Things I've enjoyed on the Internet today.

* A Seth tribute to Charles Schulz.

* The ruins of Detroit's abandoned Belle Island Zoo. Via MeFi.

* Spy Vibe, a blog devoted to the '60s spy aesthetic. Also via MeFi.

* Three Jane Austen sci-fi films are apparently in the pipeline: Pride, Prejudice, amp; Zombies; Pride & Predators; and Lost in Austen.. What can account for Austenmania?

* I can't believe putting a totally unqualified action-movie star in charge of the world's fifth largest economy has turned out so badly for California. More on this from Ezra Klein, who actually points the finger not at Arnold but at systemic gridlock, i.e., the California state constitution and deluded Orange County Republicans.

* Why we love gambling: almost winning is almost as good as actually winning, as far as our neurochemistry is concerned.

* Grade inflation is a feedback loop: students now expect a B just for showing up.

* Life as a tie-in novelist.

* Braid, Game of the Year 2008 by all accounts, is finally coming to the PC.

Saturday night's all right for blogging.

* How we kill geniuses. Via MetaFilter.

* Eleanor Clift loses one of her uncountably many demerits in agitating for Howard Dean to HHS.

* The unsustainability of sustainable energy.

* It looks like Michael Steele was the perfect person to head up the Republican party—a week on the job and he's already embroiled in a corruption scandal.

* Yes we can. Yes we did, now leave us alone.

* The University of Ottawa's Denis Rancourt has been suspended from teaching and is facing possible dismissal for promising all students an A+ on the first day of class. I think it was the + that did it—if he'd just promised them As it would have been business as usual... (via Pharyngula)

* Science fiction as religion. Via io9.

Over at Crooked Timber, Harry Brighouse argues that there's no such thing as grade inflation and that it wouldn't even matter if there were. He's probably right that the evidence for grade inflation is mostly anecdotal, but I tend to think it's real nonetheless, and furthermore I tend to think it's absolutely a problem insofar as it accelerates a student-as-consumer understanding of a university degree as a service purchased and not a distinction earned.