Here, with minimal comments, are some things I ran across on the internet that I thought were amusing or interesting.

Depressed Darth: Stay on Target.

Alternate History: What if “Star Wars Episode 1” was good?

Top voice talents: 5 Guys in a Limo.

The Lives of Others. (I’ve seen this. A great movie. It’s my favorite German-language film, except possibly Downfall.)

Joss Whedon: why does he kill the characters we love? And what does that forebode about Tony Stark in The Avengers?

Tripp and Tyler’s Rad Sk8 (featuring Tony Hawk).

Life on earth prospers during certain seasons in the galactic year. When the solar system passes through regions with a lot of star formation going on, things get better here:

[The fossil records] tended to be richest in their variety when continents were drifting apart and sea levels were high and less varied when the land masses gathered 250 million years ago into the supercontinent called Pangaea and the sea-level was lower. But this geophysical effect was not the whole story. When it is removed from the record of biodiversity, what remains corresponds closely to the changing rate of nearby stellar explosions, with the variety of life being greatest when supernovae are plentiful.—via /.