Language Log is doing the hard work of debunking a new conservative meme about Obama's supposed imperial arrogance.

Sunday!

* Literature: no cell phones allowed.

JULIET: Fakn death. C U Latr.

ROMEO: gud plan.

Recently published narrative fiction is still uneasy about the telephone, much less cell phones or the Internet...

* In defense of The Life Aquatic: Jamie Rich defends the most unfairly maligned of all of Wes Anderson's films. (Via Rushmore Academy.)

* 'North Carolina Town Prints Own Currency to Support Local Business.' I support the effort, but I thought that was illegal...

* The Washington Post continues its efforts to make up for allowing George Will to lie with impunity on its editorial pages.

* Muppets vs. Zombies. If only it were real.

Tuesday night linkdump #3.

* Here comes the Dollhouse? 'Scientists Erase Painful Memories Without Drugs.'

* Both Inside Higher Ed and Barack Obama himself can declare victory alongside UNC.

* Even the National Review says it's time for Coleman to concede.

* Environmental reporters at The Washington Post hit back at George Will over the many inaccuracies in his climate change columns.

* More on the Morristown UFO hoax.

Sunday linkdump #3.

* The local food movement gets a big boost with news of a vegetable garden on the White House lawn. More at MeFi.

* Visualizing the organic food industry in the U.S.

* The Washington Post finally gets around to kind of correcting George Will's dishonest columns on climate change. Sure, it's been a month, but it's not like the paper comes out every day.

* You may remember from Jon Stewart's well-placed mockery when Barack Obama gave Gordon Brown a gift of twenty-five DVDs during his visit that paled in comparison to Brown's gift of a pen-holder made from the timbers of the HMS Resolute. Well, it's a little worse than you think.

Alas, when the PM settled down to begin watching them the other night, he found there was a problem.

The films only worked in DVD players made in North America and the words “wrong region” came up on his screen.

I've told you before, information wants to be free...

Even the list of DVDs itself is fairly unimpressive. Star Wars? The Godfather? Really? I've got to be honest, I think Brown's probably seen some of these.

Still working through a backlog of open tabs. First up: ecology and the environment.

* There's no such thing as clean coal. Just ask the Coen brothers. Also at Grist: dealing with the fact of environmentalism's soft public support.

As I have argued before, our attention to wide but weak public support is misplaced, leaving us vulnerable to the cycles of an ADD media and alienating our potential core. It is increasingly evident that the vast scale of climate risk provokes a number of numbing psychological responses -- pre-conscience cognitive dissonance and buffering in various forms -- which exacerbates the usual forces of diffusion.

The only means by which a worldview and solution that is significantly at odds with majority public opinion may be driven onto the public agenda is through the agency of "a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens" -- in other words, a determined, partisan core.

* George Will: still lyin'.

* 'Hacking the planet: The only climate solution left?' First up: a sunshield. I guess it's true what they say: from the dawn of time mankind really has yearned to block out the sun.

* Sympathy for the Unabomber? Don't open any packages from Kevin Kelly for a few days.

* Times Square and several blocks of Broadway are being shut down to cars for most of the year in the name of traffic management and pedestrian malls. Awesome.

* Nuke your city. Via BLDG BLOG (which has a lot of examples) and io9. Of course, we've already done Durham.

A rare treat: good news on climate change. A glitch in satellite sensors caused scientists to underestimate the extent of Arctic sea ice by 500,000 square kilometers (193,000 square miles), a California- size area, the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center said. Of course, it's good news on an objective level, but perhaps bad news politically, as this is just now other isolated data point for the ignorant, the deluded, and the actively dishonest to latch onto in their efforts to deny real progress.

Friday night links while I wait for Jaimee to get home so I can watch some science fiction and turn my brain off.

* George Will is in the news this week for his latest stunningly dishonest column on climate change, which the Washington Post has perversely decided to stand behind. The statement from the paper's ombudsman is here.

* The EPA under the Obama administration will finally be able to take carbon seriously.

* Secure website authentification questions.

* Howard Machtinger looks back at his participation in the Weather Underground to acknowledge the group's failures. Via MeFi and Matt Yglesias.

While “New Morning” signaled the WU’s commitment to taking greater care after the accident to target property and not people, it did not acknowledge the WU’s own responsibility for the politics of the Townhouse collective.

WU leaders––then and since––failed to reckon candidly and directly with what it meant, politically and humanly, that core members of the organization had planned to use fragmentation bombs to kill attendees at a dance.

* The complete Pac-Man dossier: everything there is to know about the game, from ghost logic to how to play the kill screen. Via MeFi.

* Hard to believe we've all outlived Late Night with Conan O'Brien. I haven't watched the show in years, but it was formative to my sense of "funny" as a teenager. Here's Colbert saying goodbye the only way he knows how.

* Wither Burris? It doesn't look good for the man nobody wanted to be Senator anyway.

I have an unpleasantly busy day today, and the open tabs are already building up. Here's a few links just to relieve the tension.

* Lieberman saved the stimulus? I guess the people who said we should be nice to him despite everything he's done may have had a point.

* Four Tennessee state representatives, all Republicans, have signed up to be plaintiffs in a lawsuit against President Barack Obama, aimed at forcing him to prove he is a United States citizen by coughing up his birth certificate. Good lord. How many times do we have to do this one?

* George Will v. climate science. Spoiler alert: Science wins. More (including charts!) from Nate Silver. I did a post like this over the weekend, if you missed it.

* Relatedly, from Marginal Revolution: What if all the smart people are in one party?

* Do not attempt to eat the world's hottest peper. That's just common sense. (Via Neil.)

Evening linkage.

* George Bush's disapproval rating has hit a historic low of 70%—worse than any president since Gallup changed the wording of this question in 1938.

* Google, amazingly ten years old, is letting people search 2001's Internet.

* The 50 things that every comics collection truly needs.

* Matt Yglesias has your banking collapse brackets and your Galaxy-class starship military tactics.

* Stephen Hawking says it's time to go back to space.

The human race has existed as a separate species for about two million years. Civilisation began about 10,000 years ago, and the rate of development has been steadily increasing. But, if the human race is to continue for another million years, we will have to boldly go where no one has gone before.

* George Will: Palin is "obviously not qualified to be President," he remarked, describing her interview on CBS Evening News with Katie Couric as a "disaster.

* And solar legislation continues to stagnate in Congress. This is an inexcusable failure of leadership.

Under the pressure of the financial crisis, one presidential candidate is behaving like a flustered rookie playing in a league too high. It is not Barack Obama.

Like a sinking ship loses its rats, John McCain has lost even archconservative George Will.