Links, links, links

Polonius: What do you read, my lord?
Hamlet: Links, links, links.
Polonius: What is the matter, my lord?
Hamlet: Between who?
Polonius: I mean, the matter that you read, my lord.
Hamlet: Timewasters, sir.

-- Exclusive, previously unpublished draft of Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2* just discovered by the literary researchers at Attempts

For your amusement, enlightenment and procrastination:

Comics:

• Marc Singer's book on Grant Morrison has been published. 'Nuff said.
• Astonishing 24-hour comic: Boulet's Darkness
• I haven't yet read Buffy Season 9, but I hope they handle the event in issue #6 half as well as this one-page fan parody/knock-off (spoilers for Buffy Season 9 #6)
• L'affaire Magneto: What if Herge had Created the X-Men?

Fred Clark Remains One of the Best Bloggers On the Net:

• The very worst thing Nathan could imagine
• When the translators of the bible made up and inserted a character into it
• The 'biblical view' that's younger than the happy meal
• An interesting argument about pro-life advocates' views that I've never heard before

Religious-Related Not By Fred Clark

• Sam Harris on the Fireplace Delusion
• Does the Bible call homosexuality an "abomination"?
• Religion in Japanese:

During the late 1800s there was considerable debate about how “religion” should be rendered in Japanese... It seemed that “religion” could be a type of education, something fundamentally un-teachable, a set of practices, a description of foreign customs, a subtype of Shinto, a near synonym for Christianity, a basic human ethical impulse, or a form of politics (among other possibilities).

Humor:

• Kripke resigns as report alleges that he faked results of thought experiments
• Monty Python's Useless Tips For Anglers
• How to win a fight against 20 children
• I Was Shitting You People - A Message From Ayn Rand
• Jonathan Chait channels the Onion:

The unpredictable Republican presidential race has taken another surprising turn as recent numbers show Mongol warlord Genghis Khan seizing the lead in national polls of likely GOP primary voters. Benefiting from widespread doubts about Mitt Romney’s authenticity and ideological commitment, Genghis has changed the shape of the race by sounding sharp populist themes that resonate with supporters of the tea party. “Mitt Romney wants to manage Washington, D.C.,” he told an enthusiastic crowd in Scottsdale, Arizona. “I want to burn it to the ground, slay its inhabitants, and stack their skulls in pyramids reaching to the sky.”

• The (actual) Onion: Historians Politely Remind Nation To Check What's Happened In Past Before Making Any Big Decisions

David Graeber's Debt: the First 5000 Years

• In case you haven't yet encountered Graeber -- for various reasons, clearly the Thinker of the Year for 2011, should Time have deigned to pick such a thing -- this interview is probably the best introduction to his ideas
• More from Graeber at Naked Capitalism
• Aaron Brady's review of Graeber's Debt
• Now underway: Crooked Timber's roundtable on David Graeber's Debt: the First 5000 Years. [Update: seminar now complete; link changed to master list linking to all entries.]
• Via the above, another interesting (critical) review of the same.

Tolkien-esque:

• The Terrible Secret of Tom Bombadil -- an astonishingly wonderful exercise in midrashic counter-reading. (Also worthwhile at the same site is this reinterpretation of Star Wars in light of the prequels.)
• Andrew Rilstone has self-published some of his earlier Tolkien writings, under the title Do Balrogs Have Wings? and Other Pressing Questions (and Other Pressing Questions). 'Nuff said.
• ...Except maybe not, so for those poor benighted souls who have yet to encounter Rilstone's Tolkien writings, here, via web archive, is the title piece to the above-collections, presenting the definitive answer to that question, at least.
• More recent Rilstonish Tolkien goodness: on the Silmarillion.

Other Literary

• Sixteen-year-old high school student writes (in 1963) to a series of well-known novelists, including Jack Kerouac, Ayn Rand, Ralph Ellison, Ray Bradbury, John Updike, Saul Bellow and Norman Mailer asking them questions about symbols in their work. Answers presented as given.
• John Clute on Margaret Atwood on SF.
• This interesting review of Stephen King's latest novel makes me want to read it.
• Paris Review's interview with Samuel R. Delany
• Ari Kelman reviews four books on memory and the Civil War

Social/Political

• Woody Guthrie's story of the one-eyed banker.
• Man stopped by the police for "babysitting while white"... again.
• 25 Things I Learned From Opening a Bookstore
• "After ‘The Wire’ ended, actress Sonja Sohn couldn’t leave Baltimore’s troubled streets behind"
• Garry Wills on contraception and the Catholic church
• Russell Arben Fox's 11 Thesis on 2011 (on Democracy, Anarchism and OWS)
• Natalie Reed on the idea that transsexuals are "biologically" the sex they were assigned to at birth (via her own new, very interesting blog)

As usual, I've forgotten where I saw most of these links. As usual, my main sources for links are Gerry Canavan, Andrew Sullivan, 3 Quarks Daily and Making Light, so most of these were probably via one of them. (Except the Fred Clark links, which were all found in the genuine internet wild.)

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* Shakespeare always was ahead of his time.