Link roundup

1. "A Chinese shipping magnate last weekend spent 250,400 euros ($328,000) for a Dutch pigeon."

2. Vanderbilt University apparently employs 67 nonteaching/nonresearch professional staff for every 100 students.

3. A look at the Weyland-Yutani soldiers from Alien 3.

Illustration roundup

School Pride t-shirt by Phil Jones on sale at Threadless.



Pokemon by Olly Moss, who writes, "My plan right now is to draw all 151 first gen Pokemon then do a show where the size of the editions corresponds to how rare the Pokemon is."



Catwoman by Timothy Lim available as a t-shirt.

Link roundup

1. I really like Arkham City Lockdown for iOS (unlike Arkham City, there isn't a billion tools and buttons to keep track of). The only problem was that it was tremendously unstable, crashing frequently. Today's new update seems to have solved the problem, and includes a new free alternate Batman skin.

UPDATE: Well, it's more stable, and the costume change sometimes works.

2. Relatedly, I'm looking forward to the new Popcap game Popcorn Dragon (Plants vs. Zombies is probably my favorite iOS game).

3. A photographic examination of the heights of Tom Cruise, Jeremy Renner, and the rest of the cast of MI4.

4. I'm amazed/thrilled at how great the cast is for Ender's Game.

5. The efforts to make public school lunches healthier in Los Angeles has been a disaster (my oldest hates them). Megan McArdle explains why such pilot projects so often fail.

Link roundup

1. Tips for fighting bullies.

2. Smart Football:

I can think of really only one example of a guy whose arm now seems significantly stronger than it did earlier in his career as a college player and rookie, and that’s Tom Brady. And, well, Tom Brady is Tom Brady. But it does seem like this is generally true, at least at the higher levels once a quarterback is physically mature: There are almost no examples of guys whose arms went from “popgun” to bazooka through discipline and training, not matter how tall they are or how many weights they lift.

Also, Buddy Ryan's insidious defensive tactic.

3. Weird to see so much anticipation for new comics in the Watchmen universe - - the whole point of Watchmen is that the characters were just knockoffs of other characters. The genius of Moore and Gibbons is what made them special.

4. Lackluster review for the new Deus Ex downloadable content.

Link roundup

1. Neca posted a few WIP photos of the upcoming Team Fortress 2 and Half-Life figures.

2. "Why Do So Many Left-Handed Kids Grow Into Superstars?" (I'm just bookmarking this for my son.)

3. Megan McArdle on kids graduating with useless college degrees and endless debt:

No matter how inflated your expectations may have been, it is no joke to have your confidence that you can support yourself ripped away, and replaced with the horrifying realization that you don't really understand what the rules are.

More here.

4. Gallery of vintage high school photos.

*Buy Neca toys at eBay.

Link roundup

1. Several answers to the question, What’s the Most Important Lesson You Learned from a Teacher?

2. How Ireland's rugby team developed new tackling styles to take advantage of loopholes in the rules. Via.

3. "$39,000 Olsen Twins Backpack Sells Out."

4. And since those last two links are from Gawker media sites, "Nick Denton Loses Bet That The Gawker Redesign Wouldn't Hurt Traffic."

Link roundup

1. Maybe it gets better later, but why would I keep playing Glitch when the first actions it makes me do are collecting a hamburger and watering a tree?

2. Speaking of games, here's three free games: Psychonauts iOS app; Team Fortress 2 demake; Broken Sword.

3. Joel McHale describes his college football career.

4. Walter Russell Mead:

Our educational system isn’t nearly user-friendly enough. Modeled after aristocratic and elitists institutions in Reformation England, American undergraduate colleges still accept as a default model four years of full time residential study. A deep confusion about different kinds of education means that the model of liberal arts education is stretched to fit subjects like “business administration” and “water safety management” which have much more to do with training than with education in the classic sense.

5. Thomas Barnett:

My advice here is simple: It is time for both Afghanistan and Pakistan to stop being our problem and ours alone to solve. The Bush-Cheney unilateralism segued right into the Obama-Biden version: We simply refuse to deal with the regional powers, all of which want a far bigger say in how this whole thing settles out. Instead of working with India, China, Russia, Turkey, and Iran — and accepting that their more vigorous management of the situation would mean "victories" for them and not us — we've chosen consistently to side with Pakistan, which not only wants but is committed to keeping the region unstable.

Super villain training school, perhaps?

Elite Tae Kwan Do and Math Academy. Via.

Work and learn while you sleep

Pulp dream machine.

Link roundup

1. Whale shark and swimmer.



2. Enrollment at for profit colleges is way down:

new University of Phoenix enrollment is down over 40 percent from last year, 47 percent from Kaplan.

3. Some guesses as to how Hugo Chávez will transport 211 tons of physical gold from Europe to Caracas.

Link roundup

1. From an article on jock culture:

Despite the many ways males can identify themselves as "real men" in our culture—size, sexuality, power, money, fame—nothing seems as indelible as the mark made in childhood when the good bodies are separated from the bad bodies, the team from the spectators. The designated athletes are rewarded with love, attention and perks. The leftovers struggle with their resentments and their search for identity.

