Friday Links

* Istvan Csiscery-Ronay talks to Kim Stanley Robinson about the Three Californias trilogy.

* The state of national emergency declared after 9/11 has now entered its 11th year.

* CFP: Technology as Cure – Representations of Disability in Science Fiction.

* I was childishly ragging on Obama boosters proclaiming “Obamacare is already working” the other day on the strength of a very slight decline in uninsured 18-24 year olds, so it’s worth noting/conceding that for a lot of people it is in fact actually already working.

* You clamored for it, now here it is: Source Code: The Television Series.

* And now it’s really time to buy an iPad: Reading Rainbow‘s coming back on it.

Friday!

Friday!

* ‘Decision to end Reading Rainbow traced to a ‘shift’ in priorities during the Bush administration.’ That bastard!

* “Too big to fail” is so 2008. Via Ezra Klein.

J.P. Morgan Chase, an amalgam of some of Wall Street’s most storied institutions, now holds more than $1 of every $10 on deposit in this country. So does Bank of America, scarred by its acquisition of Merrill Lynch and partly government-owned as a result of the crisis, as does Wells Fargo, the biggest West Coast bank. Those three banks, plus government-rescued and -owned Citigroup, now issue one of every two mortgages and about two of every three credit cards, federal data show.

A year after the near-collapse of the financial system last September, the federal response has redefined how Americans get mortgages, student loans and other kinds of credit and has made a national spectacle of executive pay. But no consequence of the crisis alarms top regulators more than having banks that were already too big to fail grow even larger and more interconnected.

* No Senate Democrat has gone on record as opposing the public option. More and more I think the public option will pass using reconciliation. I haven’t heard a single persuasive counterargument to doing it this way, and Obama and the Democrats are too all-in to let health care die altogether.

* Also in health care news: Steve Benen announces the death of the public option and the rise of the free pony option. Sounds a little bit like socialism to me.

* WAKE UP SHEEPLE. THE OLIGARHY IS REAL.

* Snow Leopard reviews. I’ve installed this on both our Macs and so far everything appears to be almost exactly the same as before. Disk Utility works much better, which is nice. And a few menus that used to be white are now black. Believe the hype.

* And io9 has your TV science fiction themes by the numbers. We are truly in the dark age of televised time travel.

Thursday Morning

Thursday morning.

* Tarantino on Tarantino on Charlie Rose. It gets better once Tarantino gets going on IB-related subjects like Goebbels’s theory of film or the origins of Col. Hans Landa and the Bride. Watch out for spoilers.

* 61 literary euphemisms for masturbation.

* More Snow Leopard reviews.

* Reading Rainbow to end its 26-year run. You don’t have to take my word for it.