Monday various

  • Need a little extra bees and honey in your sky rocket? Cockney rhyming slang to be added as an option to some East London ATMs. Silly merchant bankers!
  • An interesting article on the new graphic novel version of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, although I’m not so sure about the whole “comic books are the anti-book” sentiment that seems to be running through it. [via]
  • It may be time for me to revisit Bradbury’s original novel, especially in light of the man’s own sometimes puzzling pronouncements about it in recent years. I love Ray Bradbury maybe more than any other writer, and it’s possible he’s earned his curmudgeonly ways, but it can be a lot easier to love the words than the man.

  • Still, the man’s an absolute darling compared to, say, Lord of the Flies author William Golding [via]
  • Dear Tom Ridge: too damn little, too damn late. I didn’t even like you all that much when you were my governor.
  • And finally, John Scalzi has been getting some flack in certain circles for his write-up of design flaws in the Star Wars universe, but the man isn’t wrong. (Even the six-year-old me, who can’t help but pester, “Well, maybe the Sarlaac isn’t native to Tatooine,” has to accept that.)