overheardnyc

http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/archives/019895.html

Professor to couple making out during lecture: Excuse me, what do you think you're doing?
Guy: Oh sorry, one of our friends bet us 50 bucks we wouldn't make out during a lecture.
Guy in front of him to his girlfriend: We have got to get in on that!

--Fordham University

makinglight

http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/011447.html

This weekend, co-vocabularists are invited to nominate new similes fit for the times in which we live. These can be adaptations of classic similes (as good as Goldmans) or novel comparisons (as generous as a stimulus package). It is hoped that co-vocabularists will take to this competition like a politician to pork but, please, keep 'em as clean as a Prius.

In the meantime, I'll bet we can play this game a lot better than the NYTimes.

overheardnyc

http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/archives/019894.html

Comedy club rep: Hey, crackheads, come see a comedy show!
Woman: I'm not a crackhead.
Comedy club rep: ...yet.

--43rd & 7th

jennreese

Some exciting news on the feline front!

First, the kitten has a name, and that name is “Oslo.” We like the city motif (see “Cairo”), and he’s all grey and white indicating someplace cold and snowy. (What, you were hoping for Stuttgart?)

From Oslo

Originally published at jennreese.com. You can comment here or there.

overheardnyc

http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/archives/019893.html

Teacher: Which race of people were counted as 3/5 of a person during the 1850s in the South?
Student: Midgets.

--Williamsburg High School

io9_rss

http://io9.com/5317703/amazon-secretly-removes-1984-from-the-kindle

Thousands of people last week discovered that Amazon had quietly removed electronic copies of George Orwell's 1984 from their Kindle e-book readers. In the process, Amazon revealed how easy censorship will be in the Kindle age.

In this case, the mass e-book removals were motivated by copyright . A company called MobileReference, who did not own the copyrights to the books 1984 and Animal Farm, uploaded both books to the Kindle store and started selling them. When the rights owner heard about this, they contacted Amazon and asked that the e-books be removed. And Amazon decided to erase them not just from the store, but from all the Kindles where they'd been downloaded. Amazon operators used the Kindle wireless network, called WhisperNet, to quietly delete the books from people's devices and refund them the money they'd paid.

An uproar followed, with outraged customers pointing out the irony that Amazon was deleting copies of a novel about a fascist media state that constantly alters history by changing digital records of what has happened. Amazon's action flies in the face of what people expect when they purchase a book. Under the "right of first sale" in the U.S., people can do whatever they like with a book after purchasing it, including giving it to a friend or reselling it. There is no option for a bookseller to take that book back once it's sold.

Apparently, until last week, Amazon claimed it wouldn't take back purchased books either: The New York Times' Brad Stone reports:

Amazon's published terms of service agreement for the Kindle does not appear to give the company the right to delete purchases after they have been made. It says Amazon grants customers the right to keep a "permanent copy of the applicable digital content."

But this isn't the first time there has been a problem with secret deletings. Stone adds:

Amazon appears to have deleted other purchased e-books from Kindles recently. Customers commenting on Web forums reported the disappearance of digital editions of the Harry Potter books and the novels of Ayn Rand over similar issues.

Now that the public is up in arms over the Kindle deletions, Amazon is once again promising good behavior. Amazon spokesman Drew Herdener told reporters:

We are changing our systems so that in the future we will not remove books from customers' devices in these circumstances.

That "in these circumstances" bit doesn't inspire a lot of confidence. Sounds like books will be removed again under other (undefined) circumstances.

Regardless of whether you believe Amazon's promise to leave your Kindle alone, the company has tipped its hand and shown us the dark side of a culture where books are only available in electronic form. If the WhisperNet service from Kindle allows the company to delete books silently from your device, what other information might they have access to? Can the company monitor what you're reading and when - and then hand that over to law enforcement? Can it replace a book file with a different file whose content is changed?

Perhaps more than anything else, this mass deletion of 1984 has made it clear that collecting e-books is going to require some technical know-how. No e-book is truly yours unless you can get it off your Kindle and onto your computer - hopefully a computer that isn't connected to the internet.

io9_rss

http://io9.com/5317710/whats-the-matter-with-the-hugo-shortlist

The six books chosen for the 2009 Hugo Awards shortlist are largely mediocre, insists up-and-coming author Adam Roberts. But the interesting part isn't his critiques of Gaiman, Doctorow, Stross, and Scalzi, it's his ideas of what make a great novel.

