With her new movie Jesus is Magic coming out, Sarah Silverman is getting a shitload of press. But I like this article the best because it tries to get at the latest movement of offensive comedy:

The Kansas Board of Education officially voted to back the teaching of Intelligent Design in the science classroom. I think ID would be a better fit in a current events class. In any case, the scientific community should fight back by replacing large-scale agriculture with scientific breakthroughs, thereby making Kansas economically irrelevant.

Bookslut interview with William T. Vollmann, a favorite writer of mine. Even if you don’t know anything about Vollmann, it’s a good interview for getting acquainted with his war zone trips, adventures with prostitutes, and his view on whether or not he’d be a Nazi if born in Germany in the early 20th century.

Apple has posted the trailer to Munich , Steven Spielberg’s new film about the hunting down of the 11 Palestinians suspected of kidnapping and murdering 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. This looks like it could be the best Spielberg film in a long, long while. What’s especially interesting is that the plot can easily make room for some anti-Israeli sentiments, a controversial step for the director of Schindler ‘s List.

Amazon Mechanical Turk will pay you to do repetetive tasks that provide data for artificial intelligence projects. Data is in high demand in the AI community – usually undergraduates are recruited to do these menial tasks 10 hours a week for a little more than minimum wage. Now you can be like a resume-packing undergrad, except here you’ll get paid much less since the job market will be so crowded.

Clearly, things have been slow around here for the past few days, in part because of my computer problems but also because I was in Houston for a wedding Friday through Sunday. We had a great time during the weekend, although I was disappointed yet pleased that we didn’t encounter anything stereotypically Texan while there. Instead, we spent Saturday afternoon visiting the more sophisticated side of Houston.

Months after the Supreme Court said Grokster could be found liable for marketing the illegal uses of their peer-to-peer services, Grokster decided to settle the case against the recording industry and shut down. Although a settlement was somewhat inevitable, it’s too bad they didn’t go to trial. I would’ve liked to have seen a clarification as to what constitutes illegal marketing and what doesn’t. In any case, I’m not crying much over their shutdown or the Supreme Court decision, unlike many of my peers.

Slate wonders if the slowing of the Las Vegas boom is an inevitable step in the city’s maturing process. It’s hard to predict where Vegas will be 5-10 years down the line, but I do get the feeling around here that however the business of the Strip changes, culturally the city is getting better, not worse, with time. But that’s only if you have a pro-gentrification bias in the first place.

My former officemate Chris Lydon interviews Errol Morris on his radio show Open Source. Not the best Morris interview I’ve read/heard, but it’s the most recent. Apparently, Karl Rove really loves Fog of War and recommends it often, which I find difficult to believe. And yes, I really love Errol Morris.

Two of documentarian Errol Morris’s Quaker commercials filmed in an actual Ames Room (the two at the bottom). An Ames Room is an optical illusion constructed so that objects near the front are perceived as gigantic and those near the back as miniature. Hey, Ricky Jay seems to like ‘em.

“If you’ll look at my lovely FEMA attire, you’ll really vomit. I am a fashion god.” And other stupid shit former FEMA Director Brownie emailed during the days when Katrina was slamming into New Orleans. I almost feel bad for the guy, but then I remember how terrible the consequences were. Heckuva job, Brownie – learn to say no to a job when you know it’ll be more than you can handle.

We went to the DMV on Monday to get Nevada licenses and registration, only to find ourselves at the biggest Halloween party in Las Vegas. We knew there was trouble as soon as we drove into the parking lot – it was jam-packed with cars hapharzardly parked wherever they could fit, like the mall on the day before Christmas (the photo on the left was not taken on this day). The inside of the building looked like the interior of a sports stadium; there were huge lines of people snaking around the area, masses of people sitting in chairs and on the floor looking up at an LED display with numbers, and I shit you not a concession stand selling popcorn and soda.

Oscar Goodman, mayor of Las Vegas, suggests punishing graffiti artists by cutting off their thumbs on television. Yeah, we have an eccentric mayor, but he’s popular out here. He used to be a mob lawyer, and is known for his off-the-cuff remarks such as telling a group of fourth-graders last March that his favorite hobby is “drinking” and that a “bottle of gin” would be one of his desert island selections.