I think this ties into the root of the appeal.

I thought for a second you were going to swerve into Vonnegut's Slapstick. Arguably, his weakest novel and a much better handling of collectivism and exceptionalism than anything else I can remember reading.

The Jungle isn't necessarily great cinematic fodder either but it is oddly telling that The Jungle was somehow redirected into a rallying cry for meat safety standards. If Atlas Shrugged had suffered the same treatment, it would have been reduced to a book about designing a better motor.

"Marie Antoinette dressing up like a milkmaid and milking a cow"

Do you think they won't get extended forever?

Incidentally, if anyone ever needed to edited by Gordon Lish, it was Ayn Rand. (Lish was famous for "creating" Raymond Carver's terse, Hemmingway-esque style through radical rewrites and cutting 80% of the content out.) Lish might actually have made something of a literary sensation out of Rand… Which probably would…

I believe it's one where one partner is seated at a drafting table, engaged in methodical industrial design with a slide rule and vellum paper, vaguely tolerating the fact that the other partner draws breath.

Isn't that last one the central appeal behind Twilight and 50 Shades? I thought modern audiences really did cling to the idea that joyless, austere, ceremonial sex was something the world needs more depictions of.

"Kids everywhere would dress up like heroes Dagny Taggart, Hank Rearden, or John Galt for Halloween."

Thanks, Organa!

Friedman may prove to be the western hemisphere's greatest historical monster.

There's a general feeling that Abrams, who seems fairly captivated with surprise twists, might be releasing fake set photos. On top of that, there is leaked concept art from the film which suggests a character we haven't seen who is either Hamill or Max Von Sydow. And the set photo we did see has him doing 3D…

I don't think Yahoo will find success as long as they have investors breathing down their neck. They need to go private or sell off their name and web services to a private company. IMHO, activist investors are making them schizophrenic and making any kind of longterm gameplan impossible.

Inclusiveness can only apply if you drop cynicism and embrace sincerity. The guys who trigger Dan on this begin by attempting to score easy points without skin in the game. Harmontown is all about inclusiveness if you're willing to put skin in the game.

Anybody who adopts a "don't feed the trolls" or "fighting back is a bad option" stance is just getting in the way, man. It becomes literally impossible to tell those people from troll enablers. Collateral damage in a just war.

Frankly, I sympathize with Dan a lot in these things and would add that when he gets going, the trolls increasingly will delete tweets or take them private.

Yeah. See, I thought maybe they had plans for a universe or spinoffs or additional projects with the same talent. Heck, Alison Brie is a producer on some stuff now. I also thought they at least would have done the "Use Community to Promote Hulu Plus"-type thing that Hulu did. You know, 30 second sketches promoting…

Well, NBC just hired Dan Harmon again a few weeks ago so that proves lightning can strike three times.

They could always adapt it with a focus on getting a little bit of the Die Hard wit/sense of humor in there and give McClane a Nakatomi phone or something.

If you're going to do a Die Hard prequel, why not remake The Detective, the Frank Sinatra movie from the first novel in the series that the original Die Hard was based on? (They renamed the cop John McClane for "Die Hard".)