Mythical creature Venn diagram. Via Kottke.

All is quiet on New Year's Day.

* As the Bush administration blessedly draws to a close, it's important to remember the casualties of the War of Terror, people like Alberto Gonzales. (via)

* More people get their news from the Internet than from newspapers. More importantly:

The percentage of people younger than 30 citing television as a main news source has declined from 68% in September 2007 to 59% currently.

That's good, good news.

* Howard Dean, Vermonter of the Year. Maybe next year, Ben and Jerry.

* Batman casting rumors you can believe in: Philip Seymour Hoffman as the Penguin.

* It's the future, and Microsoft still sucks.

* Top 10 space stories of 2008. A different 10.

* Top 10 cryptozoology stories of 2008.

* James Howard Kunstler's predictions for 2009. Prediction: Pain. Via MetaFilter.

* Thank god for philosophy grad students, the only graduate demographic upon Lit students can look down.

Potpourri.

* Incoming Energy Secretary Steven Chu hates coal. I sort of love this guy.

* The Battlestar Galactica webisodes have started up again.

* "Would you rather be a novel or a poem?" Answer wisely and you could go to Oxford. Via Bookninja.

* Every so often the veil of ideology drops.

* Classic albums get LEGOized.

* 'Whedon: Dollhouse Problems Are My Fault.'

* Ron Moore's promising-sounding Virtuality may never see the light of day.

* The natural history of mythical creatures.

Monday!

* Which imaginary animals are kosher? Via Boing Boing.

* Plan59.com is a great site for retro and nostalgia art.

* MetaFilter has now apparently set about translating all of Pulp Fiction into Shakespearease, following the lead of this link.

* Cogitamus has a question for the class, via Cynical-C.

Do you think if Barack Obama had left his seriously ill wife after having had multiple affairs, had been a member of the “Keating Five,” had had a relationship with a much younger lobbyist that his staff felt the need to try and block, had intervened on behalf of the client of said young lobbyist with a federal agency, had denounced then embraced Jerry Falwell, had denounced then embraced the Bush tax cuts, had confused Shiite with Sunni, had confused Al Qaeda in Iraq with the Mahdi Army, had actively sought the endorsement and appeared on stage with a man who denounced the Catholic Church as a whore, and stated that he knew next to nothing about economics — do you think it’s possible that Obama would have been treated differently by the media than John McCain has been? Possible?

* The New York Times says Harold and Kumar 2 creates a whole new genre: the stoner protest film. The legendary Randolph High School debate squad of the 1990s even gets a veiled shout-out...

* The Catcher in the Retirement Home.

* A people's history of the banana.

Things I've been looking at today.

* The Earth and Moon as seen from Mars.

* How infants and adults process color.

* The best of Occasional Superheroine.

* How skilled are supermarket sushi chefs, and are they lonely? I've thought about both these questions too.

* The Condiment Packet Gallery.

* The evolution of the Yeti. (Link fixed!)