Mexico has had these for their newest peso notes. They are pretty resilient, but can tear, as a friend of mine experienced in pulling one out of her snug jeans pocket. But thanks to their being plastic, they are a bit tougher to write on, to get grimy, and to fold. (They feel a bit like a single layer of a zip-top food storage bag) People do have to be a bit more careful, since they can be slipped out of wallets and pockets and such much more easily and unnoticeably than paper money.

Just learned from boingboing that it was only a couple of miles from the house i lived in for ~10 years!

Just liking the inclusion of Pocahontas at all. Lots of Disney products that have multiple princesses don't include her, or Mulan, or Jasmine. They are including Tiana now, but they could be a lot better at recognizing the non-European looking characters.

Was going to ask when he would get around to being Barnabas Collins, but wikipedia says he is working on it. :)

Reminds me of Luke 19:37-40, The Holy Bible:

When he had come near the place where the road goes down the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen:
"Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!
Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!"
Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, "Teacher, rebuke your disciples!"
"I tell you," he replied, "if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out."

Muzition beat me to it, but i think it just means Haley is a Craig Ferguson fan and had one of those midnight great ideas.

As someone who has had a childhood fear and adulthood discomfort with any taxidermy whatsoever (including fur coats, though for some reason leather products are not all that scary to me), i do NOT welcome this coming back in style. Where is PETA when you need them?

Dear (some) fellow Christians,
Please stop caring about inane stuff while there are way more important things to be doing, ok?
Signed,
a Mary who has to be Martha's shoes and apron sometimes.

Wow. As someone who lives in a nation of a different language than the one I grew up speaking, I understand how difficult it is to transition to a different culture, language, and nation. However, it is not the expats who deal with the hardest hurdles, it is their children, who had no say in the matter. I hope that life for all children of expatriates can end up as well as it did for Mr. Levy's children.

I remember reading or hearing about a short story in Asimov's Science Fiction magazine about women who made a whole language in the lace they made, to subvert the men that were mistreating them. Could be that Major Alexis Casdagli inspired that story.

What? I'm thoroughly confused as to how someone looked at that adorable widdle black puffball and thought "I shall call it Be'elzebub." If it is fiercely protective, well, would not the very scientists who named it do the same if a strange looking group of giant aliens busted into their homes and took all the food and broke and destroyed everything and then held them just to get a good look at them?

Any celebrity, fameish or famous, that will help fulfill a child's "Make-A-Wish" is pretty sweet. Thanks Miss Cellania for telling us to watch all 17 minutes.

I heard of this practice a few years ago in, believe it or not, a class called "Perspectives of the World Christian Movement". The textbook is a series of articles, one called "Redemptive Analogy" by Don Richardson, who worked in Irian Jaya. The article is about the need for Christian missionaries to learn all they can about the culture that they have been sent to, so as to look for a common practice there that is similar to the redemption found in Christ, hence the title. In that article, Richardson tells of the Asmat tribe in Irian Jaya, who have an almost identical way of making peace. I'll just quote it here:

"Yet the new birth of the gospel can be understood by Irian Jaya's Asmat tribe. They have a way of making peace that requires children from two warring villages to pass through a symbolic birth canal formed by the bodies of a number of men and women from both villages. Those who pass through the canal are considered reborn into the kinship system of their enemy's village. Rocked, lullabied, cradled and coddled like newborn infants, they become the focus of joyful celebration. From then on, they may travel freely back and forth between the two formerly warring villages, serving as living peace bonds. For centuries, this custom has impressed deeply on the Asmat mind the vital concept: True peace can come only through a new birth experience!"

Richardson also authored a book called "Peace Child", about a similar practice in the Sawi tribe of Irian Jaya, in which a father who is an enemy with another father sends one of his own children to be raised by the enemy to make peace. (The closest thing to it in our culture is being an exchange student, and even that usually only lasts a few months at most among adults) Richardson was able to describe Jesus the Christ the "Peace Child" of God, sent by God the Father to make peace with all humanity, for our crimes and offenses (aka sins) against him, the punishment for which is death and full separation from God, the very real hell. By leaving his village (Heaven) and coming to ours (Earth), and being a human in every sense of the term, yet not in sin, he took that punishment for us and let us know that it worked by coming to life again. But like any gift of peace, it must be understood and accepted by each individual for it to apply to that individual. So, will you understand it and accept it, and see to it that you get reborn and switch villages, becoming a child of God? As someone who has, i can tell you that being a child of God is the best thing that has ever happened to me and ever will, and if you do, you will agree.

So that is why we have SO MANY here in Baja California! About a hundred (or more?) years ago lots of Russian people settled here and they must have brought the flowers with them. Now there are a few little ones that grow wild and people still will grow a patch of them, likely just to sell the seeds.

The sad thing is, I see some family actually moving to Riverside 216 years from now-ish for the sole purpose of getting their son born on that day so they can name him James T Kirk. If we actually do manage first contact in about 50 or so years, people will be chalking Roddenberry as the next Aristotle.