In honor of the 51st anniversary of Hitler's bunker suicide, Dial B for Blog has your top-ten Hitler comic books. Numbers four and five, if you please:

We're visiting Wilmington this weekend; we'll be back Sunday night just in time for The Sopraneys. Have a good one.

V for Vendetta: The G-rated version. (via Boing Boing)

The most amazing LEGO model I've ever seen. Incredible. (via Cynical-C)

For some reason Nintendo just took the exciting, evocative, long-standing name for its upcoming new system and flushed it completely down the toilet. I'm amazed. See more pissed nerds at MeFi.

Also in music news, RockStatic's own JJerm has a roundup of reviews of the new Springsteen album, We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions. JJerm says it's really good, and despite his sometimes questionable kellyclarkson musical tastes, I imagine it actually is.

From the right angle, Yo La Tengo Is Murdering the Classics is the funniest record in the world. At first the title only seems sarcastic-- when you listen to the album, it turns out it's just honest, if humorously so. The disc features Yo La Tengo and a few friends flat-out slaughtering other people's songs in on-air performances during WFMU fundraisers. It makes sense that this collection of bootleg-quality recordings of unrehearsed covers would be associated with WFMU, given the freeform radio station's legendary penchant for incorrect and outsider music, and the saving grace of the whole thing is that no one involved is taking it remotely seriously.

WFMU Announcement
Pitchfork Media Review
Yo La Tengo Shop (for the Purchasing)
Via MeFi.

The Internet must be taking a nap. I did, however, get a pretty excellent quote from William James on my Zen calendar this morning:

All religion begins with the cry "Help!"

See you tomorrow.

Oddly compelling. (via Cynical-C)

The portfolio in VQR this month is "Why Darwin Is Still Right (and Intelligent Design is Wrong)." Check it out.

I must have linked to this before, but I can't find it in the archives, and what the hell anyway. Super Mario Brothers: Live! via Waxy.

At, horribly, AOL.com.

AskMetafilter's thread on "Where can I find good blogs about grad school?" leads to some pretty definitive don't-bother sites. (But I'm not sweating it.)

PhD Comics is a good find too.

On a more juvenile note, MeFi's got an amusing list of easily confused domain names.

Thirty minutes of Rube Goldberg insanity. Via MeFi.

The 10-year-old group, which meets weekly, is carefully making its way -- word by word, line by line, and page by page -- through James Joyce's famously difficult final work. The book is 628 pages long, and they're now on Page 251. They expect to be done in 15 more years. (via Bookslut)

Hey, we got mentioned in the News & Trends section of the new Poets and Writers! That's amazing. I'm sort of shocked.

All about John Stuart Mill. Via A&L Daily.

These apparent contradictions in Mill's thinking also reflect the fact that he was often operating on two different timescales. On the one hand, he was concerned to bring about certain changes in the short term—wider suffrage, greater freedom of speech, the rationalisation of welfare and government, freer trade—and on the other was concerned about the longer-term consequences of the measures he was advocating: collective mediocrity, a tyranny of public opinion, an overweaning state and wasteful competitiveness. He supported the centralising poor law amendments, while writing about the dangers of state centralisation. He supported a wider electorate (not quite universal—he wanted a basic educational qualification), but worried that mass democracy might drive down standards in public life. He wanted the widest possible dissemination of ideas, but was concerned about how public opinion might hamper freedom just as effectively as despotic governments.

Mill's concern with the way today's solutions could be creating tomorrow's problems finds its fullest expression in his most famous and enduring work, On Liberty. Plenty of ground is covered, including a rich argument for freedom of speech and a meditation on the role of government. It is most famous, however, for the "simple" harm principle cited earlier, which guides the limits of interference in a person's actions. But the harm principle is a poor summary of the essay taken as a whole, and a small ingredient in Mill's liberalism. The principle is, to this day, a powerful counterpoint to paternalism. But for Mill, liberty consists of much more than being left alone. It requires choice-making by the individual. "He who lets the world… choose his plan of life for him, has no need of any other faculty than the ape-like one of imitation," he writes. "He who chooses his plan for himself employs all his faculties." For Mill, a good life must be a chosen life.

Mill's principal target was not state coercion. A potentially bigger threat to individual freedom was the constricting effects of public opinion, or what he variously called "the despotism of custom" and the "tyranny of public opinion." Mill had been greatly influenced by Tocqueville's assessment that American democracy and freedom were homogenising, rather than diversifying, opinions and lifestyles.

