While sifting through some comics sent my way care of The Pig, I came across this bit of pure gold:

That’s right: Star Blazers, the comic book. It’s composed of cells from the show, with the same awkward dialogue, strange translations, and bizarre Japanese fixations.

The first time they fire up the Wave Motion Gun, well, I don’t have to tell you . . .

The live-action movie can’t hit blu-ray soon enough.

Quick update on my numerology-like obsession continuing interest in demographics, fertility rates, and population. I’m writing a book-length version of America’s One-Child Policy for Encounter, so I’ll probably be sprinkling in some demography posts among the Dark Knight Rises stuff during the next year. I mention this only as a way of soliciting string from you. If you see interesting news/books/journal articles on the subject, please send them along.

Thanks in advance.

Over at the Standard I’ve got a long piece on dishwasher detergent. I don’t want to oversell it, but it might be the most exciting story you’ve ever read on the subject.

Sadly, Mr. Sparkle does not make an appearance. But you can have him here.

Update: Now, with more Science!

After failing to purchase Groupon for $77 gazillion, Google has decided to launch its own social-shopping-coupon site, Google Offers.

If Google’s corporate history has taught us anything–Google Video, Knols, Buzz, Lively, Checkout–it’s that this venture will be a colossal success.

Exit Question: Was the whacking of Eric Schmidt somehow Steve Jobs’ final act?

I guess so. Anne Hathaway (Havoc) and Tom Hardy (Layercake) have been cast for The Dark Knight Rises.

Speaking only for myself, I have absolutely no need of a sequel–or maybe even another Batman movie–after TDK. It’s a nearly perfect movie that is an absolutely perfect distillation of the character. If Warner and Nolan want to tell another story, good for them. But whatever follows TDK is going to be like giving us a movie about the adventures Rick and Renault have after the plane takes off. That Rick & Renault movie might be really great. But it ain’t going to be Casafuckingblanca.

Also, the only good thing about Catwoman’s presence, from a story perspective, is that it means Nolan is turning away from Talia A’gul, who is one of the biggest mistakes in the Batman mythology.

I’m actually more bullish on the idea of Bane who, as written, was pretty interesting–a much more cerebral villain than you might otherwise guess.

Even so. If this movie had to be done, it seemed like a city-wide war between the Mutant Gang and the Sons of Batman was the most promising ground.

Exit question: What’s the over-under on number of Dark Knight posts between now and July 2012? 250?

The good news is, the months between now and Dark Knight Rises are going to fly by.

Last week I reviewed Eduardo Porter’s The Price of Everything over at the Wall Street Journal. It was not, on the whole, a favorable notice. Yesterday Porter responded over at his book blog. His reply is, and here I paraphrase somewhat, “Neo-con! Iraq!”

I feel a little guilty even pointing out his response–I don’t want to be a bully. So we’ll just leave it at that. I’m sure that Porter is a perfectly nice fellow; I hope he sells a lot of books.

The revolution in Tunisia is a fascinating story on many levels, from the First Lady fleeing with 1.5 tons of gold to the First Daughter being holed up at DisneyLand Paris. But what interests me most is how the mechanics of abdication work in the modern world.

First off, it should be clear that abdication is a very good thing. Western governments looking at Third-World autocrats should do everything in their power to make clear to corrupt rulers that if they want to slip out, they’ll live out their days in luxury and comfort. The CIA should have a standing offer to guys like Bashar al-Assad that if things get too hot, we’ll set them up in a Swiss castle with Tricia Helfer, half the Florida State cheerleading squad, and a lifetime of free shopping on Amazon.com.

The reason, of course, is simple game theory: If you’re a strong-man sitting on top of an unstable government with no way out, then your incentive is to be as brutal as possible when things go sideways. Better to have an attractive offer of exile than streets full of dead rioters and a last stand in the palace bunker.

But abdication requires that a number of conditions be met: They tyrant needs means, a path to asylum, and the ability to take care of enough loyalists that these foot soldiers can successfully get him out of the country.

