[space] Methone, an egg in Saturn orbit? … fascinating blog entry with pictures about a recently discovered moon of Saturn … ‘Methone is really shockingly round. Some of the other small moons that orbit near the rings have a smoothed appearance, but they all still have some craters or some topography. The smoothness probably results from these things collecting dust, a substance that there is a lot of in this part of the Saturn system, but it’s kind of hard to understand what could make the dust slide around to fill every topographic low on this little world, covering it with what’s essentially a global ocean of very puffy dust. I think the roundness tells us that whatever Methone is made of, that material behaves like a liquid — it has no strength to hold any shape whatsoever.’

[politics] Oh Happy Days: A Personal Recollection Of Working For Jeremy Hunt … ‘I distinctly recall one presentation after a period of company expansion. All of us, old stagers and new recruits, were gathered together in front of a Powerpoint screen. On it were projected smiling photographs of various members of staff, the heads of sales, IT and so on. The company had recently outsourced much of the data entry work to a centre in India. Jeremy Hunt, smiling away in that peculiarly insincere, head-bobbing way that you’ve all seen on the news, was leading. We gasped in horror as our “new colleagues in India” were introduced: there glowed a slide that featured row after row of the same cartoon clip art Generic Brown Person, sat behind a computer.’

[space] All the Water on Europa vs. All the Water On Earth … ‘The subsurface ocean plus ice layer could range from 80 to 170 kilometers in average depth. Adopting an estimate of 100 kilometers depth, if all the water on Europa were gathered into a ball it would have a radius of 877 kilometers.’

[comics] Posy Simmonds Profile … by Paul Gravett … ‘Posy is simply one the world’s most sophisticated contemporary authors expanding the scope and subtlety of the graphic novel. Based in London, Posy has become renowned since the early Seventies, not only as a brilliant strip cartoonist for the national press, but also as a much-loved author and illustrator of children’s books.’

[comics] A Portal to Another Dimension: Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons, and Neil Gaiman … the Watchmen Panel at UKCAC ’86 – moderated by Neil Gaiman … ‘I think that because there’ve been a lot of fascist overtones in Marvelman [Miracleman] people assumed that the superheroes had taken over. There aren’t really any fascist superheroes in Watchmen. Rorschach’s not a fascist; he’s a nutcase. The Comedian’s not a fascist’ he’s a psychopath. Dr. Manhattan’s not a fascist; he’s a space cadet. They’re not fascists. They’re not in control of their world. Dr. Manhattan’s not even in control of the world — he doesn’t care about the world.’

[blogs] Jim Davidson’s Official Blog … ‘I have put on some replies to my blog on the Jubilee. It would seem that I am once again a racist. I am not. Why do people get so upset? was it because I didn’t like Grace Jones or because I described her as a black woman dressed as bat girl. Well I’am sorry if that caused offence. I really am, but come on, get a life.’

[books] What The Author Meant Vs. What Your English Teacher Meant … ‘The curtains were fucking blue.’

[funny] Leaving child in pub ‘right for Britain’ says Cameron … ‘DAVID Cameron has insisted that leaving his nine year-old daughter in a pub is the sort of tough decision that will rescue Britain from recession. The prime minister left Nancy in a pub near Chequers after the move was agreed during a conference call with chancellor George Osborne and Nick Clegg…’

[comics] Comics I Read In Series Form In The 1980s: American Flagg! … Tom Spurgeon On American Flagg … ‘That first 26-issue run felt like it spanned the entire decade. In actuality, issue #26 appeared a mere 25 months after the debut. Sometimes I wonder if the difficulty in repackaging American Flagg! for other formats comes down to something spiritual. The serial comic book edition was pretty close to perfect in its way: a regular visit to a giddy clash of satire, comedy, adventure-comic beats and general rudeness delivered with aplomb by an artist working at the far edge of his talent while being supported by able, compelling craftsmen. Reading American Flagg! as comics felt like getting a broadcast from someplace else and watching it on a broken, filthy, slapped-together computer screen.’

