Author: KcM

This Ain’t No Place for No Hero.


“Have you ever considered that all this is your fault? Your presence creates these animals.” Following up on their Hugo Strange teaser of last December, WBGames releases the gameplay trailer for Batman: Arkham City, and it looks like the Joker and Harley Quinn are back for another go-round (along with Two-Face, Catwoman, and the aforementioned doctor.)

My non-Cata gaming time has most recently been spent playing through the scary-impressive Dead Space 2, but this and Portal 2 are on my drop-everything list. Can’t wait. (And FWIW, that catchy song above is “Short Change Hero” by The Heavy.)

The End of the Beginning.


“‘We want to unite, we want to fight, we want to get back workers’ rights…The people united will never be defeated.’ ‘This is not the end. This is the beginning of phase two,’ said Sen. Fred Risser (D-Madison).” With Governor Scott Walker and the Republicans having forced their union-busting budget through, the Wisconsin 14 return to Madison to a heroes’ welcome. “‘They won the battle; we’re going to win the war,’ said Sen. Dave Hansen (D-Green Bay).” The next phase of the battle: the April 5th Supreme Court election. (Pic via Crooked Timber.)

An Apple a Day Isn’t Enough.

“In 1970, in New York City, a newly minted teacher at a public school earned about $2,000 less in salary than a starting lawyer at a prominent law firm. These days the lawyer takes home, including bonus, $115,000 more than the teacher, the McKinsey study found.“

In related news, Nick Kristof offers a modest proposal for fixing education in America: pay teachers more. “When governors mock teachers as lazy, avaricious incompetents, they demean the profession and make it harder to attract the best and brightest. We should be elevating teachers, not throwing darts at them.“

Deep Dark Truthful Mirror.


“As the Evil Queen, Olivia Wilde joins Alec Baldwin as the spirit of the magic mirror from ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.’ In the dark depths of her lair, the Queen has summoned the mirror’s spirit through wind and darkness to reveal the identity of a lovelier maid than she. The caption reads, ‘Where magic speaks, even when you’re not the fairest of them all.’“

Mental health break #2 via Megg at Quiddity: Disney unveils new Annie Leibowitz photos for the Disney Dream campaign, featuring stars as Disney characters, including Jeff Bridges as the Beast, Queen Latifah as Ursula, and the two folks above.

If it ain’t broke…

“You can practically break a search engine if you start looking around the Internet for those words. They’re used repeatedly with reference to our local, state and federal governments, almost always to make a case for slashing programs — and, lately, to go after public-employee unions. The phrase is designed to create a sense of crisis that justifies rapid and radical actions before citizens have a chance to debate the consequences. Just one problem: We’re not broke.“

Swimming upstream against a tide of misleading soundbites and outright idiocy — from Republicans and Democrats both — E.J. Dionne tries to explain the obvious: America has plenty of money right now. “A phony metaphor is being used to hijack the nation’s political conversation and skew public policies to benefit better-off Americans and hurt most others.”

The Village Plays Hathorne.


“Even worse than that is the common assertion by these millionaire pundits that ‘we all’ must sacrifice for the greater good and allow Social Security to be slashed. This is usually spoken with such a tone of lugubrious forbearance that one imagines they would like us to believe that while they might be forced to become Wal-Mart greeters in their elder years, patriotic duty demands we all pitch in. They seem to have no idea that the median wage in this country in 2009 was $26,261 — sadly, lower than it was in the year 2000.“

In very related news: In The Hill, Heather D. Parton of Digby fame rails against establishment media’s complicity in the deficit witchhunt. “It’s very easy to prescribe ‘shared sacrifice’ when you will not personally sacrifice anything at all.”

The Cataclysm in Japan.

“‘I saw people trying to balance on the rooftops like surfers,’ she said. ‘It didn’t work. It was like hell.’” Boston’s Big Picture offers a survey of the horrifying images out of Japan since the earthquake/tsunami double-whammy of last Friday. [Part 2, Part 3.]

“‘It’s way past Three Mile Island already,’ said Frank von Hippel, a physicist and professor at Princeton. ‘The biggest risk now is that the core really melts down and you have a steam explosion.” And, in unfortunately related news, an animated infographic at the NYT explains exactly what engineers are trying to avoid at Fukushima Daiichi right now. (It’s not as bad as you may have heard, but, Lordy, it’s not good.)

Atlantis Rising?

“‘This is the power of tsunamis,’ head researcher Richard Freund told Reuters. ‘It is just so hard to understand that it can wipe out 60 miles inland, and that’s pretty much what we’re talking about.‘”

As a modern-day tsunami wreaks catastrophe in Japan, researchers think they may have found the original Atlantis in the mud flats of Spain. “To solve the age-old mystery, the team used a satellite photo of a suspected submerged city to find the site just north of Cadiz, Spain…The team of archeologists and geologists in 2009 and 2010 used a combination of deep-ground radar, digital mapping, and underwater technology to survey the site.”

Soderburnt.

“When you reach the point where you’re, like, ‘if I have to get into a van to do another scout I’m just going to shoot myself,’ it’s time to let somebody else who’s still excited about getting in the van, get in the van.‘”

Director Steven Soderbergh says he’s retiring after his next two films, Liberace (with Michael Douglas) and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (with George Clooney.) “[S]o it’s just time. For the last three years, I’ve been turning down everything that comes my way, so you’re not going to have Steven Soderbergh to kick around anymore.” That’s too bad…but we’ll see. This sounds to me like one of those Anthony Hopkins retirements.