Link roundup

1. An explanation for why "illegal immigration is the best immigration."

2. "Jon Stewart is misleading stoned smart-alecks in dorm lounges across America about how things really work."

3. Jennifer Aniston recently bought an apartment in her dog's name.

Illustration roundup

Lots of great (and silly) Thor by Kirby pages in this gallery. You can buy Kirby's Thor collection at Amazon.




This is a dating don't.




Editorial illustration by Tomer Hanuka for the NY Times.





Spider-Man and Daredevil by Moebius (from a gallery of Moebius art). (It's interesting that Moebius is so famous, yet doesn't have a single comic in print at Amazon.) Via.




Pen Ward looking for a drinking buddy the other night.

Link roundup

1. This Reddit thread has links to several iPhone wallpapers, including Pac-Man and Tron.

2. Why are most livable city lists always so lame?

In fact, Vancouver’s boringly consistent topping of the polls underlines the fundamental fault that lies at the heart of the idea of measuring cities by their “liveability”. The most recent surveys, from Monocle magazine, Forbes, Mercer and The Economist, concur: Vancouver, Vienna, Zurich, Geneva, Copenhagen and Munich dominate the top. What, you might ask, no New York? No London? No LA or HK? None of the cities that people seem to actually want to emigrate to, to set up businesses in? To be in? None of the wealthiest, flashiest, fastest or most beautiful cities? Nope.

This article tries to explain. Via.

3. It's always good to be reminded how politicians (in this case Obama) stage photos.

Link roundup

1. NERF stands for NonExpanding Recreational Foam. Via.

2. Lots of interesting anecdotes in this article about Tina Brown (including how much money The Daily Beast and Newsweek have lost recently). For example:

As is not uncommon in preparation for Brown’s parties, that afternoon the room’s furniture was loaded into a truck, which was waiting, out of sight, for the last guests to leave before unloading its contents back into the apartment. Sir Harold Evans, Brown’s 82-year-old husband, has been known to joke with friends that he’d prefer to be in the truck, where he could circle the block in the comfort of his own home.

And:

As her guests said goodbye, Brown and Evans looked eager to get their furniture back. Suddenly the French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy wafted in, dressed in black and trailing a cloud of cologne and his mistress, Daphne Guinness, who was wearing a revealing black cat suit and heelless Alexander McQueen platform shoes. Lévy was fresh from Paris, where, he proceeded to tell Brown and a few stragglers, he had just single-handedly persuaded his old friend President Nicolas Sarkozy to go to war against Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi of Libya. (A few days later, Steven Erlanger of The New York Times reported that this had, improbably enough, been the case.)

3. "An ongoing fight between Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei has taken a turn for the weird, as several of the president's closest advisers have been arrested and charged with being 'magicians' and invoking djinns, or spirits."

Link roundup

1. FYI, you have to pay $150 to $495 to be nominated for a Webby award.

2. If you missed it, Minnesota House Majority Leader Matt Dean said he "hated" Neil Gaiman and called him a "pencil-necked little weasel who stole $45,000 from the state of Minnesota." Neil Gaiman responds here. His response includes a link to Dean's contact page and encourages you to share your thoughts with Mr. Dean.

3. Here's an explanation for why eating asparagus makes your urine smell. Via.

Matt Drudge on Osama's death

Drudge on Osama's death via.

Link roundup

1. SF Chronicle:

In a pants-on-fire moment, the White House press office today denied anyone there had issued threats to remove Carla Marinucci and possibly other Hearst reporters from the press pool covering the President in the Bay Area.

Chronicle editor Ward Bushee called the press office on its fib:

Sadly, we expected the White House to respond in this manner based on our experiences yesterday. It is not a truthful response. It follows a day of off-the-record exchanges with key people in the White House communications office who told us they would remove our reporter, then threatened retaliation to Chronicle and Hearst reporters if we reported on the ban, and then recanted to say our reporter might not be removed after all.

2. The time Jim Carrey went totally nuts for new year's eve on David Letterman.

3. How law schools trick students into attending by promising them merit scholarships, and then keeping secret how likely it is that they will lose the scholarship after their first or second year. Via.

Link roundup

1. Thomas P.M. Barnett applauding the utilization of weaponized drones in Libya:

This sort of response sends a lot more signal than the heavy hardware or brigades. It says America will continue to fight as it always has: by generating more stuff than you can possibly imagine. The old model was big stuff. The new model is small and disposable and unmanned stuff. It comes with willpower attached. It's staying power is its dwell time.

China thinks it has a grip on the future with a carrier killer, but it's protecting itself from the 20th century. The name of the game going forward is what it has been these past two decades: globalization's advance, the remapping of fake states, the liberation of people long oppressed by their conditions and cruel leaders, and the new matrixing of supply chains and labor pools as this magnificent process continues to unfold.

2. Octopus ride. Via.

3. Writer discusses how incredibly easy it was to create a fake photograph of an iPhone 5, and get the photo on the main tech blogs.

*Buy iPads at eBay.

Link roundup

1. Sounds like Reddit's screenwriting forum is a great place to learn and get critiqued.

2. Frank Frazetta was apparently a cover model for books in The Man From S.T.U.D. series, which you can find at eBay. (Specific titles include, "Rape is a No-No," and "The Solid Gold Screw.") Via.

3. An interesting dilemma -- what's more important: Does Obama honor his pre-election pledge and acknowledge the Armenian genocide? Or does he renege so that he can avoid infuriating Turkey and rely on Turkey's help in preventing current killings?

Link roundup

1. "In 2005, the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) predicted that there would be 50 million refugees in 2010 due to climate change." Apparently, when a reporter tried to follow up on that prediction, "UNEP tried to erase the evidence of its initial claim."

2. CBS News: "A major ticket fixing scandal is rocking the NYPD, and as many as 400 cops could face bribery and larceny charges for making tickets disappear in exchange for gifts." Via.

3. Gawker media's traffic has either totally nosedived, or not.