Happy Newtonmas!! Of course, Newton was long dead by the time the British switched over to the Gregorian system, and it is largely his biographers who have held out so persistently in using his old birthday so as to construct that Romantic narrative in which Galileo's ghost goes out and turns into the baby Newton. But it's more fun this way, isn't it?

It is Christmas Eve as I type this, and my hopes on tomorrow's loot are pinned on a shiny accordion that Geoff and I might be able to serenade future convention goers with Gilbert and Sullivan patter songs while they wait in line or mill about waiting to take pictures with various and sundry Slave Leias. I don't think I'll in fact get it, but if you all close your eyes and BELIEVE, then maybe, just maybe, beautiful things will happen!

- Count Dolby von Luckner