Link roundup

1. I didn't expect to read this:

Thor on the Nintendo DS is not what you'd expect. Despite having to tie into a movie property and needing to work with certain likeness and story parameters, the developers at WayForward (Contra 4) have created a great licensed game. Thor plays incredibly well, and is a remarkably well-executed 2D brawler.

$30 at Amazon.

Kotaku likes the Wii and DS versions too. Just like my experience with the Force Unleashed 2, the Wii version was pretty good fun, while the PS3/Xbox versions got terrible reviews.

2. Gawker:

We all know reality television shows, including and especially American Idol, are basically serial hoaxes. But couldn't they try a little harder to maintain the illusion? Idol producers went to elaborate lengths last night to falsely present Jennifer Lopez's on-air performance as "live," but they left behind a few editing artifacts proving that it was taped.

3. And also at Gawker:

Kate Middleton's Brother Pretends to Be a Lawyer to Get His Dirty Pictures Off the Internet.

Link roundup

1. SF Chronicle:

In a pants-on-fire moment, the White House press office today denied anyone there had issued threats to remove Carla Marinucci and possibly other Hearst reporters from the press pool covering the President in the Bay Area.

Chronicle editor Ward Bushee called the press office on its fib:

Sadly, we expected the White House to respond in this manner based on our experiences yesterday. It is not a truthful response. It follows a day of off-the-record exchanges with key people in the White House communications office who told us they would remove our reporter, then threatened retaliation to Chronicle and Hearst reporters if we reported on the ban, and then recanted to say our reporter might not be removed after all.

2. The time Jim Carrey went totally nuts for new year's eve on David Letterman.

3. How law schools trick students into attending by promising them merit scholarships, and then keeping secret how likely it is that they will lose the scholarship after their first or second year. Via.

Link roundup

1. One particular person was caught posing as various people in Reddit's Ask Me Anything feature (including a blind guy, a deaf girl, a pickpocket, and a mean high school cheerleader).

2. Move over grade inflation, here's course name inflation:

the content of these courses is not as high-achieving as their names — the course-title equivalent of grade inflation. Algebra II is sometimes just Algebra I. And College Preparatory Biology can be just Biology.

3. "4 Great Ways to Convert Partial RSS Feed To Full RSS Feed."

Link roundup

1. Thomas P.M. Barnett applauding the utilization of weaponized drones in Libya:

This sort of response sends a lot more signal than the heavy hardware or brigades. It says America will continue to fight as it always has: by generating more stuff than you can possibly imagine. The old model was big stuff. The new model is small and disposable and unmanned stuff. It comes with willpower attached. It's staying power is its dwell time.

China thinks it has a grip on the future with a carrier killer, but it's protecting itself from the 20th century. The name of the game going forward is what it has been these past two decades: globalization's advance, the remapping of fake states, the liberation of people long oppressed by their conditions and cruel leaders, and the new matrixing of supply chains and labor pools as this magnificent process continues to unfold.

2. Octopus ride. Via.

3. Writer discusses how incredibly easy it was to create a fake photograph of an iPhone 5, and get the photo on the main tech blogs.

*Buy iPads at eBay.

Link roundup

1. "The Cal State Long Beach cheer team was stripped of its national title after it was discovered that one of the competing members was not a student."

2. Funny post about comic strip writers who post idealized version of themselves, with possibly the most cringe-inducing Peanuts strip I've ever seen. (I actually made a similar, albeit more subtle observation about James Kochalka a while back.) Via.

3. OK, file this one away for when the reviews come out. Kotaku says, "Raise Your Expectations For The Captain America Video."

Link roundup

1. Someone uploaded Tron: Legacy to Youtube - - the full movie as one, two-hour video. This has to be by Disney, right? It was mentioned on Reddit hours ago, and yet Disney hasn't taken it down. Or does it take much longer than I think for infringing videos to be removed?

2. Recipe for Horseradish Cream Sauce (so good with prime rib).

3. Noxzema now has two fewer ounces than it used to, but comes in the same size container - - which features a false bottom to disguise the smaller amount of product.

Link roundup

1. The NY Daily News says, a woman won a settlement of $850 a month for life in alimony and "the couple's home by convincing a court three years ago that a 1997 car accident left her too injured to work." But her husband spotted photos she had posted about her daily belly dancing and turned them into the court. "Confronted with the damning evidence, [the woman] told the court she was prescribed belly dancing as treatment for her injuries - a statement her doctor contradicted on the stand."

