[comics] The Complete D.R. & Quinch … a review of one of Alan Moore’s early works from 2000AD … ‘It’d be hard today to convey the level and nature of the excitement readers felt in 1984 when a fresh new talent – an author – blew into the company town, overhauling a run-of-the-mill commercial comic, revitalizing it completely and, in the process, making it utterly his own. Who was this guy? Where had he learned to write like that?’

Go Look: 69 alternatives to the default Facebook profile picture …

[movies] Inception Music Comparison … (slight spoilers) … [more…]

[tech] On Tablets …some thoughts on iPads, magazines and tablets computers from Lee Maguire … ‘That was my first thought: This seems ideal for my technophobic mother. She refuses, point blank, to touch keyboards. When, as a kid, I got my first computer she asked me if I knew what all the buttons did. “That’s not an answerable question,” I told her, “the function of the keys is contextually dependant. Any key can potentially do anything.” Whoops, turns out that sort of revelation is not an effective way to cure the older generation’s fear of computers.’

[comics] What is Doctor Strange’s birthdate? .. The internet’s resident Doctor Strange expert Neilalien on the rumour that Alan Moore and Doctor Strange share a birthday on 17th November … ‘From Doctor Strange #176’s cover, we get November. The tombstone is oh-so-conveniently cracked where the year should be.’

[life] He Took a Polaroid Every Day, Until the Day He Died … ‘By May 4, 1997, it’s clear that he has cancer…’

[fake] Go Look: Photo Tampering Throughout History … ‘Photography lost its innocence many years ago. In as early as the 1860s, photographs were already being manipulated, only a few decades after Niepce created the first photograph in 1814.’

[disasters] The Crash of EgyptAir 990 … fascinating report on the last flight of a Boeing 767 in 1999 which was probably deliberately brought down by one of it’s pilots in an act of suicide … ‘The pilots were left to the darkness of the sky, whether to work together or to fight. I’ve often wondered what happened between those two men during the 114 seconds that remained of their lives. We’ll never know. Radar reconstruction showed that the 767 recovered from the dive at 16,000 feet and, like a great wounded glider, soared steeply back to 24,000 feet, turned to the southeast while beginning to break apart, and shed its useless left engine and some of its skin before giving up for good and diving to its death at high speed.’

[health] On Being Sane In Insane Places … long disturbing report on a now classic experiment where a number of mentally healthy people pretend to have mental ilness to enter a psychiatric hospital and once they are in return to their normal behaviour and then report on how they are treated …

One tacit characteristic of psychiatric diagnosis is that it locates the sources of aberration within the individual and only rarely within the complex of stimuli that surrounds him. Consequently, behaviors that are stimulated by the environment are commonly misattributed to the patient’s disorder. For example, one kindly nurse found a pseudopatient pacing the long hospital corridors. “Nervous, Mr. X?” she asked. “No, bored,” he said.

[comics] My Favourite Medical Graphic Novels … a list of comics exploring health and medical themes … On Epileptic by David B: ‘In Epileptic there are no happy endings, no miracle cures, but we are left with a deeper understanding of how illness can affect a family. Not recommended for newly diagnosed epileptics. An upsetting masterpiece.’

[magazines] The Best Magazine Articles Ever … great reading list of links from Kevin Kelly.

[life] What Makes Us Happy? … engrossing article on a long-term study of (what appeared to be) successful, happy American men and what factors might have contributed to that …

Indeed, the lives themselves-dramatic, pathetic, inspiring, exhausting-resonate on a frequency that no data set could tune to. The physical material-wispy sheets from carbon copies; ink from fountain pens-has a texture. You can hear the men’s voices, not only in their answers, but in their silences, as they stride through time both personal (masturbation reports give way to reports on children; career plans give way to retirement plans) and historical (did they vote for Dewey or Truman?; “What do you think about today’s student protesters, drug users, hippies, etc.?”). Secrets come out. One man did not acknowledge to himself until he reached his late 70s that he was gay. With this level of intimacy and depth, the lives do become worthy of Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky.

