Sillybean

McCain’s Voice Mail to Palin Leaked to Press — bleeped and yet probably not entirely work safe. (via DF)

Welcome to Facebook! — sound not entirely work-safe.

Parsing the Bechdel Rule, and Writing a Few of Our Own — NPR has two additional suggestions.

Via several places, the news that Minneapolis police are preemptively raiding suspected peace protesters’ homes with semi-automatic weapons drawn, without warrants. More here.

Jo Walton has a lovely review of Steven Brust’s Vlad Taltos series (yes, the whole thing) up at Tor.com. If you haven’t read the books, check out the review!

Dark Chocolate and Cherry Brownies — OM NOM.

Ubiquity — new plugin for Firefox. My God, this is how the web should be! Watch the video.

Why film schools teach screenwriters not to pass the Bechdel test (via Beth)

Blockbuster CEO Doesn’t Understand the Fascination With Netflix — ‘Equally bewildering to Mr. Keyes is the emphasis on catalog size. Why would anyone want to watch anything other than new releases, he wonders. “I don’t care how many movies are available to me. As my personal taste as a customer, I want to watch the new stuff so whether we have 10,000 movies or 200 movies doesn’t matter if I don’t want to see any of the movies that we have . . . our assortment is heavily weighted toward newer releases and mainstream staple titles.”’ And that is why I no longer go to Blockbuster, you idiot. Because I saw the new releases in the theater, thanks very much, and I like watching old stuff that I’ve never seen. You know, on this nifty archival disc format we have. (via DF)

A culture of rat neurons in a cabinet communicates with a robot via Bluetooth and learns to steer it around obstacles. In the immortal words of Keanu… whoa.

Lenovo’s ad with the two guys in the airport is absolutely hysterical. (For all the people here not watching NBC’s Olympic coverage.)

Writing a novel, a love story — so very true. I think you all know which stage I’m in….

The Shire is in foreclosure! — anybody up for establishing a commune? (via MeFi)

Neuromancer — with Hayden Christiansen in the lead role, I fear for the quality of the movie. The poster makes a most excellent iPhone wallpaper, though.

Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist trailer — squee!