As a rule, I really like Bruce R’s blog Flit. However, I am starting to wonder about his choice of blog partners. T. M. Lutas is not the sharpest crayon in the shed. This in the way of introduction to this exciting new theory of American’s Iraq reconstruction plan. Salam Pax said: I guess you’ve been hearing news about Mosul? Well it’s worse. The security situation isn’t too bad (they don’t rely on Americans in these parts- if they did it wouldn’t be any better than Baghdad). Electricity is more or less sorted out (although we do have problems)- and no, it wasn’t the Amreeeekan who got things running, thank you very much. ...

The BBC just announced that it was going to put its archives online, for free. Danny O’Brien has the best post yet (original) on the announcement, with thoughts on what that might mean, and what the problems could be. I like the theory that it could be a Creative Commons project.

Perhaps reaching new depths of geekiness here, but I added a relationship mapping feature (original) to my local gaming Wiki. It shows how nodes link to one another; here’s Reese Beulay (original) as a collection of boxes and lines. This is actually pretty useful for visualizing how characters relate to one another. I’m going to play around with using it to do relationship maps for new campaigns, too. There’s probably some clever way to use this to visualize blog connections, but I’m not sure that it wouldn’t just degrade into a black hole. Maybe I’ll play with it sometime.

Morning quick-links, morning quick-links… possibly I should get a sidebar. Dunno. Anyhow, Asian Historical Architecture is 6500 pictures of, well, Asian historical architecture arranged in an easy to browse format. Check out, for example, the Patuxai in Laos.

Quote from myself: “Either the Democrats or the Republicans are going to come together behind one candidate. The winning candidate is going to have upwards of 35% of the vote.” Advantage: me! (Yeah, I spent too much time reading self-absorbed blogs while doing research on the previous post. I admit it.)

You probably aren’t going to be able to see Masked and Anonymous — it’s not playing in Boston or San Francisco anymore, so unless you live in New York or Los Angeles you may be out of luck. (Seattle’s got it, though.) The critics really savaged it (original). Me, I thought it was brilliant. _I’m lost, sleeping in an alley _ _I’m lost, I had some family _ I’m lost, I’m here, I’m lost. ...

Under the Banner of Heaven is the new book from Jon Krakauer, who appears to want to shed the outdoors adventure label. With this book, he does a pretty good job. One thread of the book is the story of Ron and Dan Lafferty, fundamentalist Mormons who killed their sister-in-law and niece. It’s an exploration of how two relatively typical men became — pardon the freighted language, but it’s accurate — insane religious fanatics. The brothers believed that God ordered them to carry out the killings. ...

Via the Dead Parrots, one of the more painful pictures (original) I’ve ever seen. That sucker’s in there.

Well, it’s not as good as the Walken original (original), but if you’re going to remix Fatboy Slim songs with stick figures, this is the way to go (original). I can no longer believe that Flash is evil.

The clever and studious Brant has discovered and shared with us Deb’s Historical Research Page (original), which is simply brilliant. As Brant says, “Generally I don’t trust sites whose title involves the name ‘Deb,’ but I’ve made an exception in this case.” Awesome collection of links.