Always strive to learn something useful. --Sophocles

National Public Radio has Wait Wait Don't Tell Me.

Archive Of Our Own has the recently delivered Yuletide gift exchange.

And in 2009, I don't know if it was requested or what, someone wrote a zombie apocalypse during the opening of a WWDTM broadcast with Peter Sagal, Paula Poundstone, Mo Rocca, and Tom Bodett.

This is a brilliant and very short story, only 1002 words, 5-10 minutes to read, and very, VERY funny if you like WWDTM. The writer captured their voices perfectly. This story truly puts the Fan back into FanFic.

To tell you how far it spread, PETER SAGAL heard about it and tweeted about it! It also made Boing Boing's web site!

https://archiveofourown.org/works/36750

Wait Wait Don't Eat Me
Fandom: • RPF - National Public Radio

Summary: "We're going to be cutting our show a little short today, because, as you may have heard, there's an apocalypse happening! But we didn't let the election of Barack Obama stop us, and we're not going to let the zombie hordes stop us either."

"The only way to build a great, enduring company is by linking shareholder value with value for employees."
--Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks

Schultz was on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart on Monday night and made the announcement that Starbucks would pay for two years of classes for employees through Arizona State University's online program.

This is awesome. I assume there's some restrictions, like maybe you have to work there six months to a year before you're eligible, but it covers both part-time and full-time employees. I believe he said that Starbucks also has a $15 an hour minimum wage.

Then today I read a great article on NPR about a new classification of corporation called a Benefit Corp. The thing that is so strikingly different is that they are protected under law from suits brought by shareholders who complain that they're putting environmental responsibility (among other things) over profit and shareholder value.

This is just beyond awesome and something that the world really needs. Not all states have this structure in place, but it is growing. The article says "For example, in Nevada, the state's incorporation document clearly lists as an option. And 236 companies signed up in only four months...", so clearly there is an interest in such a thing.

http://www.npr.org/2014/06/18/316349988/benefit-corporations-look-beyond-the-profit-motive

They had a call for suggestions, which I sadly missed, as they didn't include Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. Oh, well.

Not a bad list, but by no means definitive.

http://www.npr.org/2011/08/02/138894873/vote-for-top-100-science-fiction-fantasy-titles

Wired has a nice little article including some video clips of their reunion in New York, and Fresh Air/NPR also had a good piece.


Wired article

NPR article with link to audio clip


I was first exposed to/corrupted by Python in the late 70's whilst in high school. They had probably already completed their BBC run at that point and the Phoenix PBS affiliate, KAET, ran the entire series. I don't recall the first sketch that I saw, but I was hooked pretty much immediately. I bought a few of their albums, including the original three-sided album (Matching Tie and Handkerchief) which I think I still have around somewhere, not that I have a functioning record player.

While in Tucson a couple of weeks ago, I was quite happy to discover two albums at one of the greatest used bookstores in the world, Bookman's, and drove back to New Mexico listening to the soundtrack to Holy Grail and an album called Monty Python's Previous Record (1972). I had many segments from Holy Grail from other CDs, but I was missing one of the most brilliant: the Professional Logician. It didn't appear in the movie, it was a comment on Sir Bedeviere's logic, but was nonetheless hilarious. I played it for Russet the other evening and it blew her mind ("Sex is more fun than logic. One cannot prove this, but it IS, in the sense that Mount Everest IS, or that Elmer Cogan ISN'T. Goodnight."). Sadly, with the Previous Record CD, although the album had something like 26 tracks on it the CD has two: Side 1 and Side 2. *sigh* If I get ambitious some day with a good sound editing program, maybe I'll break it in to chunks.


(and for the record, Powell's Bookstore in Portland, OR is the greatest used bookstore in the world. Bookman's is quite good, but it ain't Powell's.)

Very interesting clip. The thing that astronauts do the most? Not go into space.

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=1235