Here's a quick reminder that it's only a little more than a month until this year's WonderCon in San Francisco. If you've been to the San Diego Con but not to WonderCon, think of it this way: It's like the Comic-Con International but small enough that you can walk the entire dealer's room, see a lot of panels and not wait in line for everything…but not so small that you won't have plenty to see, do and buy. It's run by the same folks and, of course, San Francisco is a great city to visit.

I'll be moderating around five panels over its three days. The one that most interests me is that Gerard Jones and I (and maybe one or two other folks) are going to sit down and discuss his book, Men Of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters, and the Birth of the Comic Book. As I said here, I think it's the most important book ever written about comic book history and I believe it's very accurate. There are, however, some points with which I might take issue, and Gerry is being gracious and professional enough to chat about them with me. It's not so much that I think he's wrong about anything in particular but there are a few places where his interpretation of events differs with mine and I thought it would be educational to converse about them.

I'll be posting a list shortly of my other panels. Don't wait for it. Make your plans for WonderCon.

One quick thought about the mining disaster…

It would be an additional tragedy — and perhaps the cause of future mining disasters — if all the investigations and remedies that came out of this accident were about the media coverage and the fact that the families were misinformed for a time. Things went wrong there but things really went wrong in that mine. Twelve men were killed in a facility that had repeatedly been cited for "significant and substantial" safety violations. What a shame it would be if someone thought that was less of a scandal than how their deaths were and were not reported.

NBC Universal has launched its new cable channel that features nothing but recyclings of old detective and action TV shows and a few movies in the same genres. It's called Sleuth and it's not available yet on DirecTV or from most cable services around the country. If you'd like to see what you're missing — a lot of Simon and Simon reruns, mostly — here's a link to the Sleuth website.

Sleuth starts with, the website says, entry into 5 million American homes. Trio, the channel which NBC Uni terminated when they launched Sleuth, was in 8 million homes when pundits, including Yours Truly, first began predicting its demise. That was down from the 20 million they had when Trio was included in the DirecTV lineup. Obviously, they must have some strategy to get Sleuth into more households soon.

If we are to believe Fred Kaplan — and I've yet to see anyone seriously suggest he's wrong about this kind of thing — the whole funding of the Department of Homeland Security has become just a way to shovel your tax money into pork barrel projects that have nothing to do with thwarting terrorist attacks.

This is another one of those "I don't know why there isn't more outrage about this" kind of things. If some Congressguy got up and said we should stop allocating funds to this program, people who are terrified of another 9/11 would accuse him of being soft on terrorism. But they have no problem with that money going to help developers in Kentucky build more shopping malls.

Researchers at a Missouri university have identified the largest-ever prime number.

This is so exciting. I can't wait to put it to good use.

GSN skipped over the two Michael Larsen episodes in their Press Your Luck rerunning. This morning's episode was from the day after Larsen's big win.

Don't know why they did this. I believe GSN is now on its third rerunning of this string of PYL episodes. The first time through, they jumped past Mr. Larsen, reportedly because they wanted to save those shows for a special promotion. They did that documentary about the event and then the second time through the 1984 Press Your Luck reruns, they included the two shows with Larsen. This time around, they skipped them again but the documentary is being rerun next Monday. Go figure.

Anyway, sorry for getting anyone's hopes up or making you set your TiVo unnecessarily.

My pal, TV critic Aaron Barnhart, has a little different view of Dick Clark's return to broadcasting on New Year's Eve. I don't have a strong opinion on this. I said at the time I was unsure which of two views to take of it and there are others I didn't even mess with.

Did it make some people uneasy? Sure. Did it gladden the hearts of others? Yes. Would some folks have preferred not to see it? Of course. Did others tune in just to see how Dick was? You bet.

Let me throw one other thought into the discussion, even though I'm not clear enough on my own feelings to have much of a discussion on it. As I said, I worked with Dick a number of times. I've had no contact with him in over a decade but I doubt this has changed: The guy was and I'll bet still is a workaholic. I don't know whether it's vanity or greed or just some inability to deal with the whole concept of leisure time but the Dick Clark I knew loved to work and lived to work. He would carefully plot his schedule to see how much he could do in a day and if someone came to him with a project or offer, he'd immediately rejuggle that schedule to see if he could fit the new thing in, whatever it was. All of us around him knew the Golden Rule when it came to Dick Clark: He was the most cooperative, professional person you could possibly deal with as long as you didn't waste his time.

