Friday Night Links

* This American Life retracts their Apple documentary. More here.

* Greetings from Milwaukee: Selections from the Thomas and Jean Ross Bliffert Postcard Collection.

* Rortybomb with three ways of looking at the student debt crisis.

* China Miéville previews his new comic series Dial H for Hero.

* Inhofe on climate change: “‘I Thought It Must Be True Until I Found Out What It Cost.” Sure, that’s how facts work.

* Wisconsin GOP loses state Senate majority after surprise resignation.

* The Family Hour: An Oral History of The Sopranos. Via MeFi.

* Rick Perlstein argues the problem isn’t that conservatives are crazier than they were fifty years ago; the problem is they’re exactly as crazy as they were fifty years ago. Via LGM.

* After less than three full days of deliberations, the five men and seven women of the jury found Dharun Ravi, 20 years old, guilty of invading the privacy of his 18-year-old roommate, Tyler Clementi, and his dorm-room date. 

* So much intercepted information is now being collected from “enemies” at home and abroad that, in order to store it all, the agency last year began constructing the ultimate monument to eavesdropping. Rising in a remote corner of Utah, the agency’s gargantuan data storage center will be 1 million square feet, cost nearly $2 billion and likely be capable of eventually holding more than a yottabyte of data — equal to about a septillion (1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) pages of text.

* I miss Linsanity. Those were simpler times.

* Americans used public transformation twice as much in 1940. That’s per capita. That’s nuts.

* Louis C.K. Withdraws as Host of Radio and Television Correspondents’ Dinner. Who invited him in the first place? What a terrible choice for the gig.

* Obama comes out against Amendment One. Hey, me too!

* Al Gore endorses filibuster reform. Hey, me too!

* And today in Settlers of Catan news: A Dutch public broadcasting network last month offered its viewers a board game featuring Israeli settlers who use “Jewish stinginess” and “the Anne Frank card” to colonize the West Bank. Hours of fun for the entire family!

I Can’t Imagine Anyone Would Find This Situation Disagreeable

A proposed new law in Arizona would give employers the power to request that women being prescribed birth control pills provide proof that they’re using it for non-sexual reasons.

Friday Links

* My career in academia-based standup comedy begins with this report from Inside Higher Ed. Republican professors grade like this, while Democratic professors grade like this…

* I linked to a little bit of this yesterday, but actually the entire A.V. Club interview with Dan Harmon is pretty compelling reading for Community fans.

* I’m pretty sure I could play Indiana Jones better than Tom Selleck. They really offered him the part?

* Also at Blastr: 10 great unmade Star Trek series. Brian Singer’s idea for a Federation in decline actually doesn’t sound bad.

* Chris Christie’s unblinking eye turns its ceaseless gaze to state-owned public broadcasting channels.

* I get that Gawker thinks I should find this funny, but the whole thing is just so sad.

* And WTFTracyMorgan. I mean really.

This Is Why Your Parents Are Totally Crazy Now

I don’t think I’d ever actually watched a full segment of Glenn Beck before this morning. My god. My god.

Tuesday Morning

* An arrest has been made in the Times Square car-bombing case. Click the link to find out the ethnicity of the accused and therefore whether this was terrorism.

* New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has broken a 63-year precedent and refused to reappoint a sitting judge to the New Jersey Supreme Court, opting instead to nominate someone who has neither been a judge nor active in politics. Click the link to find out the ethnicity of the two judges and therefore whether Christie’s a bold innovator or bowing to special interests.

* Superman vs. offshore drilling. Zack Morris vs. offshore drilling.

* Discussion question: When is an entirely manmade disaster an act of God?

* WTFArizona: Arizona Senate Majority Leader Follows Stormfront on Twitter.

* A rare thing that isn’t soul-crushingly terrible: Jimmy Fallon’s ongoing Lost parody, Late.

* And it was forty years ago today.

Thursday Daytime Links

* Alastair Reynolds, Vernor Vinge, Karl Schroeder and Charlie Stross chat about the Singularity. Via MeFi.

* A school district in Pennsylvania is being sued for spying on students in their homes with school-provided laptops. WTF? What lawyer cleared this?

* Duke undergraduates can have their so-called “rights” when they’ve clawed them from my cold, dead hands: Really interesting (and, I think, ambitious) initiative from Duke Student Government. I wonder how it’ll turn out.

* Has the Democratic Party had a secret brain/spine transplantation? The OpenLeft whipcount now has 30 Democratic Senators on board for the totally obvious step of using reconciliation to pass health care, with an additional 17 officially on board with the Clyburn-tested, Canavan-approved step of using reconciliation to reinsert the public option.

* GOP to filibuster jobs bills entirely on procedural grounds. These guys should definitely be put back in charge. P.S.: There’s no way they’ll ratify a test ban treaty, either.

* Thomas Geoghegan at Democracy Now on killing the filibuster.

* Two more high-ranking Taliban commanders have been captured in Pakistan.

* The odds a United States president owned slaves are 1 in 3.58. Via Eric Barker.

* Eat the rich: 400 families “earned” $345 million each in 2007. Taxing these 400 families at the marginal tax rate of 1951 would net an additional 125 billion dollars for the federal government each year, which by itself would more than pay for health care. of course, that’s just my opening bid; I’m open to compromise. For instance we could split the difference between 91% (1951) and 35% (today) at 63%—this would net $87 billion a year, also enough to pay for health care by itself.

* And every blog on the Internet is required to link to the Esquire Roger Ebert profile, as well as Ebert’s reply on his blog. Consider me in compliance.

What Is Jared Diamond Smoking?

As part of my board work, I have been asked to assess the environments in oil fields, and have had frank discussions with oil company employees at all levels. I’ve also worked with executives of mining, retail, logging and financial services companies. I’ve discovered that while some businesses are indeed as destructive as many suspect, others are among the world’s strongest positive forces for environmental sustainability. His key examples—no joke—are Wal-Mart, Coca-Cola, and Chevron.

Truly, only the super-rich can save us now.

Great Moments in American Civil Discourse

Great moments in American civil discourse: About a dozen people carrying guns, including one with an AR-15 assault rifle, milled among protesters outside an event where President Barack Obama was giving a speech Monday in Phoenix. How can it possibly be legal to bring assault rifles to presidential speeches? Holy hell.

Outing

Remember, kids, whenever you don’t like what someone says, you’re free to set out to ruin their life. That’s what America is all about.

Trolling Oneself

Sensors indicate someone at NRO has gone completely off their nut.

1,000,000 Strong Against Women Having the Right to Vote

Facebook backer announces his new Facebook group: 1,000,000 Strong Against Women Having the Right to Vote.

Dollhouse

I think tonight’s Dollhouse gave me whiplash. It was a very good episode with several truly superb moments, and on the level of pure adrenaline I probably enjoyed it better than any other episode thus far—but you can tell Joss has no faith in renewal. The twists, reveals, callbacks, and payoffs in that episode alone could have covered a couple seasons on a show with Joss’s usual glacial pacing…