Horked from Metafilter, but high on the cool factor: MagicGallery.com, a collection of vintage magician posters from 1890 to 1930. Those who enjoyed a certain novel should make sure to view this poster.
Author: Bryant
I love Sundays. You get talking heads on Sundays. Here’s Secretary Rumsfeld on that 87 billion dollars.
“On the other hand, if you cast it [$87 billion dollars kplzthx] directly, that the $87 billion is part of the global war on terror, and that it is a lot better to be fighting terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan than it is in the United States, and that the effort is one that has not as its purpose, I think, as you phrased it, rebuilding Iraq. Iraqis are going to have to rebuild Iraq.”
Well, yeah, it’s better to be fighting terrorists in Iraq if you don’t happen to be an Iraqi. Sorry about chosing your country as our battlefield against Al Qaeda, guys. And you can just rebuild your own country, cause that 87 billion is battlefield money.
Mind you, this is not what the President said. Someone’s getting way too far off message!
The Sunday London Times reported today that the US/UK WMD report is being shelved. (Here’s the direct link, but it’s only useful if you live in the UK or want to pay some money.) 1,400 people spent four months scouring Iraq for evidence of WMD, but found nothing. So little did they find that they won’t even publish the report.
Now, at the beginning of August, David Kay was talking up his progress. At the time, it was pretty clear that he was setting up the argument that Saddam was maintaining the “capacity” for WMD, rather than having any actual weapons, despite what Bush said before the war.
Now it looks like he was even lying (or sorely mistaken) about that.
I can’t think why anyone on either side of the debate about Iraq wouldn’t want that report to be published. Or is this more of that information that’s too dangerous for ordinary citizens to know?
Poolhall Junkies is top of the line fare, as Christopher Walken B-movies go. We’re talking The Prophecy quality here, albeit in a completely different kind of flick.
The star of the movie is a guy named Mars Callahan, who also wrote and directed the thing. His sister is America Martin, which is completely irrelevant but I thought it was cool. Anyhow, he overdirects about half the time — it’s way too stylized in places, and some of the jokes are dead corny — but when you get right down to it what you’ve got is a hustler movie with some good dialogue and an excuse for Walken and Chazz Palminteri to swagger around and do that macho cool thing they both do so well.
Also, Rick Schroder is stand-out good in this and he should get more roles. Trust me on this one. Or don’t, since it’s out on DVD as of last week.
Simple Game WISH question this week:
Name three gods or religions that have appeared in games you’ve played in. Were they good, bad, or indifferent? What made them so?
Off the top of my head, I can only remember one campaign in which deities played a significant on-screen role… no, wait, maybe two. OK, two.
First off, the easy one. Carl’s Babes in the Woods campaign is based on Bronze Age Celtic culture, but the gods are Roman, because the Roman culture in that world was the elves and they conquered everything. I played a cleric of the Traveller (Mercury), Cian, and his restless roguish nature was very defining for the character. Another PC was a paladin of Kore; at one point in the campaign, the gods argued about who would get this new champion, and she got to choose the god she wanted to follow. This sounds like a twinkfest unless you know Carl, in which case you’d be remembering that Greek gods get really petty when mortals deny them something they want.
Which is the key to why the gods worked so well in that game; they were a tangible presence in our lives without being overbearing to the point where player fun was diminished. They had personality. Probably the same reason we like Greek myth so much — they’re fun gods, even if you’d be wary about having a drink with ‘em.
The more complex one: Catholicism was important in UN PEACE, but probably only to me, since my character Paul was Catholic. It’s hard to say the gods were good or bad in that game, since they never showed up (although there was one person claiming to be an angel…). However, Carl did a good job recognizing that religion was an important factor in Paul’s personality and providing roleplay opportunities around that element.
Informative reading for the day: David Niewart debunks the “Bush’s family supported the Nazis” meme. He also nails the reasons why it’s important to look into the reality of the connections between Nazi Germany and American industrialism. It’s a fairly lengthy article in four parts (1, 2, 3, 4) but well worth the time.
Well, this is a dangerous site. Book Sale Finder is a lengthy list of upcoming book sales across the United States. Probably better avoided if you’re prone to book-buying, but it’s too late for me.
Turns out the Brits agreed with those dire warnings that the collapse of Iraq might result in the spread of chemical weapons:
“The JIC assessed that any collapse of the Iraqi regime would increase the risk of chemical and biological warfare technology or agents finding their way into the hands of terrorists, not necessarily al-Qaeda.”
Mind you, since it turned out Saddam didn’t have WMD after all, they were wrong. Still, you’ve got to wonder why Blair (and Bush) denied any such possibility pre-war.
I love my freedom so much that I am willing to accept certain risks to preserve it. I want, yes, my medical records to be inviolate. We are willing to send soldiers to die in Iraq if we think it will preserve our freedoms. I ask this: what sort of gutless people are willing to risk the lives of others to protect freedom, but are not willing to risk their own?
Freedom has costs. Brutal, cruel, harsh costs. Freedom is not comfort. Freedom is the most terrifying thing on the face of the earth, and it is damnably hard to truly believe in freedom. “Why, if the people could do whatever they wanted, there’d be anarchy! Chaos in the streets!” Deep down in our souls, we don’t even trust ourselves with freedom.
And so it is that at times like these all too many of us are willing to surrender that freedom. We’re willing to accept the Patriot Act, because after all we’re at war. We know, on an instinctive level, the truth: that freedom and safety are not entirely compatible concepts.
The question, as always, is this: which of the two is more important to you? There’s no wrong answer. But don’t lie about it.
Okay, sure.
“Two years ago, I told the Congress and the country that the war on terror would be a lengthy war, a different kind of war, fought on many fronts in many places. Iraq is now the central front.”
— George Bush
“Don’t you tell me not to worry about bin Laden
Have you forgotten?”
— Darryl Worley
For the record: no, I haven’t forgotten. I remember quite distinctly where I was and what I was feeling that day. I remember thinking that we needed to find the people responsible and do something about it. I still think that. I hope that, someday, we remember that Osama bin Laden was behind the 9/11 attacks. I hope that the White House will someday devote some time to reminding people who our enemy was and is.
We are fighting a war built on lies. Bush took 9/11 and turned it into an excuse for carrying out a plan he’d built well before that tragic day. As a result, our military is overextended and our world credibility is slipping. We are unable to reduce the North Korean threat; only this week we’ve learned that they’ve developed longer range missiles sufficient to reach the heartland of America.
We are not winning the war in Afghanistan. We’re certainly not losing, and the Taliban isn’t in power, but until the country is stable I don’t see how we can claim to have won. We have a smattering of troops in that country, because there aren’t any more available. Contrary to pre-war claims, Iraq really has consumed all of our available military strength.
I remember that we have provided Osama bin Laden with an opportunity to do something he could not do in the year after 9/11: namely, kill Americans. By putting our troops in Iraq, we have provided him with targets he could not have otherwise reached. Consider this. Between 9/11 and the occupation of Iraq, there were no American deaths at the hands of Al Qaeda. Since Bush declared combat operations over, we’re seeing terrorists killing Americans on a weekly basis.
But has Bush forgotten all this? Apparently so.