Weekend Links!

* Call for applications: 2014—15 Le Guin Feminist Science Fiction Fellowship.

* So Paul Di Filippo really liked Green Planets.

* Receive this petition in nomination of three candidates for MLA Executive Council and one for 2nd Vice President.

* Explaining Tuition Hikes at the University of Michigan. Construction Not Instruction: Bonds and Buildings at the Public University. 5 Links Between Higher Education and the Prison Industry.

* And this is the pattern with austerity. The measures introduced under the rubric of an emergency, the supposed need to consolidate debt and appease “the market,” ultimately do little for the debt, and only consolidate the market’s tyrannical reach.

* On trigger warnings and who gets to count.

* Journey to the Centre of Google Earth.

* I was born too early.

* The Lion King: A short history of Disney-fascism.

But the emotional trauma that Disney tries its damnedest to induce in young children is only the spadework for the ugly principles it feels it must implant in each new generation. Although the film takes place in an imaginary jungle, THE LION KING really expounds the Law of the Schoolyard: only the strong and the beautiful triumph, and the powerless survive only by serving the strong. As Disney sees it, children must not only acknowledge the supremacy of those born privileged and violent, the children must love them. The young must gaze in hushed veneration at the princely predators who stand ready to harvest the labor and flesh of their subjects. They must learn to giggle at the hopeless scampering of weak and stubby creatures as they dodge the jaws of their overlords. They must accept that true friendship means flattering those who would otherwise feast on their entrails.

* Climate denialism and the Outer Banks. These time-lapse maps show how much hotter the USA will be when you’re old.

* Why Did Borges Hate Soccer?

* Was the U.S. Robbed Against Portugal? It Depends on What Time Means.

* You got your class-based analysis in my intersectionality NO you got your intersectionality in my class-based analysis

* Another exciting week of Good SCOTUS, Bad SCOTUS.

* Kunkel reviews Piketty. The circle is complete.

* Title Now Everybody Sue Everybody: expulsion and sexual assault at IHE.

* Democrats are the worst, Daily Show edition.

* Hillary Clinton 2016 and the Folly of the Left-Flank Push.

* If you or any other speculator on my body and rights, wish to know how I regard my rights, they need but come here and lay their hands on me to enslave me. Did you think to terrify me by presenting the alternative to give my money to you, or give my body to Slavery? Then let me say to you, that I meet the proposition with unutterable scorn and contempt.

* The Star Wars museum is coming to Chicago.

* Konczal v. student debt.

* Obamaism v. teacher tenure.

* People aren’t worried about robots, they’re worried about who owns the robots.

* A New Bike Lane That Could Save Lives and Make Cycling More Popular.

*  “You express amazement at my statement that ‘civilized’ men try to justify their looting, butchering and plundering by claiming that these things are done in the interests of art, progress and culture. That this simple statement of fact should cause surprise, amazes me in return.”

* What could go wrong? Missouri School Districts Start Training Teachers To Carry Concealed Weapons In Classroom.

* Former College Basketball Player Sues NCAA Over Concussions.

* ‘Think They Got Killed?’ 1964, L.B.J. and Three Civil Rights Icons.

* When Rambo was going to fight werewolves.

* In praise of Janelle Monáe.

* On phone horror.

* Another Fermi Paradox post.

* Here comes Pacific Rim 2. Plus a cartoon! But we still live in a vale of tears.

* Humanity Surprised It Still Hasn’t Figured Out Better Alternative To Letting Power-Hungry Assholes Decide Everything.

* ​The 20 Most WTF Magical Items in Dungeons & Dragons.

* Free at last: Oakland to decriminalize pinball.

* Kill Bill as an 8-bit video game.

* Episode 7 is already ruined.

* But the kids are all right.

Look, I’m Not Going to Sugarcoat This

Lance Armstrong Wants To Tell Nation Something But Nation Has To Promise Not To Get Mad.

Worse Than Watergate

Robert Gibbs uses official White House Twitter account to endorse his local bike store.

Friday Night Links

* The Devil is living in the Vatican, says the Pope’s chief exorcist.

* Texas state School Board unpersons Thomas Jefferson.

* Can soccer ever fix tie-breaking?

* Google’s bike maps “‘filled with potentially fatal flaws.'”

* The public option is dead again. Glenn Greenwald, as we might expect, is pissed. I’m really not sure what the argument for caution is supposed to be here, as the public option remains at least ten points more popular than the rest of the bill. Why not pass it through reconciliation while we’re doing everything else? What bad thing will happen if we do?

* Adding student loan reform to the health care bill, on the other hand, is probably both good policy and good politics.

* Josh Marshall and Ezra Klein give reason to hope November might not be the Democratic bloodbath we’re all expecting.

* And here comes A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas?

‘Eating the Elephant’

“Biking across the country is like eating an elephant—you just do it one little bite at a time.” Fans of my friend Eric the Red can get their fill from the footage he’s put on Google Video of his recent cross-country bike trip.
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The first chapter functions nicely as a kind of mini-trailer: