• Watch this awesome Röyksopp video. Space Invaders!
• Is the Watchmen screenwriter actually comparing the experience watching the film to the experience of being raped??? And to him this is a good thing???
• Danah Boyd continues to be really smart about social media.
• Bad news for relativists: objective reality appears to exist.
• Now where did I leave that extra $2.7M? I don’t want to miss my chance to buy this Frank Loyd Wright home.
• Finally.
• Charlie Stross’ 21st century FAQ.

• This just in: digital video democratizes documentaries! Next they’ll tell me I can distribute these “digital videos” online!
• An appeals court has refused to force anonymous critics who made unflattering remarks about a doughnut shop in an online forum to reveal themselves.
• Steve Benen (who just finished Watchmen last week) stands up to defend comic book nerds everywhere.
• The 50-hour film festival is this weekend and it’s open to all Vermont middle and high school students.
• Meshugene Men (Mad Men parody)
• The Time Loop Theory of LOST
• Some ideas for the next time you’re stuck in Ikea for a long time.
• I am spending too much time defending IRV in this comments thread at She’s Right. Please come to my aid, Candleblog readers (assuming you agree with me, that is)!

Here’s a disdainful view of writing for the Internet (as opposed to other media). I suppose I’d take this essay more seriously if it wasn’t presented in unreadable white text on a black background. As the Mythbusters say, “well *there’s* your problem!” (Actually this piece makes some compelling points, but I think the basic argument is flawed, or at least requires a skewed perspective to accept — perhaps I’ll elaborate more later.)

Greg Rutter‘s Definitive List of The 99 Things You Should Have Already Experienced On The Internet Unless You’re a Loser or Old or Something

Say goodbye to productivity for the rest of the day when you click here and play this Incredible Machine copy flash game.

Paul Spinrad on big tent atheism. I agree with his central thesis, and though he doesn’t specifically call Dawkins to the carpet for being part of the problem, I still want to point out that I do not believe Dawkins is guilty of what Spinrad is complaining about. (huge discussion thread in the comments)

• Here’s a post mortem on last night’s tweet up at the VT Pub & Brewery.
• Former CNN science/tech reporter Miles O’Brien blogs about Continental 3407.
• The EFF issues and updated legal guide for bloggers.
• Some people are very upset that a Japanese video game about rape is was available on Amazon.
• Blurt covers the twitter backlash against the (admittedly AWFUL) Vermont Teddy Bear commercials.

• Yep, that’s my senator!
• Bale Out – the best of Christian Bale remixes I’ve seen so far
• What the hell is wrong with Joaquin Phoenix?
• Beware the green comet!
• A burglar alarm that twitters about intruders.
• This is why you’re fat. I’ve apparently been missing out.
• Those polygons are filthy and corrupting my children (why won’t anyone think of the children???)!

• Danah Boyd does the math on the much-touted 90,000 MySpace sex offenders and shows that MySpace is actually far safer for kids than real life, as far as sex predators go.
• The whole idea of New Media Office Hours is awesome and I’m totally going to steal it and do something similar in Vermont.
• Clay Shirky rebuts the current Time cover story about how to save newspapers with “micropayments.”
• More information on the technical nitty gritty of high definition digital imaging than you will ever need. Only serious HD gearheads should bother to click through.
• Pharyngula calls bullshit on the singularity.
• I want to play this game.

• Clinically Depressed Poodle Mauls Former French President Chirac
• Raccoon bites off rapist’s penis

What’s going on???

• Find out all sorts of (not all that accurate) information about me!
• Wicked-cool Photosynth of the inauguration (hit the space bar to play the show or juct click around)
• More inauguration porn via Big Picture
• This (replica Portal gun) was a triumph.
• Obama action figure (collect ‘em all!)
• A South Korean blogger is being prosectuted for blogging pessimisstic finacial predictions.
• Outgoing FCC Chair Kevin Martin slaps Comcast on his way out the door.
• A Veronica Mars movie is looking likely.

What’s more impressive is the speed at which change.gov has adopted some of these ideas. Mere days after Lessig et al. suggested posting downloadable versions of Obama’s public video addresses (along with the un-downloadable YouTube versions), the videos became available for download in MP4 format, published under a Creative Commons license. That’s very encouraging and very cool.

So I’d like to add my own little suggestion here, which I’ll call Bill Simmon’s Single Suggestion for Simplicity.

It’s not so much a suggestion as it is a question: Where do I leave comments? I’ve been all over the change.gov site and I feel stupid. I can’t find a “leave a comment” link anywhere. I know comments exist, because people keep talking about how great it is to be able to leave them and how responsive the transition team has been. And there has to be commenting somewhere because, using the search feature, I found the site’s commenting policy (which, ironically, is the one place I could find some actual comments).

I think my problem is I’m coming at the site expecting it be like other sites with comments, where the comments appear under the individual posts. Apparently, there are certain special posts under the banner of “Join the Discussion” that the transition team is requesting public comments on. Here is one example, where the site is asking how the economic crisis has affected you. There is no clear navigation to other “join the discussion” topics that I can see (perhaps there are no others?).

My Suggestion for Simplicity is to just have moderated commenting on every post on the site. That would solve the confusion problem. Short of that, the site administrators could make it clear to readers that there are only certain items for which comments are open. After hearing so much brouhaha about change.gov responding to reader comments, it was a pretty frustrating experience clicking around the site looking for this much-vaunted interactivity.

A+ for the willingness to experiment with this at all, C+ for execution.

• Sometimes XKCD is a little too dead on.
• Here’s another example.
• Funny animal video #1: Jerry Lewis goat.
• Funny animal video #2: ninja cat!
• Ding It’s up! – what an obvious and useful thing.
• Security guru Bruce Schneier on the Mumbai attacks
• Bush reminds us he’s still “in president.”
• “Could be meat, could be cake!”
• And finally, I know it’s been blogged everywhere, but the prop 8 musical is teh awesome.