news

Tuesday various

  • John Seavey on the “Vote With Your Wallet” Fallacy as it applies to comic books:

    And of course, the worst part is that DC and Marvel are the bread and butter of the modern comics store. For all that people encourage buying indie comics as a way to vote with their wallets, if DC and Marvel (possibly even just Marvel) got out of the publishing business and decided to focus on their movies and videogames, it would be an utter apocalypse for the comics industry. All the other companies combined do not sell enough copies to keep a comics store in business. And without comics stores, indie publishers have very few places to sell their stuff. So voting with your wallets…might actually mean buying DC and Marvel books you hate just to keep the store you like in business.

    The business model of the comics industry would drive Warren Buffett mad.

  • Is Detroit on its way to becoming a food desert?

    About 80 percent of the residents of Detroit buy their food at the one thousand convenience stores, party stores, liquor stores, and gas stations in the city. There is such a dire shortage of protein in the city that Glemie Dean Beasley, a seventy-year-old retired truck driver, is able to augment his Social Security by selling raccoon carcasses (twelve dollars a piece, serves a family of four) from animals he has treed and shot at undisclosed hunting grounds around the city. Pelts are ten dollars each. Pheasants are also abundant in the city and are occasionally harvested for dinner.

    Not a single produce-carrying grocery chain in the city. From the little I saw of it a couple of years ago, I’m sorry to say I can believe it. [via]

  • Is Accelerated Reader’s only criteria for assigning points the number of pages in a book? It sure seems that way, if Hamlet can be “worth fewer points than the fifth installment of the Gossip Girl series.” Shouldn’t some other factors be taking into account? [via]

  • “When Henry Hudson first looked on Manhattan in 1609, what did he see?” This, apparently. I got to see a little of the Mannahatta Project a couple of weeks ago when I accompanied my mother to an after-hours members event at the Museum of the City of New York. Interesting stuff. [via]

  • And finally, when the police shoot the Fire Chief in the courtroom over speeding tickets, you know that, just maybe, something’s wrong. [via]

Friday various

  • Tonight, I’ll be attending a live taping of The Sound of Young America. It’s streaming live at 8 PM Eastern, if you’d like to watch too. I expect part, or all, of the show will eventually find its way into the radio show and/or podcast.
  • So how is the World, Dubai’s string of man-made paradise islands for the über-wealthy and famous, doing? Not too surprisingly, not too well. [via]
  • Are Twitter users “well on their way to becoming violent, idiotic vagabonds hell-bent on destroying the world”? We can only hope! Every time I read a story like this, or one bemoaning the rise of social networking sites in general, I really don’t know how to respond, since their fears almost never match up with how I (or, I think, most people) use these things. [via] As Noel Murray writes:

    This is a common critique of Twitter: “I don’t need to know what a bunch of strangers had for lunch.” And yet that’s so far removed from the way I use the service that I’m unsure where to begin refuting it. Personally, I only follow a small group of people on Twitter, and I have a limited circle of friends of Facebook. Most of these are people I know—or at least know of. We’re talking to each other about things we’re presumably all interested in; we’re sharing quick thoughts on movies, TV, kids, and the petty annoyances and subtle joys of a passing day. The other day one of my Twitter-followers—someone I don’t follow, I hasten to note—complained that he didn’t like me having a six-or-seven-Tweet exchange with a friend and thereby “cluttering up his feed.” And all I could think was, “Dude, following me is not compulsory.” I think that’s what critics of Twitter often fail to understand. Though some may use Twitter and Facebook as one big “look at me,” the majority are just trying to stay connected with friends, old and new.

  • A live-action Scooby-Doo prequel? And here I was, thinking nothing could make me nostalgic for the Matthew Lillard/Freddie Prinze, Jr. versions… I don’t have a problem with the movie in theory — it would be ridiculous to think Scooby-Doo has any kind of canon that needs protecting, and I remember genuinely liking A Pup Named Scooby-Doo — but in practice, this looks pretty dire.
  • And finally, there’s got to be an easier way to avoid ads in Gmail… [via]

Tuesday various

  • The drugs! They do nothink! The placebo effect appears to be getting stronger. It’s an interesting article, and the whole thing has some pretty far-ranging implications, but I was especially intrigued by this aside:

    One recent afternoon in his lab, a young soccer player grimaced with exertion while doing leg curls on a weight machine. Benedetti and his colleagues were exploring the potential of using Pavlovian conditioning to give athletes a competitive edge undetectable by anti-doping authorities. A player would receive doses of a performance-enhancing drug for weeks and then a jolt of placebo just before competition.

