Weekend Links!

* Huge congratulations to my colleague Larry Watson, three-time winner of the Wisconsin Library Association’s book of the year.

* How To Survive A Zombie Apocalypse According To Margaret Atwood.

* The climate deal with China is the distraction, Keystone XL is the grift. More unhappy news: China Is More Likely to Keep Its Climate Promise Than We Are.

* But Democratic super-billionaires will save us… by suing their pollsters. Yay?

* To end global poverty, we have to end global capitalism.

* United Kingdom universities are pioneering exciting new horizons in Mafia-style university management. Now to sell derivatives based on the proposition that the unis won’t able to pay back the money… now to force a situation where those derivatives pay off…

* Finishing a Humanities Dissertation in Six Years (or Less). There’s good advice here, though as I grousing on Twitter I don’t like the framing “with working relationships, marriage, health, finances, and sanity all still in good shape at the end.” These things are in many cases prerequisites for graduate work as much as they are things graduate study puts at risk; the “still” in that sentence is really crucial.

* More kids are getting hurt on playgrounds. Blame iPhones.

* Having just one drink doubles your risk of going to the E.R.

* …do we really think that the Office of the President should have a budget nearly as large as an entire UC Campus?

* Adjuncts at N.Y. College Are Fined $1,000 for Not Joining Weeklong Strike.

* Harvard to screw its adjuncts, just ’cause.

Rule of law watch!

* Why Does a Campus Police Department Have Jurisdiction Over 65,000 Chicago Residents?

* ‘Ready For War’: 1,000 Police Officers Mobilized In Advance Of Grand Jury Ruling In Ferguson.

* Police Killings in the US Are at a Two-Decade High.

* New Orleans Police Routinely Ignored Sex Crimes, Report Finds.

* In Alabama, a judge can override a jury that spares a murderer from the death penalty.

* Of course, it’s not just cops, every bureaucratic structure in America turns out to be toxic just beneath the surface: LA School District: Students Can Consent to Sex With Their Teachers.

* Harvard students take the 1964 Louisiana Literacy Test.

* Cosmonauts Used to Carry Insane Machete Guns In Space.

* These days, the idea of the cyborg is less the stuff of science fiction and more a reality, as we are all, in one way or another, constantly connected, extended, wired, and dispersed in and through technology. One wonders where the individual, the person, the human, and the body are—or, alternatively, where they stop. These are the kinds of questions Hélène Mialet explores in this fascinating volume, as she focuses on a man who is permanently attached to assemblages of machines, devices, and collectivities of people: Stephen Hawking.

* The amazing sculptures of Duane Hanson. Milwaukee Art Museum has a Hanson too.

* 200,000 brave and/or insane people have supposedly signed up for a one-way mission to Mars. But the truth about Mars One, the company behind the effort, is much weirder (and far more worrying) than anyone has previously reported.

* Against disability, kind of: Able-Bodied Until It Kills Us.

* When we almost lost Bono.

* Tarantino says he’s retiring.

*  Poster for They Still Live. I’d watch it.

* Dogs Playing Dungeons & Dragons.

* And they say adults in America are infantilized: Underoos Are Back, Adult-Sized, And Better Than Ever!

* A Stunning Alt-History Map Showing A Completely Uncolonized Africa.

* DC in talks to let Michelle MacLaren take the blame for direct Wonder Woman. Good luck to her!

* SMBC: Prayer and the speed of light.

* [Turns back to page one.]

* And MetaFilter celebrates Asimov’s Foundation. Bonus Golden Age SF@MF! The Great Heinlein Juveniles, Plus The Other Two.

Monday Links

* From my lips to Moody’s ears: we need to eliminate the debt ceiling.

“We would reduce our assessment of event risk if the government changed its framework for managing government debt to lessen or eliminate that uncertainty,” Moody’s analyst Steven Hess wrote in the report, first reported by Reuters.

The congressional role in setting a limit on debt, creates “periodic uncertainty” over the government’s ability to meet its obligations, Moody’s said.

* The liquidation of Borders makes me feel like a old-man-in-training. I feel like I’ll still be talking about Borders in 30 years the way my father still talks about Two Guys.

* The evidence has been mounting for years that early humans and Neanderthals interbred, but now it’s pretty much a certainty. Part of the X chromosome found in people from outside Africa originally comes from our Neanderthal cousins. Look for this discovery to combine with stories like this and this to fuel racist pseudoscience for decades to come.

