The BBC is having a Jayson Blair moment of sorts. It’s an interesting, complex story, which may wind up getting Tony Blair out of the tight spot he’s in. On May 29th, Andrew Gilligan said that a British official told him that the government spiced up a dossier which made the case for war. He did not name the official, because he wanted to keep his sources confidential. That’s reasonable journalism. On June 19th, Gilligan told the Foreign Affairs select committee that his source was one of the senior officials who assembled the dossier. The British government promptly accused Gilligan of lying. The BBC Board of Governors backed Gilligan up. ...

The Texas Democrats took off again (original) (via Perverse Access Memory (original)). This time it’s the Senate Democrats, but the effect should be more or less the same. As mentioned earlier, it is not illegal for Texas legislators to hide out for the purposes of breaking quorum. Indeed, it may be illegal to hunt them (original).

I always spend too much money at Gen Con. Dark Inheritance totally tweaked my fondness for Christian mythos modern fantasy. It’s also a very nice piece of work; I concur with the reviews linked to on the Mythic Dreams Studios site. Probably useful for all kinds of D20 Modern games. I think the coolest aspect of the game is that it’s a D20 Modern fantasy game that blows off the D&D tropes. It goes way beyond the suddenly limited-seeming settings that come with D20 Modern. ...

Patchworky commentary ahoy. Um, I guess I’ll talk about indie gaming at Gen Con now. The Forge folks had a shared booth, which looked very busy every time I dropped by. Yay them! I bought some stuff and talked to some people and generally had a good time there. I met Scott Knipe (original) (who wrote Wyrd and Charnel Gods), and he is just about the nicest guy in the world. He insisted in pressing a printed copy of Charnel Gods on me, so I made him autograph it. We had a nice chat about fan sites and upcoming stuff and so on, and he was one of the people I met at Gen Con who I’d love to have a beer with sometime. Stupid busy schedule. Maybe next year. ...

Look, it’s the only place I have where I can put the packing list and be constantly reminded of it. iBook \* charger \* DVDs? \* memory card reader Camera \* Batteries Shadowfist cards Razor, toothbrush, toothpaste, hair bands Wrestling tapes GBA \* Games: AW II, AW, Crash, Yoshi’s Island, p’raps Warioware \* Charger Cell phone charger iPod & headphones

Some reports say that North Korea may carry out a nuclear test on September 9, the anniversary of the country’s founding, if there’s not more progress in the current standoff by then. I’m torn between believing that North Korea is willing to push the boundaries of reasonable behavior and remembering that the North Korean government is not always grounded in reality. In any case, the Washington Post reports that “Bush may give in on non-aggression.” Bush keeps denying that anything like that is on the table. We’ll see. ...

I’m reminded that the old GM notes for the Unknown USA campaign chronicled in the Dear Brother letters are — you guessed it — on the web.

Best trick for finding NPC pictures ever: [google://party+pictures](http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=party pictures&btnG=Google Search)

Dear Brother #7: In which our heros go back to Washington and parley with unsavory characters.

It’s a sign of Red Sox obsession that my first reaction to this trade was “ah, the Yankees just want to rub our noses in 1986.” However, I confidently predict that if the Yankees are foolish enough to put Orosco up against the powerful Red Sox lineup, the mighty Red Sox bats will erase the memory of those awful seven games.