Rapture jet pack flyer

Rapture jet pack flyer. Via.

Rapture photos

Gizmodo posted some Rapture photos.

Bioshock screen

Bioshock screen via.

Link roundup

1. From Drew Magary's latest NSFW and funny, but probably offensive column:

I gotta go to church more often then. I think churches operate as the epicenter of most American daydreams. I can't sit in a church for more than five minutes without imagining a flock of vampires crashing through the stained glass window, and I have to stab them all in the heart with a steel crucifix. I'm pretty sure my visions are exactly like that new Paul Bettany movie.

I've been at ceremonies where they do the whole "Do you reject Satan?" thing, and it's impossible to not think of The Godfather at that moment. I also wish they had an effigy of Satan right at the altar that you could stab or shoot with a crossbow. Why not add a bit flourish to the ceremony?

2. Robin Hanson:

What if the airline industry lobbied to end the practice of routinely investigating the cause of each airline crash? After all, if there is no investigation, it will be hard to show an airline was at fault. You might imagine there’d be a public outcry. But in 1970 the US medical profession did essentially the same thing, and few complained:

Today, hospitals perform autopsies on only about 5 percent of patients who die, down from roughly 50 percent in the 1960s. … Autopsies play a critical role in helping to advance understanding of the progress of a disease and the effectiveness of various treatments. At the same time, they may identify medical conditions that clinicians and high-tech imaging miss or misdiagnose. …

In 1998 the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that autopsy results showed that clinicians misdiagnosed the cause of death up to 40 percent of the time.

3. The Batman by Aragones statue I posted yesterday is available for preorder at the BBTS for $80.

Link roundup

1. NERF stands for NonExpanding Recreational Foam. Via.

2. Lots of interesting anecdotes in this article about Tina Brown (including how much money The Daily Beast and Newsweek have lost recently). For example:

As is not uncommon in preparation for Brown’s parties, that afternoon the room’s furniture was loaded into a truck, which was waiting, out of sight, for the last guests to leave before unloading its contents back into the apartment. Sir Harold Evans, Brown’s 82-year-old husband, has been known to joke with friends that he’d prefer to be in the truck, where he could circle the block in the comfort of his own home.

And:

As her guests said goodbye, Brown and Evans looked eager to get their furniture back. Suddenly the French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy wafted in, dressed in black and trailing a cloud of cologne and his mistress, Daphne Guinness, who was wearing a revealing black cat suit and heelless Alexander McQueen platform shoes. Lévy was fresh from Paris, where, he proceeded to tell Brown and a few stragglers, he had just single-handedly persuaded his old friend President Nicolas Sarkozy to go to war against Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi of Libya. (A few days later, Steven Erlanger of The New York Times reported that this had, improbably enough, been the case.)

3. "An ongoing fight between Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei has taken a turn for the weird, as several of the president's closest advisers have been arrested and charged with being 'magicians' and invoking djinns, or spirits."

Link roundup

1. Tiny computer. Via.

2. Poisoned holy water for sale. Via.

3. Ming Doyle explains how she made her Thor Costume.

*Buy Frog Thor toys at eBay.