Most of the discussions I'm reading about his reemergence, including my own first response, are about the impact Dick's New Year's Eve appearance had on us. The more I think about it, the more I think that may not have been even a significant consideration in his decision to do the show. I think he was just going nuts sitting in a wheelchair in Malibu not working. He may well have needed the goal of doing that broadcast to motivate his therapy in the preceding months. Aaron thinks Dick should refrain from public appearances until such time as he's truly overcome the crippling effects on the stroke, and in one sense — and for some people — Aaron is right. But I'd doubt Dick has the patience for that, and if doing the occasional TV show is going to help him get back to being the Dick Clark we know, or anything close to it, I'm fine with that. I see people on my set all the time who haven't had strokes but have a lot less right to be there and who make me a lot less comfortable.

Earlier, as you probably heard, it was reported that the twelve trapped miners in West Virginia were found alive. Now, it turns out that the report was erroneous; that all but one perished. We feel bad for the men who were killed and bad for their family members who lost them twice in about three hours.

When I heard this latest development — just as I was posting about Dave and Bill — I logged onto a couple of Internet discussion forums and read a batch of postings. When it seemed all had survived, people were posting, "This proves there's a God. He answered our prayers." Someone was quoting noted psychic Sylvia Browne, who'd been on the Coast to Coast radio show saying that her powers had told her the men were all alive. Then it turns out they weren't all alive.

I don't think their deaths prove there is no God any more than their survival would prove there was. I wish people would stop linking Him to specific events and deeds like that. We have tragedies and non-tragedies all the time in this world and neither means that God exists or doesn't exist or wants to smite down some state for its morality or anything. I once had a friend tell me that if the Dodgers didn't win the World Series, it would prove that there was no God. I could only wonder if there was some guy who was rooting for the other team and saying it would prove there was a God if the Dodgers lost.

On the other hand, Sylvia Browne's faulty reading proves plenty about her. How long are people going to fall for that snake oil?

And now on CNN, I'm watching them rerunning a clip of Anderson Cooper finding out on live TV — from a person he's interviewing — that the reports he and everyone else had been giving for hours about the miners being all alive were untrue. A woman came out of the church where the deaths were announced and told Cooper what was said in there. Amazing to see how this unfolded. Cooper is stunned, and you can almost see him worrying if he should be putting this out on the network without more confirmation. But you can also see him realizing that the woman couldn't be making this up. So one thinly-sourced report corrects another. Once upon a time, when TV news wasn't 24/7 and so competitive, both accounts would have been checked better before being released to the world.

Hold on a second. I'm going to flip channels.

Well, everyone's saying the same things about how awful it is for the families. I heard the term, "emotional roller coaster" on two different stations in the same sixty seconds. Everyone's saying they don't know how the miscommunication happened. At the same time, they're reporting on how the miscommunication happened and saying that there will be investigations into how the miscommunication happened.

A reporter on Fox News just said, "The miracle has been snuffed out," as if there really were a miracle earlier instead of just a bad news report. And with that, I think it's time to go to bed. Good night.

In case you didn't see it last night, David Letterman had Bill O'Reilly on. The money quote, which is probably already being repeated all over the 'net, came when Dave said to him, "I have the feeling that 60% of what you say is crap."

Even though I feel that's about the right percentage, I couldn't help feel a twinge of sorry for O'Reilly…though I also think he's smart enough to have known he was going to get clobbered. It's just about impossible to beat a guy like Letterman when he has home court advantage.

The question I wish someone would put to Dave is, "Why do you have someone on your show if you think 60% of what they say is crap? Why give such a person a forum? Just so you can insult him to his face?" It's not like Bill O'Reilly doesn't have a place to express his opinions. I can understand booking such a guest to engage in a real debate but Dave wasn't primed for that. O'Reilly trotted out the story he keeps telling about how a school in Wisconsin wouldn't allow students to sing the real lyrics to "Silent Night" and Dave was unprepared to point out that what occurred there didn't happen the way O'Reilly keeps reporting it.