All of which means that the time optimal time for abdication is going to come in the foggy period after the tyrant believes his rule is untenable, but before the rest of the ruling class reaches the same conclusion. That’s a pretty narrow window under any circumstances, particularly because once our tyrant makes his decision to leave, then it becomes essential that no one else find out about it until he’s safely out of the country. Nearly everyone who does find out will have to be bought off (or killed) to prevent an information cascade cutting off his escape.

That was all hard enough to orchestrate in the bad old days, but I imagine that mass communication and the internet has made it significantly harder.

It would be great if someone wrote a thorough tick-tock of how Ben Ali escaped.

Several years ago I came across The Darth Side, a really funny blog purporting to be the private journal of Lord Darth Vader. At the time, the blog was in progress. I stumbled upon it again the other day and the project is now complete, the blog ending just before Vader delivers his son to the den of the Emperor. And it turns out that the project became much more than funny.

The humor is still there in Vader’s winter, but it’s just a bonus. The blog’s real gift is to infuse the Star Wars story with the kind of metaphysical meaning that the original trilogy hinted at and the prequels utterly obliterated. It’s so brilliant that it kind of makes me care about Star Wars again, something I had thought to be impossible. You want examples?

Here’s Vader explaining the Force and the Sith view of the difference between the Light and Dark side:

It must be understood that the Force is, above all, singular. The so-called “sides” arise from differing matters of perspective. (If you study the way of the Sith you will find that many of the truths we cling to depend entirely on one’s point of view.)

The opposite of the singular Force is the all-encompassing void of death. Time began with the Force, and will end in desolation. This is the way of things, and an inevitable consequence of the flow of events from the past into the future.

Without the inertia of the fall toward the abyss, the Force would have nowhere to go.

For in the chaotic tumble toward doom the stuff of the worlds enact loops of complexity that change the grade from life to death, introducing valleys, peaks and cycles. Between creation and destruction comes a flutter of improbability, a brief sonnet of meaning against the noise of time. Life!

It is the causal contagion that ties every ounce of us together through the network of the Force, our actions resonating against our almost-actions and our non-actions in a web of fleeting possibility that spans this galaxy and beyond. The beat of a child’s heart detonates supernovae, the beat of a bug’s wing tilts the orbit of worlds.

We are all connected.

Anyone who awakens to the Force knows this. The divisive issue is what to do with this knowledge.

When you can run the mechanism of the universe forward or backward, scrubbing through possible histories with a thought, a theme develops. You cannot escape it. Death, death, death. It is the final destiny of all things, great or small, matter or idea. But there is astounding beauty in the arts of the not-death, the filigree dances of life’s loops as it spins from light to void. If you are human, it moves you.

It should move you. But this is what the Jedi Order denies. They preach that the heart of a beast cannot judge the destiny of a galaxy. They preach dispassion and detachment, a condescending compassionfor the damned. They stand by the sidelines and watch history happen, intervening only in trivia that offends their effete sensibilities.

Every Jedi knew the cycles of civilization, and every Jedi knew an age of barbarism was nigh. And yet they did nothing.

In contrast, the way of the Sith is predicated on a love for man. We have inherited the godhead of the galaxy by colonizing its every world. Though lesser species might have flourished given infinite time, it was our kind who got there first. We have won this galaxy with thousands of generations of our blood and our dreams. We call the others “primitives” because we are their kings.

And we will not sit idly by as it all careens toward a morbid interregnum. Inspired by our passions we will act to bridge the gulf between civilizations, shortening the period of disorder by decisively maintaining connections between societies from one side of the galaxy to the other. We will weather the storm.

Hate! Love! Misery! Joy! These are paths to the dark side, for to invest in the emotional life of civilization is to care about its fate. To care is to suffer, and suffering is real.

The Jedi were mere spectators.

This is Silmarillion-levels of awesome.

The final post, in which Vader explores the reality that his entire life has been spent in slavery–from Waddo to Qui Gon to Sidious, Skywalker was never his own master–is the deepest and most consequential reading of the character, and the most dramatic and morally satisfying view of the climax in Return of the Jedi.

If you ever cared for Star Wars, take a look-see. I’ll go on at length next week.