Your reading material for the morning: Zbigniew Brzezinski’s New American Strategies for Security and Peace speech. The second condition, troubling condition, which contributes in my view to the crisis of credibility and to the state of isolation in which the United States finds itself today is due in part because that skewed view of the world is intensified by a fear that periodically verges on panic that is in itself blind. ...

The significance of today’s casualties is not so much that it’s the worst attack so far, although it was a terrible thing. What worries me is that we knew it was going to be a bad weekend, and we still couldn’t stop the worst attack of the occupation.

Saith noted pacifist and anti-war activist E. E. “Doc” Smith: Why was all this necessary? This organization, this haste, this split-second timing, this city-wide exhibition of insane hippodrome riding? Why were not all these motorcycle-racers not stationed at their posts, so as to be ready for any emergency? Because America, being a democracy, could not strike first, but had to wait—wait in instant readiness—until she was actually attacked. — Triplanetary, 1948, page 90 of the Old Earth Books edition ...

This is a hopeful sign. New York City is considering outlawing the party primary; rather, they’ll have one big primary for everyone after which the top two vote-getters will face off in the general election. There are plenty of flaws with the idea, of course, and it’s not mathematically strong. Consider the following preference breakdown: Candidate A: 20% first choice but nobody’s last choice Candidate B: 45% first choice but 55% last choice ...

Let’s wrap this puppy up, shall we? In my frenzy of Gen Con recapping, I missed two purchases. First off was Mechanical Dream, a product of my lust for weird French RPGs. Alas, Steam Logic Editions is actually from Quebec. However, that minor flaw doesn’t seem to have kept them from producing the sort of surrealistic dream of a roleplaying game that I expect from the French. It’s a bizarre industrial fantasy world without any humans at all; the social structure of the world is predicated on a specific kind of fruit. If you don’t eat one every week, you die. I have not yet penetrated deeper into the system than that. ...

You don’t get to know who we arrested. The Justice Department might be correct; revealing the names of those detained post-9/11 could be helpful to Al-Qaeda. Assuming, that is, that Al-Qaeda is incapable of figuring out whether or not cell members were arrested on its own. Which is actually less snarky an assumption than it appears; the answer depends on the nature of the cell structure. On the other hand, with a properly defined cell structure, Al-Qaeda leadership wouldn’t necessarily know that a given detainee was an Al-Qaeda member either. ...

Advantage, moi. Well, more or less. Saith the Boston Dirt Dogs, with no cited source so it’s just a rumor: The real story behind the story: Manny asked the Red Sox put him on irrevocable waivers and insisted to Theo that the Yankees would claim up… so they called his bluff. Yes, that is only sort of close to my theory, but either way you’ve got the key element in place: the waiver was agreed upon by both the Sox and Manny beforehand. OK, what else we got? ...

Best eBay auction description ever (original). Read it quick before it ages out. In my heart of hearts I figure this is a clever scam, since the seller does a big trade in vintage items, but it’s still very funny.

So, the Red Sox put Ramirez on waivers (original). That’s whatcha call daring and surprising. My first reaction was that it was mildly insane; if the Yankees don’t take Ramirez (and they’re the only team that can), the guy’s going to be unhappy in the Red Sox clubhouse for the rest of his contract. But then I had my morning coffee and thought about it a little more. What if this didn’t come as a surprise to Manny? What if Theo Epstein sat down with Manny a week ago and asked him if he was serious about wanting to play for the Yankees? What if Manny sees this as the Red Sox offering him a chance to go where he wants to go? ...

For Mashup number fifteen, we’ll return to the classics of science fiction. Our subject today is the Foundation Trilogy, Asimov’s soft-SF series of psychohistory, galactic empire, and barbarianism. I’m more interested in the original three books than the multitude of sequels, but suit yourself for your mashups. The core concept of the trilogy is Hari Seldon’s psychohistory, with which Seldon predicted the fall of the Galactic Empire and manipulated events so as to minimize the time before another Empire would rise. Add in the backstop that was the Second Foundation — and don’t forget the psionics — and you have a lot of material to work with. Oh, and this is your sporadic reminder that there’s a game meme announcement mailing list. The only traffic on the list is announcements of new game meme posts; right now it’s just me and Ginger’s WISH. Now, on to my Mashup.