Playing Catchup - 1

Playing catchup with the day's news.

* With Caroline Kennedy officially out of the Senate race in New York, WPIX is reporting that Kirsten Gillibrand will be Paterson's pick. If that's true, I'm shocked—I would have bet anything that Paterson would pick Andrew Cuomo to neutralize his chief potential rival.

* The Dark Knight: Snubbed!

* At this very moment, miles beneath the surface of the ocean, there is a British nuclear submarine carrying powerful ICBMs (nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles). In the control room of the sub, the Daily Mail reports, "there is a safe attached to a control room floor. Inside that, there is an inner safe. And inside that sits a letter. It is addressed to the submarine commander and it is from the Prime Minister. In that letter, Gordon Brown conveys the most awesome decision of his political career ... and none of us is ever likely to know what he decided."

The decision? Whether or not to fire the sub's missiles, capable of causing genocidal devastation in retaliation for an attack that would—should the safe and the letter need to be opened—have already visited nuclear destruction on Great Britain. The letter containing the prime minister's posthumous decision (assuming he would have been vaporized by the initial attack on the homeland) is known as the Last Resort Letter. Via MeFi.

* Related: Did the Soviets really build a doomsday device?

* Having seen Frost/Nixon, I can confirm the film has serious factual problems.

* I can also confirm that the Phillips Collection is a great (and surprisingly large) collection near Dupont Circle.

* That Guardian list of 1000 novels has some siblings: 1000 films, 1000 artworks, 1000 albums.