Sorry about No-Post Monday; my summer course starts tomorrow and I'm scrambling to get everything ready. I have a few links before I declare this No Post Tuesday.

* Eliza Dushku is twittering that Dollhouse renewal talks are going on as we speak. A better indication than if they weren't.

* Miscellaneous Star Trek links:

* A fairly well-known story about TOS and MLK.
* Ultimately, then, “Star Trek” was prescient not for its futurism, with the Enterprise crew using communicators that look like flip-phones, but for exploring a universe absorbed with pop-culture history. David Hadju on Star Trek and popular culture.
* Continuity errors as honeypot.
* "Star Trek sucked so bad I can’t even think of a title for my rant."

* The secret history of Jughead's hat.

* Goonies reunion video.

* Larry David is Woody Allen as Larry David in Whatever Works.

* Apocalypse and the academy in The New Yorker.

* And some sad news: Craig Arnold is now believed to have died while traveling in Japan.

Friday morning links.

* Is Dollhouse already canceled? Fox is advertising that Prison Break returns to Fridays on 4/17.

* Mike Krzyzewski gets a tough evaluation on ratemyprofessor.com.



* Alternate-universe Watchmens. Only the Woody Allen hypothesis really sings.



* And this xkcd is quieter than the ones that usually get ricocheted across the Internet, but damn if it didn't make me laugh.



* And is time really the fire in which we burn? Consider the thermal time hypothesis. More at MetaFilter.

According to Connes and Rovelli, the same applies to the universe at large. There are many more constituents to keep track of: not only do we have particles of matter to deal with, we also have space itself and therefore gravity. When we average over this vast microscopic arrangement, the macroscopic feature that emerges is not temperature, but time. "It is not reality that has a time flow, it is our very approximate knowledge of reality that has a time flow," says Rovelli. "Time is the effect of our ignorance."

I think Rovelli just wrote Alan Moore's next three graphic novels. Grant Morrison's, too.

Random Friday Links, Politics Edition.

* McCain has finally stumbled on a winning message on the economy: "It's all Obama's fault!" Riiiiight.

* And judging from the above clip it looks like McCain's speechwriters are still trying to find a line that doesn't lead to a creepy smile.

* Turns out McCain doesn't know that Fannie and Freddie are private companies, either.

* Woody Allen says it will be "a disgrace and a humiliation" for the United States if Obama loses. Too right.

* But the disgrace and humiliation is already here: American democracy has a severe legitimacy problem in the face of a decade of Republican electoral malfeasance, as Ezra Klein shows.

* Obama hits back on the truly awful infanticide smear with the toughest ad I think I've seen him run.

* Kevin Drum and Blaney's Blarney take looks at our new nationally sponsored soccer team, Manchester United.

* And FiveThirtyEight.com shows that the probability of a 269-269 tie continues to increase, with most such scenarios centering on an Obama loss in New Hampshire. Come on, Omaha, don't fail us now...