Gerry Canavan

Surreal science fiction art from Japan, 1960s-1980s.

…from Jed Henry. Via io9. What I like about the Link one in particular is the way it highlights just how Japanese the iconography of the early Zelda games is, and how Americans read the games as traditional European medieval fantasy anyway.

* Inside Pantone HQ.

* Muppet Fairy Tales. Why isn’t this a book or long-running television series yet?

* Presenting the Rust Belt Justice League.

* Being Samuel L. Jackson.

* The Ministry of Defence is considering placing surface-to-air missiles on residential flats during the Olympics.

* To explain the behavior of “the left,” Bergen offers this theory: “From both the right and left, there has been a continuing, dramatic cognitive disconnect between Mr. Obama’s record and the public perception of his leadership: despite his demonstrated willingness to use force, neither side regards him as the warrior president he is.” In other words, progressives are slavishly supportive of “one of the most militarily aggressive American leaders in decades” because they have deluded themselves into denying this reality and continue to pretend he’s some sort of anti-war figure.

* Faith-based retirement. (via)

* 16 years, $185,000 in debt, ABD. Sad story. (via)

* Stephen King talks to Neil Gaiman.

* The secret art of Dr. Seuss.

* And the truth is out there: Seattle Attorney Andrew Basiago Claims U.S. Sent Him On Time Travels. I want to believe!

* Flights of inspired genius that made me wish I had more Twitter followers: #tweetsfrom2112 (1, 2) and #cabininthe2012GOPprimary.

* Rachel Maddow and conservatism, the new liberalism.

* The New Jim Crow: How the War on Drugs gave birth to a permanent American under caste.

* Adding Monsters to Thrift Store Paintings.

* …But for every Romney action, there is an equal and opposite Romney reaction.

“I wanted to increase the work requirement,” said Romney. “I said, for instance, that even if you have a child 2 years of age, you need to go to work. And people said, ‘Well that’s heartless.’ And I said, ‘No, no, I’m willing to spend more giving day care to allow those parents to go back to work. It’ll cost the state more providing that daycare, but I want the individuals to have the dignity of work.”

Let Jamison Foser have the final word: “If you think rich stay at home moms are awesome and poor stay at home moms lack dignity, it isn’t motherhood that you respect.”

* Tough times for the Romneys during their college years.

“We were happy, studying hard. Neither one of us had a job, because Mitt had enough of an investment from stock that we could sell off a little at a time.

* CNN has interviewed women in all branches of the armed forces, including the Coast Guard, who tell stories that follow a similar pattern — a sexual assault, a command dismissive of the allegations and a psychiatric discharge.

* How 25 National Magazine Award Nominations Went To 25 Male Writers.

* A Short History of Neoliberalism (And How We Can Fix It).

* In 1942, as part of the Manhattan Project, the U.S. government acquired 70,000 acres of land in Eastern Tennessee and established a secret town called Oak Ridge.

* Save money next tax season with these space-related tax breaks.

* And a little NostalgiaFilter: What if Google had launched in the 80s?

(thanks zz)

Trip City goes inside the home of Chris Ware. It’s even more like you think it’ll be than you think.

No One Can Save Us, A Sculpture of a Melted Superman.

io9 has your end-of-the-world art gallery. Below: post-apocalypse Tokyo.

* We had a fine time at the South End Art Hop in Burlington this afternoon and bought some tiny pieces from Moe O’Hara, John Brickels, and Nicholas Heilig (the last of whom was making this great anti-Christmas print as we passed through his studio). I bought a couple of Heilig’s Live Art prints for my office at school, but alas—the Swedish Chef was all sold out.

* Scenes from the class struggle in Iowa: Mitt Romney offers Rick Perry a $10,000 bet. Now #What10KBuys is trending on Twitter, and the best is all anyone is talking about. I’m closer than I’ve ever been to being the smartest man in politics. I almost can taste it.

* Scenes from the class struggle everywhere: The Walmart Heirs Have The Same Net Worth As The Bottom 30 Percent Of Americans.

* The Boston Review had an interesting back-and-forth recently on ethical consumption.

* North Carolina is still trying to figure out what to do about its postwar eugenics program.

* On the impracticality of a cheeseburger. Via you-know-where.

* And it looks like Monday will be another big day for #Occupy.

An amazing piece of street art has brought the famous Chinese terracotta army to life once again – in the form of Lego figures. Wrong-way view here. Via Neil.

