Tough show last night for David Letterman.

Been busy today. Here are links.

* Pam Spaulding talks about the Durham City Council meeting last night at which a pro-same-sex marriage resolution was passed.

* "In the future, a famous person will die every fifteen minutes."

* More bad news for Republican Chris Christie as a nonpartisan ethics group, NJ-CREW, has now called for an investigation into his time as U.S. Attorney. He's also facing criticism over unreported interest from a loan made to current staffers at the U.S. Attorney office.

* The Obama White House says reports of the death of the public option are greatly exaggerated. (No word yet on the pubic option.)

* David Cross was funny last night on the Daily Show.

* Mad Men footnotes.

* Xenophobia for Dummies: A District 9 Primer. Of particular interest are the historical details surrounding apartheid-era District 6. Via this AskMe, with more.

* Meanwhile, the usually-more-astute Spencer Ackerman denies that America is anything like those nasty racists in District 9's Johannesburg. What's a million Iraqis give or take?

* And the absolute worst news of all time: "Arrested Development movie is nowhere near happening."

Terminated: Arnold Schwarzenegger has gone out of his way to slash needed social spending in California.

The cuts include slashing $25 million from health clinics; $52 million from AIDS prevention, education and treatment programs; $16 million from domestic violence programs; $50 million from Healthy Families, which provides health insurance for poor children; and $37.6 million from In-Home Supportive Services.

That $16 million represents all state funding for domestic violence shelters.

Hard to believe the celebrity governor thing didn't work out.

I'm not an especially big fan of Michael Jackson—like a lot of people my age I have strong memories of Off the Wall and Thriller and not much else—but nonetheless I feel shaken by the asshat snark explosion you see in things like the first MetaFilter obituary thread. There's recognizable whiffs of both racism and queer panic in these kneejerk reactions, but also, I think, a simple human meanness. Even if you believe every terrible allegation made against Jackson—every last one—he remains in the end an incredibly tragic figure drained dry by a celebrity culture that completely and contemptuously devoured him. Whatever he did or didn't do—and who knows—like the rest of us he didn't choose the life he lived, beginning with an abused and ruined childhood that left him psychologically broken and, to use the favored euphemism, "weird."

If we have a modicum of generosity, we can only pity him. I simply do not understand this impulse to moonwalk on his grave.

Has the media feeding frenzy ever destroyed anyone as fast as it destroyed poor Susan Boyle?

Just a few links.

* I'm only going to say this once, media bloodsuckers: Leave Bruce alone.

* Pink Tentacle has your vintage alien landscapes from Kazuaki Saito.

* The Dollhouse situation and what Joss Whedon should do next.

I would like to see what kind of wonderfully dense, risk-taking project Whedon would come up with when he is not hampered by the current conservative climate at the networks, which these days want most story lines to wrap up by the end of the hour. Can you imagine what a Whedon show on HBO, Showtime, FX or AMC would look like?

...

My point is this: Whedon needs to make his next show on cable. End of story.

Ironically, this is also what Joss should have done this time, and the time before this one.

* Florida Power & Light and a real estate developer have announced that they will build the first solar-powered city in the U.S., a community of 19,500 homes, offices, retail shops, and light industry whose electricity will come from the world’s largest solar photovoltaic plant. The new city will be called Utopia Prime Future One Alpha City Babcock Ranch.

Celebrity zombies. Via MeFi.

Salon's Broadsheet has full coverage of the sexing up of Tina Fey, while Jezebel counters with photos of the provocatively unsexed-up younger Fey. My personal favorite Fey is "Weekend Update" Fey, c. 2003, who I'm certain is still in there somewhere, finding this sort of nonsense completely ridiculous.

I don't think I've never felt the monastic solitude of grad school so deeply as reading this notice in the New York Post's Page Six: I didn't even know Lindsay Lohan was dating women, and now she's getting married to one. Congrats to the happy couple.

We will never be rid of Ryan Seacrest.

Friday night is random comics night.

* Chris Ware on how Rodolphe Töpffer invented the comic strip.

* Cracked on the five most insane celebrity comic cameos. At right: a panel from The Joker Meets Ayatollah Khomeini.

* Pathetic Geek Stories.

Friday night is stupid YouTube night.

* News of a new David Cross/Bob Odenkirk HBO series brings a MetaFilter thread full of classic Mr. Show videos.

* Asking random celebrities who would win in a fight, a minotaur with a trident or a centaur with a crossbow. Via MeFi.

* There Will Be Vader.

(The centaur, obviously.)

Wednesday potpourri.

* A brief history of masturbation.

* John Rawls (yes, him) on why baseball is the best of all games. More via MeFi.

* Jason Sanford isn't worried about the singularity

* But I'm worried about climate change again. As we all know, climate change ended last month, which was unusually cold. But it seems to have kickstarted up again in a big way: the world is now warming at 0.14°C/month, or 3°F/year—30°F/decade! We can only hope March is slightly cold again, bringing that rate back down to survivable levels.

* I'm also worried about Mary Ann. She'll never make it on the inside. She's too good.

The Victorian freakshow never went away—now it's called Big Brother or American Idol, where in the preliminary rounds we wheel out the bewildered to be snickered at by multimillionaires. Andy Millman's rant on celebrity culture from the end of the Extras Christmas special, which wasn't quite as strong an ending as I might have hoped after the stellar second season but which deserves much more attention than the very little it's getting. He's also just announced his and Stephen Merchant's next project: a film about twentysomethings in a small town "where the sexual revolution didn't hit" who have to decide whether or not to stay or to run.