By whatever gods you worship, if there was ever a blot on the Star Wars Universe it was the Star Wars Holiday Special. This wonderful masterpeice of farted out garbage makes JarJar look like Brad Pitt. But for many fans it is the obscurity of this one time released Holiday Special something to acquire. I own a copy.

So here is the deal. There is no Christmas in Star Wars so they join Chewbacca’s family in celebrating “Life day” and the show reunites all the cast of the super successful Star Wars Universe for a made for TV movie. This was SO DAMNED BAD that if you ask George Lucas in an interview about it he dodges the question and all but denies its existence. It was aired once - Friday, November 17, 1978 on CBS-TV. ONCE! Not to add to its collector’s value, but beacuse it was so so bad that Lucas never wanted to inflict that on the fanbase ever again. The original director David Acomba left mid project and Lucas, who didn’t have much to do with this project applauded him for it.

Lucky for most, you have never seen it. Its worth a watch just to recognize that I am not making this up. Its bad.

But the official website decided to celebrate this forgotten (aka buried) TV Special on this, its 30th Anniversary week. StarWars.com will be offering these features all week long. I have retained the hyperlinks for the features already live on their site.

* Extended interviews with many of the cast and crew of “The Star Wars Holiday Special”, reprinted and updated by “Holiday Special” aficionado Ross Plesset (Part 1, Part 2)!
* Collecting the “Holiday Special”
* “Holiday Special” animation animatics video
* The props of “The Star Wars Holiday Special”: What has survived?
* Interview with “Holiday Special” fansite administrator SKot Kirkwood

And lo, you are not yet forewarned. So I found this clip outlining the Holiday Special hitting its “plot” in about 5 minutes. They didn’t show the animated segment which features Boba Fett’s first appearance, but it does show you a very girly looking Mark Hamill and Diahann Carroll’s video that looks awfully suggestive in this clip. (she just sings a bad song. Honest)

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81-year-old Peter Matthiessen has taken home the National Book Award for fiction in something of an upset. His book, Shadow Country (excerpt), as the Bloomberg notes, came about after he "rewrote and compressed portions of his novels about the murderous Florida sugar-cane farmer Edgar J. Watson -- Killing Mister Watson, Lost Man's River and Bone by Bone -- into a single 892-page volume published by the Modern Library."

While Matthiessen's win was perhaps a slight upset over Marilynne Robinson, whose Home was a sequel to Pulitzer-winning Gilead, the bigger upset was on the non-fiction side, where Annette Gordon-Reed's The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family (excerpt) beat out The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals by Jane Mayer. Mayer's indictment of the Bush administration's anti-terror tactics grabbed plenty of headlines this year, but The Hemingses of Monticello, despite being less obviously timely, was highly regarded for moving the ball forward in pursuing the thorny truth behind Thomas Jefferson and his slaves. Indeed, Jill Lepore made a very compelling case for the book in the New Yorker in September.

Rounding out the winners, Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems by Mark Doty (poem) won the poetry category and the award in young people's literature went to What I Saw and How I Lied by Judy Blundell.

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LYON, France, November 20 Entrepreneur-Award-20 LYON, France, November 20 /PRNewswire/ -- Logitech co-founder, Daniel Borel was awarded the 'Entrepreneur for the World 2008' Prize at the First World Entrepreneurship Forum, November 13-15, 2008 which took

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LYON, France, Nov. 20 /CNW/ - Logitech co-founder, Daniel Borel was awarded the 'Entrepreneur for the World 2008' Prize at the First World Entrepreneurship Forum, November 13-15, 2008 which took place in Evian, France. The Award was presented to him by

For all you Apple TV users out there, Apple's now released firmware version 2.3. The patch, downloadable through the media hub's built in updater, now lets users stream music from AirTunes to any speakers connected to an Airport Express or other Apple TVs in the house. You'll also get the ability to use third-party remotes, and make playlists that include a mixture of audio and video formats. [Apple Insider]

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By Joseph Romm

The first rule of journalism: Do not talk about journalism.

No, that isn't it. The first rule of journalism is "If your mother says she loves you, check it out," which is to say never rely on any non-primary sources, especially other journalists. So this recent post, "Ahnold going to pump it up: Schwarzenegger mandates 33 percent renewables by 2030," isn't right because this story isn't.

Schwarzenegger's Executive Order is here, and it clearly states:

That the following Renewable Portfolio Standard target is hereby established for California: All retail sellers of electricity shall serve 33 percent of their load with renewable energy by 2020. State government agencies are hereby directed to take all appropriate actions to implement this target in all regulatory proceedings, including siting, permitting, and procurement for renewable energy power plants and transmission lines.

The rest of the Order is worth reading because of all the details on how the state will expedite renewable energy siting.

The motto for many journalists was once "accuracy terseness accuracy." Online, it is "inaccuracy, snarkiness, inaccuracy." My apologies, and thanks to Ken Johnson for flagging this

And for those who say bloggers aren't journalists, all I can say is, first, my father was an old-school newspaper editor for 30 years, so I try to uphold his principles, and second, what the heck is a "log" if not a "journal"? -- heck you can find them on the same page and most thesauruses!

This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

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newVideoPlayer("/dailyshow_learyautism_gawker.flv", 506, 423,""); · In fact, he says so in this clip. Oh, and Leary defends his theory that most autistic kids are in actuality "stupid. Or...