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Second – S. Clay Wilson bashed his head (badly), got pneumonia and spent a bunch of time in ICU in November (via BB). He’s out now and there are some benefit concerts coming up for those on the west coast. If you don’t know his work already, Wilson is one of the greats of underground comix – his stuff is not for everyone – the amount of sex and violence is way high, but he’s a favorite of mine.

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Third – this map:

has been getting a lot of notice on the web (here, here and here). I find myself firmly in the pointing and laughing camp – New Hampshire and South Carolina? That’s beyond “he’s smoking something” and well into industrial strength CIA hallucinogen testing protocols. Georgia goes to Mexico? *shakes head*

Quickly followed by the essential sound effect.

(Check the source html on the LHC site.)

• COOP’s posted another bit of musical goodness – check his mix page for the whole list. At the moment, I’m very partial to Ghetto Organ and Bloodclot. Bloodclot has one of my desert island tunes on it – Ark of the Covenant – love it!

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• View the early chemical-powered projectile weapons over at BibliOdyssey. I’m semi-successfully resisting the temptation to make a petard joke.

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• Wicked pissa monstruos diabolicos trading cards. (via BB)

• And an odd submersible, seen by the side of the road yesterday:

Via APotD.

More – A picture of the lander (top), Heat shield impact area (middle right) and parachute (bottom) on the surface.

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The Mars Reconaissance Orbiter takes a picture of the Mars Phoenix Lander as the Lander parachutes down. I wish I could find the Arthur C. Clarke quote about 2001 coming true (except for the monolith pieces), but not being noticed because the principal players were/are all robotic.

The Phoenix Lander has a Twitter account – the latest tweet: “Looking forward to moving arm today. Will bend the wrist and flex the elbow. It’s been stowed for 10 months so I’ll move it slowly/gently.” (@marsphoenix)

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The screencap above is for all the residents at 62 Achewood Court.

Go, then, and read.

Indeed, the egocentric popular culture of today, the all-invasive media landscape in which the private becomes public — the Myspace glossolalia of intimate, private space projected onto a global screen — can perhaps be understood in these terms, a result of what Ballard sees as ‘the shared experience of moving together through an elaborately signalled landscape’.

Mild warning – the film is titled Crash! after all…

James Wimberly:

In contrast, the wider political message of the modern Olympics is vapid. The torch in particular, lit at Olympia by pretty girls dressed vaguely as priestesses in skimpy chitons, is a pseudo-religious fraud. The torch relay was actually invented by the Nazis for the 1936 Olympics; its tainted origin lies in the racist propaganda immortalized by the twisted genius of Leni Riefenstahl. No black, Jewish, or disabled athletes needed to apply then. Paradoxically, the public legitimacy of the protests depends on a measure of acceptance of the fraud as a symbol of a real value which the Chinese and the IOC are betraying; rather in the way the Church of England grew from its origin in cynical politics into a genuine religious tradition.

Henry Farrell:

The current debacle though seems to mark an important change in the politics of the Olympics. As best I understand it (I am open to corrections if wrong), in the past, Olympics politics have involved inter-state rivalry, and have been driven by decisions on the part of traditional political elites. The US boycott of the Soviet games in protest against the invasion of Afghanistan in 1980 resulted from a decision by Jimmy Carter, and the tit-for-tat boycott by the Soviets and their allies of the LA games in 1984 resulted from a top level decision too. The dynamic driving the Beijing Olympics seems to me to be rather different; what we are seeing is that the politics of boycott is being driven by mass-publics, and most recently by protestors, rather than by political leaders.

The post’s title refers to this guy.