Walked at the Race for the Cure today. Tired now. Back to sleep I go.

Comic Book Urban Legends Revealed #55.

Gordon Lee's case has made Metafilter.

Happy Morning, everyone. No, I don't drink coffee, and that ad doesn't make me any more inclined to.

Getting a refund from an eBay scammer by calling his mom. Ouch. Via Augie.

A startling nine-letter word on Snopes.

British Columbia needs a bunny cull. Attack of the hungry bunnies.

This post goes into great detail about what net neutrality means, but here's the really basic lowdown...

If Net Neutrality is NOT passed, it is almost certain that you will have to pay extra money to the providers of the internet (the folks who own the cables and lines) to get access to many sites. The only sites that will be free will be corporate sites who are willing to pay tons of money so consumers will have unrestricted access. Small businesses, blogs, fansites, private websites... all will load much slower... if they load at all.

The threat is real. It's ALREADY HAPPENING. Call your congresscritters and let them know that you think the internet should be protected from corporate greed.

Jim Baen is in the ICU after a stroke. I consider him one of the innovators of SF/F, especially the new online paradigm. Best wishes and good luck to him.

Everyone must go look at Leonard's Balls (note that this is two links).

Abadazad and the Future of Childrens Literature.

Gail Simone on Fanfic.

Oemings convention photo video. I wouldn't call this completely worksafe... and the music is very interesting.

Metafilter discusses women reading comic books.

Here's a contrast for you... the new BNL album available on-line with extras, versus Weird Al losing money when people buy on-line. It all boils down to a really crappy contract on Al's part.

More on the Japanese candy tie-in to Grave of the Fireflies.

Cheating is bad. Cheating badly is worse.

The Meow Mix House is kinda cool, but I can't stop checking out the webcams. *sigh* Cats.

High-fat diet can help with cases of intractable epilepsy. Not something I would want to try myself, but if it can help, it's something good.

But, is it Art? (image at Boing Boing.)

The Howling Curmudgeons talk about Eric Shanower's Oz graphic novels.

Aiiee! The Beat has this one right. What wasn't mentioned is that the fruit candy tin later contains the ashes of the little sister when she dies.

Mathematics on The Simpsons.

New way to desalinate water that could reduce the cost by 75%.

Um. A picture is worth a thousand... Shatners.

Earth is about to lose a moon. Sort of. But not forever.

Cute Overload reports on the Webby's. Heh. Five-word acceptance speeches. Cool.

The gutter. Originally it was to be done on Thursday. Then on Friday. Then on Monday. Well, it's getting put in as I type. They decided to do it as one long piece, and extruded (?) it from a truck on the street, then walked through the neighbors' yards to get it to the back without bending it. They are now in the process of hooking it up to the roof.

It's one really long piece of metal. And it's finally going in!

Rest in peace, Tim Hildebrandt.

Another swipe by Bob Kane of Henry E. Vallely's work. Some of the classic Batman panels are now revealed as swipes of other, uncredited, artists.

Doctor Who has been good for the ratings on the Sci-Fi channel.

Another case of rampant copyright allowing scholarship to be destroyed. Even more sickening, the works in question were in the public domain at one point, but yanked out of it by a stupid law.

And lastly: What The Ads Are Telling Me - Sierra Mist security checkpoint ads: If you buy our product, it will be taken from you, and you will be threatened if you object.

Sorry folks, nothing to see here. Move along...

Our little excursion to KBTC yesterday seems to have raised some questions about the current status of Doctor Who in this country, so I'll see if I can clear things up a bit:

• First, our local Who station stopped showing the program because the rights were taken away from them. I presume this was an attempt by BBC America to bundle the rights to showing the revived version of the show with the classic version. It seems that that didn't fly, so the classic version was made available to PBS stations again.


• KBTC will be starting it up again on a regular basis! It won't be on next Saturday, but it will be back in it's old timeslot of 7:00 and 7:30 p.m. the following Saturday, June 24, beginning with "The Three Doctors." This is about where they left off when KBTC lost the rights back in 2004.


• The only other stations that I am aware of still showing classic Who are the Iowa Public Television and Maryland Public Television networks. I think Dallas and Salt Lake City were still showing it back in the final days before it was withdrawn, but no word on if it's coming back there, or in any other market.


• If you want your local PBS station to show Doctor Who, tell them you want it. If they give that tired old line about how it's only available on the Sci-Fi Channel now, tell them that that's not the case, and three stations are currently showing it. If they don't believe you, ask that they contact KBTC in Tacoma.


• No, I have no idea when series 2 of the revival will be on the Sci-Fi Channel, nor on the CBC. But I very much suspect they will before too long.

Any other questions?