Saturday Night Links!

* I’ve had a nice bit of professional good news: I’ve been asked to join Extrapolation as an editor beginning with their Spring 2015 issue.

* “Crutzen, who is not a geologist, but one of the modern great scientists, essentially launched a small hand grenade into the world of geological time scales,” Jan Zalasiewicz, chair of the ICS’s anthropocene working group, told the Guardian. “The word began to be used widely, well before geologists ever got involved.”

* That old-time religion: Now that science fiction is respectable, it’s lost almost all of the conceptual craziness and dubious sexual politics that made it both fanboy bait and of genuine interest.

* From AfricaIsACountry: Ebola and neo-imperialism. And from Jacobin: The Political Economy of Ebola.

* The arsenal of, well, let’s say democracy: The U.S. sold $66.3 billion in weapons last year –- more than three-fourths of the entire global arms market.

* Richest 1% of people own nearly half of global wealth, says report.

* Climate change: how to make the big polluters really pay.

* Of Collaborators and Careerists.

* Whites are more supportive of voter ID laws when shown photos of black people voting.

* Meritocracy watch: Poor kids who do everything right don’t do better than rich kids who do everything wrong.

* The 21st century university: women’s only colleges and trans identity.

* Since the sinking of the Titanic, there has been a widespread belief that the social norm of “women and children first” (WCF) gives women a survival advantage over men in maritime disasters, and that captains and crew members give priority to passengers. We analyze a database of 18 maritime disasters spanning three centuries, covering the fate of over 15,000 individuals of more than 30 nationalities. Our results provide a unique picture of maritime disasters. Women have a distinct survival disadvantage compared with men. Captains and crew survive at a significantly higher rate than passengers.

* The Milwaukee police officer who killed Dontre Hamilton in Red Arrow Park is believed to be the first officer in the city fired as a result of a fatal on-duty shooting in at least 45 years.

* “Weird hobby.”

* More back-and-forth on carceral feminism from Amber A’Lee Frost and Freddie deBoer.

* Pieces like this are enough to make you nostalgic for the quietly understated narcissism of “job creators.”

like Uber but for poor people to sell their organs to rich people

— Gritty Rebootavan (@gerrycanavan) October 19, 2014

So old I can remember when technological progress was going to increase human happiness instead of helping everyone hustle 24 hours a day.

— Gritty Rebootavan (@gerrycanavan) October 19, 2014

* An oral history of The Wonder Years.

* New Scrabble Dictionary Disrepects The Game.

* Stop worrying about mastermind hackers. Start worrying about the IT guy.

* And just for fun: How to die in the 18th century. Watch for for evil, and for the purples…

Saturday Night Links!

* Chris Ware: The Story of a Penny.

* There’s nothing sweet in life: Daytime Napping Linked to Increased Risk of Death.

* So it’s come to this: the University of California is now arresting striking workers, their leaders and supporters for legally sanctioned labor activity.

* On the gender gap in academia.

* America’s total newsroom workforce dropped 17,000, from 55,000 in 2006 to 38,000 in 2012, according to the Pew Research Journalism Project.

* “D.C.’s homeless children deserve a great play space. Let’s build one.” End homelessness.

* Tasers out of schools, out of everywhere.

* The NSA has exploited Heartbleed bug for years, Bloomberg reports. The NSA denies it.

* EFF seeks student activists for campus network.

* Great moments in arbitrary government nonsense.

Social Security officials say that if children indirectly received assistance from public dollars paid to a parent, the children’s money can be taken, no matter how long ago any overpayment occurred.

* And then, as always, there’s the LAPD.

* Albuquerque police have ‘pattern’ of excessive, deadly force, report says.

* Blogs to watch: http://carceralfeminism.wordpress.com/

* PETA unable to make cannibal Dahmer’s home a vegan restaurant.

* Science is amazing.

* “May I play devil’s advocate?”

* Go on….

* Special bonus Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal!

* The Second Colbert Decade.

* Muppet mash-ups.

* Climate Change Drying Out Southwest Now, With Worse To Come For A Third Of The Planet. Extreme Weather Has Driven A Ten-Fold Increase In Power Outages Over The Last Two Decades. If We Don’t Stop Now, We’ll Surpass 2°C Global Warming.

