So, the REALLY REAL series finale of one of the smartest written shows on TV, Jericho, aired last night. Apparently all the peanuts in the world couldn't save that show indefinitely. Although, rumor has it, SciFi Channel may be picking up a third season soon. Which is good since despite the more final-ish ending the CBS press release said the show would have, it still felt like a cliffhanger. Although that's coming from a viewer who hasn't seen the original cliffhanger ending for season two (probably the Allied Air Force jets actually shooting down Jake's Cessna plane and trying to avoid dying in the crash...?) In any case, there's absolutely no word on when or if that happens, but at least now we know where to send the nuts.

Over the past week, a unique financial event has occurred. People are noticing more and more a newly redesigned $5 bill which some have reacted to at first with outcries of counterfeiting!

In case you don't have any fives in your wallet right now because you just bought a Subway sandwich with your last one, here's the design we all know by now:

And here's the series-2006 model:

So obviously the noticeable differences are the big fuchsia five in the lower-right of the backside, all the super-small gold "05"s on the right side of the back (better known as EURion Constellations, which force most color photocopiers to reject the bill for copying... Don't ask me how... Just read THIS link.), the ten stars to the right of Lincoln's face, and the ten on the other side of the front area, the fives on either side of the bottom of the front of the bill are now white instead of pale-ish green, and of course the large green oval behind Lincoln's head is now about as gone as Penn Jilette on Dancing with the Stars.

Was all this extra security really necessary though? We're now dealing with a $5 that's more secure than the $50! I read somewhere that the purpose for doing all this crazy printing trickery was to fight counterfeiting, but I haven't heard of the five being that commonly used for that purpose. Logically, the higher-value denominations would be used so the criminals would get more real money back as change, hence the hundreds, fifties and twenties being the top trifecta of being used in one of the worst federal-level felonies on the books.

Sure, it's obviously important to have security measures in place to prevent as much as possible, but this much? for a bill denomination that's scarcely used for this purpose? As I said, I do understand and support the reasoning, but I'd love to see how the $1 will be changed probably around 2015, which by the way hasn't happened since 1969, when Neil Armstrong was so famously misquoted on the moon (I still say it was "one small step for man," not "...for A man").

Bottom Line: All this paper's gonna be obsolete anyway when we get those nanoscopic implants in our thumbnails around 2025, which will be linked to everything from our PayPal accounts to Social Security information. At least, if I'm to believe that prophetic ABC 20/20 story from 1996 (I think that was John Stossel who ran that story...). The way I see it, we're probably better off enjoying old-fashioned paper while it lasts. Just as long as the vending machines will still accept my singles, no matter how crazy the printing gets. Because daddy needs his Doritos.

...But that's just me.

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