Thanks for the responses (and the other responses). The inimitable regis makes the apples and oranges point, which I had in mind as well — the Dixie Chicks aren’t selling politicized songs. She also asks about quality. The book, from the chapters available, appears to be exceedingly poorly written. Merlin notes that “Perhaps not publishing the novel could be seen as a leftist bias.” I’d disagree with that. One reason I care a lot about this particular book is because I’ve become convinced that media transmitters of extremist beliefs is a problem. (But not one that we should solve with censorship.) Baen does publish a reasonable spectrum of material — they focus on military fiction, which tends to be right-wing, but Spider Robinson gives them a touch of left-wing representation. But in general, yeah. ...

The smack, it has been put down. ICANN just ordered VeriSign to fix the DNS by tomorrow evening (original), or else: Given the magnitude of the issues that have been raised, and their potential impact on the security and stability of the Internet, the DNS and the .com and .net top level domains, VeriSign must suspend the changes to the .com and .net top-level domains introduced on 15 September 2003 by 6:00 PM PDT on 4 October 2003. Failure to comply with this demand by that time will leave ICANN with no choice but to seek promptly to enforce VeriSign’s contractual obligations. ...

According to DVDfile.com, Sapphire and Steel is about to see a DVD release. Sadly, I can’t find a press release on the topic, just the one mention. Still excellent news; this is some of the best of freaky BBC ATV science fiction. (Thanks to Adam Tinworth for correcting my lame knowledge of British TV.) (TINWORTH. No excuse except being up till 2 AM last night watching the baseball playoffs.)

Glum and glummer (original).

Glenn Reynolds, once again, is confused. THE REAL WILSON SCANDAL: Forget Valerie Plame, the big scandal is why anyone in the Bush Administration would ever have tasked a guy with Wilson’s views with an important mission. If you follow the link, you’ll find Bill Hobbs ranting about a speech Joseph Wilson gave on June 14th, 2003. The very perceptive among us will notice that June 14th is somewhat later than the date on which Wilson went to Niger to look into the yellowcake assertions. ...

You wouldn’t expect a movie about corporate espionage among multinational anime porn to be a bad viewing experience… well, OK, maybe you would. Still, I thought Demonlover was worth my ten bucks. Olivier Assayas’ Irma Vep got excellent reviews, and Demonlover stars Connie Nielsen and Gina Gershon, so there was potential there. I pretty much liked the first half. Chloe Sevigny was tremendously callow, and whether or not her character was meant to be played that way, her performance left me cold. The rest of the movie was fine, though. Very stylish, shot in blues and greys in a kind of 70s futuristic aesthetic. The plot was nicely tangled. ...

Not to harp on Glenn, but I think this is actually an important general point: are bloggers amateur or professional? I think it’s past time we stopped equating “blog” with “amateur.” In this post, Glenn defends his right to write about whatever he wants, which is a right I certainly support. He also says we shouldn’t use him as our only news source, which is commendable. However, he also says “And this is, as Eugene properly notes, an amateur activity.” ...

Dear Brother #11 picks up after the PCs left Chicago and headed down to Mississippi. Chronologically speaking, these events occurred before those recorded in Dear Brother #10c, but we played them out after we played out the trip to Mexico. If I’d known we were going to do that I suppose I’d have held off on writing #10 until we’d finished playing the events leading up to it — but it doesn’t hurt the story at all, so no harm done. On the other hand, we did wind up playing out the events described here after we played the events described in the upcoming Dear Brother #12. But this time I knew it was coming so I can write #11 and #12 in chronological order. (None of this matters or impinges on the entertainment value one bit, so don’t worry. I’m just noting it so I’ll remember what happened years from now when I’m old and grey. And I’m not complaining, cause Rob makes it all work)

Ed Gray, a sportswriter for the Boston Herald, came out today. “I’m out because I no longer, in good conscience, choose to ignore the unabashed homophobia that is so cavalierly tolerated within the world of sports. I’m out, because the silence of a closeted gay man only serves to give his implicit approval to bigotry. I’m out, because I refuse to continue hiding from the truth that an openly gay man has as much right as a straight man to play sports or report on them.” ...

rebelcoyote has pictures of a kitten on a tank. I dunno, there’s probably some big political significance to this, but all I can say is “awwwwww.”