Quick Hits

We're on thermostat watch here at Talk Talk Talk Talk Talk central, as the heat wave finally seems to have broken. We're looking for the thermostat to drop below 80 degrees for the first time in over a week. Humidity's still high, and the air is thick, so although it's well below 80 outside, the temperature's still not plummeting inside. The news certainly isn't inspiring any desire in me to blog. Fighting is getting worse in Lebanon (and yet, the Prez seems to think it's all good), and that's just too depressing to talk about in any depth. Too much heat and the restless sleep that results from it have left me scattered and seemingly unable to focus, so here are another few quick hits.

• I saw an ad for the new movie Scoop that hyped it as coming from "the writer and director of Match Point." Has Woody Allen's career fallen so far down that we don't want to talk about anything beyond his most recent work? Sure, until Match Point he'd been going through a fairly extensive commercial and artistic slump, but he might have one or two other credits somewhere back there that are worth mentioning.

• Comic-Con International is underway in San Diego. Starting today, it'll run through Sunday. This is the big one, and nowadays it's as much about multimedia these days as it is about comics. I haven't been since we moved away from LA more than a decade ago, and it was wonderfully huge then, but from everything I've heard, it's grown exponentially since that time. Its key strength, in my mind, is its incredibly diverse programming. Looking through the schedule of panels and other events we could've seen today, I counted almost 100 choices. That's more than twice as many as Wizard World Chicago has during its entire show, and CCI lasts for three more days! If you're in the area and have any interest in comics whatsoever, here's where you should spend your weekend.

• While I was browsing at Comic-Con International, I was reminded that today was the first day of issue for a series of DC super-heroes stamps from the US Post Office. I don't follow stamp sales closely enough to know how quickly we should expect them to be available in your local post office, but it's not too early to ask.

• Pew Internet has released a survey of bloggers conducted with the intention of building a blogger profile. It's pretty much what I would've expected, but PRI's Future Tense seemed surprised:

The popular image of bloggers is quite different from reality, according to a new survey from the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

We tend to think of blogs as mainstream media alternatives, heavily focused on news, politics, technology and government. Many blogs fit that category, but the survey shows blogs are far more personal than that.

Perhaps they've forgotten that blog is short for Web log. Maybe they don't realize that one of the primary blogging outlets is LiveJournal. You can hear their interview with one of the authors of the study here. Over at Slate, Jack Shafer breathes a sigh of relief that maybe journalists don't have to worry about bloggers usurping everything they do and are just yet.

• DING! DING! DING! DING! DING! We have a winner! The thermostat reads 79! I'm going to bed.