For today we have prepared a special something for the more senior amongst our loyal readership. We take a nostalgic look back into the - well - aluminium age of television entertainment.

Once upon a time, the sitting president’s father remarked that he wanted a nation closer to "The Waltons" than "The Simpsons". Nowadays, this once highly contoversial series is considered to be harmless family fun, and generally believed to have been around since the founding father’s day. If you’ve always felt there should be a website that not only offers classical Simpson’s quotes but also explains their background, history and impact under various angles – that’s pretty sad, somehow. But here you go:
http://www.westegg.com/simpsons/

Ah, those were the days, when fictious incidents ocurring in trashy TV series, characterized by implausible plots and sub- average acting, were still considered major news stories. When antihero J.R. was killed off in the terminal episode of one season of "Dallas", the oily soap that put, well , the "G" into the eiGhties, "Who shot J.R.?" was a legitimate subject for investigative journalism, and "I shot J.R." was a popular bumper sticker. (He returned from the dead three days, uhm, months later). Bumper stickers are still popular, of course, especially with people that want to document:
- the precise level of their stupid bigotry,
- their willingness to provide major companies with free advertising space,
- their membership in some stupid mass movement,
- their belonging to some stupid minority, which think they are a mass movement.
- their stupidity.
The other kind of people that like bumper stickers own automobile paintshops.
Anyone who wants to get back to the roots can still get his/her genuine “I shot J. R.”- shirt from the web.
http://www.glarkware.com/


A loooooong time ago, around the time I was hatched, the mother of all SF- TV- Series was airing on some of the aproximately three television channels known to that ancient world. This was where all of the big ones, Kirk, Spock, Luke Skywalker, E. T. and Bender the Robot learned the tricks of the trade: in Mrs. Robinson living room. ("Here’s to you, Mrs. Robinson....") Now her DVD is lost in shelvespace.!
http://www2.foxstore.com/


Back in those happier days, you even had some things completely unimaginable nowadays: like intelligent, likeable, charismatic and honest presidential candidates. How any voter could prefer any of the other candidates over Pogo, the 'possum is completely beyond me. This newspaper strip is still rated among the all- time top five.
Thanks to Mark Evanier, POVonline creator, Groo author and well known for his 'possophilic tendencies, Pogo now has a webhome.
http://www.pogopossum.com/


And finally, as a public service announcement to all people interested in circles: Pi is around 3 and 3/14 is Einstein's birthday. Who cares?

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For old Gramps Dapper, Walt Disney used to be a prime example of the self- made- millionaire we young ducklings should all strive to emulate, but after all the decades Walt's legend is overgrown with often baseless and occasionally malicious myth. Many people believe Walt had himself cyrogenically frozen after his death to enanble his disembodied head to land a part in "Futurama" (credited as "Walt Disney's disembodied head: himself - also Key Grip assistant"). Unfortunately, Futurama is on Fox.
Even more people believe the popular myth that Walt Disney has always been a vampiric CEO, and never has produced any art himself. While we generally must support any subliminal criticism of the capitalist system, comrades, we can't completely ignore the fact that, while this is true in a marxsist- leninist sense, it is not factually true.
Here is a caricature Walt produced at age 17, depicting himself asking his Poppa for some dough. Alternately, it can be interpreted as depicting Sean Penn asking Orville Wright for the keys to the barn.


Jingle bells, jingle bells..... look what the F.B.I. dumped into our stockings! A little bit of info for the 18.000 police organisations closest to their hearts: "Oh ye merry constables," they wrote "pray keepeth the watch and protecteth our king and country from the unwashed heathen terrorists". And, according to the wisdom emanating from Langley, such terrorists are readily recognizable by the almanacs they lug around while showing marked interest in public buildings, of course only for "target selection and operational planning".
www.sfgate.com

The following public service announcement is brought to you courtesy of "The Onion", the web's most reliable news portal:

Dolphins develop opposable thumbs
"Oh shit", says Humankind
I believe I speak for the entire human race when I say, 'Holy fuck,'" said Oceanographic Institute director Dr. James Aoki, noting that the dolphin has a cranial capacity 40 percent greater than that of humans. "That's it for us monkeys." Aoki strongly urged humans, especially those living near the sea, to learn to communicate using a system of clicks and whistles in a frequency range of 4 to 150 kHz. He also encouraged humans to "start practicing their echolocation as soon as possible."
Read the whole bitter truth at one of the best magazines on the web:
http://www.theonion.com/3951/top_story.html

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From the depth of night sprang sudden enlightment: The thing the world needed more than anything else, more than everything else, more than ever, right now, was: close ups of dogs' noses. The "Sudden Giant Nostril Gallery!"
http://www.mataglap.com/gallery.html

After some rough sailing, Bollywood seems to be in calmer waters again. In 2003 they churned out 245 flicks and went back to making some serious rupees. This years big earner was "Koi Mil Gaya", in which a prodigy contacts an alien creature.( or was it an alien teacher connecting his progenitor? No- Woody Allen constructing a projector! Well, something like that anyway.) The movie earned $ 18 mil. already, rewarding the producers for offering a sf- movie instead of their usual fare.
Interested in Indian movies? Check out:
http://www.indiafm.com/



If you take the Bible's (holy) word for it, the Universe was created sometime around 4000 BC, smack in the middle of the neolithic period. If you want to brainwash your kids into believing this, however, you need to start early, before any capacity for critical thought can evolve. Praise the Lord - he inspired one of his dimwits to create this book to help you:
Amazon

But as long as we are on the subject of archaeology ( "You call this archaeology?"- Prof. Henry Jones, Snr. ), recently an artifact believed to be the oldest know work of art was discovered in some backward part of Germany. Imagine a group of early humans, assembled around some meagre flames, shivering from the cold, threatened by sabre-toothed tigers, wooly mammothes and the seemingly unavoidable descent from Ice Age through Dark Age to New Age - desperately looking for a higher force to lead them out of their predicament into some other. Suddenly, the whole tribe whips out their primitive drums and pipes and starts to perform a classical orchestra suite, as befits some major discovery, while one young early human starts to carve a little idol, an idol of the most perfect, godly and superior creature know to him - a duck.
http://www.nature.com

Well, well, Wonderwoman. Our relationship has always been characterized by a certain ambivalency on my part. You sucked. Your villains sucked, too. Your family sucked, too, even if they used to treat you in an appropriately condescending way. And I have no clue who gave you the idea a lasso was a weapon typical of amazones.
On the other hand, males of any species need females to look up to at certain points in their development (nudge,nudge) - and after all you were a hottie. So, taking the long perspective, thanks for being around.
But I am deviating - actually, I just wanted to remind everybody how ridiculous it is to have a jet that's invisible. If the guys at DC Comics had had any sense of realism (which would probably have cost them their jobs, anyway) WW would have vanquished the villain, saved the world and returned to the airport to find her exclusive ride as an invisible wreck with Boeing treadmarks on it. Or alternately, she would have spent hours looking for it, finally found it, only to accidentally get into the engine's intake instead of the cockpit. This suuuuuuucksss.sss..ssss..s
Instead of this, she could start and land her supersonic bird on any plain surface half it's size, have it circle on autopilot for weeks without refueling, and always managed not only to locate it in an instant, but also get into the invisible cockpit and somehow interpret the readings of the invisible instrumentation and operate the invisible controls.
Therefore, when I first heard DC was offering a model kit of the invisible jet, I thought they were just trying to sell empty boxes to gullible kids.
But no, here it is:

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