We're off to sample Detroit today. While we're waiting for showers to finish here are a few links I never got around to yesterday.

* Dollhouse 2.3, which I haven't seen yet, ticked upwards in the ratings, managing this week to beat reruns on ABC. Related: Ten TV Spin-offs That Were Better Than the Original Shows includes Angel—I agree in the main—Daria, Xena, DS9, and, The Simpsons. Also related: Flashforward is falling fast, endorsing Bill's thesis that the show is blowing it. Related and ridiculous: "Is science fiction becoming feminized?" Mary Shelley will be heartbroken.

* Josh Marshall on the Nobel: [T]he unmistakable message of the award is one of the consequences of a period in which the most powerful country in the world, the 'hyper-power' as the French have it, became the focus of destabilization and in real if limited ways lawlessness. A harsh judgment, yes. But a dark period. And Obama has begun, if fitfully and very imperfectly to many of his supporters, to steer the ship of state in a different direction. If that seems like a meager accomplishment to many of the usual Washington types it's a profound reflection of their own enablement of the Bush era and how compromised they are by it, how much they perpetuated the belief that it was 'normal history' rather than dark aberration. More from Steve Benen.

* Something, something, something, Detroit.

* The big Moon bombing appears not to have gone so well. Did the aliens step in?

* Iceland, an epicenter of the last financial crisis, looks to recover with data centers that offer free air-side cooling.

* The L.A. Times discusses the Fantastic Mr. Fox directing controversy. (via)

* Some bad news: Universe To End Sooner Than Thought.

* And more bad news: time has not ceased its unrelenting march.

Monday!

* Steve Benen covers the behind-the-scenes wrangling around the public option. Surprising to see a hack like Bill Frist on board. Is he trying to make up for his past?

* io9's ten essential Superman stories. Missing: Alan Moore's Supreme, Superman in all but name. (Also: Kingdom Come? Dark Knight Returns?)

* Conservatives have finally gotten around to removing the Bible's liberal bias.

* The life story of Richard Leroy Walters, a homeless man who left $4 million dollars to NPR.

* Superhero Status Updates.

* The waking nightmare of sleep paralysis.

* And Angel is ten years old today.

Sunday 2.

* Caprica: actually not bad? Will I really allow myself to be roped in by Ron Moore again? The worst parts of the pilot are the parts that force the tie-in to BSG; I wish the show could have been green-lit without it.

* Dollhouse tidbits: an easter egg from the last episode pointing to the true owners of the Dollhouse and an answer to the question of what's going on with Fred/Dr. Saunders/Whiskey.

I'm not your friend in here, Echo

Looks more and more as if Fred's body, the former Whiskey, was imprinted with a copy of Dr. Saunders after the original was killed by Alpha. I think this accounts for both why she hates the Dollhouse and why she won't act against it; she needs it to continue to exist.

* A six-part interview with Alan Moore at Newsarama from my new friend and local writer Zack Smith. Via MeFi.

Lorne has sung his last song. Andy Hallett was just 33.

Sunday linkdump #1.

* Spike and Angel debate the BSG finale.

* Neil sends along your yearly article on flying cars.

* "My career in academia has bankrupted me."

* MIT's faculty has adopted an Open Access ordinance. That's a pretty big deal.

* And then there's the question of blood, which is the reason I've gathered you all here tonight. Moore & Gibbons's Watchmen has some brutal violence in it, especially considering the context of mid-'80s superhero comics it emerged in. (Many more violent comics would eventually emerge, but that hadn't happened so much yet.) And when people are hurt badly in the original Watchmen, they do bleed. But watching Zack Snyder's Watchmen, I got convinced that he thinks the human body is a highly pressurized balloon full of blood and bones. It's an alarmingly gory movie, and many of the bloodiest moments are actually places where Snyder and his screenwriters depart from the text they're otherwise following so faithfully.

* Twins commit perfect crime. This gives me an idea, but to make it work I'm going to need an identical twin.

Tuesday morning links.

* If movie posters were honest. See also: if covers of marginal SF/fantasy series were honest.

* Who knew full moons had names? Via G-Lens.

* Is California the new Michigan?

* Tough times in the USA: people are eating racoon. This has nothing to do with the recession, apparently—some people are just choosing to eat it because they are gross.

* Potsdam University is offering a graduate how-to course on flirting for computer geeks.

* Arm-Chair Logic has your elementary logic test for the day.

* Solar apocalypse: NASA warns of 'Space Katrina.' My production company has already optioned the rights to this headline, don't even think about it.

* Harper's Index: Bush retrospective mega-edition.

* A task force created by 49 state attorneys general to look into the problem of sexual solicitation of children online has concluded that there really is not a significant problem. That's right: online sexual predators have infiltrated top-level attorneys general offices in 49 states. We must redouble our efforts.

* And Whedonesque asks, appropriately forlorn: Has it really been five years since Angel ended? That is a little hard to believe. The Armchair Critic ranks the twenty-five best episodes, and the five worst, of one of the best (and surely the most underappreciated) SF series of all time.

The last day of summer, which I diligently passed in a futile attempt to finish up my summer tasks before school starts tomorrow. (Came close. So close.) I found time for a little TV, though, and the show of the week was Showtime's Dexter, new to DVD. Easily surpassing Weeds as the best of Showtime's lineup, most of you probably already know the basic setup: Dexter is a police procedural centered on a blood-splatter analyst who, in his spare time, is a serial killer himself. As schlocky as this sounds, the show is actually good, mostly credited to the strong performance of Michael C. Hall as the sociopathic title character and James Remar as Dexter's deceased father Harry, a psychologically scarred police officer who recognized his foster son's violent tendencies and trained him to safely kill only those who "deserve" it. In this respect Dexter joins Jack Bauer and McGarnagle (witty cultural reference cribbed from this spoiler-laden Yahoo.com review) as the latest entry in the increasingly popular (at least in George Bush's America) "breaking the law to save the law" genre.

But the true progenitor of Dexter, I think, is actually the superhero comic, from which it takes its damaged Dark Knight archetype, its moral universe, Dexter's common ruminations on his secret identity, its flashback-laden form, and even its sense of Camp (see photo)—including Supermanesque winks to the camera at the end of a number of episodes. (The comics connection is made explicit by Julie Benz's character in the yet-to-be-aired but deliciously-torrentable second season premiere, when she compares Dexter's bizarre disappearances to "Clark Fucking Kent.")

If the show suffers from anything, it's surely this comic-book sense of character—the characterization seems to vary greatly depending on who is writing a particular episode. Even Dexter himself shifts pretty dramatically between the pilot and the later season one episodes—once a true sociopath, only miming his humanity to innoculate himself against suspicion, he very quickly devolves into a much more conventional, conflicted and relatable version of the character, with the early second season threatening to just go ahead and turn him into Angel altogether. Still, I'm hopeful, because the plotline they've chosen for the second season is just about the only worthy follow-up to the first season's (spoilers, highlight to read): Whereas in the first season his nemesis is villainous—another, more brutal and indiscriminate serial killer—in the second season Dexter's submerged stash of bodies is discovered and his nemesis is the FBI supercop brought in to take him down, that is, a traditional police hero. (Literary analysis cribbed from Jaimee.)

It's a promising show. Keep an eye on it.

And now here's McGarnagle.