Galley Friend X asks–not facetiously–which American luminary is going to be kicked off a coin or a bill to make room for President Obama’s portrait.

I’ll open the bidding with Grant on the $50 and set the initial over-under line at January 2013.

The Eddie ran this week in Waimea for the first time in five years. Surfline has the video though, for my money, these still photos are even better.

I would have given just about anything in the world to have been there for this:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3l8iSTwxow&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

I’d argue that Iverson is the most beloved athlete in the history of Philly sports. (Dr. J is the only other guy in the discussion.) As much as any other jock who’s ever been through the city, he’s the embodiment of everything Philadelphians want to believe about themselves: He’s great; he’s troubled; he’s authentic; and while ultimately successful, he’s often fortune’s fool.

I’ve defended Iverson’s greatness in the past, so there’s no need to recapitulate that here. He’s a lock for the Hall of Fame, number 3 on the all-time scoring list, and one of the greats of the modern era. Arguments to the contrary simply aren’t sustainable.

No doubt, the Answer has had problems–lots of them. But he was never your garden-variety delinquent jock. More often than not, he got into trouble trying to hold his marriage together or dealing with extended family problems. He wasn’t just getting into fights at clubs or driving drunk with a trunkful of guns.

His problems were simply part of who he was, and he made no attempt to hide them, or pretend he was someone else. There were no Kobe-style image consultants trying to make him into a softdrink pitchman. He wasn’t Jordan with a publicly-groomed perfect marriage and an entire clandestine operation for his girls on the side. Iverson never hid who he was. There’s something touching (and maybe a little bit tragic) about a guy who isn’t quite equipped to lead a normal lower-upperclass existence trying his best to figure it out on the fly and create what he thinks a normal life is supposed to be.

Like Philly itself, Iverson is a bundle of contradictions. People remember his “practice? you talking about practice?” rant–and he was a terrible worker when it came to practice. You can’t be a Jordan or Bird level player without being obsessed with workouts, so Iverson’s game and the franchise suffered because of his laziness. But while he was disdainful of practice, he was an absolute warrior in games. He never took a play off; never hesitated to give up his body. He never tanked games. Philly fans love Iverson because on any given night, he cared about the game more than anyone watching did. That’s probably the rarest attribute in all of professional sports.

Galley Friend M.C. points us to Stanley Fish doing a very fair impersonation of Lorne Michaels in his assessment of Sarah Palin.

The lede, though, is what’s really striking:

When I walked into the Strand Bookstore in Manhattan last week, I headed straight for the bright young thing who wore an “Ask Me” button, and asked her to point me to the section of the store where I might find Sarah Palin’s memoir, “Going Rogue: An American Life.” She looked at me as if I had requested a copy of “Mein Kampf” signed in blood by the author, and directed me to the nearest Barnes and Noble, where, presumably, readers of dubious taste and sensibility could find what they wanted.

A bookstore that purports to be the best of its kind refusing to sell the book of the moment simply because they don’t like the politics of the author? Some businesses deserve to die.

The Czabe runs the best single best sports-talk show I’ve ever heard, a nationally syndicated show on Fox Sports Radio during the morning drive time.

His show has been cancelled. This is terrible.

But wait–there’s more.

He’s being replaced.

By Stephen A. Smith.

The 11th Wonder of the World–the Cowboys’ new giant HD screen–is going to being doing a demo at this week’s game: Converting normal 2-D HD image into 3-D.

You heard right. Glasses-free, auto stereoscopic three-dimensional, HD images on a 72′ by 160′ screen. The new software is going to render all replays (and maybe even the live feed?) on the big screen into 3-D.

Awesome.

I can’t really imagine the computing power it’ll take to make conversions like that in real-time.

Uh-huh.

Google CEO: Only bad people keep secrets.