One aspect of climate change that's already affecting people in various parts of the world is the slow but steady rise in sea level (via YaleE360):

This month, China started operating the fastest high-speed rail system in the world—a 600-mile line between Wuhan and Guangzhou that clocks an average of 193 miles per hour (and peaks at 245). MIT Technology Review explains what makes the new train so fleet. It's the tracks:

The increasingly nutty columnist unearths a novel historical counterfactual:

• The ‘Civilian Surge’ Myth: Stop Pretending That the U.S. Can Actually Nation-Build, by Steven Metz

  

The on-going “Tonight Show”/YouTube feud between Conan O’Brien and Newark Mayor Cory Booker will evidently reach its culmination Friday when Booker appears on the NBC broadcast.

In the interim it has spawned a spate of news stories, an “intervention” by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and, earlier this week, was the focus of Bob Herbert’s New York Times op-ed column.

 In paraphrasing Conan, Herbert reports that he “threatened to form an alliance with the mayors of nearby municipalities, thus “creating a geographic toilet seat around the city of Newark,” making it possible to flush the city down the figurative bowl.”

The sad thing is, that’s kind of true. This scenario already exists in that the mayors of many nearby municipalities are allied against Newark in the worst possible way. All except the poorest towns--like East Orange--prohibit affordable housing anywhere in their jurisdictions. Despite the state Supreme Court’s famous Mt. Laurel decision, which declared that each town must have its “fair share” of affordable housing, zoning policies have managed to keep New Jersey highly segregated by race and class.

I don't pretend to be an expert in the voter dynamics of the New Jersey governor's race. But, given that

a) GOP challenger Chris Christie's lead over incumbent Jon Corzine has largely evaporated as independent Chris Daggett has bled away his support (while having little discernible impact on Corzine's); and

b) there seems to be a low ceiling on Corzine's support, so his only clear path to victory is for Daggett to take out Christie

I.

Near the midpoint of Hellboy II: The Golden Army, the titular demon is asked by his all-too-human girlfriend, “Do you need everyone to love you?

On January 25, the New York Times endorsed Senator Hillary Clinton. At the time, the 1,100-word editorial stood out for both its tepidness and early appearance, coming near the front-end of the primary season. The piece ran in the paper the Friday before Super Tuesday, instead of in the Times’s symbolically-important Sunday edition.

The Brooklyn Novels: Summer in Williamsburg, Homage to Blenholt, Low Company

By Daniel Fuchs

(Black Sparrow Books, 927 pp., $24.95)