[tech] In Memoriam: Our Favorite Apps and Services That Have Gone Belly Up (and Their Replacements) … useful list from Lifehacker … ‘Delicious (Web): 2003-2011 – The history: Delicious is a web-based social bookmarking app that is technically still around, but it isn’t really the same site it used to be. Many users have jumped ship entirely to other similar services instead. What’s taken its place: We rounded up our favorite Delicious alternatives back when it was headed for death, and Pinboard is still our top choice.’

[funny] Existential Star Wars … C3PO: ‘All actions are equivalent and all are on principle doomed to failure.’

[web] Keep Calm Must Stop … a tumblr examing the worst of the “Keep Calm” meme … ‘Keep Calm It’s Our 2 For 1 Sale’

[comics] Behold! Alan Moore! Cliff Richard! Shakin’ Stevens! Alvin Stardust! A Black Dog! TOGETHER AT LAST! … quite possibly the weirdest photo of Alan Moore in existence.

Entire Facebook Staff Laughs As Man Tightens Privacy Settings … “Look, he’s clicking ‘Friends Only’ for his e-mail address. Like that’s going to make a difference!” howled infrastructure manager Evan Hollingsworth, tears streaming down his face, to several of his doubled-over coworkers. “Oh, sure, by all means, Jason, ‘delete’ that photo. Man, this is so rich.”

[tv] William Shatner confirms Devon town actually prostitute free … ‘One knowledgeable Register source confirmed that Ilfracombe is indeed prostitute free, but full of “dodgy brummies and scousers who are too dodgy for Liverpool”. He added the “toilets up on Oxford Grove” had been shut down because of immoral activity.’

[life] Why Aren’t Cities Littered With Dead Pigeons? … On the numerous and brutal threats to pigeons existence in cities … Stray and domesticated cats: Your precious Chairman Meow is likely an avian serial murderer if you let it roam around outdoors. Researchers believe that cats kill hundreds of thousands of birds every year; the National Audubon Society has passed a “Resolution on Cats” that states that felines “may have been involved in the extinction of more bird species than any other cause, except habitat destruction.”

[comics] Comics I Read In Series Form In The 1980s: Miracleman … Tom Spurgeon On Marvelman / Miracleman … ‘I can sure recall any number of individual moments in these comics. There’s a birth. There’s the way the character initially puts together his “magic word.” There’s a scene where they’re reading comics for clues. There’s a man with scary teeth. There’s one where they talk about sex education as something that should involve having sex as part of that education. There’s a bunch of stuff with the creepy Kid Miracleman character, a wonderful bad guy. There’s the arch-villain that looks like the late Joe Paterno. And then there’s the single issue with all the killing, which I remember mostly in terms of its visual texture, one giant smear of pain. That was one of the actually rare comic books of its day, incidentally; I had two or three interns at TCJ that asked to read the office copy the day they arrived.’

Facebook Changed Everyone’s Email to @Facebook.com; Here’s How to Fix Yours … useful Facebook fix from Lifehacker.

[watergate] Did the Press Uncover Watergate? [Part 1 | Part 2] … fascinating look (from 1974) at the myth that it was investigative journalism that uncovered Watergate … ‘In keeping with the mythic view of journalism, however, the book [All the Presidents Men] never describes the “behind-the-scenes” investigations which actually “smashed the Watergate scandal wide open”-namely the investigations conducted by the FBI, the federal prosecutors, the grand jury, and the Congressional committees. The work of almost all those institutions, which unearthed and developed all the actual evidence and disclosures of Watergate, is systematically ignored or minimized by Bernstein and Woodward. Instead, they simply focus on those parts of the prosecutors’ case, the grand-jury investigation, and the FBI reports that were leaked to them’

[comics] Annotations to League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Volume III Chapter Three, a.k.a. Century: 2009 … Work-in-progress annotations from Jess Nevins … ‘Page 13. Panel 1. “QueeQueg’s” is a reference to the harpooner Queequeg, from Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick (1851). Pádraig Ó Méalóid and Greg Daly note that “Starbuck” is also from Moby-Dick, so that in the world of League there is no Starbuck’s, there is Queequeg’s.’