Link roundup

1. The start of this article about Chernobyl is so good, I'm not sure I want to read the article and ruin it:

Twenty-five years after the Soviet-era meltdown drove 60,000 people from their homes in the Ukraine, a rebirth is taking place inside the exclusion zone. With Geiger counter in hand, the author explores Europe's strangest wildlife refuge, an enchanted postapocalyptic forest from which entirely new species may soon emerge.

Via.

2. Garfield cake.

3. Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw makes a compelling case for a video game that makes you weaker as you progress. Via.

*Buy Garfield Minus Garfield at Amazon.

Link roundup

1. One of Bill Simmons's readers had a great idea - - losing team in the NBA all-star game has to wear short shorts in next year's game.

2. Here's a great explanation for why Mubarak will be very reluctant to give up power - - he fears prosecution:

So, how can Mubarak protect himself if he eventually makes an escape from Cairo? He's taking the usual steps now. Start with his decision to install foreign intelligence chief and CIA confidant Omar Suleiman as vice president and constitutional successor. (Mubarak himself came to the presidency through this route; he had been Anwar Sadat's vice president.) This comes close to matching what in the Russian-speaking world is known as the "Putin option," a reference to the exit strategy adopted by a teetering Boris Yeltsin: Fearing possible retribution from opposition figures, Yeltsin opted to surrender power through a transitional period to a wily senior player in the intelligence community. In exchange, Yeltsin is said to have extracted a firm commitment from Putin that the full machinery of the Russian state would be mustered to protect him. There would be no criminal probes or inquiries, and no cooperation with foreigners who undertook the same. Yeltsin would be free to live his final days shuttling between Moscow and the French Riviera. Putin scrupulously kept his end of the bargain.

Via.

3. Here's Consumer Reports' picks for best frozen pizzas. (Presumably they'll have to reevaluate once the pizza/cookie dough combo is released.)

Link roundup

1. From a review of Brutal Legend:

Like a solitaire or Bejeweled, you have to ask, when you remove even the context of resolution from real life, what is there but burning time. Is there an achievement out there for 1 million games of Bejeweled played? No amount of lines of Tetris fulfill anything. They disappear as soon as they form (Russians have a grim sense of humor–in my private world of crazy, my assumption is that the desire to build something constantly being undermined is some sort of metaphor about a totalitarian state, or maybe anybody with an MBA).

2. Two-headed snowman.

3. Pitchfork's top 100 songs of 2010.

*Buy albums for $5 each at Amazon.