2. The Awl imagines what the menu would be at Passover at Guy Fieri's House (for example, "Gefilte fish parmigiana jammers"). Via.

3. The Mortal Kombat 9 fatalities and Stage Fatalities stepped past amusingly violent and are more like short snuff films. But the babalities are very cute.

Link roundup

1. 60 minutes has reported that Nobel Peace Prize nominee Greg Mortenson fabricated his bestselling books and misused millions of dollars in donations. Jon Krakauer published an expose, and you can read it free before April 20th. Via.

2. You can also read Jim Rugg's Afrodisiac online for free. Via.

3. Outside magazine has chosen its Spring/Summer 2011 winners of the Gear of the Year awards.

All Portal, all the time (t-shirt and tattoo edition)

Portal-themed t-shirt and temporary tattoo by Ian Leno. You can preorder it here, it'll be tomorrow's Tee Fury t-shirt, and Ian's giving away a few tattoos, as described here.

In other Portal news, Kotaku apparently got scammed into promoting a band when the band sent them an email claiming to be part of the Portal ARG. The post originally linked to the band's website and encouraged downloading the band's song at iTunes, but they scrubbed the post to largely eliminate any mention of the scam.

*Portal 2 is $35 at Amazon.

Link roundup

1. Excellent overview of the Undertaker's WWE career, including this:

In 2006 The Undertaker was feuding with Randy Orton and his proxy (and father), '80s fixture "Cowboy" Bob Orton. (The Orton-'Taker match at WrestleMania 21, incidentally, was the first to use The Undertaker's undefeated streak as part of the storyline. After last night, his streak now stands at 19 matches.) In one match, an aggrieved 'Taker took it to Orton père, bloodying him badly. Later, off screen, Calaway found out that Bob had once tested positive for hepatitis and that nobody had thought to mention it to him before the two shared a bloodbath. Calaway was justifiably incensed, and the elder Orton was soon sent packing.

2. Jim Shooter has been posting one great anecdote after another. For example:

The San Diego Comic Con used to do this thing where artists would do drawings on stage, and then auction them off to raise money for the con. I remember Jack Katz had set a minimum bid on his of $200, and somebody actually paid $200 for it. Then the auctioneer gets this wonderful, huge drawing of Captain America that Jack had been drawing live on stage, and the auctioneer looks at it and says, “Am I bid $5?” I was so offended; it just cut me like a knife. He, like a lot of fans, didn’t like Jack’s work at that point, and that was his honest assessment of what somebody might pay for this.

And another:

The road that led to Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars actually began when Kenner Toys licensed the DC Universe for a boys’ action figure line. Their competitor, Mattel, already had their He-Man action figure line, which was doing very well, but wanted to hedge the bet in case comic book character action figures became the rage. So, they came to Marvel to talk about licensing our characters. One thing they demanded of us was an “event,” a special publication or series to help launch the toy line. I offered an idea that was suggested by a dozen or so correspondents -- usually younger ones -- in the fan mail every day: one big, epic story with all (or many) of the heroes and villains in it. Everyone agreed.

We went through a number of ideas for names for the toy line and series. Mattel’s focus group tests indicated that kids reacted positively to the words “wars” and “secret.” Okay.

Mattel had a number of other requirements. Doctor Doom, they said, looked too medieval. His armor would have to be made more high-tech. So would Iron Man’s, because their focus groups indicated that kids reacted positively...etc. Okay.

3. In 2010, 186 restaurants in Florida were cited for mislabeling their fish. Via.

*Buy Secret Wars toys at eBay.

She can's act, can't dance, and even her looks are fake

Natalie Portman a "natural beauty"?

This bit of fan mail was posted on the website, Awful Plastic Surgery:

Good job spotting Natalie Portman’s streamlined nose! I was at Harvard the same time she was (though not in the same year), and would occasionally see her around campus. By the time she graduated, her nose had clearly been altered; not only were the nostrils smaller, but it was smaller and narrower overall.

Here is are pictures they posted:
Looking at that site, it's amazing---it seems like pretty much all movie stars have had plastic surgery whether they needed it or not. Even very young ones. Zac Efron. Miley Cyrus.

Having surgery of any kind seems like an ordeal, and if you look at that the Awful Plastic Surgery site, you can see how easily it can go wrong. Hard to believe people go for plastic surgery so readily.