The soon-to-be ex-vice-chancellor of Buckingham University explains in a startlingly ill-conceived article in the Times that female students are a male academic's "perk." Via The Guardian via Dana at The Edge of the American West.

PS: "The fault lies with the females." FYI.

Tuesday night!

* The buzzword at the heart of my dissertation got a bump today.

* 'Good Night and Tough Luck': a short web comic about the misery of insomnia.

* Good news/bad news: the total implosion of the global economy has caused CO2 emissions to plummet 6%, to 8.5% of 2005 levels.

* Corzine takes his first polling lead over Chris Christie in the New Jersey governor's race.

* Osama bin Laden blurbs a few of his favorite books, including Jimmy Carter's Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid and (apparently) Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. (via)

* American debt, the Chinese economy, and mutually assured financial destruction.

* The House passed a resolution of disapproval against Congressman Joe Wilson along strict party lines? You lie!

* When will the MSM break its silence on Obama's secret rat love?

* 'Wealthcare': A brief history of Ayn Rand. Some talk at MeFi.

(The anti-government activist Grover Norquist has told a similar story from childhood, in which his father would steal bites of his ice cream cone, labelling each bite "sales tax" or "income tax." The psychological link between a certain form of childhood deprivation and extreme libertarianism awaits serious study.)

* Conservative bloggers have truly outdone themselves in their efforts to hype the 9/12 rally; Steve Benen and Media Matters have the details on "the largest event held in Washington, D.C., ever." It's the greatest propaganda FAIL since they tried to pass off a picture of the Promise Keepers rally as being from last weekend.

* And this interview from one of Bush's last speechwriters has been linked by nearly every mainstream political blog I read: Ezra Klein, Matt Yglesias, Steve Benen, Kevin Drum, Atrios, Ben Smith, Think Progress, MetaFilter, and Crooks and Liars, each with their own favorite moment from the piece. The Palin line is sort of inescapable:

“I’m trying to remember if I’ve met her before. I’m sure I must have.” His eyes twinkled, then he asked, “What is she, the governor of Guam?”

Everyone in the room seemed to look at him in horror, their mouths agape. When Ed told him that conservatives were greeting the choice enthusiastically, he replied, “Look, I’m a team player, I’m on board.” He thought about it for a minute. “She’s interesting,” he said again. “You know, just wait a few days until the bloom is off the rose.” Then he made a very smart assessment.

“This woman is being put into a position she is not even remotely prepared for,” he said. “She hasn’t spent one day on the national level. Neither has her family. Let’s wait and see how she looks five days out.”

Tuesday, I'll never forget you.

* Precision Hacking: 4chan hacks a Time poll not just at the top but all the way down.

* In the fifth and final installment of his Wes Anderson series, Matt Zoller Seitz annotates the prologue to The Royal Tenenbaums.

* You and I know it's fair and balanced, but believe it or not there are those who argue that the reporting on Fox may show a slight rightward tilt.

* On the making of Swamp Thing #20.

* And Blographia Literaria calls FAIL on failblog.org.

German police have solved the mystery of the Phantom of Heilbronn, a female serial killer responsible for six murders as well as petty larcenies and break-ins. It was a cotton swab.

If you thought the actual BSG finale was terrible, just take a look at the plotline they almost went with.

Tuesday!

* Cold fusion is back. More here. We're saved!

* Radiology art. (Hat tip: Neil.)

* My pursuit of all Wes Anderson-flavored cultural ephemera has led me to this video from Company of Theives, as well as Tenenbaum Fail. Via Fimoculous.

* The first eleven episodes of Quantum Leap are up at NBC.com.

* Anarctica travel blog.

* Who was dead at your age?

Has there ever been a show that misunderstood itself as badly as Battlestar Galactica? As regrettable as the last few seasons have been, I confess I was completely unprepared for the sheer awfulness of this finale. I think I pissed off a few people on Twitter with my up-to-the-minute spoiler-laden despair, so I don't want to repeat that mistake here—but suffice it to say I can't think of a television finale less successful than this one.

I wrote not that long ago that

All that said, I think it's too early to turn Battlestar into Star Wars; the reputation of the series will live or die in what happens in these next few episodes and it could still go either way. Melodrama aside—and yes there was a lot of it last night—I think there are reasons to believe.

Well, now we know. Frak it all.

Put its utter randomness, offensively easy a-wizard-did-it mysticism, and excess sentimentality aside. Battlestar Galactica in its final moments actually seems to view itself as some sort of prophetic warning about the dangers of artificial intelligence. Delivered by angels. It's actually that bad.

What a colossal disappointment. Bad, bad, bad.

The headline reads, "Mishap leaves skier dangling pantsless from Vail chairlift."

The auto bailout has failed in the Senate.

The image that launched a thousand blog posts.