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[The Thinker]After almost 1½ years, my Golden-Age back-issue hunt finally netted a relatively cheap copy of All-Flash #12, the first appearance of the Flash villain, the Thinker. It’s an odd read, because the origin of the Thinker (a mob boss who plans his heists very meticulously) is interwoven with a slapstick story of the Three Dimwits.

All-Flash #12 (Fall 1943)The Thinker story is played more or less as a straight super-hero vs. organized crime story. I’d summarize it, but the Comics Archive has already written it up in their article on the Thinker. Now, imagine the first five paragraphs over there interwoven with a Three Stooges film and you’ll get the idea. The Dimwits end up buying a restaurant heavily in debt to the mob, and accidentally make salads out of an alien plant that make people turn invisible.

It’s incredibly silly, but it ties into the other half of the story: The original mob boss’ henchmen are caught robbing the Dimwits’ restaurant, so he calls in the Thinker to solve his problem before they can rat on him. And of course, once the Thinker takes over, he’s mighty interested in these salads that turn people invisible.

And yet, the feel is so completely different that it seems like two different stories.

The Three Dimwits

An unexpected discovery was a reference to the planet Karma, where the alien plant comes from. I’d seen two other references in other Golden-Age Flash stories, so it’s clearly part of the background mythos. This is one reason I’ve been looking for the source material. It’s relatively easy to find info on the leads, or the major villains, but the minor supporting characters who appear in three or four issues—Deuces Wilde, Evart Keenan, Dr. Flura, Ebenezer Jones—are mostly forgotten.

On a related note, while looking up the Thinker’s other appearances, I discovered that one of the non-Flash titles I’d been looking for, All-Star Comics #37, was reprinted in The Greatest Golden-Age Stories Ever Told—a book I already had. I felt bad that I hadn’t actually read the entire book, but that meant I could cross off two items from my wantlist instead of just one.

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I was browsing the DVD releases at Target this weekend, and saw the box for Bring it On: All or Nothing. I did a double-take, because right there on the cover was Claire Bennet from Heroes:

Bring it On: All or Nothing DVD cover Claire Bennet

Yes, shortly before Hayden Panettiere played a cheerleader with super-powers on Heroes, she played a cheerleader in a direct-to-video sequel to Bring it On. The uniform is even the same color scheme!

She’s probably safe from being typecast, though. She’s done quite a bit of work, and something tells me Claire isn’t going to be cheering—or particularly cheerful, for that matter—anytime soon.

Edit: Forgot to mention, the Heroes Wiki is was a fascinating and addictive site.

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An NPR story about an archaeological site in Peru mentioned that the ancient Andean calendars used a 10-day week, and I started wondering what other measurements various societies have used. The seven-day week is (almost?) universal these days, developed independently in both the Middle East (spreading to the West) and in the Far East, but past societies have used anywhere from three days to ten.

Unlike the day, year, or lunar month, there’s no natural unit of time corresponding to the week. So it’s hardly surprising that different societies have chosen different lengths. Ten is one obvious choice (there’s a reason we refer to number places as digits, after all). But aside from the obvious Biblical origins, why seven?

Well, seven days roughly corresponds to a phase of the moon. But humans have long had a fascination with the number seven, no doubt influenced by the seven heavenly bodies: the sun, the moon, and the five visible planets. Sunday, Monday (moon day) and Saturday (Saturn day) are obvious in English, but Tuesday through Friday are a little less clear: you have to work out which Norse god the name comes from—Tyr, Wotan, Thor, Frigg—and convert to the corresponding Roman god—Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus. It’s much clearer in Romance languages, as I discovered when I studied Spanish a few years ago. Wikipedia also has a nice table of weekday names in various languages.

On a related note, if February were a full month, today would be February 30. It turns out there’ve been a few of those in relatively modern times, including an extra-long leap year in Sweden in 1712, and two in 1930-1931, when the Soviet Union tried to use a “revolutionary calendar.” (Funny how those never seem to catch on.)

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There’s a lunar eclipse tomorrow. It looks like we’ll only get to see the tail end of it here in California, right at moonrise. Europe and Africa get to see the whole thing.

Interestingly, the map of where the eclipse will be visible manages to cover the major land masses almost exactly. The only region that won’t see it at all is the Pacific Ocean.

(via SANS ISC)

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Someone I know encountered a really sneaky eBay phish this weekend. It arrived through eBay’s official “Ask seller a question” system, and consisted of a simple request: Was his auction the same as the auction at the following About Me page?

The URL was a normal eBay URL of the form http://members.ebay.com/aboutme/_____. Pasting the link into another browser brought up the user’s About Me page… which consisted of a spoofed eBay login form that would submit the username and password to a page hosted at Yahoo.

So it not only came through eBay’s official messaging system, but the form appeared on eBay’s own website, meaning it bypasses many of the usual cues. It’s not a secured page, but use of SSL for login pages is still spotty enough that a user could easily miss that. And how many people have noticed that eBay only puts login forms on signin.ebay.com? You have a slightly better chance if you have a browser like Opera, which shows you the target* of a form when you hover over a button. If you think to look at it. Continue reading →

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I can’t believe nobody’s made this comparison yet……it looks like the producers of “Lost” picked the wrong SF TV-show lead to be Alex’s mom:

Tania Raymonde (Lost)Claudia Black (Stargate SG-1)

Of course, it’s entirely possible that they might be able to land Claudia for a recurring guest spot as her “mother” (flashbacks maybe?), and thus call into question through visuals alone whether Danielle is even as right in the head as she seems to be.

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Yesterday, the Los Angeles Times ran an article on Justice Antonin Scalia and how his opinions may represent the majority as the Supreme Court hears cases about race, religion, abortion and campaign finance. Apparently, conservatives are really looking forward to the possibility that the court might restrict abortion, outlaw affirmative action, strike down the separation of church and state, and get rid of limits on campaign finances.

In other words, conservatives are hoping for a bunch of activist judges to legislate from the bench.

Below the second page of the article, there’s a short bit about Senator John McCain appealing to the religious right by saying he wants the court to overturn Roe vs. Wade…but that he doesn’t like judges who legislate from the bench. Sorry, Senator, you’re going to have to pick one or the other.

I liked McCain back in 2000. He seemed to be a moderate Republican with some integrity, and a more interesting person than Al Gore. Over the last year or so, he’s leaned more and more rightward. Either he’s changed his views, or is finally showing his true colors, or he’s sacrificing his integrity for power. In none of those cases would I want him as President.