Thursday!

* What happened in Atlanta this week is not a matter of Southerners blindsided by unpredictable weather. More than any event I’ve witnessed in two decades of living in and writing about this city, this snowstorm underscores the horrible history of suburban sprawl in the United States and the bad political decisions that drive it.

* Accreditation Standards Should Include Treatment of Adjuncts, Report Says. This has been my revolutionary scheme for a while, glad to see it could actually be feasible…

* Let Banks Fail Is Iceland Mantra as 2% Joblessness in Sight.

* “I wouldn’t go so far,” writes Horton of Kincaid’s central thesis that short science fiction exhibits all the signs of exhaustion. “I don’t think that ‘all meaning has been drained from’ the tropes we use, but I do think they are becoming overfamiliar. And I do think that the field of science fiction has to a considerable extent become enamoured with explicitly backward-looking ideas.”

* “These findings suggest that potential harm to faculty-student relationships and academic freedom should not continue to serve as bases for the denial of collective bargaining rights to graduate student employees.”

* Boom: A Journal of California interviews Kim Stanley Robinson.

* My friend Jack Hamilton eulogizes Pete Seeger.

* What STEM shortage? Electrical engineering lost 35,000 jobs last year.

* Utterly horrifying: Hanover College Told Rape Victim That Attempting To Have Her Alleged Rapist Punished Is Harassment.

* California is thirsty.

* UNC: We failed students “for years.”

* Maps of Hip America.

* Many watchdogs believe the police are killing more innocent Americans than ever. But here’s why they can’t be sure.

* Occupy and the Academy.

* Stradivarius violin stolen in armed robbery in Milwaukee. Said to be the biggest heist in city history.

* Some Notes on the MLA Job Information List.

* What do unionizing NCAA players want? NCAA Should Be Begging for a Union.

* Capitalism, the infernal machine: An interview with Fredric Jameson.

* The police union as philosophical problem.

* The Rise of the Post-New Left Political Vocabulary.

* …41 percent of transgender and gender non-conforming people have attempted suicide, a rate far higher than the national average of 4.6 percent.

* New York Senate passes bill punishing ASA over Israel boycott.

* More on Ezra Klein’s very strange idea.

* Batgirl advocates for equal pay for equal work.

* Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal wins every prize today.

* So does this Ice-T impersonator prank calling noted Ice-T impersonator Paul F. Tompkins (as played on the second episode of the new Ice-T podcast starring Ice-T).

* New York City commissioner’s ancestors were slaves of Benedict Cumberbatch’s family.

* Climate Change Is Already Causing Mass Human Migration.

* 10 Failed Utopian Cities That Influenced the Future.

* And The State reunites (for a segment anyway)…

80% More Likely To Be Vegetarian

Hunch Blog has a breakdown of my particular demographic on along Mac vs. PC lines. Thanks Bill!

If Superheroes Were Hipsters

At College Humor. See also: If Superheroes Were Cats. Via MeFi.

This Vibrates Me

How to speak like a 1950s hipster.

Saturday Night

Saturday night.

* The first eight minutes of the ABC V remake. Some of this footage you’ve probably seen before.

* Canuxploitation!: your complete guide to Canadian B-film.

* Dollhouse ratings dip back down again after a week off. My thoughts on this week’s episode here; in general I thought it was very good but not as good as everyone else seems to want to think. The show, never all that certain what it wanted to be about in the first place, is showing serious strain from being pulled in so many different directions at once. Is it a critically acclaimed loss leader or is it supposed to have high ratings? Is it an Eliza Dushku vehicle or an ensemble show? Is it serial or episodic? Are its characters tragic or villainous? Is it a feminist critique of late capitalism or a machine for generating sexy girls in miniskirts?

* Glenn Greenwald considers why debt matters for domestic spending but not for military spending.

Beltway elites have health insurance and thus the costs and suffering for those who don’t are abstract, distant and irrelevant. Identically, with very rare exception, they and their families don’t fight the wars they cheer on — and don’t even pay for them — and thus get to enjoy all the pulsating benefits without any costs whatsoever. 

* And, via Vu, Žižek explains hipsters.

‘He-Man Characters as Hipster Fashion Models’

Great find from Drawn: He-Man characters as hipster fashion models.

Thursday Night!

Thursday night!

* President Edwards prepares to resign the presidency tonight after admitting he had lied about the fathering of Rielle Hunter’s baby during the third debate with John McCain. Vice President Barack Obama is expected to assume the presidency tomorrow morning.

* Paul Krugman, legendary futurist?

* Luck, math, and how to win at gambling.

* What’s hot: potbellies!

* Multitask: the game. Note: you will hate this game.

* On the cinematography of Mad Men. Nice video to get you ready for the third season.

* Behold, NASA’s secret plan to move the Earth.

Hence the group’s decision to try to save Earth. ‘All you have to do is strap a chemical rocket to an asteroid or comet and fire it at just the right time,’ added Laughlin. ‘It is basic rocket science.’

The plan has one or two worrying aspects, however. For a start, space engineers would have to be very careful about how they directed their asteroid or comet towards Earth. The slightest miscalculation in orbit could fire it straight at Earth – with devastating consequences.

What could possibly go wrong? (Not a hoax. Via Occasional Fish.)

* Behold, the banned Family Guy episode.

* Nerdivore points out District 9 is getting great reviews.

* GLAAD flunks SyFy.

* And a physicist at Slate says The Time Traveler’s Wife checks out.