1. The Footnotes of Mad Men (via Kottke).
2. Corona saves a man’s life by being gross (via @BoingBoing).
3. Kenji Lopez-Alt reverse-engineers an In-n-Out burger. He also recreated Mickey D’s fries a while back.
4. Bill Murray gets interviewed.

More potentially-related posts:

1. Linkwad (updated).
2. Linkwad.
3. Linkwad.

More potentially-related posts:

1. Linkwad.
2. Linkwad.
3. Linkwad.

More potentially-related posts:

1. Linkwad.
2. Linkwad.
3. Linkwad and an update.

Via @DrGrist

More potentially-related posts:

1. Watching for the ads.
2. Where they been at?
3. Five for Friday, April 23, 2010.

Updated: “To buy or not to buy” with opt-out information for targeted iAds, via Katy O’D-P.

More potentially-related posts:

1. Linkwad and an update.
2. To buy or not to buy.
3. Linkwad and an update.

Second, Diaz calls Shurtleff “all mighty self-righteous” for the phrase “most extreme power of Utah“.  While I agree that “with my final nod” reads a little self-aggrandizing, I think this is mostly a word choice problem, and I’m not sure what else you’d call the ability to legally kill people. In fact, during his press conference, he said, “[W]e have exercised the most extreme power that the state has, that the government has, to take life, [which] was done very solemnly. It is a very sobering moment.”

I think Diaz and others are mostly reacting to the judgment inherent in lines like “Mourn his victims. Justice”¹ and “May God grant him the mercy he denied his victims,” which blurs the line between Shurtleff’s role as public servant and his personal beliefs. I also think the general perception that denizens of the southwest/mountain west are vengeful, execution-happy² rednecks is working against Shurtleff here (along with his conservative self-identification and his pledge to “sue to stop Obama Healthcare“). Sure, it’s obnoxious to non-Christians like me, but it’s also well within the realm of generally-accepted public speech for politicians.

A few tangents:

• Firing squads generally have one member who receives a blank cartridge, or “conscience round,” ostensibly to prevent them from knowing if they’d fired a lethal shot. Thanks to Newton’s third law, this should be obvious; however, a dummy round was used during Gardner’s execution to provide realistic recoil (The NYT‘s piece is accompanied by a photo that shows four bullet holes).
• A day or two before execution, Gardner was essentially put on suicide watch:”[the] prisoner is watched continually by rotating teams of prison staff, to ensure he doesn’t try to take his own life.
  “That’s why we called it the ‘Death Watch cell’,” [Gary DeLand, executive director of Utah's corrections agency from 1985 to 1992] says.”

  I know I’m pushing up against the “one idea per blog post” rule here, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a better economic argument against the death penalty than keeping staff on alert to make sure a prisoner doesn’t kill himself before they can.

More potentially-related posts:

1. Linkwad.
2. “The King stay the King.”
3. Ska is not a crime.

It’s becoming more common for shows and movies to create character Twitter accounts. Glee, for example, has a whole bunch of them set up, but they aren’t particularly good: lots of repeated jokes, extreme sporadic entries, no real interaction with the events of the plot or deeper development of the characters beyond their tics.  I think feeds like these will work best if they’re treated like webisodes, a way of offering more, quality original content that expands a universe, and can be produced at no cost other than the time of the person who is tasked with updating them. But that means taking them seriously. Just because a product doesn’t require major production costs doesn’t mean it should look and read cheap.

Although I’m not sure how it’d work for movies, it’s a great idea for TV–I know I’d follow Community twits. Also, a few webcomics have been doing this for a while; Achewood had blogs¹ by several characters, and Questionable Content‘s characters are on Twitter.

More potentially-related posts:

1. Watching for the ads.
2. Television rules the nation.
3. I have been called unstable, but not unsustainable.

So, here’s the flyer:

Via @brendankoerner

More potentially-related posts:

1. Linkwad.
2. Mad house.
3. Early half: one sentence per game.

And here’s You Are Not So Smart, a blog about… well, being wrong.

And here’s TV on the Radio’s “The Wrong Way,” because it’s a great song!

More potentially-related posts:

1. (Late) Five for Friday, May 22 2010.
2. Wired up.
3. Five for Friday, April 30, 2010.

1. Tim O’Reilly makes some big-picture arguments for Facebook.
2. The “toe of God.”
3. Janelle Monae fucking rules. YouTubage here. Check it out. The Archandroid came out while I was in the middle of Kentucky, sans computer. I have high hopes.
4. Thoughts on journalism, branding and the “nothing-based economy.”
5. The BP/Transocean oil spill could flow up the Atlantic coast. Opposition to offshore drilling, already pretty high in those states, would likely spike.
6. Bonus deepwater drilling story: there might not be much oil down there.
7. The mortgage crisis is still spreading, but might be slowing down.
8. Rand Paul got elected during my vacation, and if I’d been there last week, I could’ve told you it was coming. Didn’t see a single Grayson sign. Anyway, I’ll talk more about him later–for now, the Maddow blog corrects the NYT take on Paul’s interview.
9. Trudy Campbell/Annie from Community has a story to tell. It’s not even really sexy, the way she tells it.
10. The US might legalize online poker, but continue to ban sports betting, because their goal is to make gambling not fun.

More potentially-related posts:

1. Five for Friday, May 7, 2010.
2. Five for Friday, May 28 2010.
3. Five for Friday, April 16, 2010.