I always knew you’d go from a surprisingly comfortable upbringing to riches

From Cracked: 6 Inspiring Rags to Riches Stories (That Are Bullshit).

Best fantasy story of 2008

… as chosen by a poll of readers at Fantasy Magazine.

If you're so smart, how come you ain't rich?

From The Chronicle of Higher Education:

Ever bought a 12-foot Christmas tree for a 10-foot-high apartment? Picked up a hitchhiker in a nasty part of town? Or, perhaps, taken out a mortgage you couldn't afford? The good news is that poor decision-making skills may have little effect on your IQ score, according to Keith E. Stanovich, author of What Intelligence Tests Miss: The Psychology of Rational Thought (Yale University Press). The bad news? He thinks you'd lose a few points on a more-accurate gauge of intelligence.

Okay, what if you have an average IQ score, and make bad decisions, too? Uh, we ask only for informational purposes....

I had to laugh like hell…

From Zulkey.com:

I heard that Rod Blagojevich bought his daughters a puppy over Christmas, in order to make them feel better about their dad being one of the worst politicians in history.

Somebody please rescue this dog.

The rest is insightful and, frankly, a little heart-breaking – so read it, if you please; we cannot live on out-of-context quotes alone.

Women in Iraq

From the Guardian (by Sara Wajid):

'Women [in Iraq] are being killed simply for being women," says Nadje Al-Ali when I meet her at her home in south London. "In Basra in 2008 a reported 133 women were killed for not 'being Islamic' enough. And these are only the ones that made it to be officially counted. I saw the police photos - they were horrific."

Jack Shafer discovers…

… that Chris Matthews is an inane blowhard.

Uh, thanks, Jack. Good work.

1up & EGM: The aftermath

Long post from Sam Kennedy that explains what happened to 1up.com. Freaking sad, man.

Bush’s legacy

It’s tempting to forget that W ever existed.

But we probably shouldn’t.

To any Klingons who might be reading…

You may want to look at this post over at SFX:

A computer keyboard featuring letters from the Klingon alphabet has gone on sale in the UK. Priced at £43.99, it comes from Cherry Electrical Products, and is a limited edition. The compnay plans to release further keyboards based on other Trek languages in the future.

Of course, if you’re going to get a Klingon keyboard, you may need to have some Klingon fonts, as well. (As far as I’m able to tell, Microsoft doesn’t have a Klingon language pack for XP, but someone is working on a custom locale for Vista.)

RIP Ricardo Montalban

From the AP:

LOS ANGELES - Ricardo Montalban, the Mexican-born actor who became a star in splashy MGM musicals and later as the wish-fulfilling Mr. Roarke in TV's "Fantasy Island," died Wednesday morning at his home, a city councilman said. He was 88.

Link via Whatever.

RIP Patrick McGoohan

This is bad news. From SFX:

[I]t's just been reported that respected actor Patrick McGoohan died yesterday aged 80. Famous for playing Number Six in cult favourite The Prisoner, McGoohan passed away on Tuesday in LA following a short illness.

Re-designing women (and men, we suppose)

Just a quick note to mention that the A.V. Club redesign has finally been completed. Also (not coincidentally, we assume) they've posted an article entitled "New and improved: 17 revamps that went much better than expected".

You can comment on the new design here. Some love it, some hate it. I think I'll need more time to decide how I feel about it.

More on ebook pricing

From Booksquare:

When the ScrollMotion App and titles and prices were announced, I had one question for the publishers involved: are you on crack? Seriously, what were you smoking in that meeting? I know, I know, you want to control the market, you want to control prices, you want…what? To, oh, maybe sell some books? The hardcover price of our poor example book, according to Amazon, of Brisingr is $27.50. The Iceberg edition is $27.99.

Are you trying to kill the market? Are you trying to be funny? Do you truly think outrageous prices are the way to bring in new, younger readers? Do you think we’re stupid?

At last, some vitriol about this subject.

The world’s tightest smile

From The Guardian:

Laura Bush, the US first lady, has beaten her husband in the literary stakes with the announcement that she has secured a multimillion dollar deal with Scribner to publish her White House memoir some time next year.

At last! A peek behind the scenes of one of the most reviled administrations in recent memory. Except:

"She was not forthcoming about anything that I would consider controversial," one publisher told New Yorker magazine. "We questioned her rigorously, but it was one-word answers. I considered it the worst, or the most frustrating, meeting of its sort that I've ever had. But she really couldn't have been nicer."

Ya think? We’re not good a predicting the future, but we expect Laura Bush’s memoir to be about as controversial as a basket of puppies.

Oh, there’ll probably be some phony, BS controversy, on the level of, “I didn’t like Condi’s hair-style,” or “Dick Cheney was mean to a friend of mine, once.” But nothing substantial, we’ll bet.

C:\What’s_All_This_Then.exe

From Techdirt:

Over in the UK, police are now allowed to hack into computers of suspects without any court-approved warrant. Not surprisingly (and, reasonably) this has civil libertarians up in arms.

Silly libertarians, this thing never gets abused! Besides, wouldn’t you rather be on the good list?