For the short holiday week, an early Reading Room:

Patti Smith talks books with Jonathan Lethem. In other Lethem news, he’s got a new book about John Carpenter’s over-the-top political allegory They Live.

“What are we to make of the brain processing literal and metaphorical versions of a concept in the same brain region? Or that our neural circuitry doesn’t cleanly differentiate between the real and the symbolic? What are the consequences of the fact that evolution is a tinkerer and not an inventor, and has duct-taped metaphors and symbols to whichever pre-existing brain areas provided the closest fit?” Do metaphors stymie understanding?

The human race had a good run, before flying squid were discovered.

The history of WW2 weather warfare.

JJ Abrams taps Jorge Garcia (Lost’s “Hurley”) for new series about…time travelers on an island.

“You have to choose your future regrets.” Christopher Hitchens speaks to The Guardian.

An anthropological inquiry into the worlds of made-up languages, from Klingon to Elvish.

Does Girl Talk receive more respect than underground hip-hop mixtape culture because he’s white?

The AV Club remembers Buck Owens, the Baron of Bakersfield.

Is your computer possessed by a demon?

“As for the argument that the humanities don’t pay their own way, well, I guess that’s true, but it seems to me that there’s a fallacy in assuming that a university should be run like a business. I’m not saying it shouldn’t be managed prudently, but the notion that every part of it needs to be self-supporting is simply at variance with what a university is all about. You seem to value entrepreneurial programs and practical subjects that might generate intellectual property more than you do ‘old-fashioned’ courses of study. But universities aren’t just about discovering and capitalizing on new knowledge; they are also about preserving knowledge from being lost over time, and that requires a financial investment. There is good reason for it: what seems to be archaic today can become vital in the future.” Scientist Gregory A Petsko, writing in defense of the Humanities. via.

Are magazine iPad apps sustainably profitable?