Link roundup

1. Those terrible looking DC Universe Classics "All-Stars" have apparently been at least temporarily canceled.

2. Cheating casinos as a good Christian:

What those students may not realize is that their teacher belongs to an unlikely subset of blackjack players. Jones is a Christian card counter.

Until last year, he and his high school friend from Bible camp, Ben Crawford, ran a group of more than 30 religious card counters. Based in Seattle, the rotating cast of players says it won $3.2 million over five years — all while regularly attending church, leading youth groups and studying theology.

But first Jones and his group had to wrestle with the apparent moral paradox: Should Christians be counting cards?

“My father-in-law flipped out about it,” Jones said. “I remember Ben and I discussing everything. Are we being dishonest to the casinos? Is money an evil thing?”

Group members believed what they were doing was consistent with their faith because they felt they were taking money away from an evil enterprise. Further, they did not believe that counting cards was inherently a bad thing; rather, it was merely using math skills in a game of chance.

Via.

3. Consumer Reports:

Our Fisker Karma cost us $107,850. It is super sleek, high-tech—and now it’s broken....We buy about 80 cars a year and this is the first time in memory that we have had a car that is undriveable before it has finished our check-in process.

*Previously: Logo for HeBrews, a Christian College Coffee Shop.

Link roundup

1. I highly recommend The Dala Horse by Michael Swanwick. Imagine a post-apocalyptic Dora the Explorer adventure. (Or A Dora the Explorer episode taking place in Dan Simmons's Ilium world.) It's part of the best of Tor 2011 collection that's a free download at Amazon.

2. This is a very good cat animated gif. Via.

3. Why is the Ace the high card?:

The use of the ace as the highest card in the French deck gained more widespread acceptance as a result of the French Revolution. Examples of the ace being a high card include the game Hearts.

The promotion of the ace symbolised the removal of the nobility (especially King Louis XVI) and the promotion of the common man. In addition to this move, the traditional court card imagery of the nobility had the crowns removed so as to give human personifications to chosen democratic ideals (Liberté, Egalité and Fraternité). Upon the rise of Napoleon to Emperor, royalty became more popular once more and the royal court was re-established on the imagery of the cards. Napoleon commissioned an artist to depict a more historically-correct court, but the move proved unpopular and the medieval court figures were quickly reinstated.

4. "Meet The Convicted Felon Who Defrauded The NFL, Made Reggie Bush Ineligible, And Funded The Saints' Bounty Program."

Link roundup

1. Penelope Trunk on why getting divorced, if you have kids, is probably a bad choice for you and your kids. Her comments reminded me of a book excerpt Robin Hanson posted a few days ago:

The alternative to the European Syndrome is to say that your life can have transcendent meaning if it is spent doing important things – raising a family, supporting yourself, being a good friend and good neighbor, learning what you can do well and then doing it as well as you possibly can. Providing the best framework for doing those things is what the American project is all about.

2. Book and art print giveaway. Via.

3. Outside magazine:

California’s San Quentin State Prison is home to a ball field where you can take your cuts against convicted felons. This I had to try.

4. Read about the Batman: Year One movie that never was - - directed by Darren Aronofsky and starring Clint Eastwood:

the script strips Bruce Wayne of his status as heir apparent to the Wayne Industries billions, proposing instead that the young Bruce is found in the street after his parents’ murder, and taken in by ‘Big Al’, who runs an auto repair shop with his son, ‘Little Al’. Driven by a desire for vengeance towards a manifest destiny of which he is only dimly aware, young Bruce (of deliberately indeterminate age) toils day and night in the shop, watching the comings and goings of hookers, johns, pimps and corrupt cops at a sleazy East End cathouse across the street

A perfect idea for my just announced art contest.

Link roundup

1. Cory Doctorow:

I believe that Google has created an enormous internal urgency about Google Plus integration, and that this pressure is leading the company to take steps to integrate G+ at the expense of the quality of its other services. Consider the Focus on the User critique of Google's "social ranking" in search results, for example. In my own life, I've been immensely frustrated that my unpublished Gmail account (which I only use to anchor my Android Marketplace purchases for my phone and tablets, and to receive a daily schedule email while I'm travelling) has somehow become visible to G+ users, so that I get many, many G+ updates and invites to this theoretically private address, every day, despite never having opted into a directory and never having joined G+.

2. Warren Ellis on what would get him writing more comics:

Loads and loads of money would be nice. Access to trusted collaborators would be a bigger part of it. Without going into details, I’ve had some fairly bad luck with artists over the last several years, and it gets dispiriting! There are other factors that tend to discourage me from developing new comics work right now, but that’s one of the main ones — I ran out of people to work with.

3. I love Max Silvestri's bad movie reviews.

4. Million dollar jewelry heist at my local mall.

5. My thanks to current sponsor Alien Vault. The book's terrific - - I posted several photos of its contents in November.

Link roundup

1. The River is terrible. Far from being scary or stylish, it's like watching an episode of Gilligan's Island.

2. An architect was charged with involuntary manslaughter in Los Angeles after a firefighter died fighting a fire in a home the architect built.

3. RL Stine posted a pretty great short horror story at Twitter.

4. Recruiting scandal in the world of college chess. The coach's program is called the Susan Polgar Institute for Chess Excellence (Spice).

Link roundup

1. "An undercover police officer 'chased himself round the streets' for 20 minutes after a CCTV operator mistook him for suspect." Via.

2. Mark Cuban's always a great interview. Some advice:

Never follow your dreams. Follow your effort. It’s not about what you can dream of. That’s easy. It’s about whether or not it’s important enough to you to do the work to be ready to be successful in that business.

3. Gawker on news of big government resignations in Romania:

The resignations come after some very unpopular budget cuts that were made to comply with IMF demands so that Romania could secure a loan and continue to pay government workers. The IMF is, of course, the International Monetary Fund, which is a fund with international money in it.

4. New Spider-Man promotional site. Via.

Link roundup

1. Links to the personal websites of the Tron Uprising art team.

2. Astonishing data on the number of politicians in India also facing criminal charges.

3. "'Huffington Post' Employee Sucked Into Aggregation Turbine
Horrified Workers Watch As Colleague Torn Apart By Powerful Content-Gathering Engine"

4. Are we headed to a future where our wars will be entirely fought by robots and the only people at risk are contractors?

5. Oops:

An advertising agency for BMW has paid to name a cold weather front sweeping Europe "Cooper" in Germany, after the carmaker's Mini Cooper.

But the public-relations stunt by the agency went wrong after the freezing conditions led to dozens of deaths.

*Buy Tron Legacy posters at eBay.

Link roundup

1. Like the Prisoner, but with good intentions:

Its detractors may end up dubbing it "Dementiaville", but Switzerland is brushing aside a debate raging among geriatric-care experts with plans to build a mock-1950s village catering exclusively for elderly sufferers of Alzheimer's and other debilitating mental illnesses.

Via.

2. "What do Army junior officers actually recommend reading?: Their own top 10."

3. A hobbyist piloting a drone spotted a river of blood - - a meatpacking plant in Dallas was simply ejecting blood into the river. Via.

4. Sam Wolfe Connelly has a new shop featuring some illustrations I've featured.

5. Paul Pape's having a sale on his custom made stuck in carbonite sculptures.