Saturday night, and I can't stop reloading the blogs to see how health care is doing. Image at the right via kate.

* The White House press corps does not believe you have not heard of V.

* Democratic congresswomen shouted down by Republicans. Matt has the video, and it's pretty astounding.

* Krugman: "There’s no measure I can think of by which the U.S. economy has done better since 1980 than it did over an equivalent time span before 1980."

* Kurt Vonnemutt.

* Ladies and gentlemen, Mars. Related: 1924, the year Navy radiographers were asked to listen for communication from Mars.

Go to grad school?

Ladies and gentlemen, Toothpaste for Dinner.

Lit links.

* Emily Dickinson: sexpot.

* On James Baldwin and Barack Obama. Until now I'd thought that Bill Ayers had secretly ghostwritten Obama's memoir, but I see now that it was probably James Baldwin.

* TV show as megamovie. Via Kottke.

* Reinterpreting Red Dawn.

Red Dawn is not an exact parallel to our situation, of course. The Iraq we invaded was no functioning democracy; our Army does not execute civilians; many Iraqis favor the American occupation. But Red Dawn certainly didn't stir the mad, patriotic fervor I felt when I heard Howell shout, "Wolverines" 24 years ago. MGM is so far tight-lipped about the plot of its Red Dawn remake, but I wonder: Will the new Wolverines be us—or fighting us?

* And Toothpaste for Dinner has obviously never taken one of my classes.

Quick links:

* Toothpaste for Dinner beholds the Singularity. (Thanks, kate w!)

* They're (finally) turning Isaac Asimov's Foundation series into a movie.

* Once again people are discovering Orson Scott Card's reprehensible politics. It happens about once every six months.

* 29 Literary Science Fiction Novels You Should Read. More than half of these are already on my exam lists; the rest probably will be by the time I take my exams in March...