Links for 11-11-10

"The villain Nicolae Carpathia probably reminds of more than any other is Chairface Chippendale, from one of my favorite episodes of The Tick -- a warped parody of superhero comics. Chairface, a supervillain, constructs a giant heat ray he plans to use to carve his name on the moon. Our heroes, of course, rush to stop him, but the Tick struggles to make sense of this grandly strange act of supervillainy, asking his sidekick, Arthur, if carving your name on the moon is even illegal.

"It's just wrong," Arthur says, and he's surely right about that. Defacing the moon would be an act of planetary vandalism. (Just think of it in Kantian terms -- what if everyone built a giant heat ray to carve their names on the moon?) But the Tick's confusion was understandable, too. Chairface's scheme was surely, in some sense, evil, but in an oddly non-predatory, non-cruel way."

"As it turns out, those were the droids you were looking for."