Superman, socialist. As the link notes, he's an illegal immigrant, too.

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?

Mostly non-apocalyptic Sunday links. (UPDATE: Yes, I know it's Saturday.)

* J.G. Ballard's last story, in the Guardian.

* The governments of Bolivia, Cuba, Dominica, Honduras, Nicaragua and Venezuela have issued a statement in response to the 5th Summit of the Americas that declares, in part, that capitalism is destroying the planet. Why do the governments of Bolivia, Cuba, Dominica, Honduras, Nicaragua and Venezuela hate America / Jesus / puppies?

* See also: An anti-environmentalist lobbying coalition for industry has been caught, cigarette-lobby-like, ignoring its own experts.

* See also: this cartoon.



* Myths about the National Popular Vote Bill. This page actually answered a few of my objections, mostly about the likelihood of post-election pact-breakage.

* Crimes committed by Ferris Bueller during his day off.

Does the word postcapitalism look odd to you? It should, because you hardly ever see it. We have a blank spot in our vision of the future. Perhaps we think that history has somehow gone away. In fact, history is with us now more than ever, because we are at a crux in the human story. Choosing not to study a successor system to capitalism is an example of another kind of denial, an ostrich failure on the part of the field of economics and of business schools, I think, but it’s really all of us together, a social aporia or fear. We have persistently ignored and devalued the future—as if our actions are not creating that future for our children, as if things never change. But everything evolves. With a catastrophe bearing down on us, we need to evolve at nearly revolutionary speed. So some study of what could improve and replace our society’s current structure and systems is in order. If we don’t take such steps, the consequences will be intolerable. On the other hand, successfully dealing with this situation could lead to a sustainable civilization that would be truly exciting in its human potential.

What comes after capitalism? Kim Stanley Robinson has a report on the future, while David Harvey investigates what comes right before what comes after capitalism.