Waiting for Vu in Ann Arbor with the South Lyon blues again.

* The end of fish. Via MeFi.

* I must be getting old—it's the second day in a row I've agreed with a conservative on the Supreme Court. And this time it was Antonin Scalia!

"The cross doesn't honor non-Christians who fought in the war?" Scalia asks, stunned.

"A cross is the predominant symbol of Christianity, and it signifies that Jesus is the son of God and died to redeem mankind for our sins," replies Eliasberg, whose father and grandfather are both Jewish war veterans.

"It's erected as a war memorial!" replies Scalia. "I assume it is erected in honor of all of the war dead. The cross is the most common symbol of ... of ... of the resting place of the dead."

I think he's right about this; it seems to me to be a pretty clear (and frankly inoffensive) case of civil religion, which is historically acceptable in our legal tradition. Dissenting views from Steve Benen and Pharyngula.

* Also via MeFi: results from OKCupid data that suggests race's impact on online dating behavior.

* George Saunders lives in a tent city for GQ.

Sunday! Links!

* Jaimee has a new poem online at Country Dog Review.

* Traxus has a nice post on status update activism jumping off my post at HASTAC the other day.

* In praise of the sci-fi corridor.

* All about ocean acidification, the climate change disaster no one is even talking about.

* Confessions of an Aca/Fan has two good posts about where District 9 came from, one on transmedia promotion strategies and the other on Afrofuturism.

* NeilAlien is your source for Disney/Marvel merger news, especially more Photoshopped images than you can possibly handle. Here are even more Photoshopped images.

* Why is Glenn Beck wearing an East German military uniform on the cover of his new book? No, really, why?

More!

* The World Future Council eyes the possibility of punishing crimes against the future, but news on climate change and ocean acidification suggests we should be more concerned about crimes against the present.

* Here comes your Grant Morrison documentary.

* Early Ditko.

* How to bring the party.

* Are graduate creative writing programs worth it? Only if they're free, and frankly maybe not even then. This, however, is quite true:

A friend and classmate of mine recently said that our program was a place where people who ordinarily never would have met in their entire lives could become best friends.

It's the best reason to do it. Via Jezebel via @sposnik.

* Alain de Botton says "it's time for an ambitious new literature of the office."

* And an art historian thinks Duchamp's readymades weren't really readymades.

This is Ms. Shearer's case against the readymades so far.

Duchamp's readymade glass ampoule, which he named ''50 cc of Paris Air,'' is larger than any that would have been readily available to pharmacists. (And she has a tape of a man from Corning Glass saying so.)

''Beautiful Breath,'' the readymade perfume bottle with Man Ray's photograph of Duchamp on it (now owned by Yves Saint Laurent) is green, she says; the real bottles of ''Un Air Embaume,'' from Rigaud, are peach-colored (like the empty but still-fragrant one that Ms. Shearer bought for $650).

The readymade snow shovel, which now exists only in photographs and replicas, ''would hurt your hand'' if you tried to use it, Ms. Shearer says, because it has a square shaft. And it doesn't have the normal reinforcements to keep it from breaking. (She has hired people to make her a snow shovel like Duchamp's and use it until it breaks.)

There is more: the bird cage is too squat for a real bird, the iron hooks in the photograph of the coat rack appear to bend in an impossible position, the French window opens the wrong way, the bottle rack has an asymmetrical arrangement of hooks and the urinal is too curvaceous to have come from the Mott Iron Works, where Duchamp said he bought it.

Friday Friday Friday.

* People are once again rediscovering what everybody used to know: the purpose of torture is to extract false confessions, not gather actionable intelligence. In this case, the torture appears to have been directed towards "finding" a connection between Iraq and al Qaeda with regard to 9/11—part of a much larger process of manipulation and outright fabrication that we've long known leads directly through the Office of the Vice President. See also: MyDD and Attackerman. There's no easy way for Obama to deal with the sordid legacy of the Bush administration, but there's no way to sweep it under the rug. I still think a truth and reconciliation commission is the most politically feasible model for this, but if not that, prosecutions; it's got to be one or the other.

* I knew I wouldn't do anything productive this morning until I beat all 35 levels of Minim. And lo, the prophecy was true. (Level 23 was the one that took real thinking.)

* In 2002, rogue NASA interns stole millions of dollars in moon rocks. This is the untold story of how they did it.

* The other environmental apocalypse: The Center for Biological Diversity has sued to EPA to take action over ocean acidification.

Link dump #2. So many open tabs.

* The Case against Candyland. Playing games with Jaimee's nieces and nephews has taught me this lesson too—the games we used to play are terribly unfun.

* 'Obama Disappointed Cabinet Failed To Understand His Reference To Savage Sword Of Conan #24.'

* Also in the news: 'Blagojevich Claims Behavior Was Just Elaborate Plan To Surprise Patrick Fitzgerald With Senate Nomination On His Birthday.'

* Remember when Conservapedia was sort of hilarious? PZ Meyers catches them with a very disturbing post that reads like a hitlist of Democratic senators.

* The bad news: Climate change may choke the oceans for 100,000 years. The good news: Damage to the rest of the biosphere may be limited to only 1,000 years. A little more from the sporadically blogging Alex Greenberg.

* The Space Adventures of Krypto, Superbody's dog.

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.

News roundup!

* Surprising sat: 2/3 of U.S. corporations pay no taxes at all.

* In the latest sign of trouble in the planet's chemistry, the number of oxygen-starved "dead zones" in coastal waters around the world has roughly doubled every decade since the 1960s, killing fish, crabs and massive amounts of marine life at the base of the food chain, according to a study released yesterday. More at Political Animal.

* 'Honeybee deaths reaching crisis point' in U.K.

* And they've finally, finally invented Mr. Fusion. For real this time. (We're saved.)

Scientists say they have found a workable way of reducing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere by adding lime to seawater. And they think it has the potential to dramatically reverse CO2 accumulation in the atmosphere, reports Cath O'Driscoll in SCI's Chemistry & Industry magazine. According to the article, Shell is putting a lot of money into this:

Shell is so impressed with the new approach that it is funding an investigation into its economic feasibility. 'We think it's a promising idea,' says Shell's Gilles Bertherin, a coordinator on the project. 'There are potentially huge environmental benefits from addressing climate change -- and adding calcium hydroxide to seawater will also mitigate the effects of ocean acidification, so it should have a positive impact on the marine environment.'
...

'This process has the potential to reverse the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere. It would be possible to reduce CO2 to pre-industrial levels,' Kruger says.

So, assuming this works—and I can't imagine that it won't—we're saved! Hooray! Except.

Global population growth is looming as a bigger threat to the world's food production and water supplies than climate change, a leading scientist says.

Speaking at a CSIRO public lecture in Canberra yesterday, UNESCO's chief of sustainable water resources development, Professor Shahbaz Khan, said overpopulation's impacts were potentially more economically, socially and environmentally destructive than those of climate change.

"Climate change is one of a number of stresses we're facing, but it's overshadowed by global population growth and the amount of water, land and energy needed to grow food to meet the projected increase in population. We are facing a world population crisis."

(first one via Joe)