Not at all in honor of any films currently in or shortly to be in theaters...
- Watch out, literary agents: New York is reclassifying the unauthorized practice of law as a felony (effective 01 November 2013), and that's what y'all do every time you negotiate a contract for a client, among other things that agents do... especially when you do it without consulting an IP lawyer (you know that you don't do that) or knowing what you're doing (unfortunately, you usually don't recognize that).
- The so-called "agency model" is now officially dead in Europe, as the publishers (and, unlike in the US, Apple) have agreed to trash the model in response to an EU antitrust investigation. The fine print is still worrisome — it's only fully binding for two years, after which they can try again (with some restrictions; unfortunately, the governing document has not yet been released in English, and my Rechtsdeutsch is painfully slow).
- From the Department of So Weird It Must Be True, New Scientist reports on a study claiming that the Tower of Babel is evolutionarily inevitable, which is not going to be a popular conclusion with fundagelicals or with Esperanto enthusiasts...
- Last, and far from least, Jim Hines and John Scalzi are currently engaged in a simultaneously hilarious, unrealistic, and disturbing pose-off based on cover images of hawt chix. Do not actually page down on that page if you have any beverages handy... or a weak stomach. Jim wins this round because John cheated and made it too easy: Look at John's head position, which (unfairly) shifts his center of balance to over his left heel, instead of the greater, umm, fidelity of Jim's better, more-painful, and more-unrealistic weight shift to just off the ankle.
I propose a new rule: Cover artists are not allowed to paint postures that they cannot personally assume. Or, for that matter, apply tramp stamps to characters that explicitly do not have tattoos...