Really, it's already Friday?

* Michael Jackson and SF: Michael Jackson "cameo" in Back to the Future II. (And here's a real cameo from Men in Black II.) io9 remembers Captain EO.

* At right, of course, there's a panel from Persepolis.

* NASA thinks it's solved the 1908 Tunguska mystery.

* Happy birthday to the toothbrush.

* 'How Wall Street Will Ruin the Environment': Robert Bryce at The Daily Beast slams Waxman-Markey.

In short, given its length and complexity, the cap-and-trade bill would be better named “The 2009 Lawyer-Lobbyist Full Employment Act.” Proponents are ignoring the fact that Enron (remember Jeff Skilling and Ken Lay?) desperately wanted caps on carbon dioxide because they saw huge profits in being able to trade carbon allowances. And now Congress wants to give Wall Street traders—the same pirates who helped engineer the financial meltdown—a mandate that requires a massive new trading business that has the potential to be gamed in the same way that Enron gamed the California electricity market? Hello?

* And Wired has a detailed look at swine flu hysteria, just in time for the outbreak at Duke.

Overthinking It tackles the science of Back to the Future.

Seriously, I have pink eye. That's just absurd. Here are some links.

* Utopia is now: curing cancer by virus.

* Dystopia is now: New York is talking about taxing Internet porn. What's 4% of free?

* How the Crash will reshape America.

* Debt: The First Five Thousand Years. Via American Stranger.

* Salute to British comic creators.

* Is Final Crisis "the death knell of the 'mad ideas' school of comics writing"?

* Nate Silver tries to statisticize the Oscars.

* Goodbye, Dubai.

* And Candleblog directs us to the official Trilogy Meter. Pretty good, but they got Back to the Future 2 wrong; it's not only better than the original, it's the greatest cinematic achievement of all time.

So those are mine. What are your imaginative Urtexts, dear readers?

For me, a few runners-up:

* Superman (really, Superfriends)
* Star Wars (naturally, but less than you'd think)
* the Adam West Batman TV show
* Back to the Future II

and maybe most crucial of all

* the LEGO Space franchise

That last one might be more important than even these.

Bollywood will remake Back To The Future. This is guaranteed to be awesome.

Save the Clock Tower: A fire on Universal's backlot has destroyed most of Hill Valley, the setting for Back to the Future. Combined with new reports that the Back to the Future franchise will be "saved from Indiana's Jones's mistake", it's clear that this is a piece of the past we're just never getting back.

The BBC has inscrutably decided to remake Bewitched, while longtime sentimental favorite Back to the Future has been added to the Library of Congress for its cultural and historical importance.

I was going to write as a sidenote that Back to the Future must never, ever be remade, but upon reflection I think I might actually like to draft the script for a Back to the Future remake. It would be Tim-Burton-dark, though. I think Biff would win.