Saturday!

* John Lanchester: More general conditions involving gender abnormality affect one in three thousand people – which, globally, is two million people. There are more human beings who are in some degree intersex than there are Botswanans. (via Vu)

* I have no idea what to think or say about Marge Simpson's Playboy spread.

* Regender.com swaps gendered language on websites. Here's my site regendered.

* And, in non-gender news, the Freakonomics folks are facing tons of criticism in the blogosphere over their new book, including Krugman, Brad DeLong, and a four-part series at Climate Progress. The authors have posted a response at the Freakonomics blog, but as Matt Yglesias and their own commenters note, it's fairly limp. I liked the first book, but it looks like I'll skip this one.

Super Happy Insomnia Linkdump.

* Here come your Simpsons stamps.

* Thomas Lennon says The State DVD is finally coming out this July. Meanwhile, State alums Michael Ian Black and Michael Showalter have a new show and a new blog.

* Only 53% of Americans think capitalism is better than socialism. What happens when we cross 50%? Does it mean over-educated literary theory PhDs suddenly get to be in charge? I certainly hope it means that.

* The dark side of Dubai. Ugly, ugly stuff.

* On the neuropsychology of zombies. Via Pharyngula.

* A good post I forgot to link to a few days ago from FiveThirtyEight.com: Nate Silver predicts when various states will legalize gay marriage. My expectation is that a federal court ruling will make gay marriage a nationwide reality via the full faith and credit clause long before Mississippi—a state sweltering with the heat of injustice—gets its chance in 2024.

* And Part 4 of Matt Zoller Seitz's Wes Anderson documentary is up. This part's on J.D. Salinger.

Still working through a backlog of open tabs. First up: ecology and the environment.

* There's no such thing as clean coal. Just ask the Coen brothers. Also at Grist: dealing with the fact of environmentalism's soft public support.

As I have argued before, our attention to wide but weak public support is misplaced, leaving us vulnerable to the cycles of an ADD media and alienating our potential core. It is increasingly evident that the vast scale of climate risk provokes a number of numbing psychological responses -- pre-conscience cognitive dissonance and buffering in various forms -- which exacerbates the usual forces of diffusion.

The only means by which a worldview and solution that is significantly at odds with majority public opinion may be driven onto the public agenda is through the agency of "a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens" -- in other words, a determined, partisan core.

* George Will: still lyin'.

* 'Hacking the planet: The only climate solution left?' First up: a sunshield. I guess it's true what they say: from the dawn of time mankind really has yearned to block out the sun.

* Sympathy for the Unabomber? Don't open any packages from Kevin Kelly for a few days.

* Times Square and several blocks of Broadway are being shut down to cars for most of the year in the name of traffic management and pedestrian malls. Awesome.

* Nuke your city. Via BLDG BLOG (which has a lot of examples) and io9. Of course, we've already done Durham.

As I was saying yesterday it's a little strange to find oneself in a post-Conan universe, even if it's been nearly a decade since I watched an episode. Between his work on The Simpsons and his early work on Late Night, he's definitely something like a saint for my particular demographic.

Huffington Post has some highlights from the final show.

A new Simpsons opening sequence? Is nothing sacred?

Lots of links to dump today. Here's a preliminary batch...

* There's a new Springsteen album out today, which all right-thinking people have undoubtedly already purchased on iTunes. Slate and Salon both have Boss-centric coverage in celebration.

* The banking crisis has brought down the government of Iceland. More here.

* At one point, The Simpsons was funny. Eye on Springfield has proof. Via Kottke.

* Regional pizza styles of the U.S.

* LEGO Vipers. Oh, BSG, I can't stay mad at you.

* Favorite photos of George W. Bush. My favorite is probably this one, which I've linked to before, but they all have their charms.



You're doing it wrong...

Sorry there's been so many linkdumps and so little of everything else lately. I'll get back to business soon.

* Watchmen settlement reached!

* Top ten other science fiction films for the thinking man.

* Duke's "Hoof 'n' Horn" is running Superman: The Musical this week and next. Need I say more?

* It's a show I don't watch anymore, but nonetheless I'm greatly angered to discover that The Simpsons completely retconned the history of Homer and Marge's marriage. I'm aware it happened last year. WORST EPISODE EVER.

* 'The Turning Point: How the Susan Crawford interview changes everything we know about torture.' Via Matt Yglesias. More on torture at Glenn Greenwald. I still haven't decided whether prosecutions are better than a truth and reconciliation commission, but there has to be a reckoning.

* The headline reads, "History May See Lincoln-Like Greatness in George W. Bush." Suuuuuuure.

* The facts are in: college is expensive. Very expensive. How else could I make such mad bank?

Geo-engineering means never having to change the way we live: '10 mad ways to save the planet.'

10. Seed the ocean with iron filings.
9. Mirrors over the Sahara.
8. A sunshield in space.
7. Artificial weather.
6. Artificial volcanoes.
5. Factory filters.
4. Jellyfish farms.
3. Wrapping up Greenland.
2. Replant forests from the air.

