I have no idea why I have decided to procrastinate on a blog for the first time in 3 years rather than the ways I usually do. Nonetheless here I am.
New to me: True Detective ends tonight, and I cannot wait. This is the most captivating thing I've seen in years, and I can't wait to see it wrap up. The atmosphere is great, I love the acting, and I love the small ways contemporary politics are woven into its dystopia. io9 has mentioned the school vouchers, but also the issue of forfeiture. The cops in the world of True Detective get a truck through forfeiture, just like in real life. See this report here by PBS.
Old favorites: S and I are rewatching Star Trek: The Next Generation on netflix. I particularly recommend the episode Symbiosis, which is a total 90s rumination on the War on Drugs. It is hilarious.

Winter Reading

After spending all summer at it, I finally finished The Left Hand of Darkness. I adored it, in part because it crept up on me so slowly. For some reason winter is one of my favorite settings for books so I clearly need to read the rest of these as well as Winter's Tale, Time and Again, and Jonathan Strange.

My favorite winter books:
Left Hand of Darkness.
The Long Winter. (I used to read this every March in Chicago).
Far North.
The Golden Compass.
Game of Thrones.

Image here.

Adventures 2011 on Iphone (so far)

Featuring the Muppet exhibit from the Museum of Science and Industry, a Charlie Harper mosaic from Miami, and Rosie Red from a Reds game.

Links

Sci-fi about each of the 7 planets
Tintypes and ambrotypes of Civil War soldiers
Interview with the writer of one of my new favorite comics
A Very Important Pyramid
I love tiny art and Alfred Hitchcock
The craziest story I've heard in a while.

Amazing

These are so gorgeous.

Academic crush

I have an academic crush on science. If you do too, I recommend:
the NeuroTribes blog
and the Radiolab podcast.

NeuroTribes also introduced me to this short story by Cordwainer Smith, which I love.

Yarn

Yarn in three parts.
Part 1:

Part 2:
knitted stool I plan to make
Part 3:

Looking forward to

Here's a bunch of stuff I can't wait to see. It's the pop culture edition:
1) They're making adaptations of both A Wrinkle in Time and Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. The first is one of my favorites from childhood. I read Frisby for book club--good times.
2) The Adjustment Bureau. This trailer is awesome.
3) Micmacs. It makes me want to go back and rewatch City of Lost Children.
4) An adaptation of Heck.
5) Film Experience did their "We Can't Wait" feature. I absolutely agree with 10, 6, 5, 3-1. Especially 1. I hear there will be dinosaurs.
6) HBO's Boardwalk Empire. This looks so good.
7) A new Jane Eyre with Michael Fassbender as Rochester. OMFG as they say. Two great tastes that taste great together.
8) Paani.
9) I will probably give most of these scifi tv shows a chance.

Embarrassment of Riches

All of November, in one post:
FDR probably died of cancer. Discovered by brilliant neurologist and journalist.

Gorgeous dollhouse.
The best movies et al of the 00s. I might do this soon.
Jezebel reminded me of this Lisa Simpson quote, which would look nice under my theoretical Lisa Simpson-as-Jolly Roger tattoo: "beneath my goody two shoes lie some very dark socks."
Five comics I'm not reading, but might read soon.
Another fascinating story on autism.
And more weird things about the brain.
Possible inspiration for twitter.

Look-alikes

Paige from Degrassi and Mia from Taking the Stage




Star Trek Enterprise by Amanda Vissel and Chris Craft Wooden Boat

Link Attack!

My brother's impressive video of a grass-roots organization in IN.
Errol Morris explores forgery. See pic above.
A kids' book list.
A really crushing assessment of Tiller's murder.
Nesting dolls in danger.
Vampires saving humans from zombies.

Encryption

Seeing this about Fringe and reading Little Brother on dailylit has inspired me to try Cryptonomicon, a book lent to me way too long ago.

Also, I have accidentally developed a crush on Fat Pacey.

Best of You Tube, Part II

The above commercial featuring my childhood friend and this video, via kottke, is a great anecdote about the beams of New College, Oxford. It really is great enough that I'm going to watch the rest of this.

The Best of Youtube

This Flight of the Conchords song, which unfortunately didn't make it onto the cd.


Also, this video by She & Him.

And last, but not least, cell phones popping popcorn.

Robot News

We've seen Wall-E (twice). I really really like it. That said, I think the movie would have been perfection with a much more devastating, much less kid-friendly ending that I won't describe due to spoiler issues. It's so good though. I stole the image from here.

The G4 network told Stephan that there's a robot race between Japan and Korea, much like the space race, but with robots.

I found this owl robot my brother had on ebay. Man, this robot is so much cooler than the crappy robots currently at Toys R Us.

Kottke-esque

Google is cutting back on the daycare available to its employees. The lack of affordable and acceptable daycare in this country is a travesty.

Scandinavians 2000 years ago were more ethnically diverse than they are now.

Apparently making access to the means of suicide more difficult actually reduces the number of suicides. People don't find another method.