- Giant prehistoric krakens may have sculpted self-portraits using ichthyosaur bones. “McMenamin anticipates that this theory will be met with skepticism.” Gee, ya think?
- Are DVD “special features” already a quaint relic of the past? Certainly, they seem to have quickly become a premium feature only.
- Computer Virus Hits U.S. Drone Fleet [via]
- Typewriter cocktail machine [via]
- And finally, If Arthur Dent Was In ‘The Dark Knight’ Instead of Harvey Dent
various
Thursday various
- Painless Protein Scaffold Lets Cavity-Ridden Teeth Re-Grow From the Inside Out [via]
- The Complete Harry Potter Story In One Comic [via]
- Dolce & Gabbana in dock over ‘killer jeans’. What William Gibson calls “The life-threatening labor required to ma[k]e the jeans of people who don’t do physical labor look somewhat as if they did.”
- Can you tell the difference between these Letterman and Leno monologue jokes? I sure couldn’t. [via]
- And finally, Betty has an odd, random thought:
…namely that if a zombie apocalypse were to suddenly erupt, whatever clothes I’m wearing right now could very well be what I’m shambling around biting people in forever, or at least until someone gets a clear head shot. This idea especially tends to occur when I’m wearing a t-shirt that would be just a little too apt in the circumstances. Like my Farscape “Irreversibly Contaminated” shirt. Or the one that says, “Life Is Short. Read Fast.” Or my Monty Python and the Holy Grail pajama pants. (“It’s only a flesh wound!”) In this fashion, I manage to simultaneously amuse myself and kinda creep myself out.
Wednesday various
- Obama’s Kickstarter Campaign to Solve the Debt [via]
- On a more serious note, an interesting look inside Kickstarter itself.
- Moore’s Law may soon be broken. Whither the Singularity? [via]
- If Male Superheroes Posed Like Wonder Woman. We’ve seen this sort of thing before, but…well, that there is part of the problem, isn’t it? [via]
- And finally, Matthew Cheney revisits the movie Stand By Me:
When I was ten, Stand By Me felt like the apex of realism because I’d never encountered a character who seemed so much like me as Gordie did. Twenty-five years later, it feels real for opposite reasons: for its naked artificiality. It gets right the way we shore up our fading memories by turning them into stories, by setting a soundtrack to them, by finding just the right words for every conversation and just the right lessons for every walk down the railroad tracks.
Tuesday various
- Abercrombie & Fitch will pay Jersey Shore cast to stop wearing its clothes. How have I gone this far without ever directly encountering either? (And how can I continue this pattern of unexpected grace?)
- Now you can watch The Big Lebowski with a bunch of random people on Facebook. I am intrigued by this…but not at all interested in participating. I’ve watched — and riffed on — movies with friends online, and enjoyed that experience. But Facebook’s system seems designed mostly to send money to Facebook, which is something I’m considerably less interested in doing.
- Angry Robot’s WorldBuilder, on the other hand, seems like a much more intriguing communal experience. It’s, again, not one I’m likely to participate in myself, just because I don’t tend to seek out secondary worlds like this — fan fiction, role-playing games, etc. — but there’s something potentially very cool (and profitable, obviously) about a publisher embracing and facilitating this kind of thing right out of the gate. [via]
- Aled Lewis’s mashups of historical paintings with ’80s adventure games. There’s only a few of these here, but they’re really quite amusing. [via]
- And finally, Whiny Tea Partiers feel threatened by Jane Yolen:
Why all the fuss? I believe it’s because Jane explained what was wrong in clear, straightforward language — a knack that way too many liberal pundits have lost. If exposing children to books and literacy is good, then what Ron Johnson is doing to schools and libraries is bad. If children being cared for in a public health clinic is good, then what Ron Johnson is doing to healthcare funding is bad. Johnson tacitly admits that these things are good, and that the general public sees them as good, by using them as props for his photo session. He wants the benefit of being associated with them. Then, in real life, he does his best to trash them. Simple.
What venues like Moe Lane and WTAQ News Talk are really saying is that Jane Yolen made them feel bad. She got through to them. They can’t really argue with her, so they throw sh*t in her general direction, but still: she got through to them.
Monday various
- Diamond World Discovered by Astronomers [via]
- Scrabble makes you smarter, say Calgary researchers [via]
- McMaster research finds link between gut bacteria and behaviour [via]
- 6 Technologies Conspicuously Absent from Sci-Fi Movies [via]
- And finally, Frank Bruni Takes Aim at Anthony Bourdain, Misses the Point:
[Paula] Deen, for all of her folksy, I’m-just-cooking-for-all-of-y’all-who-can’t-afford-microgreens charm, has made many millions thanks to her partnership with Smithfield Foods, the pork producer and processor that’s made headlines for abusing unions, animals, small farmers, and the environment. (It’s also given plenty of campaign contributions to the GOP, that bastion of fairness to the working class.) Deen is no less a member of the culinary aristocracy than Bourdain — they just belong to country clubs with different rules. [via]