* Jed Whedon explains why Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has been so bad all this time.

* Kickstarter of the night: Geek Theater: Anthology of Science Fiction & Fantasy Plays.

* And of course you had me at “Game of Thrones in Space.”

Likely Human Carcinogen, Light Starch

The headline reads, “Does Dry Cleaning Cause Cancer?” Here’s the part of the article that really tickles me:

The good news is that nontoxic dry cleaners are becoming easier to find. Most of them aren’t technically “dry” at all; rather, they use liquids. A method called “wet cleaning” involves different water-based soaps and machine settings for various fabric types…

Wet cleaning? It’ll never catch on!

Category 2B

The pendulum has swung back and your cell phone is (maybe) killing you again.

Tuesday Links – 3

* You know you had me at “Underwater Translator May Finally Let Us Talk to Dolphins.”

* Wild and wacky patents!

* Sitting is killing you.

* The United States has the worst income inequality in the OECD.

* Alas, Trump!

* Total Recall without Mars is an abomination.

* And the ICC may issue arrest warrants for Gaddifi.

Rising from the Ashes Thursday

* Confusion Reigns Over Legality of Anti-Union Bill Passage in Wisconsin. I offered in the MetaFilter thread last night my suspicion that having this bill overturned on procedural or state-constitutional grounds could be Walker’s face-saving exit strategy at this point; it’s been very common over the last few decades for Republicans to pass transparently illegal or unconstitutional legislation as red meat for the base, only to raise additional cash when “activist judges” throw the legislation out. If the lack of quorum genuinely tied his hands, illegitimately claiming to have passed the law anyway lets Walker still claim to have won. It’s certainly being reported that way.

* Watching Twitter last night was inspiring, despite the defeat. Calls for a general strike in particular are exiting; that’s something I’d never expected to see happen here. (The last was apparently in 1934.) The class war is definitely happening out in the open in the moment: Wisconsin GOP Bill Allows State to Fire Employees for Strikes, Walk-Outs. No strike yet.

* Elsewhere in union-busting news: The many lies of Chris Christie, in the New York Times.

* So what is this Manifesto? In essence, it is a vindication of the arts and humanities as the most valuable of social and cultural practices.

* Flying cars: just one year away.

* And you always knew it: science proves running a lot will kill you.

Some More Links

* Smart presidents making stupid arguments:

For instance, the FDA has long considered saccharin, the artificial sweetener, safe for people to consume. Yet for years, the EPA made companies treat saccharin like other dangerous chemicals. Well, if it goes in your coffee, it is not hazardous waste.

They call it poison. We call it life.

* From the don’t-know-if-this-is-crazy-or-awesome file: Though stem cell therapies are still in the early stages of development, some families are having their children’s baby teeth extracted and saved in anticipation of treatments that could be around by the time the child reaches adulthood, the Miami Herald reports.

* When Left-Wing Editors Fight Unions.

* When Famous Directors Lose Their Minds.

* Being Roger Ailes.

* Bomb Planted Along MLK Day Parade Route In Spokane.

* David Simon v. Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III. Discussion at MeFi.

* Last Stand 4 Children is devoted to providing all children with a quality education in spite of their teachers. See also: Billionaires for Educational Reform. (Via @mrtalbot.)

* Almost none of these “literal New Yorker cartoons” are actually “literal,” though a few are amusing nonetheless.

* Uplifting Duke/Durham story of the day: The Secret Game.

The North Carolina College Eagles were coming off their most successful season ever at that time. McLendon had just led his team to a 26-1 season. Aubrey Stanley, Henry (Big Dog) Thomas, Floyd (Cootie) Brown and James (Boogie-Woogie) Hardy were the stars on a team that ran McLendon’s fast break with great discipline.

That team was not eligible for participation in the National Invitational Tournament or the NCAA tournaments simply because they were African-Americans, but many — including the Hall of Famer McLendon — felt like the Eagles could’ve beaten anyone.

Meanwhile, Burgess and others regularly attended meetings at the local Y in Durham, as students from both sides of the tracks met secretly to discuss ways to overcome racism in the local area. During one of those meetings, the conversation turned to basketball and a bold challenge was issued: What about a secret game between the Eagles and the Duke Medical School team?

* And your couch is trying to kill you. Don’t let it!