But it's a Wes Anderson American Express commercial. I hate advertising, but I'm not made of stone. (via)

Presenting Communist Mario.

All lit blogs are required by law to link to this Lorrie Moore piece on Shakespeare in the New York Times. Via my mom.

As is well-known in certain circles, my choice to go to Greensboro for my MFA was initially dictated by financial considerations: Greensboro takes care of its students, while Columbia expects them to cough up thirty thousand dollars to attend every year, not to mention what it costs to live in NYC. I don't regret coming here a bit. Greensboro's been a very good and incredibly supportive place to be these last few years, while everything I've heard since about the Columbia program suggests to me that I made the right call.

Consider, for example, this letter from a professor recently denied tenure at Columbia School of the Arts in the Columbia Spectator, via Bookslut.

There is no point in being coy. Despite the presence of a small minority of talented and committed faculty members and an equally small core of serious, gifted students, what prevails at the writing division in the School of the Arts, and to some extent at the School of the Arts as a whole, is an institutionalized and self-perpetuating culture of mediocrity so out of step with the general climate of excellence for which Columbia is rightly known that most would be shocked to be apprised of the details. A senior colleague of mine recently put it quite neatly: “Leaderless, rudderless, standardless. The worst among us sense the vacuum and rush to fill it with their own kind. So sad. How I wish I could believe there will be some surcease, some righting of the ship in the foreseeable [future]. Alas, I fear it will not be so.” I would like to believe otherwise.

...

The overall climate of mediocrity to which I refer extends to the standards—or, more precisely, the lack of standards—to which students are held. Grading options for all courses are pass/fail. No one fails. The few theses that are failed because they are unreadable—by mavericks like myself and a few others—are often mysteriously changed to a passing grade after a few cosmetic changes have been made—a process which undeniably cheapens the value of a Columbia MFA and does a profound disservice to the truly outstanding students Columbia still manages to attract. When I inquired at a faculty meeting last spring, whether there was finally any level of writing low enough to merit a failing grade in the Columbia writing division, I was told by one tenured colleague—to general nervous laughter—that she felt bad failing anyone paying so much money. This is shameful enough. Add the fact that when compared with its peer institutions the writing division at Columbia is an unconscionably bloated program which brings in more students every year—with the predictable effect on quality—while offering a minute amount of financial aid, what we have is something resembling a diploma mill hiding, unbelievably, under the Columbia name.

I see no reason to post anything from now on but excerpts from Kirk Cameron's "Way of the Master" videos. In this one, Kirk and Ray prove that the banana is an atheist's nightmare, its deliciousness proof of God's glorious creation. Yeah, for real. Incredibly, it somehow manages to pack all the stupid of the last video into a much tighter space. (via Cynical-C)

After seeing that the Gravity Lens Frappr! map had been spammed, I checked our own, and sure enough, the place was trashed. Too bad.

With the spam gone, though, we only have 14 people linked. Now that I'm calling attention to it, why not add yourself?

At newyorker.com.

Thank heaven for HBO. I've only seen the first two episodes, but the early prognosis is very, very good. Here's Wikipedia on the show, as well as the historical Deadwood. (Both, obviously, contain spoilers for the show, so tred cautiously.) If Firefly - Star Trek + Sopraneys sounds like it might be your bag, check it out.

At the New Yorker.

Three great links from Bookninja, all in a row.

* The Independent profiles Don DeLillo.
* Why People Hate Self-Published Authors.
* Global Politics in 30 Seconds.

Horrible Segues, With Local Anchorman Clive Rutledge. At McSweeney's, of course.

They want the Smashing Pumpkins back.

...let's play the game of imagining we could go back in time and change a few features of life that function well, but with a mind to improving them for far future generations.

Nothing but. (via RaShOmoN)

If you have to ask, you know you're old and busted. I've heard nearly all of these at least once from my students.

(via, most recently, Cynical-C)

Slate's Stephen Burt wonders, where is the "Howl" for our time?

