Posts Tagged ‘pirates’
Star Wars Day Links! Yay!
* A brief history of the Star Wars Expanded Universe. Star Wars Minus Star Wars. Is Luke Skywalker of ‘Star Wars’ inspired by Wisconsin war hero? Star Wars and Jihad. May the toys be with you. Me talking Star Wars at Salon. The only review I read, which seems 100% right to me (very light spoilers).
* They Might Be Giants Look Back on Every Album They’ve Ever Made.
* This is maybe the most “Cold War” story of all time.
My suggestion was quite simple: Put that needed code number in a little capsule, and then implant that capsule right next to the heart of a volunteer. The volunteer would carry with him a big, heavy butcher knife as he accompanied the President. If ever the President wanted to fire nuclear weapons, the only way he could do so would be for him first, with his own hands, to kill one human being. The President says, “George, I’m sorry but tens of millions must die.” He has to look at someone and realize what death is—what an innocent death is. Blood on the White House carpet. It’s reality brought home.
When I suggested this to friends in the Pentagon they said, “My God, that’s terrible. Having to kill someone would distort the President’s judgment. He might never push the button.“
* Running the Red Cross like a business.
* This seems true, at least as FYE as it is usually conceived goes, but all the same it’s not necessarily a great argument for FYE practitioners to make.
* The Humanities as Service Departments: Facing the Budget Logic.
* UMass brass cash in despite budget woes.
* 10 Revealing Tidbits We Found in Football Coaches’ Contracts.
* The law school collapse continues.
* Milwaukee’s Push to Move the Homeless From the Streets Into Permanent Housing. U.S. Department of Justice agrees to review Milwaukee police. Milwaukee to pay $5 million to settle suits over illegal strip searches.
* Today NASA Begins to Take New Astronaut Applications. Do You Qualify?
* My life story: Tsundoku.
* Yet another trailer: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.
* The Trouble With Calling Jessica Jones an ‘Antihero.’ Show Me a Hero: Thoughts on Jessica Jones.
* Academic librarians: what do they do all day?
* Sylvia Plath — you know, for kids.
* Where the jobs are(n’t), 2015. The other me who went to grad school in philosophy instead is pretty unhappy right now.
* People Who Curse Have Better Fucking Vocabularies, According to Science.
* Followup: Report: Las Vegas Review-Journal’s Mystery Buyer Is Right-Wing Billionaire Sheldon Adelson.
* Another followup, from years back: Cop Who Sought Photos of Teen’s Erection in Sexting Case Commits Suicide Moments Before Arrest.
* I understand why they made the decision they made, but I don’t think this paradigm is really sustainable: All LA Schools Closed After Hoax Threat.
* An Unbelievable Story of Rape. Difficult but very powerful read.
* A record 409 scripted TV series were produced this year, according to FX. Almost too many, don’t you think?
* Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal doing the Lord’s work on Schrödinger’s cat. BONUS.
* Hear 6 Classic Philip K. Dick Stories Adapted as Vintage Radio Plays.
* The Strangest, Most Spectacular Bridge Collapse (And How We Got It Wrong).
* Did the utopian pirate nation of Libertatia ever really exist?
* And your daily dose of total institutional breakdown: Embattled state’s attorney refused to prosecute cop who admitted to perjury. Prosecutors have hijacked America’s criminal justice system while no one was looking. LAPD found no bias in all 1356 complaints filed against officers. And maybe the worst just in sheer audacity: Denmark passes law to seize jewelry from refugees to cover expenses.
Top 25 Censored Stories for 2009/2010
Top 25 censored stories of the year. Don’t miss:
2. US Schools are More Segregated Today than in the 1950s
3. Toxic Waste Behind Somali Pirates
4. Nuclear Waste Pools in North Carolina
10. Ecuador Declares Foreign Debt Illegitimate
15. World Bank’s Carbon Trade Fiasco
18. Ecuador’s Constitutional Rights of Nature
Monday Links
Getting everything together for the big roundtable this Friday is keeping me fairly busy, so it’s just links tonight.
* Sad news: Eve Sedgwick has died.
* Matt Yglesias luxuriates in the deliciousness of Richard Burr’s low approval ratings. So say we all.
* ‘Pentagon Prioritizes Pursuit Of Alternative Fuel Sources.’ With the military-industrial complex at our back, we can’t fail!
* St. Augustine vs. the pirates.
In the “City of God,” St. Augustine tells the story of a pirate captured by Alexander the Great. The Emperor angrily demanded of him, “How dare you molest the seas?” To which the pirate replied, “How dare you molest the whole world? Because I do it with a small boat, I am called a pirate and a thief. You, with a great navy, molest the world and are called an emperor.” St. Augustine thought the pirate’s answer was “elegant and excellent.”
* The mutants walk among us: ‘Woman has developed an imaginary, but useful, third arm.’
* New fiction on the way from the late, great Kurt Vonnegut.
* 7 (Crazy) Civilian Uses for Nuclear Bombs. What could possibly go wrong?
Links
You know what these are. They’re links.
* Pirates: the key to understanding the world.
* Inside Joss Whedon’s next project. No, not Dollhouse: Dr. Horrible Singalong Blog, a Web musical starring Neil Patrick Harris, Felicia Day, and Nathan Fillion.
* We’ve reached the end of the remake express: they’re remaking Highlander. Not only are there no more ideas in Hollywood, there aren’t even any more movies to be remade.
* Film School Rejects has the Top Ten Indiana Jones moments. This is actually a pretty terrible list, as the Grail challenges from Last Crusade are foolishly clumped together—”The penitent man shall kneel before God” and “You have chosen… wisely” both easily make the cut—as is one of the best lines from the whole series, “We named the dog ‘Indiana,'” which along with four horses in the desert for two decades served as the capstone for the trilogy. But you know a list like this doesn’t know what it’s talking about when it excludes the single best shot of either Lucas’s or Spielberg’s career:
Via Cyn-C.