And the number one mad way to save the planet...

1. Pursue conservation, efficiency, and renewable fuels and slightly curb overconsumption in developed nations. Literally move heaven and earth.

Parodia y homenaje en Los Simpson.

Late night.

* 'Our Phony Economy': Why measuring GDP doesn't tell us much of anything we need to know. In Harper's, via MeFi.

The purpose of an economy is to meet human needs in such a way that life becomes in some respect richer and better in the process. It is not simply to produce a lot of stuff. Stuff is a means, not an end. Yet current modes of economic measurement focus almost entirely on means. For example, an automobile is productive if it produces transportation. But today we look only at the cars produced per hour worked. More cars can mean more traffic and therefore a transportation system that is less productive. The medical system is the same. The aim should be healthy people, not the sale of more medical services and drugs. Now, however, we assess the economic contribution of the medical system on the basis of treatments rather than results. Economists see nothing wrong with this. They see no problem that the medical system is expected to produce 30 to 40 percent of new jobs over the next thirty years. “We have to spend our money on something,” shrugged a Stanford economist to the New York Times. This is more insanity. Next we will be hearing about “disease-led recovery.” To stimulate the economy we will have to encourage people to be sick so that the economy can be well.

* Springfield Punx Simpsonizes celebrities and superheroes. At right: Tobias Fünke.

* Al Giordano says Tim Kaine is growing on him for VP.

The number one rule in choosing a vice presidential nominee is "first, do no harm." If you're a presidential nominee, you don't want a running mate that will distract from you, commit gaffes, speak off-message, or that secretly thinks he or she is too good to be number two.

And the second rule is, "then, do some good." You want a VP that will reinforce your messages and make voters more comfortable with you.

Kaine is so far passing both tests with flying colors.

I'm not there yet—as I've mentioned before, just about everything I hear about Kaine turns me off—but Al's instincts have never steered me wrong. I guess we'll see.

* What are the essential reads in literary fantasy? Personally I'd have to start my list with heavy-hitters from the twentieth century (and my bookshelf) like Kafka, Borges, García Márquez, and Calvino...

* Mission accomplished, corporations! Wal-Mart employee voluntarily enforces her entirely false belief that "copyright lasts forever."

* And will Burn After Reading, the new Coen Brothers comedy, be the new greatest movie of all time? All signs point to yes:

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

Periscope Studios has an on-going project to Simpsonize The Wire. Via kottke.

Let's rock Tuesday.

* Today's election day in Pennsylvania. Obama is telling people it'll be "closer than they think," but he's been hurt too bad this month and he's almost certainly not going to close the original nineteen-point gap. I predict he loses by about ten.

This will be spun in the media as a massive victory for Clinton and will result in six more weeks of winter. The new "final final decision" moves to May 6 with North Carolina and Indiana. Karl Rove laughs maniacally and eats another baby.

* Dmitri Nabokov will not burn his father's last novel after all.

* The American economy is totally boned.

* And Paul McCartney says you should go vegetarian to save the planet.

Dial B for Blog returns to fertile ground with a Simpsons history of comic books.

This week's issue of the newly restarted Dial B for Blog has the secret origins of Bartman. I read a fair number of Radioactive Man comics when I was younger, so this was a nice little trip down memory lane; of course, Dial B for Blog has mined that ground too:

Radioactive Man #100
The Man Faces of Radioactive Man
The Secret Origin of Radioactive Man

The last day of summer, which I diligently passed in a futile attempt to finish up my summer tasks before school starts tomorrow. (Came close. So close.) I found time for a little TV, though, and the show of the week was Showtime's Dexter, new to DVD. Easily surpassing Weeds as the best of Showtime's lineup, most of you probably already know the basic setup: Dexter is a police procedural centered on a blood-splatter analyst who, in his spare time, is a serial killer himself. As schlocky as this sounds, the show is actually good, mostly credited to the strong performance of Michael C. Hall as the sociopathic title character and James Remar as Dexter's deceased father Harry, a psychologically scarred police officer who recognized his foster son's violent tendencies and trained him to safely kill only those who "deserve" it. In this respect Dexter joins Jack Bauer and McGarnagle (witty cultural reference cribbed from this spoiler-laden Yahoo.com review) as the latest entry in the increasingly popular (at least in George Bush's America) "breaking the law to save the law" genre.

But the true progenitor of Dexter, I think, is actually the superhero comic, from which it takes its damaged Dark Knight archetype, its moral universe, Dexter's common ruminations on his secret identity, its flashback-laden form, and even its sense of Camp (see photo)—including Supermanesque winks to the camera at the end of a number of episodes. (The comics connection is made explicit by Julie Benz's character in the yet-to-be-aired but deliciously-torrentable second season premiere, when she compares Dexter's bizarre disappearances to "Clark Fucking Kent.")