(via both Bookninja and Bookslut, so you know it's good)

I am an instructor of English at a small, private college near Cleveland, Ohio. With its tree-lined streets, gothic architecture and sprawling quad, the college is an idyllic setting and one that disguises some unsightly truths. Like a Hollywood movie set, the college campus is all artifice, a make-believe world where actors appear for a short time, recite their lines, and then exit the sound stage of higher education forever. I say this because the longer I teach, the more convinced I become that, in general, a college education takes the form of a very predictable and tedious script in which students are asked to memorize material and then regurgitate that material on an exam, after which time they forget everything they’ve just memorized (“learned” would be too hopeful a word), only to repeat the cycle again next semester. After four years of reciting various soliloquies in a plodding monotone, students attend a graduation ceremony that in many respects mimics the Academy Awards except for the fact that everyone, no matter his or her level of competence, is given a diploma from the dean and an ovation from the befuddled professors who seem a bit perplexed by the whole event as if it were some kind of elaborate hoax.

Baldwin-Wallace College's Kevin Keating on English 101, American anti-intellectualism, movement conservativism, and the end of culture. (via Bookninja)

Wikipedia and Muppetpedia on Fraggle Rock, the Muppet show everybody my age just barely remembers. I know I've spent a good amount of time in recent years trying to remember the specific geography of the human home in relation to the giant Trash Heap -- turns out they're just in separate directions.

The sites also detail the specifics of the Fraggle/Doozer ecosystem, if such matters are important to you (they are of great importance to me).

Another tidbit: there's apparently a Fraggle movie coming in 2007.

The one where they tell Big Bird that Mr. Hooper's dead. Via Metafilter's mega-post of Sesame Street clips and songs. (Among other things, they've got the video for the Springsteen parody classic "Born to Add," too.)

The entire thirty-part New York Times Magazine run of Chris Ware's Building Stories is now available online. Go check it out. Of course it's great stuff. (via Waxy)

Austin Kleon listens.

Finally, a reputable voice in the evolution-creationism debate: Kirk Cameron. As stupid as you're expecting this to be, I guarantee you, it's much, much worse. (via MetaFilter)

Should regular appearances on TV sully an academic's reputation? (via A&L Daily)

In Philip Ball's deeply weird and wonderful new book, "The Devil's Doctor," the man who might well be the prototype for that familiar mad-scientist figure -- the 16th century alchemist and epic wanderer Paracelsus -- neatly escapes the caricaturist's frame and emerges exuberantly and combatively alive. Hardly a hagiography, the book (subtitled, enticingly, "Paracelsus and the World of Renaissance Magic and Science") rescues from obscurity a man who, Ball argues, was a flesh-and-blood hinge between the medieval and the modern universe.

At inpersuasionnation.com.

The Saunders Army mostly involves calisthenics, and foisting my books on
unsuspecting friends. Also, as mentioned on the website, we will be sending you Updates. I am envisioning these as coming directly from me, say every six minutes or so. You may receive GOING UP TO THE BATHROOM WHILE THINKING ABOUT MY CHILDHOOD CATHOLIC SCHOOL, for example, or FUCK I JUST TRIPPED ON THAT SAME DAMN STAIR WHY AM I SUCH A KLUTZ AND ALSO WHY DID OPRAH NOT CHOOSE MY BOOK AND JESUS WHY DO I HAVE TO BE GOING BALD JUST WHEN MY CAREER IS REALLY STARTING TO GO PLACES? But, as mentioned on the website, these will not come “too often.” I would expect that, for most of you in the “Saunders Army,” too often might be, like, every six minutes. Far be it from me to be intrusive or invasive.

UNCG Writing Program alum Claudia Emerson just won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry.

The wiki devoted to petulant whining about Wikipedia.

* The weekend's hot nerd debate topic was what would happen if you dug a hole through the core of the Earth and then jumped in.

* The New York Times on Bruce's new all-covers album, The Seeger Sessions.

* Over at Monitor Duty, Alan Kistler is doing a huge profile on the forty-three-year history of Doctor Who.

* Mapping religion in America.

* In his death, my father, Glenn Vernon Martin, did something he could not do in life. He brought our family together. Steve Martin on the death of his father. (via Monkeyfilter)

* Rethinking science for non-majors.

More like Great Friday. School's closed for "Spring Holiday" and the living's easy. I'm taking the weekend off from blogging -- I think it's what Jesus would have wanted. See you on Monday.

The Passion of the Superheroes, Parts 1 & 2, at Dial B for Blog.

