So Levon Helm is dying, and Charlie Pierce has a great tribute to him.

What if Darth Vader had been a good father? This is likely to make you go, "Awwwww."

Remarkable photographs from the isolated Tibetan kingdom of Lo.

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I suspect this has already made the rounds, but I've bookmarked it for those particularly stressful days: Calming Manatee ( Read more... )

If you're an SF/fantasy fan, I can pretty much guarantee you'll find something you like up for sale at the Con or Bust auction! Check it out, there are all sorts of offers, including signed first editions and no end of other cool things. And of course the money goes to a worthy cause ( Read more... )

Noted for reading: At this moment, there are more females serving on the United States Supreme Court than there are writing for Late Show with David Letterman, The Jay Leno Show, and The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien combined. Out of the 50 or so comedy writers working on these programs, exactly zero are women. It would be funny if it weren’t ( Read more... )

Oh, this is totally awesome. It reminds me of telophase's Cool Things story generator. The funny thing is, I could totally use it to write a story. On a leather-clad terraformed Mars, a flying message courier stumbles across a talking fish, which spurs him into conflict with murderous robots, with the help of a tomboyish female mechanic and her closet ( Read more... )

If you recorded a single that became a hit but the record company stiffed you out of the profits, what would you do? What if there was a single throwaway clause in the contract that promised to fund your education? Roxanne Shante forced Warner Music to pay for her BA and her PhD in psychologogy, to the tune of $200,000+. I just think that's ( Read more... )