Various and Sundry

Heraldry, Design, and Ranking State Flags

A bit overdue for Father’s Day, but definitely thinking of my dad, for whom heraldry was a passion, here’s CGP Grey ranking all the state flags with the requisite amount of snark because so many of them are just so bad as flags. My dad also loved flags and would have approved of many of the guidelines Grey (and others) mention for good, clean, flag design. Not sure if he’d agree with all the rankings…

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Rants Raves Various and Sundry

Patton Oswalt: Galactic Cinema Scoundrel

I’m going to save some of my posts for Banned Books Week for, well, the week itself, but I mention it here in order to spur you on to make a reading selection, possibly from the website, possibly from visiting your friendly local library. Instead, we have Patton Oswalt rating his top 5 and bottom 5 films with the zeal and wit you have likely come to expect. Now, knowing that Oswalt is a total…

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Various and Sundry

A Singular Ranking of Five Score Sherlock Holmes Portrayals. Most Singular!

I do not know Olivia Rutigliano, but upon starting to read her exhaustive article on Crime Reads ranking 100 portrayals of Sherlock Holmes, I immediately detected that same sort of insanity that drove me to rank all Star Trek episodes. It’s a delightfully thorough list. I know many of these portrayals, but by Jove, I hardly know all of them. And now, thanks to the assiduous investigation of, one may hope, soon-to-be-Doctor Rutigliano, I can…

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Various and Sundry

It’s Time to Rank Muppets

Many of you, knowing my project management tendencies, know I make lists — and by this time, it’s quite clear I’m a fan of ranking, so how could I say no to a ranking of Muppets recently conducted by NPR? Do I agree with all the rankings? Of course not. That doesn’t make the list any less wonderful. Mind you, the article does reference the Chaos/Order Theory of Muppets first proposed by Dahlia Lithwick in…

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Rants Raves Various and Sundry

Every Episode of Every Star Trek Series, Ranked

As long-time readers of this blog know (all seven or nine), I am a bit of a Star Trek fan, as may be deduced from my manic series Crisis of Infinite Star Treks alone. Where that series delves into fannish hand-wringing and minutiae, it did remind my of how much I enjoy Star Trek in its seemingly infinite combinations. I wanted to do something special for its official 50th anniversary, but life has intervened (quantum…

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