I watched the rest of Country Boys today, and it really is engrossing. The Mefi thread is right that some scenes seem a bit overly theatric and others are definitely staged -- but nonetheless, it's a valuable look at a place to grow up that is radically different from where I did. The character of Chris in particular is a fascinating character study in someone who is a victim of both parental abandonment and extreme poverty, and at the same time can come across as selfish, deceitful, manipulative, and at times even essentially unlikable. You can't help but feel bad for him and yet you wish he would take resposnsibility for some of his own bad choices. Good documentary.

Alex Tabarrok of Marginal Revolution takes on The Tyranny of the Alphabet. (via)

Scifi.com's new science fiction wiki. (via)

Ireland's RyanAir is experimenting with a new profit model: everybody flies for free. Sounds great. At Geekpress.

Lately I've been on a bit of a documentary kick. Yesterday we took a look at the first two entries in Britain's seminal Seven-Up series, which takes a look at the lives of several British schoolchildren every seven years. The series began in 1964 and 56-Up is due in 2011. We've seen the first two, which establish the characters; from 21-Up it's all about what happens to them.

I also recently finally watched the first part of Country Boys, the David Sutherland PBS documentary on growing up in Appalachia. It's available for free at pbs.org, so it's just a matter of finding the hours in the day to watch it. It's quite good.

The essay I wrote about Backwards City for the CWRU alumni magazine is up, at long last. Check it out [.pdf] if you're into that sort of thing.

I found out earlier in the week that we're also going to be profiled in the next issue of the UNCG Magazine. We're taking over, one alumni magazine at a time.

This summer, fake trailers are back. Titanic Two The Surface. Via MeFi.

Thirteen minutes of Japanese Rube Goldberg machines.

There's rumors that Robin Williams wants to be the Joker in Batman Begins 2: Batman Continues. Monitor Duty rightly poohs on the idea.

* Adam Gopnik in The New Yorker on the Gospel of Judas. (via)

* Tom Wolfe and literary realism. (via)

* Build Your Own Lego Lie Detector.

* Why does sex exist?

* Dungeon Escape: A "very silly and very low-budget flash tribute to the classic laserdisc games like Dragon's Lair, Space Ace, and Super Don Quixote."

* AskCynical-C: Whatever happened to Tianamen Square's Tank Man? and How does an Ouija board work?

Somebody else's AskMe: What literary, philosophical works, or films deal with a person's attempt to figure out whether he should put up resistance against government-sanctioned persecution of minorities or dissidents at the price of his own personal well-being or whether he should comply with the persecution to ensure his own safety?

I said Huck Finn, and then a few minutes later came back with the chapter from Unbearable Lightness that deals with this as well. But surely there are better answers.

Via Metafilter comes this amusing and thought-provoking essay by Ran Prieur in which he contemplates six scenarios for the end of Western technological civilization. Warning: unabashed, unrepentent hippieism herein.

Naive Sci-fi Utopia
An inventor discovers a way to generate unlimited free energy. The patent draws instant attention from the big media, who do not assume he must be a crackpot. He is not killed by interests that would be wiped out if they could no longer charge money for energy, nor is the invention confiscated by the military so they can keep it for themselves, nor is he forced to sell out to interests that will only use the technology to increase their own power. Instead he becomes fabulously wealthy distributing his machines all over the world, and spends his money wisely.

The old saying "absolute power corrupts absolutely" turns out to be false. In fact, it's nearly absolute power, like what Stalin had over Russia, or what humans get from burning oil, that corrupts absolutely. Truly absolute power makes people wise and enlightened and creates an eternal golden age. So all the individuals, businesses, governments, and religions with (or without) Infinite Energy Generators do not get in any conflicts about what kind of shared world that energy will create. Our limitless power to shape our environment does not make us more and more sensitive and demanding. We do not get in super-high-energy wars with each other. In fact, a feature of the machine, which cannot be disabled or tampered with, makes it impossible to use the energy for destruction -- except good destruction, like blasting mountains to make mag-lev train lines, or pulling up ugly train lines to restore mountains -- whichever one every human in the world happens to agree on.

Everyone can live forever, and have kids, and enjoy wide open spaces. No one is sure how this is possible, but it probably has something to do with the Mayan calendar or the word "quantum."

(See also: "The Future," according to R. Crumb and The Pain -- When Will It End?. From the second comes this illustration of Bush's vision of the future.)

Nineteen-year-old Nadin Hamoui and her family were arrested and jailed for nine months after 9/11. Their visa had expired, but their real crime was being Syrian. At Salon.

...at Dial B for Blog.

