links for 2009-07-16

"From this rich central dynamic, all manner of hilarity springs. Smith is fastidious about the upkeep of his expensive sports car. Lawrence is a slob who gets his messy hamburger all over its glistening interior! How will they ever be able to work together? My curiosity was piqued! Incidentally, since Iâm writing about Michael Bay, I feel it is only appropriate to use as many exclamation points as possible, in a futile attempt to convey the mind-bogglingly extreme and in-your-face nature of Bayâs work. Whose face is Bay in? Mine. Yours. Societyâs."

"There's a lot of villains in the Harry Potter series. They are young and old, male and female, human and otherwise, magical and muggle. They range from indolent and reformable pests to soul-sucking embodiments of death personified. Not all of them set out to be bad. Some are good people who made bad choices; some are power-mad petty bureaucrats. But if you want to pick out the single person who caused the most damage, it's an easy task.

He is, of course, Albus Dumbledore."

"Obama's speech yesterday at Macomb Community College in Michigan was, by far, the most intelligent Presidential discussion of higher education I've ever seen. He connected the dots between state budget shortfalls and declining investment in higher education, a dose of reality that I, for one, found utterly refreshing.

That said, the devil is always in the details."

"Hey there sports fans there's an international showdown going on that you might not even know about! Right now some of the brightest high school physics minds in the United States are down in Mexico matching wits against some of the brightest high school physics minds of the rest of the world. Itâs the annual International Physics Olympiad! Go team go!"

"Enjoy the night sky while we have it, because someday everything beyond our own galaxy will be hopelessly out of reach."

"Awfullibrarybooks.wordpress.com is a collection of the worst library holdings. The items featured here are so old, obsolete, awful or just plain stupid that we are horrified that people might be actually checking these items out and depending on the information.

This blog contains actual library holdings. No specific libraries or librarians are named to protect the guilty. Check your shelves, it could be you."

"JEFFERSON BEAUREGARD SESSIONS, III (R): Arenât you saying there that you expect your background andâand heritage to influence your decision-making?

[White people have history; minorities have ethnicity. Will you people treat us white folk with the respect our history demands?]"