The Hugos, of course, are the fan-voted awards, and anybody who attended last year's WorldCon or plans to attend this year's gets to vote. That makes them the most democratic of all the major awards, although actual numbers of voters still tend to be quite small.

And Roberts argues that the voice of fandom, through the Hugo Awards, has chosen to represent the genre poorly. With the possible exception of Neal Stephenson's Anathem, the six books chosen for the Hugo Awards shortlist are utterly unremarkable, says Roberts. He calls Scalzi's Zoe's Tale "mediocre but pleasant," Gaiman's The Graveyard Book "twee" and "cosy," Stross' Saturn's Children "as scattershot a novel as any Stross has written," and Doctorow's Little Brother "stylistically dull." As for Anathem, it's "enormous and deranged and so boring it goes through boring into some strange condition on the far side."

Adds Roberts:

Widely publicised shortlists of mediocre art are a bad thing. What do these lists say about SF to the multitude in the world-to the people who don't know any better? It says that SF is old-fashioned, an aesthetically, stylistically and formally small-c conservative thing. It says that SF fans do not like works that are too challenging, or unnerving; that they prefer to stay inside their comfort zone.

As for the fact that the novel shortlist is so dominated by young adult fiction, Roberts quotes Abigail Nussbaum who says that's not the real problem:

Though it might be tempting to conclude that the shoddy state of this year's shortlist is the result of the infantilization of the genre, to my mind the problem isn't that YA books are being nominated, but that the wrong YA books have been. How much stronger would this year's best novel shortlist have been if Terry Pratchett's Nation, Margo Lanagan's Tender Morsels, or even Allegra Goodman's The Other Side of the Island had been on it? (This is not even to mention books that have received a great deal of critical attention, but which I haven't yet read myself, such as Patrick Ness's The Knife of Never Letting Go, Kristin Cashore's Graceling, or Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games.)

But once you unpack Roberts' statements further, you realize that he's actually making a larger argument about what a good novel is, and what science fiction novels should do. It's not just that he didn't like the shortlist, it's that those books didn't do what he wanted them to. Writes Roberts:

[T]he very heart's-blood of literature is to draw people out of their comfort zone; to challenge and stimulate them, to wake and shake them; to present them with the new, and the unnerving, and the mind-blowing. And if this true of literature, it is doubly or trebly true of science fiction. For what is the point of SF if not to articulate the new, the wondrous, the mindblowing and the strange?...

Fandom, look at the 2009 Clarke novel shortlist. Do you know why that list is better than yours? It's not that its every novel is a masterpiece-far from it (although it seems to me regretable that you couldn't you vote books as good as The Quiet War, House of Sons or Song of Time onto your shortlist.) But some of the books on that list fail, no question. Martin Martin's on the Other Side, for instance, is a mediocre novel. But (and this is the crucial thing) it's a mediocre novel trying to do something a little new with the form of the novel. It's an experiment in voice and tone, and ambitious in its way. The novels on the Hugo shortlist-except Anathem, as I mentioned-try nothing new: they are all old-fashioned: formally, stylistically and conceptually unadventurous.

And that's probably the crux of it, I think — do we want awards like the Hugos to celebrate works that tell a good story, or do we want to uplift works that are experimental and "do something a little new with the form of the novel"? I don't think it's actually true that mainstream literary fiction values strangeness or formal experimentation, outside of a few rarified circles. I have a feeling the Hugos represent the books that most of the WorldCon-goers read and liked the most, rather than ones which pushed the envelope in some way.

Maybe we should have a different set of awards for envelope-pushing works? What do you think? [Punkadiddle]

overheardnyc

http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/archives/019892.html

50-something lady to 30-something daughter: I really want Japanese food.
30-something daughter: Where do you wanna go?
50-something lady: I see Japanese people in that restaurant. It must be sushi... what's it called?
30-something daughter: Nick's Pizza.

--Fortest Hills

Overheard by: Godzirra

io9_rss

http://io9.com/5317662/extremophiles-i-have-known-and-loved

Extremophiles challenge everything we thought we knew about the existence of life on Earth. Now, astrobiologists are questioning if some extremophiles are actually aliens living among us. Just who are these incredible creatures, and what can we learn from them?

Extremophiles are organisms that thrive in the most extreme environments on Earth. From the sulphuric hot springs in Yellowstone National Park to the icy Antarctic, these creatures push the limits of what we know about biology, and force us to reevaluate the possibility of extraterrestrial life forms. Scientists are finding an ever-increasing number of these tough little organisms living quite happily in places where we previously believed no life could possibly exist. Extremophiles have even been found nestled in the heart of a nuclear reactor.