New research from Tufts University indicates that diverse groups perform better than homogenous groups when it comes to decision making and that this is due largely to dramatic differences in the way whites behave in diverse groups--changes that occur even before group members begin to interact.

...

Surprisingly, this difference was primarily due to significant changes in white behavior. Whites on diverse juries cited more case facts, made fewer mistakes in recalling facts and evidence, and pointed out missing evidence more frequently than did those on all-white juries. They were also more amenable to discussing racism when in diverse groups.

People are hating on the Times's head book critic.

...recreated in Nintendo's RBI Baseball.

In the New York Times. I'm going to quote the same damn passage Bookslut did, and I'm not going to feel bad about it.

Although you're often described as a dark satirist of American culture, your work is essentially a nostalgia fest. Like Pop Art, it drips with sentiment about things it pretends to ridicule.

When I was a kid, I took "The Brady Bunch" and "The Partridge Family" very seriously. It was a world to me in the same way that the Greek myths would have been had I read them. You know, Marcia is Athena and Mr. Brady is Zeus.

It's true that "The Brady Bunch" creates its own imaginative universe, somewhat like fiction or any art form. You cannot say that about today's reality shows.

I agree, "The Brady Bunch" can seem utopian compared to "American Idol" or "The Bachelor" or "Swapping Grandma" or "America's Bravest Hottie Midgets."

What is the connection between television and the arc of our lives?

I don't think it is a coincidence that we got into Iraq in the wake of Monica Lewinsky and O. J. and the round-the-clock television coverage of them. There has got to be a causal connection between the kind of small-bite thinking that we started to accept around the time of Monica and our incredible gullibility vis-à-vis Iraq.

Variety reports that Kiefer has signed on for three more years of 24. How is this even possible? They've killed off every last one of the good supporting characters and the plots are already completely absurd.

Pretty much the only thing left, as far as I can see, is a final, radical divergence with our universe. (Even moreso, I mean.) Jack's the last outlaw in a nuked-out L.A., fleeing the corrupt security forces of President Logan's fascistic America. His only ally? Zombie Tony.

Then the aliens show up.

Seriously, unless they do a prequel or midquel season so they can bring back Soulpatch and Palmer and Nina, where does this show still have left to go? (Via AICN.)

Seven days is all it takes to make you "up to 40% smarter," however that's supposed to be quantified. This is not at all nonsense; it's science. (Via MetaFilter, which only makes you 35% smarter, when used as directed.)

An Art History Professor Explains to His Four-Year-Old Daughter Why the Fair Market Value of Her Picture Is Actually Far Less Than That of a Thousand Words. At McSweeney's.

According to the Writers Guild of America. Casablanca and The Godfather top the list, as seems appropriate. (via MetaFilter)

If we don’t know history, then we are ready meat for carnivorous politicians and the intellectuals and journalists who supply the carving knives. I am not speaking of the history we learned in school, a history subservient to our political leaders, from the much-admired Founding Fathers to the Presidents of recent years. I mean a history which is honest about the past. If we don’t know that history, then any President can stand up to the battery of microphones, declare that we must go to war, and we will have no basis for challenging him. He will say that the nation is in danger, that democracy and liberty are at stake, and that we must therefore send ships and planes to destroy our new enemy, and we will have no reason to disbelieve him.

But if we know some history, if we know how many times Presidents have made similar declarations to the country, and how they turned out to be lies, we will not be fooled. Although some of us may pride ourselves that we were never fooled, we still might accept as our civic duty the responsibility to buttress our fellow citizens against the mendacity of our high officials.

Sigh. At least there's a new bunny reenactment at Angry Alien: Resevoir Dogs.

14 things to do if you have missed the rapture: The most least important list you will ever read.

10. BE CAREFUL WHO YOU TRUST. Don’t trust every person who claims they are a Christian. Beware of Communist agents posing as Christians or ministers.

This is good advice even pre-Tribulation. Communist agents are everywhere! (via Cynical-C)

Die Hard remixed as a silent movie. What's astounding here is that they remixed the entire movie. (via Cynical-C)

An addictive little game where your tiny, underpowered fighter battles an endless series of ever-evolving boss ships. In addition to your enemies just getting bigger, the game responds to your strategies, protecting the regions you tend to attack and favoring weapons that tend to destroy you. (via Jay Is Games)

The text gives new insights into the relationship of Jesus and the disciple who betrayed him... In this version, Jesus asked Judas, as a close friend, to sell him out to the authorities, telling Judas he will "exceed" the other disciples by doing so.

