By the time they have been retired for two years, 78% of former NFL players have gone bankrupt or are under financial stress because of joblessness or divorce. Or, apparently, not-keeping-it-in-your-pants-ism:

Children almost always complicate the issue. How to limit paternity obligations is a challenge for pro athletes. Former NBA forward Shawn Kemp (who has at least seven children by six women) and, more recently, Travis Henry (nine by nine) have seen their fortunes sapped by monthly child-support payments in the tens of thousands of dollars. Last month Henry, who reportedly earned almost $11 million over seven years in the NFL, tried and failed to temporarily reduce one of his nine child-support payments by arguing that he could no longer afford the $3,000 every month. Two weeks later he was jailed for falling $16,600 behind in payments for his child in Frostproof, Fla.

Also via MeFi.

Sunday!

* Literature: no cell phones allowed.

JULIET: Fakn death. C U Latr.

ROMEO: gud plan.

Recently published narrative fiction is still uneasy about the telephone, much less cell phones or the Internet...

* In defense of The Life Aquatic: Jamie Rich defends the most unfairly maligned of all of Wes Anderson's films. (Via Rushmore Academy.)

* 'North Carolina Town Prints Own Currency to Support Local Business.' I support the effort, but I thought that was illegal...

* The Washington Post continues its efforts to make up for allowing George Will to lie with impunity on its editorial pages.

* Muppets vs. Zombies. If only it were real.

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.

Alan Moore, seen here grooming his beard, explained the current financial crisis in Miracleman #16. Via NeilAlien.

Before you throw this letter into the proverbial round file, let’s be clear: this is the first time I have ever asked for a bailout from the Federal Reserve. I know what you’re thinking. Why do I deserve your largesse, and I do mean largesse, since I’m asking for five million big ones? The answer is simple. Like many of our nation’s financial institutions, I am simply too big to fail. If investors were allowed to witness the collapse of Freddie, Fannie, and then Andy, I can’t begin to describe what havoc it would wreak on their already frayed nerves. Actually, I can describe it: global financial calamity. I think we can both agree that, to dodge this bullet, ten million dollars is a small price to pay. (I know that I originally asked for five, but since I started writing this letter my financial situation has deteriorated in grave and unexpected ways.)

Andy Borowitz is too big to fail. In the New Yorker, alongside John Cassiday's claim that the Lehman Brothers collapse gave the election to Obama (see also Krugman last night) and a fascinating article on the legal intricacies of trust funds for dogs.

Is it right to give so much money to a dog—or to dogs generally? And what is the limit of such dispensations to pets? Will there come a time when dogs can sue for a new guardian—or to avoid being put to sleep? One philosopher draws a distinction between the needs of Trouble and those of dogs as a whole. Helmsley “did a disservice to the people in the dog world and to dogs generally by leaving such an enormous amount of money for her own dog,” Jeff McMahan, who teaches philosophy at Rutgers University, said. “To give even two million dollars to a single little dog is like setting the money on fire in front of a group of poor people. To bestow that amount of money is contemptuous of the poor, and that may be one reason she did it.

...

Throughout her life, Leona Helmsley demonstrated not just a lack of affection for her fellow-humans but an absence of understanding as well. The irony is that, for all that her will purports to show her love for Trouble, Leona didn’t seem to understand dogs very well, either. “What is funny about giving all this money to one dog is that it doesn’t deal with the fact that the dog is going to be sad that Leona died,” Elizabeth Harman, who teaches philosophy at Princeton, said. “What would make this dog happy is for a loving family to take it in. The dog doesn’t want the money. The money will just make everyone who deals with the dog strange.”

While I've been finishing up my absurdly busy weekend, Wall Street has apparently collapsed around our ears.

More on firing up the base(s): Obama has raised $8 million since Palin's speech last night from over 130,000 people, and is on pace to raise $10 million by McCain's speech tonight, according to Drudge...

Warren Buffet recently made a one million dollar bet that a hedge fund "won't beat the returns of S&P 500 after their extremely hefty fees are accounted for." The bet was made using the Long Bet mechanism set up and operated by the Long Now Foundation.

Of course, we're talked about the more scammy aspects of hedge funds before. Via Boing Boing.

The Bush administration continues to fight the entirely sensible decision that U.S. currency discriminates against the blind, and continues to lose.

The U.S. acknowledges the design hinders blind people but it argued that blind people have adapted. Some relied on store clerks to help them, some used credit cards and others folded certain corners to help distinguish between bills.

The court ruled 2-1 that such adaptations were insufficient. The government might as well argue that, since handicapped people can crawl on all fours or ask for help from strangers, there's no need to make buildings wheelchair accessible, the court said.

A brief history of the liquidity crisis, in cartoon form.

