Monday!

* I may have done this one before, but what the hell: the RAW rejection letter.

* RIP, Sally Ride. And here’s the politicized postscript.

* The NCAA drops the hammer on Penn State.

* Justice Department Investigates Pennsylvania Voter ID Law.

* The New Yorker profiles the Boss.

The tune, thick with horns and vocal harmonies, elides into “My City of Ruins,” one of the elegiac, gospel-tinged songs on the 9/11 album, “The Rising.” The voices sing “Rise up! Rise up!” and there comes a string of horn solos: trombone, trumpet, sax. Then back to the voices. Springsteen quickly introduces the E Street horns and the singing collective. Then he says, “Roll call!” And, with the music rising bit by churchly bit, he introduces the core of the band: “Professor Roy Bittan is in the house. . . . Charlie Giordano is in the house. . . .”

When he finishes the roll call, there is a long ellipsis. The band keeps vamping.

“Are we missing anybody?”

Two spotlights are now trained on the organ, where Federici once sat, and at the mike where Clemons once stood.

“Are we missing anybody?”

Then again: “Are we missing anybody? . . . That’s right. That’s right. We’re missing some. But the only thing I can guarantee tonight is that if you’re here and we’re here, then they’re here!” He repeats this over and over, the volume of the piano and the bass rising, the drums hastening, the voices rising, until finally the song overwhelms him, and, if Springsteen has calculated correctly, there will not be an unmoved soul in the house.

* Six facts about guns, violence, and gun control.

* Dibs on the novelization: Zhang and Li write that the the Milky Way will be torn apart 32.9 million years before the big rip. The Earth will be ripped away from the Sun two months before the end, and we’ll lose our moon with five days left. The Sun itself will be destroyed 28 minutes before the end of time, and the Earth will explode a mere 12 minutes later.

* The headline reads, “Neurosurgeons banned from human research for giving infectious bacteria to brain tumor patients.”

* Radiolab says the Greeks didn’t know about blue.

* John Scalzi, self-made man.

* Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld go get coffee.

* And Fred Willard is keeping his head up.

Back Home Just in Time for the Economic Collapse Links

* 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.”

Tuesday!

* Grieving, From Asbury Park. Clarence Clemons and the History of the Rock Sideman. With Clarence Clemons, the notes that mattered most weren’t on the saxophone.

* Mysteries of Göbekli Tepe.

Discovering that hunter-gatherers had constructed Göbekli Tepe was like finding that someone had built a 747 in a basement with an X-Acto knife. “I, my colleagues, we all thought, What? How?” Schmidt said. Paradoxically, Göbekli Tepe appeared to be both a harbinger of the civilized world that was to come and the last, greatest emblem of a nomadic past that was already disappearing. The accomplishment was astonishing, but it was hard to understand how it had been done or what it meant. “In 10 or 15 years,” Schmidt predicts, “Göbekli Tepe will be more famous than Stonehenge. And for good reason.”

* Of course you had me at Barthelme in Space.

* Mother Jones and a brief history of the speedup.

Webster’s defines speedup as “an employer’s demand for accelerated output without increased pay,” and it used to be a household word. Bosses would speed up the line to fill a big order, to goose profits, or to punish a restive workforce. Workers recognized it, unions (remember those?) watched for and negotiated over it—and, if necessary, walked out over it.

But now we no longer even acknowledge it—not in blue-collar work, not in white-collar or pink-collar work, not in economics texts, and certainly not in the media (except when journalists gripe about the staff-compacted-job-expanded newsroom). Now the word we use is “productivity,” a term insidious in both its usage and creep. The not-so-subtle implication is always: Don’t you want to be a productive member of society? Pundits across the political spectrum revel in the fact that US productivity (a.k.a. economic output per hour worked) consistently leads the world. Yes, year after year, Americans wring even more value out of each minute on the job than we did the year before. U-S-A! U-S-A!

Except what’s good for American business isn’t necessarily good for Americans. We’re not just working smarter, but harder. And harder. And harder, to the point where the driver is no longer American industriousness, but something much more predatory…

* UNC gets hit with a Notice of Allegations from the NCAA.

* And really, honestly: how much jewelry does Newt Gingrich buy?

When the Change Was Made Uptown and the Big Man Joined The Band

Rest in peace, Clarence Clemons.

Monday Links

* Very sad news: The Big Man is ill.

* More sad news: Terry Pratchett begins formal process to end his life.

* Great news: HBO will turn Neil Gaiman’s American Gods into a six-season series.

* I wish had hope the Captain America movie will be anywhere near as awesome as this novelty poster made for cast and crew.

* ‘A Frightening Time in America’: A 2006 interview with David Foster Wallace, now in English.

* Surprising everyone, Obama is still ahead in North Carolina.

* And Sherman Alexie vs. the prudes.

I write books for teenagers because I vividly remember what it felt like to be a teen facing everyday and epic dangers. I don’t write to protect them. It’s far too late for that. I write to give them weapons–in the form of words and ideas-that will help them fight their monsters. I write in blood because I remember what it felt like to bleed.