Mike Cassidy: “I’d love to embrace the future, but honestly I’m too busy dealing with the present.

I’m a freak in Silicon Valley, I know. This is Tomorrowland, a place where every other brain is focused on what’s to come.

Me? I’m still trying to figure out how we got to a place where 135 people can run for governor, where a man called Dr. Phil becomes the arbiter of our nation’s mental health and where it’s most hip to join a cell-phone-arranged “flash mob” for a brief and inexplicable public demonstration. (Is this, by the way, how we got 135 candidates for governor?)

Let me back up for a minute. I’ve been reading the news magazine published by the AOL-Time-Warner-CNN-Atlanta Braves company. (Remember when Time magazine was a product of Time Inc.? Simple, wasn’t it?)

Anyway, Time devoted most of a recent issue to “What’s Next?” It’s a valuable exercise. At the very least, knowing what’s coming provides us with time to figure out how to avoid it.” Mercury News via Interesting People

A San Francisco investigative reporting team gives the Voight-Kampff Test to San Francisco mayoral candidates: “The only reliable method that we know of for sniffing out replicants is the Voight-Kampff Test, created by Phillip K. Dick in his book, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and later used by Harrison Ford’s character, Deckard, in the film Blade Runner. The test uses a series of questions to evoke an emotional response which androids are incapable of having. By the candidates’ responses to this line of questioning, we feel we can say with some certainty whether or not they’re replicants. However, we’re stopping short of recommending that you vote for them or not. After all, though a replicant mayor may be more likely to gouge a supervisor’s eyes out with their thumbs, they have another quality that could be great in an elected official: a four year life span.” The Wave [via the null device] Ought to be a required part of standing for office…

Related: Zombie infection simulator.

“While everyone was preoccupied with the fireworks, Washington has quietly deployed thousands of agents in a secretive struggle that may last a lifetime.” Globe and Mail via CommonDreams

“They sound like Harry Potter titles, they look like Harry Potter titles, but unless you are JK Rowling, the schoolboy wizard’s creator, you had better not think of using them as Harry Potter titles.

Harry Potter and the Chariots of Light, Harry Potter and the Mudblood Revolt, Harry Potter and the Alchemist’s Cell and Harry Potter and the Quest of the Centaur have all been registered as trademarks with the UK Patent Office.

The names were taken by a company which shares an office with the London lawyers of Warner Bros, the studio which makes the Potter films.

One possibility is that the titles are on a shortlist of possible names for the forthcoming books and have been registered to prevent other companies cashing in on the huge merchandising potential of the Potter books and films.” The Scotsman However, one fan commented on a Potter website that “lame and cheesy” titles like these are just a way of keeping fans guessing.

Another fascinating item cribbed in its entirety from acb:

“A criminologist attempts to explain why Adelaide has so many bizarre murders. Allan Perry, a criminologist from Adelaide University, claims that the Snowtown killings and other crimes are symptomatic of a malignant subculture that exists in South Australia, and that Adelaide is a social hothouse that breeds psychopathic killers:

‘We’re seeing a sub-culture which has arisen out of family breakdown, economic deprivation, drug and alcohol abuse, unemployment,’ Mr Perry said.

That could also explain the Adelaide tradition of breaking into the zoo and mutilating the animals.”

When you think about it, it makes sense that variations in social conditions would propel locales at differing rates toward the dystopian future. I’m sure American readers can think of examples closer to home.

Via boing boing: Mysterious ‘Toynbee tiles’ with cryptic graffitti have been spotted inlaid into the asphalt of city streets in more than twenty American cities since the late ’80’s. A reporter who stumbles upon one (forgive me) at a Kansas City intersection does some investigative work on the messages, which involve historiography, the planet Jupiter, Kubrick’s ‘2001’ (his daughter says Kubrick was unaware of the phenomenon) and some nasty ideas about Jews and journalists. Speculation, but nothing probative, about what they might mean. The Kansas City Star Among other things, he discovers a web site devoted to the tiles, with a database of known sightings. I’m disappointed; they range up the Eastern seaboard but not as close to me as New England, as well as the Midwest and two South American cities. Has any FmH reader seen one? If you discover a Toynbee tile not noted in the database, the author asks that you contact him.

Also via boing boing, a collection of the artist’s kinetic optical illusions. Have your eye drops ready; you will have to stare.

Via Billmon:

“‘Iraq is now the central front in the global war against absolute evil, but it’s not so important that we have to roll back any of my tax cuts, send more U.S. troops to Iraq or do anything else that might make swing voters slightly less likely to vote for me next year. Thank you and God Bless America.'”

Kerry gets in tune for Moby gig. The guitar-playing senator shares a bill with Moby tomorrow night in Boston, raising funds for Kerry’s presidential bid. Moby feels Kerry has “the best chance of beating George Bush”; he also expresses the optomistic hope that Kerry is better than Bill Clinton was on saxophone. Boston Globe

Jon Pareles’ NY Times obituary: Wry Singer and Songwriter Dies at 56:

Warren Zevon, a singer and songwriter who came up with hard-boiled stories and tender confessions of love, died on Sunday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 56.

The cause was lung cancer, which was diagnosed last summer.

Mr. Zevon had a pulp-fiction imagination that yielded songs like ‘Werewolves of London,’ ‘Poor, Poor Pitiful Me,’ ‘Lawyers, Guns and Money’ and ‘I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead.’ They were terse, action-packed, gallows-humored tales that could sketch an entire screenplay in four minutes and often had death as a punch line. But vulnerability and longing were also in Mr. Zevon’s ballads, like ‘Mutineer,’ ‘Accidentally Like a Martyr’ and ‘Hasten Down the Wind.'”

…

When his cancer was diagnosed, Mr. Zevon was the first to recognize that songs like “My Ride’s Here,” about a hearse, had become self-fulfilling prophecies.

“I keep asking myself how I suddenly was thrust into the position of travel agent for death,” he said last year. “But then, of course, the whole point of why it’s so strange is that I had already assigned myself that role so many years of writing ago.” He allowed a camera crew from VH1 to make a documentary during the recording sessions for his final album.

“The Wind” has death-haunted songs like “Prison Grove” and “Keep Me in Your Heart,” as well as a version of Mr. Dylan’s song about a dying sheriff, “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.” But songs like “Disorder in the House” and “Dirty Life and Times” maintain Mr. Zevon’s old sardonic humor.

While he was recording the album, Mr. Zevon said he was planning to write goodbyes to people and to make one other point: that, he said, “This was a nice deal: life.”

Sleep well… Readers can go further (much further) with Craig’s singluar tribute