Thursday night!

* President Edwards prepares to resign the presidency tonight after admitting he had lied about the fathering of Rielle Hunter's baby during the third debate with John McCain. Vice President Barack Obama is expected to assume the presidency tomorrow morning.

* Paul Krugman, legendary futurist?

* Luck, math, and how to win at gambling.

* What's hot: potbellies!

* Multitask: the game. Note: you will hate this game.

* On the cinematography of Mad Men. Nice video to get you ready for the third season.

* Behold, NASA's secret plan to move the Earth.

Hence the group’s decision to try to save Earth. ‘All you have to do is strap a chemical rocket to an asteroid or comet and fire it at just the right time,’ added Laughlin. ‘It is basic rocket science.’

The plan has one or two worrying aspects, however. For a start, space engineers would have to be very careful about how they directed their asteroid or comet towards Earth. The slightest miscalculation in orbit could fire it straight at Earth – with devastating consequences.

What could possibly go wrong? (Not a hoax. Via Occasional Fish.)

* Behold, the banned Family Guy episode.

* Nerdivore points out District 9 is getting great reviews.

* GLAAD flunks SyFy.

* And a physicist at Slate says The Time Traveler's Wife checks out.

It sounds as though Rob Moore's Battlestar followup, Virtuality, is dead on arrival, which is really too bad, because the pilot (first twelve minutes / whole episode) was actually fairly promising. (The premise is intriguing, from the eco-apocalypse backstory to the overarching reality-TV conceit—though there are worrying signs of BSG-style mysticism already peaking through.) Of course, there's a "Save Virtuality" web campaign, but that and widespread, very positive reviews will get you exactly nothing. Maybe Sci-Fi Channel SyFy will come through, but I wouldn't hold your breath...

Case study in what late capitalism does to language: The Sci-Fi Channel is changing its name to SyFy.

NBC Universal's Sci-Fi Channel is changing its name to the "SyFy channel," a name that is apparently easier for children to text to one another and will therefore increase the company's earnings dramatically.

"SyFy" sounds exactly like "Sci Fi" when you say it, but, as Richard noted in the Trade Roundup, NBC Universal will own it now. For years, NBC executives had longed to trademark the channel's own name, but legal kept telling them you can't trademark a genre of entertainment for lonely obsessives. So they spent years, and paid a branding company gobs of money, to come up with SyFy.

"SyFy" is actually a fairly appropriate neologism; it nicely captures the relationship between the Sci-Fi Channel's generally crummy output and actual SF.

The end of the Gawker piece twists the knife just right:

Accompanying the name will be the channel's new slogan, "Imagine Greater," which means nothing and is grammatically incoherent.