Accumulated weekend marginalia

Time to move away from all J.A.I.L. all the time. With the weekend upon us and as a transition back to a more normal flow of posts, here’s an extended miscellany from near and far:

• Local savant Scott Hudson picks a get out of town all star team.
• Via a comment to an earlier post I’ve learned of Another Liberal Blog in South Dakota. It has been added to the blogroll.
• Scott Esposito at Conversational Reading ponders creating a personal literary world map. I fear I would fare far worse than him.
• I’ve never been to an SF convention as I’m not into the costumes and fascination with what I perceive to usually be bad SF shows I have always perceived to are rampant at them. Yet here’s a SF Con I’m actually thinking of putting on my calendar next year. (Via SF Signal.)
• With the space shuttle Discovery being one of the most filmed and photographed in history, there’s plenty of video floating around. Here’s an impressive one from the launch. (Via NASA Watch.)
• An insider’s view of book design indicates that one of the most important tasks is “figuring out a way to fit enough words on a page so that the book comes out to the number of pages that were budgeted for.” (Via Kottke.org Remaindered Links.)
• The science behind the five second rule. (Also via SF Signal.)
• The Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity has started an obesity blog. (Also via Kottke.org Remaindered Links.)

“Spare Parts I (A Nocturnal Emission)”
Tom Waits, Nighthawks at the Diner