A few links I've missed over the last few days.

* xkcd discovers the secret origins of the Kindle.

* RIP, Philip Jose Farmer. More here, especially about Venus on the Half-Shell, the book he published under the name Kilgore Trout. It's not half-bad.

* 'Las Vegas Running Out of Water Means Dimming Los Angeles Lights.'

* Spider-Man is taking a job at McDonald's in these tough economic times.

* And Joss Whedon explains why DC Comics movies don't work. He's right and wrong about this; there's something to be said for the "pain" thesis, but mostly it's a failure of writing and directorial ambition, compounded by corporate cowardice...

Presenting The Compleat Kilgore Trout. (Via Cyn-C.) Here's a favorite:

The Gutless Wonder

This, too, was the title of a book by Trout, The Gutless Wonder. It was about a robot who had bad breath, who became popular after his halitosis was cured. But what made the story remarkable, since it was written in 1932, was that it predicted the widespread use of burning jellied gasoline on human beings.

It was dropped on them from airplanes. Robots did the dropping. They had no conscience, and no circuits which would allow them to imagine what was happening to the people on the ground.

Trout's leading robot looked like a human being, and could talk and dance and so on, and go out with girls. And nobody held it against him that he dropped jellied gasoline on people. But they found his halitosis unforgivable. And then he cleared that up, and he was welcomed to the human race.