This literally decades-old Calvin and Hobbes pretty much explains 21st century Wall Street behavior.

We’d all be a lot better off if more the so called “Christians” in public life spent any time reading the Bible. Fred Clark reminded me of this passage I’ll quote completely here; it’s from a part of the Old Testament not all that far from the verses the antigay bozos are fond of quoting — but, then again, those books include all sorts of rules those right-wingers manage to forget, so it’s no surprise they’ve ignored Deuteronomy 24:17-21:

You shall not deprive a resident alien or an orphan of justice; you shall not take a widow’s garment in pledge. Remember that you were a slave in Egypt and the Lord your God redeemed you from there; therefore I command you to do this.

When you reap your harvest in your field and forget a sheaf in the field, you shall not go back to get it; it shall be left for the alien, the orphan, and the widow, so that the Lord your God may bless you in all your undertakings. When you beat your olive trees, do not strip what is left; it shall be for the alien, the orphan, and the widow.

When you gather the grapes of your vineyard, do not glean what is left; it shall be for the alien, the orphan, and the widow.

Imagine for a minute what it might mean if the idea of “politically active Christian” conjured not images of Pat Robertson and know-nothing right-wingers like Perry and Bachman and Santorum, but of men and women who remember verses like these, or the Sermon on the Mount, or — and this is a real stretch — what the Bible says Jesus actually did and said, and with whom he kept company, instead of cherrypicking Old Testament proscriptions designed to incite hatred and xenophobia in their base.

Yeah. Never happen. But it’s nice to think about.

I am now absolutely certain that there should be more marching band pranks.

Check out these UNDERAGE HOOTERS.

The NY Observer’s “Scooter” thingy is running the full collection of our pal Chris’ Reviews of My Son’s Toys, which contains easily the best reference to thigmotaxis you’ll read today.

Also, apparently someone thinks he’s poachable. Go Chris!

Dude befriends and rehabs injured owl on his farm. Owl hangs out thereafter. Owl essentially adopts family — including one of the cats — and brings them food.

Via MeFi.

You’ve by now probably all seen Apple’s home page which, in a week they’re launching a new iPhone revision, is nevertheless dominated by their memorial to their founder and leader. That’s classy.

What you may not have noticed unless you’re really nerdy is that the photo of Steve has the name “t_hero.png”.

Computing pioneers, like rock stars, are all mostly postwar baby boomers. Actually, the rock stars — the first ones, like the Beatles Jobs idolized — are a bit older, which is hilarious. In either case, though, we’re on the narrow leading edge of a demographic inevitability. The next 20 to 30 years will be costly in terms of musical and technological giants, but I’m a bit at a loss to figure any whose loss we’ll all feel as acutely as this one.

Say what you will about the remaining Beatles or the Stones, but their best work is undeniably years behind them — Jobs was still churning out vastly influential hits.

He was able to do this because, as he was fond of quoting, he liked Apple to “skate to where the puck will be.” He started doing this very early. From a 1985 interview he gave with Playboy — when he was all of 31 — we find an early example. Younger Heathen (are there any?) may find it hard to believe, but back then the broad reaction to computers was “well, they’re cool, I guess, but what can you do with them that’s useful?”

Playboy: Those are arguments for computers in business and in schools, but what about the home?

Jobs: So far, that’s more of a conceptual market than a real market. The primary reasons to buy a computer for your home now are that you want to do some business work at home or you want to run educational software for yourself or your children. If you can’t justify buying a computer for one of those two reasons, the only other possible reason is that you just want to be computer literate. You know there’s something going on, you don’t exactly know what it is, so you want to learn. This will change: Computers will be essential in most homes.

Playboy: What will change?

Jobs: The most compelling reason for most people to buy a computer for the home will be to link it into a nationwide communications network. We’re just in the beginning stages of what will be a truly remarkable breakthrough for most people‐‑as remarkable as the telephone.

Playboy: Specifically, what kind of breakthrough are you talking about?

Jobs: I can only begin to speculate. We see that a lot in our industry: You don’t know exactly what’s going to result, but you know it’s something very big and very good.

Now, the Internet existed in 1985 — I got my first email address only two years later — but it was nerdland, and very few were thinking even a little bit that grandmothers might use it to look at pictures of their grandkids someday. Apparently, Jobs was in that crowd, which is how we find ourselves with devices today that delight instead of confound, and how, odds are, you learned about his passing on a device he made. Lots of you will read this post on one, too.

Godspeed, Steve. We’ll miss you.

(It’s proper to note that, given the twin legacies he’ll leave, Bill Gates may well be the runner up here. His contribution to computing hasn’t been as dramatically evolutionary or as prolonged as Jobs’, but his business savvy and technical acumen did much to make business computing a foregone conclusion. His real legacy, though, may turn out to be the fact that after having founded Microsoft and become the richest man in the world — a title theretofore usually held by inheritors of wealth, not self-made men — he decided to take on a new, ambitious humanitarian mission instead of settling into a very expensive and luxurious retirement.

But nobody ever stood in line for a new copy of Windows.)

You can quibble with a couple, but if you take the list as “rules a man should follow if he’s dressing well,” and also accept that sometimes you’re just not gonna bother, then these 25 are well worth your review.