2. Free Tap Tap Glee iTunes app sounds fun. Via.

3. "The writer/artist of the Popeye daily comic strip was fired for a series of strips involving jokes about abortion."

Link roundup

1. Gawker on Newt Gingrich's 1.3 million Twitter followers:

About 80 percent of those accountsare inactive or are dummy accounts created by various "follow agencies," another 10 percent are real people who are part of a network of folks who follow others back and are paying for followers themselves (Newt's profile just happens to be a part of these networks because he uses them, although he doesn't follow back), and the remaining 10 percent may, in fact, be real, sentient people who happen to like Newt Gingrich.

2. NBC is claiming that its new show The Playboy Club is about female empowerment.

3. A little less corporate-funded propaganda in schools:

In response to pressure from parents, educators and grassroots advocates, Scholastic Inc. will drastically limit its practice of partnering with corporations to produce classroom material, the company announced last week.

The publisher had been under fire since May, when it was forced to stop distributing a fourth-grade curriculum called “The United States of Energy” that had been paid for by the coal industry and distributed to classrooms across the country.

Via.

Link roundup

1. Arguments against attending cooking school.

2. XKCD on media reports of hacking. Penny Arcade on the 3DS.

3. Diablo III will allow players to auction off virtual goods for real money. I wonder if that will be a major selling point, or just a feature that benefits gold farmers (The Old Republic looks nice, but if I can make money while I play...).

Link roundup

1. For other Blogger users, here's a useful comment by a Blogger employee from Ann Althouse's blog:

While our export tools may have been somewhat unreliable when handling blogs this large (Althouse is one of the largest Blogger blogs!), along the way helping Ann we discovered ways to improve them and moving forward Blogger will be much better equipped to handle cases like this.

So Ann while I'm personally sad to see you go (if that is indeed the decision), I wanted to let you know that you will always have a home on Blogger and a team who cares about your experience with Blogger. That also (of course) goes for everyone. We love hearing from users, and anyone can bug me directly on Twitter (@electrobutter) if something is on their mind, or hit up the team via @blogger.

It seems like such a typical Google thing to do to make such outreach efforts only when it was too late to keep her on the platform. Her entire Blogger blog was deleted, possibly by error, possibly by a rogue Google employee, last month.

2. "An investigation into Atlanta’s public school system has uncovered evidence that teachers and principals have been secretly erasing and correcting answers on students’ tests for as long as a decade."

3. "For the past few years, networks have been digitally inserting ads and product placements for new products into old reruns."

Link roundup

1. The Los Angeles public school system is reducing the emphasis on homework, making it now account for no more than 10% of students' grades. This criticism is pathetic:

Critics — mostly teachers — worry that the policy will encourage students to slack off assigned work and even reward those who already disregard assignments. And they say it could penalize hardworking students who receive higher marks for effort.

Shouldn't the teachers be confident that the kids who work the hardest on homework will also score the best on tests?

2. I might have linked to this before, but since it won an Emmy, here's a video by the Washington Post in which a comic book cover featuring Frank Cho's Brandy character (based on Lynda Carter) is brought to life. Via.

3. Seven fascinating moments in online video game history.

Link roundup

1. Robin Hanson:

Yes, maybe homework helps kids to learn things that their tests do not test. But more likely, homework functions to get kids used to doing a lot of work, in preparation for their future industry era jobs. Learning seems secondary.

2. Elephant and rhino playing tag.

3. Tie Fighter helmet.

Link roundup

1. Tax dollars at work in Southern California:

When it's completed this fall, Riverside's Hillcrest High School will be a high-tech academic hub with wireless Internet, a robotics lab, digital smart boards in every classroom and a first-rate performance hall worthy of any "Glee" hopeful.

But no students.

Sapped by state budget cuts, the Alvord Unified School District doesn't have the money to turn on the lights or hire staff for the $105-million campus.

2. Young Jason Kidd.

3. It's a tremendous shame George Takei hasn't been able to show off his personality until the last few years.

Link roundup

1. Create a Star Wars name contest.

2. Mickey Kaus:

It would be ironic if Amherst-style reforms finally gave lower income Americans greater access to college just when elites were concluding that college isn’t worth it. But when you think about it, a non-college world in which high school graduates acquired the skills they wanted on the web or in ad hoc classes and proved their worth by performing well in actual jobsmight be a preferable form of meritocracy. a) There would be no “signaling” of status for life, the way an Ivy League degree now signals status for life.

3. Bradley Cooper wants to make a Hyperion movie so bad that he submitted a spec script. (I love the book, but it's probably unfilmable.) Via.

Brochure for a college criminology course

Criminology and Criminal Justice brochure by Junior for Griffith University. Via.

Image roundup

A few gems, mostly spotted at Reddit:


Middle school classroom/cabinet of wonders.



Petra, Jordan.



Fleeing a dragon.



If you see something, skate something. Via.



Deadly bird.