I don't have that big a problem with taxing people over $200K. What worries me is that enacting any tax makes it a lot easier to add more.

I lived in Tennessee once, where the state constitution says no income tax, period. The government howled constantly about how badly they needed one, but no constitutional amendment seemed to get passed (and reelection was a problem for proponents.) The Attorney General stated publicly that he thought he could beat the constitution in court, but the governor declined to let him try. No one believed that a "nominal" one or two percent tax would stay nominal, once our constitutional protection was gone.

At the time the justification was "saving" TennCare (state run insurance that had just gone broke; I made too much to use it, not enough to buy my own anywhere.) I would have been highly annoyed to work and pay taxes to provide free insurance to others, while my family stayed one major illness from bankruptcy (maybe we could have gotten TennCare then.)

Another difficulty for the TN Taxers was North Carolina next door: very high taxes (for the southeast, anyway ; ) ), more and higher fees on just about everything (slightly lower sales tax, though), no TennCare, and just as big a budget crisis.

• I think they'd have to include the beginning and show Hari Seldon alive, if only to make him recognizable in the Time Vault later on.
• The original books did have some space scenes; want to bet the movies will have more? Including single seat fighters?
• I shudder to think how the Foundation's religious empire would be portrayed in a modern film.
• The original framework is disturbingly similar to Star Wars (triumphant beginning; the Empire/Mule strikes back in the second installment; everything is neatly and adventurously resolved in the third. It's an okay plan, but it still makes me nervous. Not to mention that Asimov wrote other books that could be used to make (eeek) prequels.

If handled well, an aged Hardin reminiscing while waiting in the Time Vault might actually work. What I really expect is that we'll get a brief Seldon appearance, followed by Hardin (played by Tom Cruise, complete with love interest and angst) leading his revolution and triumphing in the Time Vault (picture Encyclopedist storm troopers listening to Seldon, then lowering their weapons; extra points if Anacreon is blasted to atoms by the Foundation's secret weapon or Hardin has a laser fight with Pirenne on a space station.)

Hollywood has a tendency to utterly miss the point of a book because some all knowing PHB didn't get it when his assistant described the story to him. All too often they reuse the title and a few names in a bad new story that no one would have bothered filming had it not been a successful book (anyone seen I am Legend or I Robot lately?) After the tragic atrocities that were Starship Troopers or the first 'Salem's Lot film, there's no way to predict what might come out of this.

I've been saying for a while that the US will never land on the moon again. This doesn't change anything, it's happening because the US no longer has the national will to commit to anything that big. No foreseeable amount of technology is going to change that, even if it solved all the other problems we have (that are more pressing.)

I see the 60's as pretty much the high point of modern civilization Project Apollo happened to come along at the only time in human history thus far when both technology and society were capable of it, and society started to seriously decline about that time.

China may make it to the moon; I doubt anyone is going to Mars, at least not until we've been through a new dark age and (hopefully) renaissance.

I have tremendous respect for Watterson (Calvin & Hobbes): he realized that he was running out of new stuff to say and quit. Peanuts (for example) took the opposite approach, traded on its fame, and turned into very sad and boring garbage for many years.

I read Mad cover to cover in the 60's and early 70's, at which point it turned into crap for the amusement of semiliterate 11 year olds. I can't blame them for wanting to stay in business, though I wish they'd had the integrity to accept a dignified end when society deteriorated too far to appreciate what Mad was. I feel deprived of the chance to mourn for an old friend who languished for years in a nursing home rather than going out with dignity, continence, and decent hygiene.