My new favorite punctuation symbol

Scientists yesterday reported discovering an evolutionary "missing link" between fish and land animals -- an ancient, river-dwelling predator with arm joints in its fins, an alligator-like head and ribs heavy enough to support its body on dry land.

I knew it was never really dead. At Dial B for Blog.

The Seattle Times profiles the "Science of Superheroes" course at U. California--Irvine.

n lessons that cover Aquaman to X-Men, Dennin's 14 students learned to distinguish science fiction from science fact.

Science fantasy: Gamma rays turned 98-pound weakling Bruce Banner into a raging green giant called the Incredible Hulk.

Science reality: Intense gamma radiation would have killed Banner. However, Hulkification could be achieved with anabolic steroids and DNA from a jellyfish.

(via Gravity Lens)

...in the New Yorker.

The other day I was watching TV and it occurred to me that I’ve become a prude. The show in question was innocuous enough, nothing shocking—just an episode of “Hottie Leaders,” featuring computer simulations of what various female world leaders would look like naked and in the throes of orgasm—but somehow, between that and the Pizza Hut commercial where Paris Hilton and Jessica Simpson engage in some “girl-on-girl” action in a vast field of pizza sauce, something snapped. I know what the problem is: I’m old. I came of age in a simpler sexual time.

Steven Grant on comics, the movies, and V for Vendetta. Via Gravity Lens.

The following is a list of some moral dilemmas, mostly adapted from Moral Reasoning, by Victor Grassian (Prentice Hall, 1981, 1992), with a couple additions. The question to consider with all of these is why they are dilemmas. Some, however, may not seem to be dilemmas at all.

Many of these dilemmas hinge of the (possibly false) distinction between positive and negative moral obligations, like this one:

A Father's Agonizing Choice

You are an inmate in a concentration camp. A sadistic guard is about to hang your son who tried to escape and wants you to pull the chair from underneath him. He says that if you don't he will not only kill your son but some other innocent inmate as well. You don't have any doubt that he means what he says. What should you do?

(via Cynical-C)

I was amazed today to finally find a comics series that actually approaches The Watchmen in terms of sheer comics excellence -- but of course Alan Moore is the writer behind it, too.

The series is Supreme, collected in two wonderful trades (The Story of the Year and The Return). It's nothing less than Moore's epic take on the Superman mythos, crammed with subtle and not-so-subtle references to Superman characters and continuity, including supremium (kryptonite), Suprema (Supergirl), Radar the Hound Supreme (Krypto), Darius Dax (Lex Luthor), Optilux (Braniac), Judy Jordan (Lana Lang), and Diana Dane (Lois Lane). As Backwards City's resident Superman nut, I loved it.

It may in fact be the best comic I'd ever read, though a fairly weak ending probably keeps Watchmen safely to the top position. Regardless, Supreme is fantastic.

Despite all the work I was supposed to get done tonight, I wound up reading through both books instead.

Moore's work on Supreme is unrepentently postmodern. After returning to Earth after a long absence, having failed to discover the meaning of life in the far reaches of space as he'd hoped he might, Supreme discovers the planet on the verge of a "revision" -- a shift in continuity as the character is retconned. He avoids danger by escaping into The Supremacy, a place where alternative versions of Supreme go to die whenever the series is reconned, revised, or cancelled (pictured left).

Afterwards, Supreme returns to Earth, finding himself unable to remember huge chunks of his personal history. (Because, of course, it hasn't been written yet.) The next few issues take us through the Supreme origin story through flashbacks, which Moore and Sprouse depict in Golden and Silver Age artistic styles, as Supreme "remembers" events which are actually being made up by his creators on the spot. In the new continuity, Supreme finds that during his absence the world has moved on without him: Supreme's nemesis, Darius Dax, is long dead, as are his parents; his Littlehaven girlfriend, Judy Jordan, is now a sixty-year-old grandmother; his adoped sister is missing and presumed dead; and his allies are retired and largely forgotten. How does Supreme, with his campy robot duplicates, absurd inventions, and massive floating Fortress of Solitude Citadel Supreme, fit into this new world?