I hear people say they've given up watching Letterman because he strikes them as cranky and grouchy. I don't always agree…but then there are nights like last night. O'Reilly spouted his usual nonsense. Letterman insulted him. The studio audience cheered Dave. The home audience decided to see who Jay had on. Television doesn't always have to be pleasant and happy but if you're going to have friction, make it be about something.

One more item about the infamous Michael Larsen episodes of Press Your Luck…and yes, I know a lot of you couldn't care less about this. As I mentioned, GSN did a special documentary on the incident, replaying most of the footage with interruptions to tell Larsen's story. It was called Big Bucks: The Press Your Luck Scandal and it reruns next Monday night, January 9, on GSN.

I'm watching MSNBC and a reporter just said, "[Jack] Abramoff's plea bargain deal today should keep his prison time down to between nine and eleven years."

How guilty do you have to be to make that kind of deal? The charges could have put him away for thirty years but how often does anyone in a non-violent crime get the maximum? Abramoff and his lawyers had to be pretty sure he was heading for a lot more than fifteen or sixteen.

As mentioned here, the always-festive-shirted Scott Shaw! is commencing his Oddball Comics show this Saturday night at the Acme Comedy Theater at 10 PM. Here, once more, are the details.

Also that same Saturday night, the Totally Looped improv troupe, which ordinarily performs once a month on a weekday, is doing the first of four consecutive Saturday night performances at the Second City Comedy Theater at 8 PM. At this show, which I've plugged unmercifully in the past, several brilliant improvisational comedy performers dub in new dialogue to old films without ever having seen the films before. In my day, I've seen good improv and bad improv and even phony improv. This is the first of those three kinds and here are those details.

And I might point out that it is quite possible to do both shows in the same Saturday night. Totally Looped runs about an hour in a venue which is (I actually looked this up on Mapquest) 1.98 miles from where Scott will be performing his unnatural act. Mapquest figures travel time at five minutes so I'd guess you could make it in a half-hour. I always multiply estimated driving times from such services by six to figure how long it will take if you obey the speed limit, stop for red lights, have other cars on the road and don't run over too many people.

Five of you have sent me links to this webpage which tells the story of Michael Larsen and Press Your Luck. The article has some errors in it, most notably in claiming…

In order for Michael to keep his winnings, he'd have to remain trapped on the stage of Press Your Luck forever. His situation was an infinite loop from which there was no escape: he'd learned how to trigger only plunger-hitting patterns nailing a cash prize and a free spin. According to the game's rules, this "free" spin would eventually have to be spun. In other words, each plunger push would lead to another. Nobody else could play, and Larsen himself could never stop playing. The only way to break this loop would be for Larsen to abandon any pretext of surefire pattern matching. He would literally have to Press His Luck like a regular contestant, plunging the Big Board onto a non-winning square, a non free-spinning square, and one possibly yielding a Whammy capable of draining him of every penny. When he pushed the plunger the last and final time — Michael Larsen won a trip to the Bahamas. He stopped playing, to thunderous applause.

Absolutely wrong. The rules of the game allowed a player to pass his remaining spins at any time, which is exactly what Larsen did as soon as he crossed the $100,000 mark. The trip he won to the Bahamas was won when he slipped and didn't hit one of the two spaces for which he was aiming. At no point was he intentionally out of control of the board.

What always interested me about Press Your Luck (much like Deal or No Deal, recently discussed here) was that its rules were cleverly configured to usually promote an exciting conclusion. Yes, it was largely a game of chance — so is Deal or No Deal — but near the end, the player is forced into increasingly-tough decisions about how far to push that game of chance and must keep making decisions that mean the difference between a big cash win and going home with nada. What Larsen did was to take the rules used to foster those suspenseful conclusions and use them to wring serious dollars out of the show. Landing on a big money square also gives one an extra spin which therefore (usually) gives one another hard decision to pass or play. Larsen just kept using the extra spins to win more until he hit his target goal.

I'm not suggesting Larsen was heroic or admirable. From all reports, he seems to have been something of a creep. I just like the fact that a guy from out of nowhere could, with a little ingenuity, walk into a big time TV studio, make so much money and create so much chaos.

Robert Kuttner on why the new Medicare prescription plan for Seniors gives them terrible coverage but gives the drug companies and HMOs a lot of benefits.