Wes Phillips

On December 31, 2006, the UK will pay off its post-WWII debt to the US. "Nobody pays off their student loan early, unless they are a nutter," Dr. Tim Leung explained. Well, the full story is a bit more complicated than that. Or maybe not.

I have a soft spot for this show, but what really impresses me about this article on the long-running series is that the Sci-Fi network stuck with the show and worked to get viewers versed in its backstory and mythos, instead of just moving it to different time-slots each week like the "real" networks do.

Michael Chabon's rant about the imposition of predetermined boundaries and contours, of a formulary of play—and why Sid in Toy Story wasn't necessarily a Norman Bates in the making.

The Independent interviews Jared Diamond, author of Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. The good news? We may not be doomed. The bad news: Yet, that is.

The link is to The Guardian Unlimited's podcast of Stephen Fry and Christopher Hitchens debating blasphemy. You might think you don't have time to listen to a 78 minute argument? Well, think again—this you've got to hear.

My friend Jeff gave me a copy of the new CD remaster of this David Byrne/Brian Eno disc—and it's great. Now Byrne and Eno, "in keeping with the original spirit of the album," offer listeners access to the original multitrack recordings and a chance to remix them through a Creative Commons license. They also offer a chance for the remixes to be posted in a daily Top 20, as chosen by the site moderators.

Canadian Driver gets us past the front gates.