The Chernobyl fungus was discovered several years ago, when scientists were using an R.O.V. to inspect the Chernobyl site. To their surprise, they found a dark slime on the walls, living within the reactor and actually feeding on the radiation. The melanin-rich fungus increases rapidly in size when exposed to a high level of gamma rays (and no, you wouldn't like it when it's angry). Other fungi and bacteria have been discovered with the same ability to thrive within radioactive environments. Deinococcus radiodurans, an amazing polyextremophile with the distinction of being considered the world's most durable bacterium, is capable of withstanding 5,000 Grays of radiation (500,000 rads). The discovery of such fungi and bacteria have provided scientists with a dramatic breakthrough in finding organic ways in which to detoxify radioactive waste.

Extremophiles are not just microbes; more highly evolved creatures have also proved to be as durable, and as strange and wonderful, as the Deinococcus radiodurans bacteria.

The Pompeii Worm

This extremophile keeps a cool head even in extreme temperatures. The Pompeii Worm finds a habitat on or near Black Smokers, hydrothermal vents on the sea floor, which give the worm its volcanic name. Nestled within its cozy tube, its body stays at a very toasty 175º F, while its plume-like head protrudes from the tube into water that is a much more temperate 72º F. Weirder still, its fleecy coat is actually a colony of bacteria that lives in a symbiotic relationship with the worm, fed by mucus secretions produced by the worm. Truly an oddity, the Pompeii worm (and its living coat) obviously has a lot to teach us about living in an extreme range of temperatures.

The Tardigrade
The Tardigrade is considered the king of the extremophiles. These microscopic organisms look like clear gummi bears come to life (hence their more common name, "Water Bears") and have proven to be more durable than Twinkies. Tardigrades have been discovered all over the world, and in the most amazing places, from the peaks of the Himalayas to the sea floor, from temperatures approaching absolute zero to temperatures over 303° F.

Like the Chernobyl fungus, these wonderful Water Bears can withstand doses of gamma rays lethal to humans without flinching. Tardigrades can also withstand the extreme pressure of a vacuum, and research is being conducted to test Tardigrades' durability in space. The Tardigrade Space program has been geekily nicknamed... yes, you guessed it... TARDIS.

io9_rss

http://io9.com/5316528/marvel-takes-iron-man-the-mecha-route-with-new-tv-show

Spider-Man may have gotten to be reinvented for Indian and Japanese audiences, but now it's time for some of his fellow Marvel Superheroes to feel the lure of international franchise building with the publisher's impressive new Marvel Anime project.

Announced prior to its launch at next week's San Diego Comic-Con, Marvel Anime will see Marvel team with legendary Japanese animation studio Madhouse (Vampire Hunter D, Tokyo Godfathers, Death Note and many, many more) for four new television series based on well-known Marvel characters. The first two to be announced, Iron Man and Wolverine, are expected to start airing in Japan next year and are based on new takes by British writer Warren Ellis, who apparently enjoys re-imagining franchises for animation, having just performed similar duties on Hasbro's GI Joe: Resolute.

This won't be the first time Madhouse have worked on American properties; they contributed to DC's Batman: Gotham Knight movie and The Animatrix, and have even worked with Marvel before on the Hulk Vs. series.

More details on Marvel Anime will be revealed at Marvel's animation panel next Friday at San Diego Comic-Con.

overheardnyc

http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/archives/019891.html

Man #1, watching firemen climb a ladder and enter a brownstone: What are they doing? Why are there so many of them?
Man #2: Maybe somebody got stuck in the bathtub.
Man #1: You're probably right.

--75th St & Amsterdam

Overheard by: Stephanie

makinglight

http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/011445.html

"We completely understand the public's concern about futuristic robots feeding on the human population, but that is not our mission," stated Harry Schoell, Cyclone's CEO.

io9_rss

http://io9.com/5316501/why-lost-lawsuit-missed-what-makes-the-show-special

The lawsuit from a television producer that claims that ABC's Lost was created by him 32 years ago may sound ridiculous, but even if his claims are true, he's still ignored what makes the show the success it is.

TMZ.com has the list of similarities between Lost and his unproduced drama (also called Lost, he claims) that producer Anthony Spinner filed as part of his lawsuit, and while it looks as though his 1977 pilot about the survivors of a plane crash on a tropical island has more than a few shared elements with the popular ABC show, it also raises the question about what makes Lost the show it actually is.