Via Matt Yglesias and everywhere else, this is why I'm glad I have no money:

It’s just been announced that JP Morgan will buy Bear Stearns for $2 a share, implying a value of about $250 million. Given that the company headquarters is said to be worth about $1.2 billion, that gives the BS banking business a value of negative $1 billion. And that’s only after the Fed agreed to take on $30 billion worth of toxic waste from the BS portfolio, politely described as “less-liquid assets.”

Bear Stearns, Wall Street's fifth-biggest investment bank, had opened at $60 a share on Thursday.

There's much more at Huffington Post, MetaFilter, and elsewhere, including Alan Greenspan's claim that this is the worst financial crisis since World War II. And he should know, he helped cause it.

Thursday links:

* The North Pacific Trash Vortex, which was the size of Texas in September, is now larger than the entire United States. My horror about what we're doing to the planet has likewise quintupled in size in that time—though I must admit there's something eerily poetic about the idea that our wasteful patterns of consumption are creating a kind of shadow U.S. comprised entirely of garbage. Via Daily Kos.

* Science fiction and space technology, an educational site at NASA. Thanks to Klarr for the pointer.

* ...imagining the future is not an issue of imagination vs. actualization, and neither is it an issue of affirming the future, or "keeping the future alive." Rather, science fiction can configure the future as the conditions of possibility and constraint for social change in the present. A short essay concerning Jameson's Archeologies of the Future at CTheory.net, also via Klarr.

* "Marinaded in war and violence: Philip Dodd interviews J. G. Ballard."

* Top-earning dead celebrities, at Forbes. This year, no one can touch Elvis, not even John Lennon. Via Bitter Laughter.

* Rumors of her demise may be exaggerated: While Obama's supporters have raised $7.5 million dollars since Super Tuesday, Clinton's people have still raised about $4 million (almost enough to cover that loan she gave herself a few days ago). We don't want a repeat of New Hampshire on our hands—she's going to be in this fight for a while. Still, john in the comments notes that Obama's taken the lead in the Rasmussen prediction markets for what we think is the first time, 57-43, bolstering my claim that he is now the strong frontrunner. Can victory for the cult of Obama be far off?

* The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory & Criticism, online.

In response to the news that Clinton loaned her campaign $5 million before Super Tuesday, Obama's campaign manager sent this email out to his supporters:

The Clinton infusion of $5 million -- and there are reports it could end up being as much as $20 million -- will give them huge resources for the next set of primaries and caucuses.

Thanks to you, we have raised more than $3 million since the polls closed on February 5th. But we have no choice -- we must match their $5 million right now.

That was around 6 pm tonight. Since then, Obama's raised nearly $3 million, the total Clinton was hoping her supporters could help her raise over 3 days.

His total since the polls closed on February 5 (just over 24 hours now) is at right. It seems like every day something unprecedented happens.

Meanwhile, Clinton's senior staff have started to go without salary.

In my armchair analysis of the state of the Democratic primary race last night, I talked a lot about Obama's structural advantages going into the rest of February. Chief among these are a friendly February schedule and a functionally limitless fundraising horizon. It's why I was able to make this bold claim:

Obama +1 and above: If everything goes Obama's way and he somehow winds up ahead in Super Tuesday pledged delegates at the end of the night, then he's got the nomination sealed up, barring any really shocking gamechangers. (This is really a super-knockout, Clinton-dropping-out-this-week territory.) Unfortunately, it's completely unlikely to occur.

Now that this has actually come to pass, I should say that I don't think Clinton will actually drop out this week, not least of all because she won California—but it should become increasingly clear in the coming days that she doesn't have to resources to fight what's left of this campaign on Barack's terms the way he was able to win on hers. Today the first shoe dropped, and it's a big one: Hillary loaned her own campaign $5 million dollars in advance of Super Tuesday. (More here and here.) With Clinton apparently already contemplating another self-loan, one can only conclude that the campaign has little or no cash on hand. This does not bode well for her ability to launch a comeback later in the month, lending credence to my theory that Super Tuesday will come to be seen, in retrospect, as the night Obama won the election. It's not over, but he's playing with a very strong hand.

What's it's like to be a stockbroker.

Once, he confessed to his boss his misgivings about the performance of his customers' portfolios. His boss told him point-blank, "Blaine, you're confused about your job." A fellow broker added, "Your job is to turn your clients' net worth into your own."

Don't make me quote Brecht.

But is it disaster porn you crave? Pick your flavor:

* Natural: Natural disasters have quadrupled in the last two decades. Lucky this like everything else on planet Earth has nothing whatsoever to do with human behavior. Via ThinkProgress.

* Financial: “Our entire banking system is a complete disaster,” he wrote. “In my opinion, nearly every major bank would be insolvent if they marked their assets to market.” Via Atrios.

* Personal:

I know a lot of people who are thinking they'll have to get a new computer soon, so I thought they might be interested in what AskMetafilter had to say on the subject.