    Using the placebo response to cheat at sports? Hmm. [via]

  • Meanwhile, in other medical news, depression may be good for you [via]
  • Missing Link found in church: both more and less than the headline suggests. [via]
  • Have I mentioned recently how much I dislike Antonin Scalia?

    As a constitutional matter, Scalia is not wrong. The court has never found a constitutional right for the actually innocent to be free from execution. When the court flirted with the question in 1993, a majority ruled against the accused, but Chief Justice William Rehnquist left open the possibility that it may be unconstitutional to execute someone with a “truly persuasive demonstration” of innocence. Oddly enough, for at least some members of the current court that question is now seemingly irrelevant: In Scalia’s America, the Cameron Todd Willingham whose very existence was once in doubt is today constitutionally immaterial. Having waited decades for an innocent victim of capital punishment, the fact that we have finally found one won’t matter at all. In this new America we can execute a man for an accidental house fire, while the constitution stands silently by.

    I think there are several strong arguments against the death penalty, but for me the most convincing has always been that it demonstrably sends innocent people to their death. [via]

  • Maybe I should cast Scalia in this interesting class assignment from Jeffrey Ford:

    In one of my classes this semester, we are reading Dante’s Inferno….Our reading will lead to a number of assignments, but one of them will be a written canto that will deal with the students choosing one of their most despised political, religious, or cultural figures and developing a circle of Hell for that individual, the tortures of which somehow metaphorically fit the perceived sin of the offender. They must also choose some political, religious, literary, or cultural icon to be their Virgil. I put this out to ditch readers who are up to the challenge and ask — Who would be your guide? Who would be the sinner? What would the bole of Hell be like that the sinner is trapped in for eternity?

    Hmm.

Monday various

Saturday various

  • Proof again that parasites are the scariest damn things out there. [via]
  • Speaking, sort of, of parasitic mouth-breathers, you have read the single worst sports column ever written, right? The fact that Mark Whicker doesn’t seem to understand how his column trivialized Jaycee Dugard’s horrific 18-year ordeal — and is lousy journalism to boot — is just disgusting. Joe Wilson gave a more sincere apology.
  • Speaking of Wilson, via Twitter Kurt Andersen writes:

    Nobody who applauded the dude in Baghdad who threw his shoe at Bush really has any standing to accuse Joe Wilson of incivility. Right?

    It’s an interesting point, but I do think it’s wrong and maybe over-simplifies. For starters, this is at least partly about context. Shoe-thrower Muntazer al-Zaidi was a journalist attending a press conference, whereas Joe Wilson was a Congressman attending the President’s address to that legislative body. There are different levels of decorum expected, if only by tradition, in those two very different settings. Also Bush is obviously not Iraqi, whereas both Wilson and Obama are Americans, and Iraq was/is a more hostile battleground than health care. (Although you maybe wouldn’t know it, from some of the “debate” and hysteria surrounding the latter.) Both the thrown shoe and presidential heckling were uncivil acts, neither the best solution at the time, but the shoe is more defensible, if only because it was born out of a shared desperation instead of politics. That Wilson was demonstrably wrong about Obama’s so-called lie, and yet has continued to spread his own lies about the proposed governmental health care… Well, it’s tough to continue drawing parallels between the two outbursts.

  • James Patterson signs a 17-book deal “that will keep him with publisher Hachette through 2012.” Do the math: even if the deal goes into effect immediately, that’s 17 books in just over two years, about eight books a year. I guess it’s a good thing James Patterson doesn’t actually have to write well, huh? [via]
  • And finally, this proposed Plan 9 from Outer Space remake…is a joke, right?

    Plan 9 Teaser Trailer from Darkstone Entertainment on Vimeo.