the movie would involve.

…on the cutting-room floor. Listen, as Darth Vader tries to explain to Palpatine how he lost his Death Star. Boy, talk about Worst.Boss.Ever.

What did we ever do without Youtube?

It’s Towel Day. Do you know where yours is?

Lileks reminisces about comics:

These books still have a tremendous pull, mostly for nostalgia

…when people start talking about 80s nostalgia.

Late seventies, early eighties, was when I pretty much quit listening to pop music, so this is a conversation in which I can’t participate. The vast majority of the songs being discussed I wouldn’t recognize if I heard them. I have no idea what any of Prince’s songs sounded like (though I do know Cyndi Lauper and I remember Kim Carnes “Bette Davis Eyes”). But for those of my readers who are interested, it’s probably an interesting post.

Oh, and yes, I was also surprised that Callimarchus could write that with a straight face. I wonder what his wife thinks?

“OM” over at sci.space.history has a more plausible way for Anakin to turn (long thread–search the phrase “ROTS had its good points”).

That’s what it sounds like Oliver Stone should have named his latest cinematic atrocity.

Stone gives himself much credit of “telling the truth” about Alexander’s bisexuality as if it’s some progressive badge of honor, but at the same time he can’t get away from the cruelest, least imaginative stereotyping: His Alexander, as expressed through the weepy histrionics of Colin Farrell, is more like a desperate housewife than a soldier. He’s always crying, his voice trembles, his eyes fill with tears.

Actually, he sounds like an early version of Bill Clinton. If he got the lip-biting thing down, he’d be ready to run for “Alexander The President.”

The movie apparently tells us a lot more about Oliver Stone than about Alexander:

The movie lacks any convincing ideas about Alexander. Stone advances but one, the notion that Alexander was an early multiculturalist, who wanted to “unify” the globe. He seems not to recognize this as a standard agitprop of the totalitarian mind-set, always repulsive, but more so here in a movie that glosses over the boy-king’s frequent massacres. Conquerors always want “unity,” Stalin a unity of Russia without kulaks, Hitler a Europe without Jews, Mao a China without deviationists and wreckers. All of these boys loved to wax lyrical about unity while they were breaking human eggs in the millions, and so it was with Alexander, who wanted world unity without Persians, Egyptians, Sumerians, Turks and Indians.

Read the whole thing. It’s Mark Steynian.