_Irredeemable_ by Mark Waid

Just received Irredeemable Volume 1 in the mail today, and have already read it twice. Couldn't be more excited about it. This is one of the scariest stories I've read.

The premise is that The Plutonian, a Superman-analog hero (anything you can do, he can do better) has gone rogue for some reason and no one seems able to stop him. The story really drives home the fear involved: what do you do when someone super strong, super fast, and able to hear a pin drop from ten miles is out to get you? He doesn't really need the death ray eyes, but they don't subtract from the terror.

Add to that the fact that this version of Superman hasn't let anyone discover his Kryptonite, and the fear ramps up.

By the time the story starts, the Plutonian is already a mass murderer who has leveled a city. A few heroes are left scrambling to stay alive long enough to learn how to stop him.

I knew a lot of this already, from reading volumes 1 and 2 of Incorruptible...which I also greatly enjoyed. Reading those stories, I had trouble believing that Waid could make a character who committed Plutonian's crimes into a believable person. But he has.

I'm going to be collecting Irredeemable now. I can hardly wait to get volume 2.

Fresh Air interviews author of 'After Qaddafi'

I heard a bit of this interview with Dirk Vandewalle on the radio earlier this month. The full transcript is available online, which is darn cool....made it easy to find.

Some highlights:

• Qadaffi systematically destroyed basically all organizations in Libya. They don't even have organizations of doctors, or stamp collectors. There's no way for people to group or congregate, because that might lead to dissent.
• Qadaffi's got a serious yes-man problem. No one can speak against him, so he just hears his own words back alla time.
• Qadaffi also ended most private business, including rental of apartments and houses, and restaurants. He created a membership-required system of supermarkets. If you displeased him, you could lose membership, and be unable to buy food.

All energy disasters lead to coal, which is an energy disaster

Here's a thought-provoking piece on how nuclear power problems scare us more than they should. Maybe we just can't stand the idea of death via invisible radiation? But the point is, we need power, and if we swap nuclear for something else, that doesn't make us safer.

I think the easiest way to imagine this is to think of a dam. If a tsunami or earthquake busts a dam, thousands are likely to be killed. Meanwhile, go coal and people die from it every day.

Highlight web pages, then send a short link

So I thought, 'hey somebody probably made a widget that lets you highlight stuff in a web page then send a link to the page with highlights.' And a nanosecond of searching produced this, the Awesome Highlighter.

Here, for example, is a short link to a wikipedia page that I highlighted.

http://awurl.com/qmYbbDXbm

Poi Dog Pondering - Living With the Dreaming Body

This video was filmed right here in Austin, on the main drag across from the UT campus. This is one of the most evocative Poi Dog songs for me...it taps into joy.

Happy birthday to me!

Why you're still single, ladies

Here's an article that takes an interesting tack with respect to the marriage ambitions of ladies.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tracy-mcmillan/why-youre-not-married_b_822088.html

I thought the points were generally very well taken, and enjoyed how charitable they are to the pool of men out there. That is, the article asserts that there are enough men with worth and integrity out there for the women who want marriage.

I think this should be balanced by Lore Sjoberg's piece about why guys who think nice guys finish last probably aren't as nice as they think they are...

http://www.wired.com/underwire/2010/05/alt-text-nice-guys-guide/

Gamasutra says Minecraft is no fluke

Really interesting breakdown of why Minecraft is a success, and why the next Minecraft won't be a Minecraft. :)

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/32760/Opinion_Minecraft_And_The_Question_Of_Luck.php

Playmobil Stop Motion - Joy Division - Transmission

Found this on BoingBoing.

_The Keep_ by Jennifer Egan

I can't remember why I put 'get a book by Jennifer Egan' on my list, but I'm really glad I did. This book is compelling from page one, based on its characters and their intertwined mysteries. It develops an interesting structure, too: just when you dig into the tight single point-of-view of the main character, you get pulled back out into a narrator's point of view... and the narrator has a mystery of his own.

I'd expect a device like that to create unwelcome distance. Nope. It just creates more tension.

The big hook for me was the anticipation around the main character arriving in Europe to meet an estranged cousin whom he'd betrayed as a child. He was in a tight spot, and a jaunt to Europe arrived just in time, but he doesn't know whether he'll be sincerely welcomed by the man he betrayed.

Anyway, read the thing, it's fantastic.