I can forgive Spinner's comparison of the similarities between the shows' characters - although, it's worth pointing out that none of Lost's characters seem particularly original or even interesting when given the one-line basic description that Spinner provides, and to an extent, that always seemed kind of the point of them; that they were stock characters we were familiar with as viewers, plunged into an unfamiliar environment - even when the comparisons border on the "One of my characters was a man, as well" line:

Survivor suffers from a drug addiction (Kyle) - Survivor suffers from a drug addiction (Charlie)... Ethnic minority character (Coby) must deal with racial slurs especially from one character (Butch) - Ethnic minority character (Sayid) must deal with racial slurs especially from one character (Sawyer)

But it's the description of plot similarities where Spinner's comparison of the shows starts running aground. Even supposing that Spinner's Lost was real - and, to be honest, we're not entirely convinced that that's the case - the situations that he describes it sharing with ABC's Lost seem more like situations that the latter show used as misdirection or McGuffin in order to get viewers lured in for the real story:

Raft built but destroyed by natives... Killing off of a lead... Leads attempting to kill one another, committing suicide, dying of illness... Use of trip-wires and makeshift weaponry... Use of flashbacks to the regular life of each character before being marooned as both a source of content, style, and a means of character development

I mean, yes, Lost did all of those things, and the flashbacks in particular were a defining gimmick of the show's first seasons, but... they're not really what the show was about, you know?

(You could even argue - if I were a more argumentative sort, I would - that the flashbacks were as much about priming the audience for narrative that takes place in more than one timeframe simultaneously so that they wouldn't be confused when the time travel element of the show really kicked in, as they were about character development. But I'll get to that in a second.)
All of this raises the question, in an around-about way, of what Lost is really about. And here's where I piss off at least half of everyone reading this by saying that, should this lawsuit come to trial, ABC should defend themselves by pointing out that, like Battlestar Galactica, Lost really isn't about the characters. Don't get me wrong; both shows had characters we empathized with, believed in and rooted for - not to mention had crushes on and built fansites for - but, when it comes down to it, the characters in both shows? Pretty much coincidental to the important stuff.

Stephen spent some time yesterday worrying that Lost's big finale will disappoint as many people as Galactica's did, and that made me think about why BSG left so many people upset (as well as why I thought it was perfect when I watched it, and felt that fall away the more I thought about it). What I realized was that I only semi-agree with the idea that Lost puts character first. Galactica showrunner Ron Moore has talked more than once about feeling lost as to how to put together the finale of the series until he realized that the show's mythology came second to the show's characters, and that's why it felt satisfying at the time and less so as soon as the warm fuzzy glow faded; yes, each character got their moment and their earned (un)happy ending - well, almost - but at the expense of logic and plot in many cases, and that's what kept us watching, much more than the human drama, as good as it was: the sense that there was a bigger point to it all.

The same is true, I think, of Lost, but to a greater extent; as much as characters like Ben, Locke and Desmond may stay with you, I would still rather find out the answers to all of the questions of the show's mythology than watch any of them have happy (or unhappy) endings, and I doubt that I'm that alone in that. Lost, by design, is as much about the larger questions as it is about any of the characters' individual journeys, and if it ends up going to Galactica route, it'll end up upsetting fans much more than Ron Moore's robot-montage final sequence could even have imagined. It's one thing for Spinner to say that he created Lost in 1977 - and, given the show's time travel aspect, it'd be wonderfully fitting to discover that the whole thing is some ARG-esque parable about a writer who saw Lost then ended up thrown back in time and pitched the show in 1977, knowing it would fail, so that he could file a lawsuit in 2009 - but Lost isn't really a show about characters marooned on an island after a plane crash; it's a show about time travel and destiny and the big questions that you can only really address successfully in science fiction that just happens to feature people whose plane crashed on an island. Which may or may not be an island after all. Unless Spinner can show that that's what his show was always going to be, his Lost will, at most, be an awkward footnote in the history of our favorite island drama.

io9_rss

http://io9.com/5313516/one-size-terrorizes-all-with-new-chart

Wondering just which movie monster is the biggest of them all? A new t-shirt from designer Sean Mort lays it all out for you in a handy, easy-to-reference chart.

The t-shirt is available here, and described simply by Mort as

a load of monsters and baddies from famous films on a size chart.

We're just concerned that Megatron seems so small in comparison to Cloverfield's monster.