[comics] Lady Gaga Kidnaps Commissioner Gordon … ‘While the kidnapping occurred at stately Wayne Manor, home of playboy jet-setter Bruce Wayne, the eccentric billionaire was not available for comment.’

[world] The Most Alien-Looking Place on Earth … some amazing pictures from Socotra Island. ‘…for this island, which is part of a group of 4 islands, has been geographically isolated from mainland Africa for the last 6 or 7 million years. Like the Galapagos Islands, this island is teeming with 700 extremely rare species of flora and fauna, a full 1/3 of which are endemic, i.e. found nowhere else on Earth.’ [via Sore Eyes]

[lists] A List Of Common Misconceptions … ‘There is no evidence that Vikings wore horns on their helmets.’

[press] Overheard in the Newsroom …

Editor to no one in particular: “Can’t we just have a normal murder?”

[kubrick] Go Watch: A Brief Interview with Kier Dullea on Kubrick’s 2001: Space Odyssey. [via Daring Fireball]

[brain] Why Minds Are Not Like Computers … a long article on the history of artificial intelligence research and why it might not be possible to create a thinking computer … ‘People who believe that the mind can be replicated on a computer tend to explain the mind in terms of a computer.’

[music] Go Look: Photograph of Rick Astley and Morrissey … ‘Taken Backstage at Top Of The Pops in London, February 1989’ [via Boundr]

[comics] For Sale on eBay: Cerebus: High Society #1-25 Reprints by Dave Sim.

[philosophy] The Philosophy Of Immanuel Kant in Three Minutes … ‘Kant. It’s a German name and I’m quite happy to sit here in silence until you’re mature enough to get over it…’

[funny] Go Look: America’s Joyous Future.

[comics] Jonathan Ross Meets Jim Steranko, His Comic-Book Hero … ‘Spend an hour with Jim Steranko and, if he’s in the mood, he’ll regale you with the most extraordinary tales. Are they true, I have asked myself more than once, or is he a fantasist? Has his love of storytelling and the creation of modern myths bled into his own life story until he can no longer tell the two apart? Well, now that I’ve met him, I believe them all to be true, just as I believe it when he tells me he still runs miles every day, pumps iron, and fornicates blissfully like a man a third his age. He is unique. He is Steranko. He is the greatest.’

[comics] The Unwanted … a new comic from Joe Sacco on African migrants in Malta.

[comics] The Moon Hoax … a great comic strip from Darryl Cunningham debunking some of the moon landing conspiracy theories …

[headlines] Meanwhile, in Durham: Police Hunt Norman Wisdom Lookalike.

[comics] When It Comes To Comics, You Just Can’t Beat A Drunken, Violent Aardvark … Sam Leith on comics … ‘The genre end of comics has actually diversified a lot: from hardboiled noir in Sin City or 100 Bullets, to punk psychedelia in The Invisibles, to jaunty post-apocalyptic soap opera in Preacher. It’s at the literary end of comics you sense a narrowing of the range, the main strand being a sort of studied Pekarian drabness. You could call it mundane realism. Direct or oblique autobiography is the mode, neurosis and alienation the dominant tone. Their archetypal hero is a morose and ill-socialised writer or collector of comics, often subject to sexual humiliation, sometimes sharing a name with the author. These are frequently comics, in one way or another, about comics.’

[news] The News … Charlie Brooker on the news coverage about Raoul Moat … ‘The hunt for Raoul Moat got the news so flustered, it shrieked its reports at a pitch several hundred octaves above satire. Beneath a photograph of Britain’s Most Wanted Man as an infant, The Sun ran the caption “Cute baby … but two-month-old Moat clenches his fists”. On the front page, his estranged mother apparently wished him dead.’

[weird] Go Look: No Big Deal – Just Dodging Traffic

[comics] An interview with Harvey Pekar from 1984 conducted by Gary Groth [Part One | Part Two] … ‘Some comic book fans don’t know what to make of American Splendor. They think a normal comic book should be about superbeings who can fly, that a comic dealing with everyday people doing everyday things is weird. Ordinary is weird to them. Wow, that’s really ironic.’