Moore's Supreme, among other things, is a biting critique of superhero comics in the post-Crisis Dark Age: much of the run of the series details Supreme's (and, of course, Moore's) attempts to bring back nostalgic elements of that lost age, with often unhappy results. Everything in the book is a self-referential Möbius strip: Supreme's alter ego, Ethan Crane, even works at "Dazzle Comics" as an inker on the superhero title Omniman, which is also undergoing a period of rapid revision, gimmick issues, and ill-advised editorial interference. (When The Story of the Year opens, they're just putting the finishing touches on the "Death of Omniman" mega-issue.)

The sole disappointment is, as I said, the last few issues of the Moore run, connected in The Return, which are not as themetically unified as the stories in The Story of the Year and seem too much like filler. (A perfect example is the final issue, "New Jack City," a story in which Supreme meets God as played by Jack Kirby. This would have been fine anywhere else in the series, but makes little sense as an end for the series as a whole.) Overlooking this one blemish is not difficult, though, because Moore does here what he always does, which is transform superhero comics from disposable junk culture into art. And he makes it look easy.

Gravity Lens has pandemic on the mind.

The Chronicle of Higher Education has words for those who doubt evolution.

"...without a utopian impulse, politics turns pallid, mechanical, and often Sisyphean; it plugs leaks one by one, while the bulkheads give way and the ship founders. To be sure, the leaks must be stanched. Yet, we may need a new vessel, an idea easily forgotten as the waters rise and the crew and passengers panic." (via A&L Daily)

I love my crazy five-blade razor, but man, I cut myself today. I'm still bleeding. I'm worried I may never stop.

America rejoices.

Bonus: Fitzgerald Will Seek New White House Indictments.

I knew this plot twist was coming, and still I wasn't prepared for the shocking, inexplicable incoherence of the President-Logan-Is-Actually-The-Evil-Mastermind! reveal. It simply makes no sense at all. It's idiotic, a cloud of unyielding suck consuming everything in its path. 24 is dead. Long live 24.

Ronald Aronson on The American Left.

I just bought one.

TONY: According to this book, if you took the entire history of earth and laid it against the Empire State Building, the amount of time human beings have been here would be a postage stamp on the top floor. Do you realize how completely insignificant that makes us?

CHRISTOPHER: I don't feel that way.

Burned kids, Katrina victims, cancer patients: someone at Sopraneys HQ has theodicy on the mind. Since the problem of evil is one of my personal hobbyhorses -- look for a literature dissertation that touches on the subject c. 2012 -- I dug the episode despite its strange cinematics and uncharacteristic thematic overtness. Jaimee dug it too. I have no idea how it played among normal folks.

Shankar was remarking to me the other day that this could be the best season ever. I have to agree, we're in the same ballpark as season one, if not quite all the way there. Judging from the preview (always a danger) the next episode looks good too. I guess now that an end is finally in sight the writers can stop spinning their wheels and actually advance the plot.

The abandonment of soccer is attributable, in part, to the fact that people of influence in America long believed that soccer was the chosen sport of communists. When I was 13 - this was 1983, long before glasnost, let alone the fall of the wall - I had a gym teacher, who for now we'll call Moron McCheeby, who made a very compelling link between soccer and the architects of the Iron Curtain. I remember once asking him why there were no days of soccer in his gym units. His face darkened. He took me aside. He explained with quivering, barely mastered rage, that he preferred decent, honest American sports where you used your hands. Sports where one's hands were not used, he said, were commie sports played by Russians, Poles, Germans and other commies. To use one's hands in sports was American, to use one's feet was the purview of the followers of Marx and Lenin. I believe McCheeby went on to lecture widely on the subject.

There's more in the Observer, via Metafilter (which also has an interesting post today on baseball's rumored unhittable pich, the gyroball).

I'd fit in much better with mainstream American male society if soccer were a popular American sport.

From Wish Jar Journal. It's 100% true.

* Dark Days, a documentary about homeless people who build a functional little society in an abandoned railroad tunnel, had an intriguing premise but bored me to tears.

* Likewise, The Motorcycle Diaries is gorgeous, but I just couldn't make myself pay attention. I really only got the gist of the plot, and that's only because I just got done editing a book on Che for a local Greensboro publisher.

* 50 First Dates is expectedly stupid, but not the worst movie I've ever rented.

* I screened Slaughterhouse-Five and The Unbearable Lightness of Being for class recently as well. They're both excellent. I used a bit of Slaughterhouse -- I like the way they filmed the ruins of Dresden a lot -- but there wasn't really anything from Unbearable Lightness that I wanted to use, and I'm pressed for time with this book as it is.

The Star Wars Wiki.