Maki, the evil genius behind the excellent Sci-ence comic, has drawn me into one of his creations! I guest-star as Pluto’s moon Nix, and may I say I look handsomer than the other moons, top-hatted and monocled though they be. (Other, far more famous guest stars in this strip: Phil Plait, Pamela Gay, and Sean Carroll; I know I’ve probably missed others.) Maki evidently is a trifle more upset than I am about the media attention Pluto receives (see yesterday’s blog post for more). Those of you who know me know how much I am obsessed by love comics, so I can say this is the proudest day of my life, at least until I’m zombified by Randall Munroe in xkcd or something.

In fact, let me continue the comics theme, and link to two other pieces of excellence out there (that don’t include me, but that’s probably incentive to look at them!):

• Speaking of xkcd, today’s strip is relevant to my post from Wednesday, about cold fusion.
• The excellent comic Cul de Sac, one of only a handful of newspaper comics that still matter, did one up on my “Universe in a box” idea, in the form of a shoebox diorama. Richard Thompson, who draws Cul de Sac, suffers from Parkinson’s disease; please consider donating to the fund in his name. (I am going to try putting one of Thompson’s comic strips into my book as well.)

Now, back to book-writing….