I’ll avoid the Star Trek jokes about the Roddenberry burial.

This is an appropriate final resting place, I think:

Star Trek Creator’s Ashes Headed for Space

The ashes of Gene Roddenberry, creator of “Star Trek,” and his late wife Majel Barrett Roddenberry are scheduled to be shot into space on a Celestis Memorial Spaceflight in about a year and a half. Part of Mr. Roddenberry’s remains were already shot into space, though they were only given the “Earth Orbit Service,” which starts at $2,495 according to the Celestis website. The other portion of his remains along with his wife’s will be upgrading to the very fitting “Voyager Service,” which starts at $12,500 and can run up to $37,500. This will launch their remains into deep space, never to return to Earth.

For my part, I pretty much assume that they’ll just go through my organs for anything useful and just bury the rest. Given the general lack of communication between this life and the next one, I doubt that I’m going to be able to make any complaints known to the corporeal authorities anyway.

Moe Lane

PS: The thought of having my body cremated and the ashes thrown into someone’s face is amusing, but it’s also kind of lame.

$750 million lawsuit filed against Marvel Entertainment.

Guess it’s settled whether there’s money in that franchise, huh?

According to the Associated Press, a lawsuit was filed yesterday in a Manhattan federal court on behalf of four shareholders of Stan Lee Media, Inc. against Stan Lee, his partner Arthur Lieberman, his wife Joan Clayton, Marvel Entertainment, Inc. and producer Avi Arad. The four unnamed shareholders are seeking more then $750 million in profits from films based on Marvel characters, including “Spider-Man,” “X-Men” and “Iron Man.”

While details are still trickling in regarding specifics to the case, the AP reports that the lawsuit claims profits from Lee’s comic creations belong to the company after emerging from bankruptcy in 2006. The suit claims Lee and the others named in the proceedings ignored the company and shareholder’s interests.

I came across this while looking up Watchmen info – see Moe succumb to the Fanboy side of the Force! Succumb, Moe, succumb! – and while I figure that this will probably get settled it’s still a little interesting. I mean, sure, between the Spiderman movies and the X-Men films and the entire Iron Man “my-God-it’s-full-of-Tony-Starks” thing Marvel must be a hot commodity right now. Still, 750 million’s nothing to sneeze at – even if they’re hoping to “only” score a 100 million or so.

Moe Lane

PS: Watchmen comes out in March; Star Trek’s still up for May.  And I don’t know what’s going to be the big summer must-see movies, yet.

[BREAKING] Boehner to House GOP: Vote against the stimulus.

But, hey, remember: “I won.”

Or, as Heritage put it, “The Pelosi-Reid-Obama Debt Plan”. Anyway, Politico reports:

President Barack Obama is coming to the Capitol this afternoon to curry favor with congressional Republicans. But it appears GOP leaders have already made up their minds to oppose his $825 billion stimulus plan.

House Republican Leader John A. Boehner and his No. 2, Whip Eric Cantor, told their rank-and-file members Tuesday morning during a closed-door meeting to oppose the bill when it comes to the floor Wednesday, according to an aide familiar with the discussion. Boehner told members that he’s voting against the stimulus, and Cantor told the assembled Republicans that there wasn’t any reason for them to support the measure, according to another person in the room. Cantor and his whip team are going to urge GOP members to oppose it.

In a nod to the president, Boehner did point out that this is the third time that Obama has met with Republican leaders, compared with the zero meetings they’ve held with Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) — a now-familiar refrain from Republicans in the House. But Obama’s diplomacy clearly isn’t buying any votes yet.

(H/T: Instapundit) Apparently, “I won.” counts as diplomacy these days. Continue reading [BREAKING] Boehner to House GOP: Vote against the stimulus.

“Remember, drinking buddies don’t let drinking buddies get marched off for mandatory sensitivity training.”

It’s the last line of a good article on the decline of academic relationships inside the academy itself (via Ann Althouse, via Glenn Reynolds). The very short version? Professors and teachers in the same college don’t hang out any more, which makes them easy meat every time somebody with a chip on their shoulder decides to offer one of them up on the altar of insensitivity.  And the people running the colleges don’t actually mind, because this works out for them in the long run: makes it easier for them to do the diversity hiring that keeps the chip-on-their-shoulder people quiet.  Of course, hiring primarily for diversity makes it harder to develop personal academic relationships (which leads to hanging out), so…

This would all be Nasty Fun hysterical, with a double helping of schadenfreude, except for one thing: in about sixteen years I have to send my kid to one of these places for an education.  Having them collectively remove their craniums from their rectums before then would be optimal.

Moe Lane

PS: It’s been years since high school Latin, sorry.  I don’t even feel like looking up what those two plurals would be.

Crossposted at RedState.

Geez, the new Whitehouse.gov site is just plain *bad*.

Don’t they have people for this?

It was Mary Katherine Ham’s article that tipped me to the problem:

Barack Obama’s administration may be promising the “greatest ethical standard ever administered to an executive branch,” and increased transparency over his predecessor, but it seems to be forgoing at least one transparency practice that was routine in the Bush White House— transcripts of the daily press briefing.

It’s been four days since Press Secretary Robert Gibbs’ first (and widely panned) appearance before the White House press corps, but no transcript, summary, or video of the event has shown up on WhiteHouse.gov. The delay could be forgiven in a less tech-savvy bunch, but given the Obama team’s considerable online skill, the omission of the the transcript is clearly intentional.

The decision to withhold transcripts is not a departure from the Obama Team’s online posture during the campaign, and signals that’s exactly the posture they intend to take for the next four years. Team Obama got a lot of credit for being an active online presence, which indeed it was, but that presence was built for message control, not openness. (My.BarackObama, the campaign’s social networking platform, is a different story, but it was cordoned off from the official campaign material, which was pretty tightly controlled.)

Continue reading Geez, the new Whitehouse.gov site is just plain *bad*.

Susan Collins (R-ME) “simply can’t in good conscience vote for Mr. Geithner.”

Obama’s advocate gave her every opportunity to recant her heresy, too.

[UPDATE]: HA! In your FACE, Allahpundit. 60/34. Which still means that we’re putting in charge of our taxes somebody who can’t do his.

But Senator Collins (R-ME) wasn’t having any of it.

Oh, did I say “Obama’s advocate?” I meant to say “Andrea Mitchell, objective journalist for NBC News.” Be sure to go all to the end; the point where Ms. Mitchell plaintively asks why such a moderate Republican as Senator Collins (R-ME) is thinking to hold the line on this one is almost worth it right there. Mind you, Allahpundit’s right: Geithner is going to get confirmed.

But what the heck: I’ll take the under. 63/36.

Crossposted at RedState.

The Scotsman Abides.

It’s not doing its usual insane growth, but Mickey D’s isn’t losing money, either:

McDonald’s profit tops view, sales growth slows

NEW YORK/LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – McDonald’s Corp reported a quarterly profit that handily topped Wall Street estimates, but said it saw growth in some overseas markets soften as a U.S.-led recession went global.

Shares of the world’s largest hamburger chain were down 0.5 percent in afternoon trade after falling as much as 2.6 percent earlier in the session.

McDonald’s posted a 5.8 percent rise in worldwide December sales at restaurants open at least 13 months.

The results are still ahead of most other restaurant operators, but mark a slowdown from the company’s own November and October results, when McDonald’s said same-store sales rose 7.7 percent and 8.2 percent, respectively.

Continue reading The Scotsman Abides.