Wednesday miscellany!

* Startling: 50% of people think women should be legally required to take their husbands' names. Watch out, most married woman under forty I know! They're coming for you.

* Jonathan Lethem talks to The Jewish Daily Forward about the greatness of Philip K. Dick.

* Have we reached our civilization's tipping point? See also: why climate change is worse than we feared.

* AMC greenlights zombie series. Sounds promising. Between this and Red Mars AMC is making a strong push for my particular demographic.

* As of tonight, Microsoft can no longer sell Word.

* Another Battlestar reboot? Already? Really?

* Lesser-known editing and proofreading marks. (via)

* 'Gathered, Not Made: A Brief History of Appropriative Writing.'

* And Ze gets philosophical.

You partake in a medical experiment. In the experiment you are given one of two pills. You don't know which one until after you take it. One shortens your life by 10 years, and the other lengthens your life by 10 years. You have just found out which pill you took. The question is: which pill do you think will increase the quality of your life the most? Would one make you change the way you live your life more than the other?

MMLD #3.

* Oil! More here and here.

* We are rich enough. Economic growth has done as much as it can to improve material conditions in the developed countries, and in some cases appears to be damaging health. If Britain were instead to concentrate on making its citizens' incomes as equal as those of people in Japan and Scandinavia, we could each have seven extra weeks' holiday a year, we would be thinner, we would each live a year or so longer, and we'd trust each other more.

* Continued tough week for MSNBC as the Richard Wolffe scandal piles on the Fox détente scandal. Of course, the roots of corporate media corruption go much deeper than just this pair of incidents. UPDATE: For what it's worth, Olbermann emphatically denied the rumors on his show tonight during his Worst Persons segment, another proud entry in the "not KO's proudest moment" file. UPDATE 2: Olbermann posted a Daily Kos diary on both subjects today as well.

* Duke's Cathy Davidson is profiled at Inside Higher Ed for her plan to schematize student grades.

*PKD rocks Bookslut and the San Francisco Gate.

* And Terry Pratchett, suffering from Alzheimer's, is fighting for his right to die.

Three-way dance: Michael Moorcock, Alan Moore and Iain Sinclair. A short snippet:

Michael Moorcock says “I invented the multiverse!”

Michael Moorcock says he invented the multiverse as a reassurance against the second law of thermodynamics and heat death of the universe.

...

Alan Moore says that “Jerusalem” disproves the existence of death from a scientific standpoint...

Via Bookslut.

The iceberg wins: 'Last Survivor of the Titanic Dies at 97.'

Yet another Monday linkdump.

* Rep. John Lewis and four other congressmen were arrested today in front of the Sudanese embassy protesting the genocide in Darfur.

* Quantifying the seven deadly sins.

* Dinosaurs may not have been killed by the Chicxulub impact after all. This example of the scientific method working is naturally taken up by anti-intellectuals at the Corner to prove the scientific method doesn't work.

* More on the connection between swine flu and industrial agriculture.

* The Flaming Lips' "Do You Realize?" is now the official song of Oklahoma, instantaneously making the state 1000% more awesome.

Do you realize that you have the most beautiful face?
Do you realize we're floating in space?
Do you realize that happiness makes you cry?
Do you realize that everyone you know someday will die?

* Scientific American concurs.

I was going to follow up that Kal Penn post with a more substantive post, but I decided to take a nap instead. Advantage: Canavan!

* The U.S. dollar as Ponzi scheme. Via Alex Greenberg. See also: The Investment Delusion and Money and the Crisis of Civilization.

* Paging Superman: Barack Obama calls for a world without nuclear weapons. More at Attackerman.

* Things more likely to kill you than terrorist attacks.

* Two visits to the Mets' new Citi Field. I still miss Shea.

Tuesday!

* Cold fusion is back. More here. We're saved!

* Radiology art. (Hat tip: Neil.)

* My pursuit of all Wes Anderson-flavored cultural ephemera has led me to this video from Company of Theives, as well as Tenenbaum Fail. Via Fimoculous.

* The first eleven episodes of Quantum Leap are up at NBC.com.

* Anarctica travel blog.

* Who was dead at your age?

I've always secretly believed my cleverness and quick reflexes will protect me in any emergency, which is why I fear airplanes and sudden debilitating strokes far more than driving or muggings. At long last, science has confirmed this phobic hierarchy.

People's reaction times are a far better indicator of their chances of living a long life than their blood pressure, exercise levels or weight, researchers have discovered.

