While we’re celebrating birthdays, let us wish a very happy one to the great Beverly Cleary, who turns 95 today. Henry Huggins is the very first chapter book I remember reading. It led me to the rest of her books, even the ones about girls, which is usually a tough sell for a little boy. I have no idea how the kids of today relate to her stuff — its simplicity may make it seem impossibly remote in our age of child sexting or whatever — but I hope they’re as able to connect to it as I was; she is indeed one of the writers who made me an enthusiastic reader, and the experience of enjoying an author’s work so much that you want to read more of it is not to be undervalued at an early age.

Ohhhh Noes, There Are Fatwas on Facebook!

War-mongering health-care privatization advocate Niall Ferguson is the sort of person who gets to take to the pages of Newsweek to declare himself appalled that people use the Internet for bad things! “The clash of civilizations would have been easy for the West to win if it had simply pitted the ideas and institutions of the 21st century against those of the seventh. No such luck. In the new mash of civilizations, our most dangerous foes are the Islamists who understand how to post fatwas on Facebook, email the holy Quran, and tweet the call to jihad.”

This is the second most-mockable thing I’ve read in the last 30 days.

Since you asked, this excerpt from Bill James’ Solid Fool’s Gold: Detours on the Way to Conventional Wisdom is still the dumbest thing I’ve read all year. It’s like Malcolm Gladwell Lite, minus the decent research and with a more advanced understanding of how to set up an unreasonable comparison that actually makes no sense.

Exactly how intense is Vanity Fair’s love affair with the Kennedys? The math may or may not shock you: “Roughly one-third of the issues of Vanity Fair since 2003 have contained at least one article about a Kennedy, written by a Kennedy, or mentioning a Kennedy at least seven times…. The October 2009 Jackie cover sold 437,000 issues, beating out both Gisele (281,000) and President Obama (370,000) in 2010. Angelina Jolie seems to be the only star with enough power to consistently outsell the family — her most recent cover sold 512,507.”

“Coldplay fans are least likely to have sex on a first date than fans of a slew of other acts — according to a new survey.”

Lest we forget, the terrible New York City alleged cop rape case is still horrifically parading through the courtroom. To my mind it hasn’t been going so well for the defense but I’m also willing to keep an open mind, I guess, sort of. Updates from the last few days:

• So, previously, when the defense claimed that the victim told people she wasn’t sure she’d been raped? Turns out she told plenty of people, including her neighbor and her boss, that she’d been raped. And that she was sure. So, you know, there’s that.

• A “few seconds” of surveillance tape show the alleged victim going to her apartment building with the police and she is apparently mobile and able to walk! Therefore she couldn’t possibly have been raped, because, obviously if you can walk, you can’t be raped. I think that’s in the law books somewhere, right? (Also it should be noted that she had just thrown up at least twice.)

• The prosecution is saying that the cops made a fake 911 call to give them an excuse to return to the woman’s building for the second of four times that night, claiming that there was a homeless person in the hallway (and that they were from Canada). “He’s right in the front doooaahh,” says the “Canadian” on the 911 recording.

Actor Tom Noonan turns 60 years old today. If you have never seen the short film Tom Goes to the Bar, please give yourself ten uninterrupted minutes in which to view it. I cannot convey how special it was during its moment, and how special it remains.

Because today is 4.11 on your digital calendar, our friends at ego trip are thoughtful enough to remind us of this incredibly great performance of “What’s the 411?” from a 1992 episode of Yo! MTV Raps. I was listening to Grand Puba’s 1995 album, 2000, recently, and I think it might well be the most under-rated rap album that I know. It’s totally excellent! And, Mary J. Blige, well, you probably don’t really need any more info about her. She’s the undisputed queen of hip-hop soul and all. But did you know she could rap like that?

Best look ever at how computer applications and systems and the Internet are depicted in film. (via)

It rather looks like it’s time to turn off the Donald Trump channel. Although he’s providing some delightful and much-needed levity in these rather frightening and oh-so-serious times, the fact remains that… HE’S BEHAVING QUITE TERRIBLY. And if it’s in service of something, what could that possibly be? Not just the whole warring with the Times thing — which, there is no way the Times should have given him space to air his incorrect views without rebuttal — and freaking out all over, straight-up birther-style, but printing out Vanity Fair blog posts and mailing them to Graydon Carter? He’s now a figurehead of a very, very small but very vocal group of paranoid conspiracy theorists, who spend all day leaving vaguely literate and rather sick comments on blogs and newspapers! That is their sole presence: angry blog comments! Is that something to which we need to pay attention?