Raleigh may be at the top of all those "where to live" lists for yuppies, but it's also the sixth most dangerous city for pedestrians.

From Cynical-C: a mammoth timeline of science fiction inventions.

Tuesday Night Linkdump #2: College Edition.

* Via my friend Eric via The Believer, Donald Barthelme’s reading list. Joseph Campbell, Donald? Really?

* Facing fallen endowments and needier students, many colleges are looking more favorably on wealthier applicants as they make their admissions decisions this year. Meritocracy!

* A master's degree is social media is actually not as stupid as everybody is pretending, Twitter-twittering aside.

* Four college majors that will still get you a job, even in today’s economy. Science fiction studies snubbed again.

* Nobody panic: MLA citation style has changed.

One thousand novels everyone must read. Via Bookninja.

Why one thousand?
Why novels?
Why everyone?
Why "must"?
Why (yes) read?

If artists depend on angst and unrest to fuel their creative fire, then at least in one sense the 43rd presidency has been a blessing. Eight years is an eternity in the life of a culture, and when we look back on an era, we do it through pinholes: a movie here, a book there. What will stand out, decades from now, as the singular emblems of this moment in history? Newsweek asked its cultural critics to pick the one work in their field that they believe exemplifies what it was like to be alive in the age of George W. Bush.

Battlestar Galactica
American Idol
Jeff Koons’s Hanging Heart
The Corrections
Black Hawk Down
Cohen’s Borat
Green Day’s American Idiot
Far Away
Rick Warren's The Purpose-Driven Life

Battlestar is a decent if limited pick, and Idol a fairly inspired one, though not for the reasons given—but the exclusion of The Wire is simply criminal, not to mention Sopranos and Deadwood, and (yes) 24. For film, it might actually be The Dark Knight, or else There Will Be Blood. (Maybe Children of Men?) For books—surely the hardest category—it's probably The Road, for a few reasons. I'm too illiterate in music to even begin to answer: the best I could manage would be a half-serious suggestion of Gnarls Barkley, or else just name a Springsteen album because that's how I roll.

Via The Chutry Experiment, who points (among other things) to the unforgivable omission of viral video.

Top tens.

* Ten best books of the year.

* Ten best archeology finds of 2008.

* Ten sci-fi films that should never be remade, and five that probably should be.

* National Geographic's top ten most viewed photos of 2008.

One hundred notable books of 2008, from the New York Times.

Fimoculous has your list of lists for 2008.

Who was the dominant writer of the twentieth century, if indeed such a question even makes any sense at all? In rejecting Alexander Solzhenitsyn's claim on the title, the Paper Cuts blog nominates George Orwell. As you might expect from the last time we played this game, I don't think anyone can really challenge Joyce, unless it's Kafka or (maybe) Gabriel García Márquez.

According to a senior government official who served with high-level security clearances in five administrations, "There exists a database of Americans, who, often for the slightest and most trivial reason, are considered unfriendly, and who, in a time of panic, might be incarcerated. The database can identify and locate perceived 'enemies of the state' almost instantaneously." He and other sources tell Radar that the database is sometimes referred to by the code name Main Core. One knowledgeable source claims that 8 million Americans are now listed in Main Core as potentially suspect. In the event of a national emergency, these people could be subject to everything from heightened surveillance and tracking to direct questioning and possibly even detention.

Meanwhile, in George Bush's America, bad things continue to happen. More at MetaFilter and ThinkProgress.

The prize for understated gallows humor goes to the very first comment at the article itself:

I find it very difficult to believe that Dick Cheney would be part of anything that was not in our best interest.

Posted by: escoBam on May 20, 2008 12:22 AM

Following up on 1001 novels to read before you die: 1001 films to see before you die.

1001 books to read before you die.

Via Boing Boing, Wikipedia's list of failed predictions.