Monday night bloggity blogs.

* Samuel Delany's "The Star Pit" as a radio show. Really good.

* More on the surprise Dollhouse renewal, including word that "Epitaph One" will likely be aired after all and an interview with Joss. Too bad about Terminator; Bill Simmon links to a Fox executive explaining the one had nothing to do with the other, except insofar as it did.

"[Sarah Connor] has completed its run," Fox entertainment president Kevin Reilly confirmed at a press conference this morning. "I think it had a nice little run. It was a good show. It was not an either or [with Dollhouse]. We did see it tailing off a bit [in the ratings]. It had a nice creative core, but, ultimately, we made the bet on Dollhouse, so that's it for [Sarah Connor]... We make no apologies. We gave it a lot of support and some consistent scheduling. We tried and thought it was time to move on."

* Benen and Yglesias explain how the right's schoolyard strategy on Pelosi and torture may be making a truth commission much more likely.

* Rick Perry has abandoned neosecessionism. Score one for the Northern aggressors.

* I was so outraged by the very idea of this I completely forgot to blog it: someone's written a Catcher in the Rye sequel and their name isn't J.D.

"Just like the first novel, he leaves, but this time he's not at a prep school, he's at a retirement home in upstate New York," said California. "It's pretty much like the first book in that he roams around the city, inside himself and his past. He's still Holden Caulfield, and has a particular view on things. He can be tired, and he's disappointed in the goddamn world. He's older and wiser in a sense, but in another sense he doesn't have all the answers."

Bunch of phonies.

* Maureen Dowd plagiarizes Josh Marshall and everyone has a really good time with it.

* The New Yorker covers the sixth mass extinction event. Print edition only, because analysis of an ongoing mass extinction event isn't something you just give away for free. A few more links at Kottke.

* Kos and Yglesias on epically bad ideas to save newspapers.

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.

Obama science adviser John Holdren says that geo-engineering isn't on the table after all.

Rather than focusing on what Holdren doesn’t believe, let’s focus on what he does. I asked him a simple question. Does he stand by what he published 3 years ago, which I often quote:

“The ‘geo-engineering’ approaches considered so far appear to be afflicted with some combination of high costs, low leverage, and a high likelihood of serious side effects.“

He wrote back, “I said exactly that to Seth Borenstein.” In his earlier email, Holdren wrote bluntly:

I said that the approaches that have been surfaced so far seem problematic in terms of both efficacy and side effects, but we have to look at the possibilities and understand them because if we get desperate enough it will be considered. I also made clear that this was my personal view, not Administration policy. Asked whether I had mentioned geo-engineering in any White House discussions, though, I said that I had. This is NOT the same thing as saying the White House is giving serious consideration to geo-engineering – which it isn’t — and I am disappointed that the headline and the text of the article suggest otherwise.

Also at Climate Progress: 'How climate change is causing a new age of extinction.'

The world's coral reefs are dying, suggesting the world could be "on the brink of a mass extinction event." That's not good. Via Daily Kos.

This thread from YayHooray (via MeFi) is easily the coolest thing I've linked to this year and possibly the coolest thing I've linked to in the entire time I've been doing this, with all the great flowcharts and infographics you've come to love from years on the innertubes. Some highlights:

this week's blog icon, the LEGO anatomy chart
probably next week's blog icon, the gummi anatomy chart
the week after that, sci-fi awesomeness
the interstate highway system as a subway map
your digestive system as a subway map
area codes in which Ludacris claims to have hoes
Sarah Palin pregnancy decision map
the map of Zork that doubles as my desktop
New Jersey invites you to come and see it all
extinction timeline, 1950-2050
narrative map of classic Choose Your Own Adventure novel The Cave of Time
risk perception and actual hazards
a chart of how Americans spend their money that seems to strongly argue for a national salary cap around $100,000
a map of the United States expressed in terms of proximate distance from Knoxville, TN
the Indo-European family tree (and again)
a visual guide to the financial crisis
a flowchart history of Cubism

Keep in mind those are just highlights. This is can't miss.

Monday night ecology.

* Starbucks has an official corporate policy of wasting a whole lot of water for no good reason.

* At least 25% of the world's mammal species are at risk of extinction, according to the first assessment of their status for a decade.

* Are we past the global warming tipping point?

'Wake Up, Freak Out, Then Get a Grip'—the single best viral video about apocalyptic climate change and the urgent necessity to at last act that I've yet seen. Via MetaFilter.


Wake Up, Freak Out - then Get a Grip from Leo Murray on Vimeo.