I'm back in hot, sultry Austin just in time for my last year of graduate school. The boys are cute and tattooed, the trucks are big and Ford, and wherever you go, there's likely to be some dude plucking away on an acoustic guitar.

I've been a bit absent from the blog because I've been traveling and moving into my new pad, in Austin's historic Hyde Park neighborhood. It's easy to imagine the lazy summer days spent on the porches of old bungalows here 100 years ago.

Where am I going with this? Well, for one, if I had flown American Airlines to New York, I might have been on a plane newly equipped with broadband internet, and therefore not as out of touch. Woo-hoo! I was wondering when this would happen. Who knew that the airlines' drive to scrape up every last cent these days (yes, I paid $25 for my second checked bag), would lead to something useful?

The service costs $12.95 on flights over three hours, initally debuting on NY-LA, NY-SF, and NY-Miami routes. From what I can tell, it is WiFi, and is available across the entire plane.

According to ZDNet, competitor Delta will soon have WiFi broadband on all its domestic planes, with Southwest and JetBlue scrambling to provide the service as well.

The British Security Service, which is from what I can tell, a mix of the equivalent of the FBI and CIA, is actively recruiting gay spies, according to the Financial Times. They've hired the (sometimes controversial) gay rights group Stonewall to advise them on how to attract gay applicants. More:

The contract marks a significant change in stance by MI5. Gay men and women were barred from working in sensitive posts in the diplomatic or security services until the early 1990s, a quarter of a century after sexual acts between men were decriminalised in 1967. The ostensible rationale was concern that gay spies could be vulnerable to blackmail, while gay ambassadors could exacerbate tensions between the UK and countries that still criminalise homosexuality.

The decision is part of a broader cultural shift by the service, away from the traditional “tap on the shoulder by a don” method of attracting Oxbridge graduates to a more open recruitment of people from across society.

Sounds like a better idea than recruiting celebrity chefs as spies, doesn't it?

Oh, George. Stick to what you're good at. Like making cool-looking ships fly around in space and minting money off the merchandising rights. Not dealing with these pesky things called "characters" or "dialogue."

Why the rant? MTV's movies blog broke the news that in the new Star Wars flick (it's animated), Jabba the Hutt's cousin, Zero, is basically a big ol' gay stereotype. He's purple, with light blue tattoos, and a peacock feather behind his head. But that's not the tip-off:

Zero the Hutt, a new character introduced specifically for the upcoming animated series, is a gay stereotype that makes what Jar Jar Binks represented to the island of Jamaica look subtle by comparison. It’s not the look or design that pushes it over the top into stereotype, of course, but the voice (performed by Corey Burden), a lispy, high-pitched twang purposively reminiscent of Truman Capote.

Apparently Lucas himself wanted the Hutt to have a ridiculous gay accent.

But just because Zero the Hutt is a stereotype, that doesn’t actually make him the first gay “Star Wars” character, [Director Dave] Filoni insisted. He’s actually not straight either, but biologically asexual.

Ah, so it's better to have a gay stereotype appear in a Star Wars film than an actual, seriously-treated gay character. Great logic, there. 

Does Lucas just not get the irony of his perpetuating offensive stereotypes in a galaxy far, far away? Or is this some sort of master plan? Judging by how defensive Lucas gets when questioned about the strange persistence of Earthly stereotypical characters in his films, he probably just doesn't get it. Time for some intergalactic sensitivity training, methinks.