[Via]

jedediah

http://www.kith.org/journals/jed/2009/07/18/12255.html

Interesting pair of articles:

"Space: Is the final frontier all it used to be?", by Ted Anthony, for AP, discusses the lack of enthusiasm for space we're seeing today, compared to the super enthusiasm of forty years ago. Also some interesting stuff about pop culture, paranoia, sf, and sense of wonder. Sample quote:

Our visions of [space] have become darker, more suspicious, more xenophobic. When a space shuttle launches, many Americans don't really notice unless something goes wrong. In a country defined by its obsession with novelty, often the response is predictably American, the thing that makes us great and weak at the same time: Been there, done that.

(I'm not sure I buy "more xenophobic" per se, considering the cultural and sf-related trends of the '50s. But I see what he's getting at.)

From a different angle entirely, an LA Times article by John Johnson Jr. about the engineering effort that went into the Saturn V rockets for the Apollo project. Sample quote:

The success of America's big bet in space depended on the ability of young, unheralded engineers to build rocket engines that were both powerful enough and reliable enough to wrench the spacecraft from Earth's jealous grasp and send it winging to the lunar surface.

overheardnyc

http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/archives/019890.html

Awkward tall man: A pigeon hit me in the chest today.
Attractive woman: That's because your chest is where most people's heads are. It was attacking.
Awkward tall man: Yeah, but it just stimulated my nipples a little bit.

--Greenpoint

Overheard by: Fatericbana

larbalestier

http://justinelarbalestier.com/blog/2009/07/18/anime/

http://justinelarbalestier.com/?p=5377

This year my favourite show is Avatar . Scott and me watched all three seasons in a greedy one-week rush. Loved it, loved it, loved it. If you haven’t seen it you really really should.

Ever since I’ve been wanting to watch something that hits the same spot. Thus far without a lot of success. Miyazake’s films, which I adore, have some of the same feel, but I’m in the mood for a series, not a standalone movies. I want interesting world building, plots that make sense, strong female characters.

The last is particularly important to me. We’ve been watching Death Note and while there’s a lot I like about it, the main female character, Misa Amane, is absolutely appalling—clingy, immature, stupid, annoying. Ever since her first appearance I’ve been steadily losing interest. I cannot stress how much I never ever want to watch a show with a character like Misa Amane in it. I don’t remember the last time I’ve been so irritated by anyone—character or real person. I loved the character of Naomi Misora but sadly she was only in a few episodes. A show all about her would be awesome.

Fire away with recommendations, please.

And does anyone have an opinion on whether the Naruto anime is as good as the manga?

io9_rss

http://io9.com/5316544/has-science-proven-that-all-artists-are-crazy

Okay, of course not; even "crazy" is a particularly prejorative word to use. But European scientists are claiming that artistic tendencies may be linked to the same genetic mutation that causes schizophrenia and paranoia.

Szabolcs Kéri of the Hungarian Semmelweis University genotyped 200 volunteers who responded to an ad asking for creative and accomplished volunteers, along with scoring and classifying their accomplishments and providing one of two tests of creative thinking to each volunteer. His study showed that those volunteers who had two copies of a particular genetic mutation called neuregulin 1 scored higher on creativity testing than those with one, although those volunteers in turn scored higher than those with zero.

Previous studies have linked neuregulin 1 mutations with increased risks of schizophrenia; Kéri theorizes that this - and the link to increased creativity - may come from the mutation dampening the region of the brain that can control mood and behavior.

Artistic tendencies linked to 'schizophrenia gene' [New Scientist]

overheardnyc

http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/archives/019889.html

Guy: Awww, man, did you hear? Billy's in the hospital!
Girl: Oh no! What happened?
Guy: He only ate bananas and pop for like two weeks straight.
Girl: Shit, that sucks. Poor Billy!

--Williamsburg, Brooklyn

io9_rss

http://io9.com/5317039/whedon-on-horrible-award-nomination

We're not saying that the Emmy Awards love Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, but they did create a new category so that it could be nominated. Surely this convinces creator Joss Whedon that he should give us a sequel already?

Whedon told SciFi Wire that, yes, a sequel is on the cards. Maybe the longterm cards, but still:

We're all extremely busy, but we're all really motivated. This is just ... yet another moment of going, "My God." This is the kind of thing, you know, that is, ... just the effect is snowballing. And, in a way, it makes you a little skittish. It's like, we don't want to do a Horrible that's horrible. You know? We don't want to blow it... it's like, yeah, it could be great, or it could be Arthur 2. We don't know. But at the same time, it motivates me, not only to do more, not only work in the Horrible realm, and also, just, who doesn't want to play with those guys? But just generally, I'm very anxious to do more stuff on the Internet, either with other people or just in my own small capacity. You know? Just to keep testing the models. Just to keep it fresh and keep surprising people, including myself. Because none of what has happened has surprised anyone more than it surprised me.

