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.

Linkdump!

* The headline reads, "Mystery Roar from Faraway Space Detected."

* Probably the stupidest thing ever published in the L.A. Times: a bald anti-science assertion that deadly allergies don't exist.

* 'Going Under': Doctors addicted to drugs. Via MeFi.

* Valuating Facebook in terms of Whoppers.

* I don't know if I'm more worried that my insomnia will lead to paranoia or Exploding Head syndrome.

* News that by this point will surprise no one: Arctic melt 20 years ahead of climate models.

* Legislation has been introduced for a post-Bush truth and reconciliation commission. This is something that is sorely needed, and I hope the Democratic leadership puts its full weight behind it.

* Blago: owned. More discussion here.

* The literary world is abuzz with news of Jack Torrance's latest, All Work and No Play Makes Jack a Dull Boy.

* Cory Doctorow on writing in an age of distraction.

* Things not to do: buying a $1000 house in Detroit. Big ups to Cleveland, which is apparently turning into Detroit.

(Thanks to Bill for some of these!)

"Burris likely to be seated," says the Page. Here, I suspect, is why: with Franken likely tied up in lawsuits for a while they need Burris to get an extra ten committee slots. However it shakes out, you've got to admire Harry Reid's continued anti-Midas touch; the man can turn anything into a lose-lose situation.

UPDATE: Reid is out in front to prolong the agony. He says there's actually no deal yet and forcefully adds "I have not yet begun to be humiliated." Well done, sir.

Taking care of a little link business.

* How to Organize an Insurrection: tips from the protestors in Greece. (Via Vu.)

* It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. Via Kevin Drum.

* Fimoculous's 30 Most Notable Blogs of 2008. #31 for the second year running!

* Burris bags benighted Blago embrace. Democrats demur.

* Jim Webb will introduce legislation to beat back the prison-industrial complex.

* The case for Caroline Kennedy. I find this interesting because it's a completely ends-based analysis, the only field in which I think Kennedy's potential appointment has merit. She will be probably a good senator from my perspective and probably (yes) advantageous for New York—but she just doesn't deserve the nod. The Senate's not the House of Lords.

* The 1,000 Greatest Films of All Time. Subset: The 250 Greatest Films of the Last Eight Years. Via MeFi.

* Also from MeFi: an improbable defense of the suburbs from a most-probable place.

* Franken... wins?

* "Golden Years": A pre-Office one-off from Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant.

* "Farewell to All That: An Oral History of the Bush White House." 22 days remain.

Rahm Emanuel resigns his House seat, and the first person he tells about it is his favorite penpal, crooked governor Rod Blagojevich? Really, Rahm? The first person?

What else has Rahm been talking to Blagojevich about? Where is the outrage?

"I've got this thing and it's [expletive] golden, and, uh, uh, I'm just not giving it up for [expletive] nothing. I'm not gonna do it. And, and I can always use it. I can parachute me there."

I've been away from the computer all day, so I'm only finding out about the Blagojevich madness now. Who tries to openly sell a Senate seat? You sell that thing quietly, under the radar. Use codes. Geez. Blagovich now joins the elite cadre of four out of the last five Illinois governors who have been indicted or convicted—and I thought New Jersey politics were corrupt.

Good luck in 2016, governor. And good on Rahm, if he did tip the feds off, though in his position Blagovich was crazy to expect anything else from the incoming chief of staff.

More everywhere.

Busy week ahead, so posting will be comparatively light except insofar as I allow the Internets to distract me from my work. We'll see how I do.

A few links:

* The U.S. has apparently launched not-at-all-October-Surprise forays into Syria and Pakistan.

* Barack draws a record 100,000+ crowd in Denver. (See photo.)

* NBC numbers man Chuck Todd is having an increasingly difficult time keeping "objectivity" in the face of Obama's overwhelming advantages; here he is on Meet the Press talking about the early voting explosion and the possibility of African-American voter participation in the neighborhood of 95-100%.

* More early voting buzz: the latest official numbers show Democrats taking a lead over Republicans in the votes already cast, 871,251 to 818,799. As early voting tends to favor Republicans due to the disproportionate absentee balloting of military voters and the elderly, this is good news.

* Jewish voters in Pennsylvania have been warned by the state GOP not to make the same mistake their German ancestors did in the 1930s and '40s. There is so much wrong with this, I don't even know where to begin.

* Who will replace Obama as the senator from Illinois? Jesse Jackson, Jr., wants the job, despite fears that he may be unelectable statewide.

* The Ann Arbor News endorses *nobody* for president. Well done, sirs.

* And the Internet has created its most bizarrely Dada meme yet: Robocop on a Unicorn.