The Daily Show went back to the Bush well last night, and the results, it must be said, were pretty hilarious. (UPDATE: Forgot to mention Colbert went there too.)

Also: the Whole Foods Boycott and a fluff interview with one of the Superfreakonomics authors. Jon Stewart has apparently never watched a science fiction movie, because he thinks geoengineering can't go wrong.

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Michael Pollan has denounced the Whole Foods boycott at New Majority.

John Mackey’s views on health care, much as I disagree with them, will not prevent me from shopping at Whole Foods. I can understand why people would want to boycott, but it’s important to play out the hypothetical consequences of a successful boycott. Whole Foods is not perfect, however if they were to disappear, the cause of improving Americans’ health by building an alternative food system, based on more fresh food, pastured and humanely raised meats and sustainable agriculture, would suffer.

He took a rather different attitude towards the chain in The Omnivore's Dilemma back in 2006, when his criticism of Whole Foods led to a twenty-five page reply from Mackey and then this reply to the reply from Pollan.

After spending time with you and reading your letter, I've wondered if perhaps I did, as you imply in your letter, present a unfair caricature of Whole Foods in The Omnivore's Dilemma, suggesting a store where organic, local and artisanal food is just window dressing to help sell a much more ordinary industrial product. Indeed, nothing would please me more than to conclude I owe you and the company an apology. I'm not quite there yet. But I sincerely hope you will prove my portrait of Whole Foods wrong, that the company has not thrown its lot in with the industrialization, globalization and dilution of organic agriculture, but rather stands for something better. For my own part, I stand ready to write that apology, and look forward to doing it.

The two met on a stage at Berkeley to continue the discussion in February the next year.

Wednesday!

* Whole Foods boycott update: consumer opinion towards the Whole Foods brand is tanking and two unions have joined the boycott. Hard to see whether anything is actually being accomplished, though. I must confess I bought a pack of Smart Dogs there last week.

* Jason Schwartzman seems to like Fantastic Mr. Fox much more than I'm expecting to.

* Please feel free to politicize my death.

* And my hometown mall had an exciting day today.

As you can see it's a little bit hectic this week. A few links:

* I've got another review in the Indy this week, this one about an upcoming fiction anthology on bad breakups.

* Five things you didn't know about District 9.

The District 9 alien homes were actually shot in a recently evacuated area of impoverished housing. The homes you see the aliens getting evicted from were homes that humans had recently been kicked out of, for real.

* The latest hints from the White House suggest that they have finally realized that Republicans are not negotiating in good faith and that Democrats will have to go it alone. This, combined with the fervor over the no-public-option trial balloon and the subsequent back-peddling, are good reason for optimism. Here's one way it might happen.

* 'Whole Foods under financial pressure.'

* Quentin Tarantino, Socrates in a dive bar.

A few Saturday links.

* Mom Tasered in front of her kids for talking on a cell phone speeding "disorderly conduct" no damn reason.

* The nascent Whole Foods boycott gets some big media attention. Apparently the apology email was generated after WFMI stock dropped 2% yesterday.

* Adam Kotsko rewatches the second season of Mad Men for PopMatters.

* Return of the Militias: the Southern Poverty Law Center reports. MetaFilter discusses.

Friday night! Let's linkdump.

* If you sent a letter to Whole Foods about the John Mackey Wall Street Journal editorial, you probably got a response tonight. I'd post what I received, but the small print at the bottom instructs me I cannot:

This email contains proprietary and confidential material for the sole use of the intended recipient. Any review, use, distribution or disclosure by others without the permission of the sender is strictly prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient (or authorized to receive for the recipient), please contact the sender by reply email and delete all copies of the message.

I certainly appreciate their crafting a non-apology apology for my sole use. I don't know how Daily Kos got a hold of it.

* NJ-GOV blogging: TPM, TPM, FiveThirtyEight.com.

* Also in Jersey news: Bob Dylan hassled by local NJ cop.

* NC-SEN blogging: Everyone hates Richard Burr.

* Airlock Alpha speaks the truth: it's obviously too early for another Battlestar Galactica reboot.

* 'Amusing Ourselves to Death': Huxley vs. Orwell.



* From Betsy to Rush to Sarah Palin to Chuck Grassley to your own old relatives forwarding you crazy shit.

* SF on HBO?

* Joe Siegel's heirs have won rights to a few more early Superman stories.

* Whitney Phillips at Confessions of an Aca/Fan tracks down the provenance of the recent Obama/Joker/SOCIALISM graffiti. Of course, it was 4chan.

* Obama sips it. Paris Hilton loves it. Mary J. Blige won't sing without it. How did a plastic water bottle, imported from a military dictatorship thousands of miles away, become the epitome of cool?

More on that John Mackey editorial and the possibility of a nationwide Whole Foods boycott from TPM, Pandagon, Ezra Klein, Daily Kos, Daily Kos, Daily Kos, Facebook, and the Whole Foods forums. This backlash has been a long-time coming; their anti-union politics are bad enough.

But I can't decide whether my new "boycotting Whole Foods since earlier this morning" tagline is a joke or not; being honest, where else are we supposed to shop for food? It's not as if Food Lion and Harris Teeter are known for their commitment to fair labor practices, progressive causes, and sustainability.

Durhamites, where do you shop for food?

Thursday!

* The First Rule of J-School Is You Don't Talk About J-School Debt.

* Nowhere in Manhattan. Hard to believe it is Manhattan. Via MeFi.

* Nnedi Okorafor has a nice guest post at Nebula on Africa and science fiction.

* The CEO of Whole Foods doesn't want us to have health care. OpenLeft doesn't want us to shop at Whole Foods anymore. Everyone at MetaFilter is mad at everyone.

* Top 10 Superhero Comics 2000-2009. I've read more of these than I would have expected, and can plug a bunch: All-Star Superman, Monster Society of Evil, New Frontier, Omega the Unknown, and Planetary are all worth reading in their own ways, as are some of the sillier Big Two offerings (I'll admit to being fond of Booster Gold). Y: The Last Man is good, too, but of course it doesn't really count. Via NeilAlien.

* Language and time. I found this interesting.

David Hauser and colleagues first showed that people with an angrier temperament are more likely to think of themselves as moving through time, than to think of time as moving towards them. You can test this on yourself by considering which day of the week a meeting has changed to, if it was originally planned for Wednesday but has been moved forward two days. If you think it's now changed to Friday, then you're someone who thinks of themselves as moving through time, whilst if you think the meeting is now on Monday, then you're more passive, and you think about time passing you by.

I'm a Monday person for sure. I see can see why Ezra thinks it would be Friday, but it seems very unnatural to me to spatialize the week that way.

* And you can now tweet @Gliese581d.