He also offered up a tongue-in-cheek reason why we haven't seen the sequel already:

I'd be doing it more, but Fox forgot to cancel my show... Very awkward. They looked and said, "Oh, this is our bad. We forgot to cancel your show. You're going to have to make more."

Cue "Fox is trying to stop Joss from making more Horrible" rumor in three... two... one...

Joss Whedon on Emmys, Dr. Horrible and the future [SciFi Wire]

scalzifeed

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2009/07/18/view-from-my-window-71809/

http://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=7984

It’s not bad.

I’m mildly amused to read the comments yesterday concerning whether all y’all should be guessing where I am and tracking me down, etc. The short answer is that it’s probably not impossible to figure out where I am (or was, at least, since I’ve moved on since yesterday), but, you know, I’m on vacation. This is a personal trip, not a professional trip.

Not that I think any of you would show up at my doorstep, etc; I suspect you’re all grownups, with grownup senses of boundaries. But even if you did, I wouldn’t have time for you — the days are just packed, as they say, with people and things to do. Hope your days are similarly packed.

The only other thing of  to report is that I am unbelievably sunburned; my head is currently the shade lobsters get around the time to bring them out of the pot. Aloe lotion and sunblock for me today, as I have to go back out into the sun; also, I’m not sure what my forebears were thinking when they decided to be so pale. Because, really, it’s not working out for me.

So. What’s up with you?

boingboing_net

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/I3KHIx5xSLg/warning-signs-for-th.html

Warning Signs (via Beyond the Beyond)

boingboing_net

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/07/18/atms-that-spray-atta.html

The extreme measure is the latest in South Africa's escalating war against armed robbers who target banks and cash delivery vans. The number of cash machines blown up with explosives has risen from 54 in 2006 to 387 in 2007 and nearly 500 last year.

The technology uses cameras to detect people tampering with the card slots. Another machine then ejects pepper spray to stun the culprit while police response teams race to the scene.

But the mechanism backfired in one incident last week when pepper spray was inadvertently inhaled by three technicians who required treatment from paramedics.

io9_rss

http://io9.com/5317181/scarjos-secret-sexy-past-revealed-in-year-one-comic

If you like what you've seen of Scarlett Johanssen's Black Widow from Iron Man 2 so far, Marvel has your future needs covered: Doctor Who writer Paul Cornell will be telling her back story in Black Widow: Year One.

The new series, announced in yesterday's LA Times, takes the character back in more ways than one. Not only does artist Tom Raney get to bring the character's look back to her classic 1970s look - unsurprisingly, the same one the character sports in Iron Man 2 - but Cornell also will be revisiting the Widow's past to remake her into something much closer than her namesake, as he told Comic Book Resources:

The plot connects back to all these different times in her life, as she tries to save everyone she ever kissed from something deadly. A real Black Widow's curse... She's not defined by the men in her past. They all, to some extent, are defined by her, and now possibly fatally. It's about the past coming after Natalia seeking revenge, and the present not being able to do a thing about it. So she's on her own. And that's fine, because she's never seen herself as being anything else.

Black Widow: Year One launches in November.

FIRST LOOK: 'Black Widow: Year One' [LA Times]

io9_rss

http://io9.com/5317142/will-futuramas-return-come-without-its-stars

Excited about the return of Futurama to our television screens? Prepare to lose that feeling: Fox have apparently cut the original voices of Fry, Leela, Bender and many other characters from the revival and are about to recast the roles.

Forces of Geek caught the mention of the recasting from Facebook of all places, but apparently Billy West, Katy Sagal John DiMaggio, Phil LaMarr, and Maurice LaMarche are all to be replaced by new voice actors when the show returns, presumably in an effort to keep costs low. The site also has a copy of the Fox casting call for auditions, which lists Fry, Leela, Bender, the Professor, Zoidberg, Zapp Brannigan, Kif and Mom (of Mom's Friendly Robot Company) as needing new actors.

Way to cut the fan rejoicing over the renewed series short, Fox.

Is FOX Planning to Recast Futurama? [Forces of Geek]

overheardnyc

http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/archives/019888.html

Ozzie #1, leaving bar: We should like, go to church tomorrow.
Ozzie #2: Like in Harlem?
Ozzie #1: Yes! Church there is awesome!

--7th St & Ave A

Overheard by: AgnosticLocal