Men and women with the most sluggish response times are more than twice as likely to die prematurely.

Former CNN anchor Miles O'Brien blogs about last night's plane crash in Buffalo. This is the first domestic crash with fatalities in two years. More information in the MetaFilter link.

Whether by pure chance or divine plan, a couple of stories about childhood atheism and/or conversion to atheism ran across my screen yesterday.

* Ricky Gervais
* Calvin & Hobbes
* Julia Sweeney

In varying ways the story of my own "conversion" has affinities with each of these three; I think I've told it somewhere on the Internets before. There's really two stories. The first is the night when I was five or so and figured out that Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, and all the rest didn't exist, in a row, one after another. The second is a few years later, eleven or twelve years old and obscenely terrified of death because I didn't really believe in God anymore. My parents, eventually fed up with my panic, took me to see our local priest, who gave me a couple of metaphors to chew on and told me I should pray for guidance.

So I did, and when I was done, I realized I'd been talking to myself.

Thirty ways to die of electrocution, via Elektroschutz in 132 Bildern. Via MeFi

How you will die, via MetaFilter. The 'Filter link has some good secondary information, including this map of catatrophe-by-region. Enjoy your weekend.

Thinking of the days when this blog wasn't about the presidential election 24-7—just sixteen long days to go—here are a few links to more traditional gerrycanavan.blogspot.com fare.

* Life on earth may have originated in volcanic eruptions.

* Invest in solar, says solar industry.

* 'Never Say Die: Why We Can't Imagine Death.' Via MeFi.

* Atomic explosions. Lots.

* Buy your own deep shelter underneath London.

* How British police foiled the IRA by opening a laundromat.

* Mad Men will be back for a third season, but showrunner Matthew Weiner may not be: he wants more money.

* Consistent with Environmental Security Hypothesis predictions, when social and economic conditions were difficult, older, heavier, taller Playboy Playmates of the Year with larger waists, smaller eyes, larger waist-to-hip ratios, smaller bust-to-waist ratios, and smaller body mass index values were selected. These results suggest that environmental security may influence perceptions and preferences for women with certain body and facial features.

My unhealthy obsession with the presidential race has been crowding out the literature and pop culture blogging I normally do. Here's a linkdump to try and correct that balance:

* The Washington Post visits the Manhattan of Mad Men, c. 1962.

* How to land a 747.

* Don DeLillo (fake) blogs politics at the Onion, while the incredible José Saramago—whose excellent Blindess is both the best book I've read in months and a new motion picture out this Friday despite the fact that it is quite literally unfilmable—(real) blogs in Portuguese and Spanish. Via MeFi and Alex Greenberg.

* Salon looks at David Foster Wallace's sad last days, while Boston.com has a map of Infinite Jest.

* Survive the Outbreak: a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure zombie movie. Via MeFi. More zombie fun here.

* Grave sites of famous science fiction authors.

* Concept art from the upcoming Green Lantern movie. More at MeFi.

* Michael Moore's latest movie, Slacker Uprising, is available for free online. "This film, really isn't for anybody other than the choir," said Moore. "But that's because I believe the choir needs a song to sing every now and then." So the film's not very good, is that it? Via MeFi.

* The Evil League of Evil is hiring.

* Stephen Colbert is about to team up with Spider-Man.

* And Neanderthals loved sushi. Who doesn't?

Nuke Pop, a large archive of pop-culture images about nuclear war, is only one of many resources at Paul Brians's large collection of Science Fiction-Related Materials. Cool site. (Via Rob Latham)

American Stranger has your random advice from a samurai.

“The Way of the Samurai is found in death. Meditation on inevitable death should be performed daily. Every day, when one’s body and mind are at peace, one should meditate upon being ripped apart by arrows, rifles, spears, and swords, being carried away by surging waves, being thrown into the midst of a great fire, being struck by lightning, being shaken to death by a great earthquake, falling from thousand-foot cliffs, dying of disease or committing seppuku at the death of one’s master. And every day, without fail, one should consider himself as dead. This is the substance of the Way of the Samurai.”

In this week's PostSecret. (Thanks, Kate. These tattoos are pretty cool, too.)

Oddly moving: 'Don't Cry for Me, I'm Already Dead.' Via MeFi.

Memorable superhero deaths, as reenacted by Peeps.

A late convert to the greatness of the early Charles Schulz, I must admit to being oddly moved by this years-old requiem for Peanuts written on the occasion of Charles Schulz's death. Via Progressive Ruin, which had a nice future-of-Peanuts thing going earlier in the week.