- I pretty much agree with everything Zack Handlen says about the latest episode of Torchwood. It wasn’t a bad episode, but it didn’t fill me with much confidence about the seven still to come.
- I have no idea if this Doctor Who Tube Map is even remotely accurate — wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff and all that — but it’s wonderfully detailed. [via]
- In praise of Joanne Rowling’s Hermione Granger series [via]
- Billionaire sheikh carves his name in desert so big it can be seen from space. (Or “SPACE,” if you prefer The Sun‘s spelling.) The rich really are different, aren’t they? Kind of…what’s the word? Assholes. [via]
- And finally, Dave Shumka of the very funny Stop Podcasting Yourself asks:
Do you ever suddenly remember you briefly had a blog 4 years ago that combined LOLCats and the Brat Pack, and it was called LOLBrats, and it sustained itself for 3 pictures?
No, but I do remember my own Lolchak the Night Stalker blog. Every now and then, I actually think about starting it up again.
news
Tuesday various
- “The body of a Massachusetts woman went unnoticed for two days in a Fall River public swimming pool, which remained open to the public and was even visited by health inspectors, generating outrage and calls for an investigation.” More here, including how such a bizarre and awful thing could actually have happened. [via]
- I think this song by Paris Hilton is, predictably, dreadful, but I actually prefer when Hilton does stuff like this, when she’s at least doing something. The paparazzi paying attention to a lousy pop star is marginally better than its paying attention to a do-nothing heiress, right?
- Well I for one am shocked — shocked! — that drug trials aren’t conducted realistically in the world of superhero comics!
- Roger Ebert on Transformers: Dark of the Moon:
I have a quaint notion that one of the purposes of editing is to make it clear why one shot follows another, or why several shots occur in the order that they do.
- And finally, Improv Everywhere’s latest mission is just lovely:
I used to work right around the corner from that park. (We’re now maybe 10 minutes away.) [via]
Monday various
- Buy a “mega jug” (their words) of soda with your meal, and KFC will donate money to diabetes research. That’s irony coming full circle.
- The US State Department reportedly lobbied against a minimum wage increase in Haiti on behalf of textile corporations. That’s just scummy. [via]
- Fuckin’ A: profanity at the New Yorker. [via]
- China used prisoners in lucrative internet gaming work. [via]
- And finally, Jonathan Coulton on Snuggies and Business Models. The Planet Money podcast is worth listening to, if you haven’t already.
Thursday various
- Firefly Meets the Muppets. Yeah, like any of you aren’t going to click that link.
- Amber Benson’s remix of “Under Your Spell” is all kinds of weird.
- Doctor Who recipes. [via]
- Kids: don’t sell your kidneys for an iPad. Got that? Good. [via]
- And finally, Alan Rickman’s classy goodbye letter to Harry Potter. [via]
Tuesday various
- Two words: yarn bombing.
- A cute comic: Superman in England. [via]
- And I thought things were uncivil on the floor of Congress. We have nothing on the Ukraine.
- I shirked my social responsibility this past weekend by not seeing Bridesmaids. I’m not really sure how I feel about this argument, although I do think it’s a sad state of affairs when the very idea of casting smart, funny women comes in a (possibly) smart, funny movie comes down to the success of one single film. [via]
- And finally, Find racist robots in Transformers 3, get $25K from Michael Bay. I’d try to collect, but then I’d actually have to watch Transformers 3.