Oct
15
2012

URLs du Jour

2012-10-15

  • spoiler bitch An insightful blog post from the wish-I-was-as-cool-as Nick Gillespie; Nick analyzes, and mostly debunks a Politico article discussing how big-L Libertarian candidates could act as "spoilers" to GOP prospects. Sample:

    Let it be noted that no third-party candidate anywhere ever cost a major-party candidate an election. Have third-party candidates gotten vote totals that more than cover the spread between the Dem and the Rep? Of course.

    But major-party candidates lose elections all on their own. If they cannot close the deal with voters - even with all the institutional advantages they possess - well, that's their problem. Don't blame others for your own failure to woo voters.

    Indeed, the whole spoiler thing tends to falls apart when you look more closely. To wit, here's part of the discussion about the Senate race in the Show-Me State, where a lackluster and thoroughly undistinguished incumbent is facing a challenger whose basic grasp of biology suggests he'd be a first-question washout on Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader?:

    … and I suggest you Read The Whole Thing™. (Maybe if I bought a leather jacket, I'd be as cool as Nick? Nah, guess not.)

  • If you haven't already done so, you gotta go to the Google today and check out their homage to Winsor McCay, creator of Little Nemo. (If you miss it today, you might be able to dig it out of Google's doodle archive, which I recommend.)

  • You might have heard about Argo, Ben Affleck's new movie. It's supposed to be pretty good, and it's based on the real-life story of the rescue of American embassy personnel from Iran in 1980. The gimmick (revealed in the trailers) is that the CIA's cover story to get into Iran is that they're making a sci-fi movie titled Argo.

    And you might have also seen one of my perennial gripes: We get piles of movies based on the works of (for example) Philip K. Dick, Richard Matheson, and Jack Finney. More power to them, but what about my favorite SF authors, like Robert Heinlein?

    Or Roger Zelazny?

    Well: it turns out that the fake movie Argo, was based on Zelazny's Hugo-winning novel Lord of Light.

    But (of course) they didn't make a movie based on Lord of Light, either in 1980 or today. But there's a website devoted to it, including some old artwork by the great comic book artist Jack Kirby. Kirby's drawings were borrowed (the website says "stolen") by the CIA to nail down the cover story. Fascinating.

    If Argo does well, maybe Affleck could get Lord of Light made? Seems only fair.