Monday various

Tuesday various

  • I see the dead Tauntaun wedding cake. And I see the zombie wedding cake. But what I don’t see is the obvious next step: the zombie Tauntaun wedding cake. Get on it, cake-makers!
  • The movie(s) may still disappoint, but I’m genuinely excited by the new Harry Potter trailer.
  • Martin Scorcese, meanwhile, has never seen the Harry Potter movies. I think they passed up a great opportunity to have him direct one of them. Seriously, can’t you see De Niro or Keitel as Voldemort?
  • I’ve been saying this about emoticons for years and years. [via]
  • And finally, today through Thursday marks the third Harlan Ellison Rare Book Purge. I’m tempted, though mostly by the stuff that’s a little outside of my price range. Say what you will about the man — and heaven knows there’s a lot to be said, both for and against — there’s no denying that he’s written some phenomenal work.

Thursday various

  • Yesterday, when I was posting links to stories about babies, I neglected to mention Ardi Rizal a two-year-old Sumatran baby who smokes some forty cigarettes a day. I think, mostly, because I wanted to pretend he doesn’t. [via]
  • Meanwhile, this is just heartbreaking [via]:

    A German biologist says that efforts to clean oil-drenched birds in the Gulf of Mexico are in vain. For the birds’ sake, it would be faster and less painful if animal-rescue workers put them under, she says. Studies and other experts back her up.

  • Whereas this is just…fingerprinting to take out a library book? Seriously? The huge privacy issues aside, how does this improve the system for the library or the patron? [via]
  • A couple of periodic tables:
    • The Periodic Table of Superpowers — I shall henceforth refer to Superman always as OAFSISpVxVhSn. [via]
    • And Periodic Table of Women in SF — There is, of course, a meme going around for this, where you bold the names you’ve read and star the ones you’ve never heard of, but if I were to do it, I think it would just reflect how unread I am. If nothing else, this is a good place to start a reading list. [via]
  • But finally, speaking of women I don’t want to spend any more time with, A.O. Scott’s review of Sex and the City 2:

    Yes, it’s supposed to be fun. And over the years audiences have had the kind of fun that comes from easy immersion in someone else’s career, someone else’s sex life, someone else’s clothes. But “Sex and the City 2” is about someone else’s boredom, someone else’s vacation and ultimately someone else’s desire to exploit that vicarious pleasure for profit. Which isn’t much fun at all.