If the show suffers from anything, it's surely this comic-book sense of character—the characterization seems to vary greatly depending on who is writing a particular episode. Even Dexter himself shifts pretty dramatically between the pilot and the later season one episodes—once a true sociopath, only miming his humanity to innoculate himself against suspicion, he very quickly devolves into a much more conventional, conflicted and relatable version of the character, with the early second season threatening to just go ahead and turn him into Angel altogether. Still, I'm hopeful, because the plotline they've chosen for the second season is just about the only worthy follow-up to the first season's (spoilers, highlight to read): Whereas in the first season his nemesis is villainous—another, more brutal and indiscriminate serial killer—in the second season Dexter's submerged stash of bodies is discovered and his nemesis is the FBI supercop brought in to take him down, that is, a traditional police hero. (Literary analysis cribbed from Jaimee.)

It's a promising show. Keep an eye on it.

And now here's McGarnagle.

Out-Raj-ous. I'm offended less by the transparently cynical attempt to "diversify" Riverdale High by adding token characters like Raj Patel, Chuck Clayton, and "Veronica's friend Ginger Lopez" and more by the idea that there's anyone anywhere buying Archie Comics in 2007.

According to Ruiz, Raj has just moved into Riverdale High and likes sci-fi movies, building models and making films. And, he’s just as impulsive as Archie.

Coming up with Raj’s look was one of the biggest challenges of creating the whole character. I wanted a character that reflected his background without looking like a caricature and still fit in seamlessly with the other characters.

...

Ruiz has given Raj a perky appearance. He’s a bit smaller than most of Riverdale’s males. His lively, optimistic personality is portrayed as much through his wardrobe, bedroom and expressive face, as it is through his words.

...

As for the rest of the family, there aren’t much background details but they do look good. Raj’s father Ravi Patel is a doctor and his character is along the lines of Mr Lodge, only younger and Indian.

Thank God they aren't caricatures. Via MeFi.

I couldn't decide whether a Simpsons or Clone High clip was more appropriate here, so you'll excuse me for going with both.

I have another article in the Independent this week, this one a book review and interview with local author Gordon Theisen, author of Staying Up Much Too Late: Edward Hopper's "Nighthawks" and the Dark Side of the American Psyche, which I enjoyed a lot.

The book begins with Theisen's polemic against optimism, and that's where we start our conversation in the OCSC, too. Optimism isn't all that bad, he tells me; it's just that "taken to an extreme it can be destructive and deeply depressing." The trouble with America, the reason so many of us feel so strung-out so much of the time, is that our optimism drives us to think that perfect happiness and untold riches lie just out of our grasp—and if we work just a little harder, spread ourselves just a little thinner, we can have it all.

But we can't—not all of us, anyway. Maybe not most of us.

"Optimism breaks our fantasies, constantly makes us feel as though we're not really living, not making the grade. It's why people make themselves miserable with hard work.

"Not me, of course," he quickly adds, smiling. "I'm talking about other people."

And when riches don't fall out of the sky, when things don't work out, it's as if you've "brought these things on yourself" by not believing hard enough. "Somebody always has to lose," he says. "We forget that."

This boundless optimism hounds us all the way to the grave. "When my father was dying of cancer," Theisen tells me, "the nurse came over and told me, 'He's a fighter.' And that's the way we always talk about people with cancer, that they're fighters—as if it's their fault when they lose."

As with so many things I loved when I was young—the church, democracy, delicious Coca-Cola—I have an extremely complicated relationship with The Simpsons. Most days I just pretend it's off the air. This may seem a bit surprising, especially given that for most of high school and college I had entire conversations (and occasionally newspaper columns) consisting of nothing but Simpsons quotes—but this actually appears to be the nearly universal experience for people in my particular demographic. Somewhere around year twelve or so we all suddenly realized that the show was no longer funny—and though I'm periodically assured by people I otherwise trust that it's somehow become funny again, I've never taken the bait.

The idea that they're still beating the dead horse after six additional years is more than a little inconceivable.

The Simpsons Movie, which Ryan and I saw today despite our better judgments, is a Simpsons movie only in the very limited sense that the characters in the movie look and sound like the Simpsons you remember. But this is in every other sense a kids' movie; anyone looking for the grand satire of the glory years will be as disappointed as we were.

Afterwards we tried to figure out what went wrong, how this ever could have happened, and we think it might be this: The Simpsons always had a problem with the gooey family stuff, even in the best of times, unnecessarily cramming it into nearly every episode in a way that always threatened to crowd out the funny, subversive moments which were the only reason to watch. They needed the family stuff to sell the show to a mainstream audience, but having gotten the mainstream, they then needed to keep it, which meant more family stuff, which meant less subversion, and so on and so forth—which is how a show that I was forbidden to watch when it first came out has now put out a movie that's just barely more adult than Shrek.

It's a shame, and honestly something of a minor cultural tragedy—but then I suppose an earlier and equally cantankerous version of me might not have understood what happened to The Flintstones, either.

I sure do miss it, though.