* Game of the night: Untris.

* I love Grant Morrison, but so far his plans for the Superman relaunch leave me a bit cold.

* Climate-Denying Oklahoma Governor Tells Residents To Pray For Rain.

* And please enjoy this Doctor Who tube map. I did.

Group of 16 Prediction Thread #1

These are rock-solid scientific predictions generated using my patented statistical methods. You can take them to the bank.

Uruguay-Korea: I’ve been impressed with what I’ve seen of Uruguay and not especially impressed with what I’ve seen of Korea, so I’m expecting Uruguay to take this one. Let’s say Korea keeps it close. 1-0 Uruguay.

U.S.-Ghana: As every schoolchild knows, the hated Ghanese ended our World Cup aspirations in 2006. Despite their proven proclivity for giving up early goals, the U.S. squad seems genuinely solid when it counts and and I predict we get our revenge. 2-1 U.S; pray for our boys.

Late Night Monday

* While my cousin was visiting last weekend we saw both Toy Story 3 and Exit Through the Gift Shop, both of which I endorse for entirely different reasons. What I find most interesting about Exit is the possibility that large swaths of the documentary, perhaps even the whole thing, are a high-concept Banksy prank; what I like best about Toy Story 3 is how bravely it faces down the themes of mortality and obsolescence that have always been the subtext of the series. That the toys (spoiler alert) receive their inevitable reprieve is ultimately a small consolation; in the end, we must admit Lotso had it right.

* This short but intriguing post from Crooked Timber compares the Toy Story franchise to Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, concluding (as we must) that Stinky Pete is the existential hero of the series, the only character who is genuinely free.

* World Cup supervillain Koman Coulibaly apparently fired.

* Steve Benen and Ezra Klein look at how a utilities-only compromise on cap and trade might work. Here too is Brad Plumer on what EPA regulation can and cannot accomplish.

* If I’m reading this correctly, Matt Yglesias wants to turn Detroit into District 9. More on Detroit and this week’s U.S. Social Forum here and here.

* Speaking of District 9: Will Neill Blomkamp direct The Hobbit?

* There’s something about this piece on spiked anti-rape protection in South Africa that gets people talking. I can’t count how many times it’s shown up in my Facebook feed.

* One day late for Father’s Day: “Daddy, could we have our planet back now?”

* Pandagon highlights a study linking sexual aggression and heavy porn use.

* Why the Right is fantasizing about a 2012 primary challenge.

It’s easy to see why conservatives would be salivating at the thought of a Hillary primary challenge. Presidents who face serious primary challenges—Ford, Carter, Bush I—almost always lose. The last president who lost re-election without a serious primary challenge, by contrast, was Herbert Hoover. But in truth, the chances that Obama will face a primary challenge are vanishingly slim, and the chances that he will lose re-election only slightly higher. No wonder conservatives are fantasizing about Hillary Clinton taking down Barack Obama. If she doesn’t, it’s unlikely they will.

* And so it’s come to this.

Monday Night Links

* Why we need a death penalty for corporations: BP is known to have skimped on safety devices to save money and is now alleged by one of its employees to have drilled deeper than the depth allowed by law.

* Related: Schwarzenegger cancels California offshore drilling project. Current estimates say it will take three months to contain the spill; could this be enough to revive the environmental movement?

* Two on space exploration: “The Myth of the Starship” and “The Wealth of Constellations.”

* Wingnut watch: GOP’s Candidate for Gov In Minnesota Wants To Nullify All Federal Laws.

* “Under this view CIA drone pilots are liable to prosecution under the law of any jurisdiction where attacks occur for any injuries, deaths or property damage they cause,” Glazier continued. “But under the legal theories adopted by our government in prosecuting Guantánamo detainees, these CIA officers as well as any higher-level government officials who have authorized or directed their attacks are committing war crimes.”

* Can’t resist posting this one: Brain shuts off in response to healer’s prayer.

* Nihilo sanctum estne? Boing Boing has a trailer for a porn parody of the classic 1960s Batman TV show.

* Also at Boing Boing: Stephen Hawking’s instructions on how to build a time machine.

* And Feministe reports on news that if you wear tight jeans, you can’t be raped.