Candleblog

When you’re done seeing Inglorious Basterds this weekend, take a moment to peruse these fine, high-quality links…

• Huxley vs. Orwell cartoon – based on the forward to Neil Postman’s excellent skewering of the absurdity of TV, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (an urtext for me, media ecology-wise). I actually think the addition of Internet-related activities in this cartoon is confusing Postman’s point a bit (he wrote the book before the Internet was widely used), but it’s still worth a look.
• 13 very important questions.
• The Spitzer Space Telescope has apparently detected a planetary collision in another solar system. That’s so science!
• DC Comics 40 years ago today (I can’t wait for the week of Sept. 7 – my 40th birthday week).
• All the nerdbloggers are going apeshit over this Scalzi post about bad design in the Star Wars universe. I think the criticisms are pretty right on, though this was covered fairly well already in Clerks and Robot Chicken.
• President Obama talks like a blogger.
• Star Wars Force Trainer. You know, for kids!
• The Onion: ‘Congress Deadlocked Over How To Not Provide Health Care.’
• Five things you didn’t know about District 9.