Come to think of it, this would explain the $700 BILLION bailout of the banking sector…

Incredible! Thanks to Larry Coen on Facebook, I discovered the film Zero Hour. It turns out that Airplane! (one of my all-time favorite films) is almost a scene-for-scene remake of Zero Hour, with jokes added. Some enterprising YouTube user has compiled some of the same scenes for your viewing pleasure:

I’m not sure I can explain what it is, but Magical Nihilism makes for some fascinating reading.

Graphic novel creator Warren Ellis never fails to amuse, enlighten, or dismay, depending on your tastes.

Tellart Labs in Providence, RI makes physical interfaces for computing devices… they take mashups to the physical plane!

The Center for Spatially Integrated Social Science has an amazing library of works on line, including this article on urban design innovator Kevin Lynch.

I meant to post about this when it was first published back in April: Steve Crocker’s Op-Ed in the New York Times marking the 40th anniversary of the RFC, the process by which Internet protocols are standardized. It makes for some great reading. Also interesting is Crocker’s RFC 1, the initial Request For Comments that described the HOST software requirements for machines connected to the brand-new ARPA Network… which laid the foundations for this vast series of tubes we know today as teh Internetz.

“TROOPS is filmed on location with the men of the Imperial Forces!” An old VHS hand-to-hand classic is, of course, now coursing through the Tubes:

Continuing Steve’s Star Wars motif…

They’re still at it:

Taken from this hilarious and time-wasting set of images of Star Wars figurines in… unexpected tableaux.

Yep. I’m back at work!

If you haven’t seen RuPaul’s film Starrbooty, you are truly missing one of the most hilariously gross films of the decade. Starrbooty makes Pink Flamingos look like Mary Poppins!

Mr. Mul-zany shared this incredible Flash video site with me today via email. Too freakin’ awesome!

Today Glenn Greenwald gives us the chilling story of an “adult film” producer from California who has been tried and convicted of violating obscenity laws, because the films he produced (using consensual adult actors) included scenes of violence, humiliation, and degradation:

So, to recap, in the Land of the Free: if you’re an adult who produces a film using other consenting adults, for the entertainment of still other consenting adults, which merely depicts fictional acts of humiliation and degradation, the DOJ will prosecute you and send you to prison for years. The claim that no real pain was inflicted will be rejected; mere humiliation is enough to make you a criminal. But if government officials actually subject helpless detainees in their custody to extreme mental abuse, degradation, humiliation and even mock executions long considered “torture” in the entire civilized world, the DOJ will argue that they have acted with perfect legality and, just to be sure, Congress will hand them retroactive immunity for their conduct. That’s how we prioritize criminality and arrange our value system.

Do we really have to suffer through this administration for another fifteen weeks? I honestly wonder if anything resembling our nation will emerge on the other side of the Bush years.