Friday fun links

1) "Why Batman could exist-- but not for long," at Scientific American (HT: Tyler.

2) I've been an absolutely resolute skeptic of the Watchmen movie. Yes, it's a masterpiece, but it's an incredibly formal (that is, form-al, of and within and about the form of the comic book) masterpiece. Frank Miller puts movies onto the comic book page, and when you put the comics onto the movie screen, it works great. (And indeed works better the more you just treat the comics as a shot-for-shot storyboard.) That's not what Alan Moore does, and is not what Watchmen is like, and I've said to all who asked that I thought this movie was a terrible mistake-- something like making a ballet of an e.e. cummings poem, or a comic book of the Ode To Joy.

But reliable geek-taste friend Aeon Skoble sends an e-mail that says, simply, This. Looks. Awesome. and... uh... he's right. Very right. Right enough that I'm officially shutting up in my skepticism for now. (Update: I see that Julian Sanchez, who knows a thing or two about Rorschach, had a similar reaction.)

3) As of yet, there is no... Act 3. But if you haven't caught up yet, now's the time.