The Emperor gives stewardship of the dessert planet Arrakis to Duke Leto, home to the colonized Fremen and the only place to mine Spice, the most valuable substance in the universe—a choice that enrages rival House Harkonnen.

Well, from past stories I’ve read, the inquiry may be whether the company that makes the machines unfairly locked out the startup that helped monitor problems. The manufacturer made negative comments about the third-party monitors, and some franchise owners removed them (or never started using them) as a result.…

Just thinking out loud here — I’m more of a cook than a baker — I know that Kraft is made with whole eggs, while a few of the beloved regional or niche brands boast of being made only from yolks. Would that make a difference in a recipe like this?

Writer and blogger Mark Evanier suggested Alton Brown, and I can absolutely see that.

Writer and blogger Mark Evanier suggested Alton Brown, and I can absolutely see that.

Disney has taken out its new Genie pass and used it to get right back in line for Jungle Cruise, which is to say that a sequel to Blunt and Johnson’s recent adventure/romance movie is getting a sequel.

The Subway app was the first fast food app I started using on a regular basis -- not for the loyalty program (although there is one) but because it makes the Subway process much easier. You can customize your sub in the app -- adding or subtracting all of the same ingredients that you could do standing in line -- and…

I wish I could remember, there was a sitcom at one time or another, maybe the early 80s, which had an episode where one of the characters was excitedly planning an Ed Asner film festival. Late in the episode, someone mentioned “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” and the character got a shocked look on his face. “You mean, he…

They may not be marking things up as much as you assume. You assume that if the convenience store is selling an item for $5 which Walmart sells for $2, the convenience store is getting $3 more profit and is therefore being greedy. I worked for my local newspaper for 34 1/2 years, and for the first half of that we had…

We have an ICS-sanctioned chili cookoff weekend every summer in my little rural town; I have been a judge on numerous occasions. One year, I entered, and I want to give it another shot one of these days. Anyway, when you judge a chili cookoff, you only taste one spoonful of chili, then move on to the next entry. If…

I live in a rural area in Tennessee, where Dollar General is based, and over the past 15 years or so they have aggressively pushed out into rural areas — little country crossroads that had only a gas station / convenience store now have a Dollar General. That sometimes causes a hardship for little locally-owned…

Looking it up just now, there’s the “Alcatraz East” crime museum; “Wonderworks,” in a building with an upside-down exterior; and “The Ripken Experience,” a baseball-themed attraction, along with plenty of others. And, of course, there are all of Dolly Parton’s various enterprises -- - Dollywood, The Stampede, etc.  htt…

I have not actually been inside the museum, but if I understand correctly, your ticket has the randomly-assigned name of a Titanic passenger, and then near the end of the exhibit, there’s a wall with the names of victims and survivors, and you can look up your ticket and see if your person lived or died. There are all…

Hepburn wrote a great book, “The Making of the African Queen: Or How I Went to Africa With Bogart, Bacall and Huston and Almost Lost My Mind.” It’s short, and a really fun read. I think it served as a test run for her autobiography, which came out just a few years later. Also, the Clint Eastwood movie “White Hunter,…

His part is being recast with Eric Clapton.

I’m surprised the AV Club hasn’t done anything yet about the announcement of Charlamagne Tha God’s new Comedy Central talk show, produced by fellow South Carolinian Stephen Colbert. Seems like it would  have been a newswire item.

it’s revealed that she sustained a head injury while skiing some time ago, causing her to speak even the most banal sentences at the precise level of volume and intensity that you’d employ to call people’s attention to an incoming, potentially civilization-ending meteor.

This time, instead of stars on a “Star Trek”-type TV show, the main characters will be three out-of-work silent movie cowboys, and instead of being summoned by an alien race, they’ll be summoned by the residents of a small Mexican town being threatened by a vicious bandit.

• I would’ve expected “Rule 34 of Asimov’s Cascade” to be… nuder.

“The Prisoner”’s finale was so controversial in the UK that Patrick McGoohan went into hiding for a little while.