Warhol is now the god of contemporary art. He is indeed, it is said, the “American Picasso” or, if you prefer, the art market’s one-man Dow Jones. In 2010 his work sold for a total of $313m and accounted for 17% of all contemporary auction sales. This was a 229% increase on the previous year—nothing bounced out of recession quite like a Warhol. But perhaps the most significant figure is the rise in his average auction prices between 1985 and the end of 2010: 3,400%. The contemporary-art market as a whole rose by about half that, the Dow by about a fifth. “Warhol is the backbone of any auction of post-war contemporary art,” says Christopher Gaillard, president of the art consultants Gurr Johns. “He is the great moneymaker.” Via longform.org.

* …American University professor Allan Lichtman, “whose election formula has correctly called every president since Ronald Reagan’s 1984 re-election,” says Obama is a shoo-in. My two-pronged election formula [(1) Is everything terrible? (2) Is one of the parties visibly insane?] put Obama’s chances at 50-50. I guess we’ll see.

* Yes please: DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, is planning on disbursing a $500,000 grant in November for interstellar starship research.

* Crimes against the future: “The Murdoch Media Empire Has Cost Humanity Perhaps One or Two Decades in Battle Against Climate Change.”

* ‘Overhyped’ Hurricane Irene Likely To Be One Of The 10 Costliest Disasters Ever.

* 25 Corporations Paid More To Their CEO Last Year Than They Paid In Taxes.

* Stephen King’s Under the Dome will come to Showtime.

* Shaviro on post-continuity.

In my book Post-Cinematic Affect (2010), I argue that American commercial filmmaking has, in the last decade or so, been increasingly characterized by what I call the stylistics of post-continuity. This is a filmmaking practice in which a preoccupation with moment-to-moment excitement, and with delivering continual shocks to the audience, trumps any concern with traditional continuity, either on a shot-by-shot level or in terms of larger narrative structures.

* Play around with this and make some art with fractals.

* And a very happy birthday to #7,000,000,000.

In 1979, with Washington worried about 52 hostages in Tehran and terrorist threats at home, Robison’s boss asked him to create a big container for works of the highest value. If catastrophe hit, the container could be spirited away to an undisclosed location. Today, Robison has seven boxes in two separate storerooms — four for European holdings, three for American. These do not include the museum’s 10,000 photographs, 3,800 paintings and 2,900 sculptures, outside of Robison’s purview and mostly too big for any mad dash out the building. And because his works are so fragile and light-sensitive, they live most of their lives in protective storage, going on the walls for viewing only in short spurts.

In the two storerooms that Robison asked not be photographed or their locations disclosed, the black, cloth-lined boxes, each the shape of very large books, bear the label “WW3,” drawn in calligraphy. These in-case-of-World-War-III containers lie ready for any possibility, and in Robison’s absence, security guards have a floor plan that shows their exact location, like an X on a pirate map.

Please enjoy. Via Chris.

* Fantasy Premier League is starting up again! Email me for our league code or leave a request in the comments.

* My old friend Julie takes the critical thinking skills she honed on the Randolph High School debate team and takes them to the Center for American Progress with a piece on the war on diversity education.

* Jaimee reviews #13 and #14 in the Carolina Wren Press poetry series.

The final section of Pratt’s collection calls on us to transcend our economic predicaments. “Street of Broken Dreams” delves into the mortgage crisis: “No way to tell who owns my neighborhood homes/ until the for-sale-by-bank signs grow overnight.” It is a poem that celebrates the people who resisted their neighborhood home foreclosures, ending with their imagined chants: “We demand. Not rabble and rabid, not shadow, not terror,/ the neighbors stand and say: The world is ours, ours, ours.”

* Also in breaking Jaimee news: her pop culture icons will be hanging in Bean Trader’s on 9th Street starting August 1.

* America eats its future: Debt Ceiling Plans Take Aim At Graduate Student Loans.

* Not-so-post-racial America: As a result of these declines, the typical black household had just $5,677 in wealth (assets minus debts) in 2009, the typical Hispanic household had $6,325 in wealth and the typical white household had $113,149.

* And House Democrats are finally starting to say what I’ve been saying all along. Even if the Republicans are capable of delivering any deal at all—which is by no means clear—there’s no deal they can offer that’s better than eliminating the debt ceiling altogether in one fell swoop. And as I’ve been saying eliminating the debt ceiling completely is now the only way left to calm the markets and prevent a potentially catastrophic downgrade:

Asian stock markets fell Thursday as uncertainty over the U.S. debt ceiling debate continued to weigh market sentiment, while concerns over a stronger yen dragged exporters in Tokyo.

“The scary part of the story is the fact that markets have not priced-in the U.S. defaulting on its debt. Should the unthinkable happen in the next week then a throw back to the chaos of 2008 would again become a reality,” said CMC Markets analyst Ben Le Brun. “Should the majority of opinion be correct and the U.S. does avoid a default, global markets do appear as if they are positioned for a relief rally of sorts. Until then investors should brace themselves for more pain.”

Science proves babies love Picasso.