Joshua Ellis writes on Taste Tribes to good effect. It’s also another demonstration of the slight gap between the political blogs and the social blogs; both create tribal effects but the binding is of a different type. Not a different nature, though. As always with tribes, it’s all about commonality. (Via Mr. Ellis.)

Yao Ming is suing Coca-Cola China. One might well assume that he’s out for big money, etc., etc. One would be wrong; he’s suing for 1 yuan, which is about 12 cents, for “spiritual and economic losses.” I.e., he feels he has to sue to protect his rights but he’s not interested in punishing Coca-Cola. Gotta admire that, even if it’s a bit unAmerican.

We played some Trollbabe the other night, and had a tonload of fun. I was kind of expecting it to be a bit turgid, since it’s a highly experimental sort of game, but it moved really quickly and provided as much drama as I could ask for. Without going into heavy detail, it’s a game in which you play trollbabes — half human, half troll, stuck between two worlds. All PCs are trollbabes, and every trollbabe in the world is a PC. The isolation from both the human and the troll worlds is an important part of the game. ...

Then: “I don?t think there is any role for the U.N. in the short term in searching for, or identifying, or securing weapons of mass destruction, but we do not necessarily rule out some kind of U.N. role down the road.” That’d be U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton. Today, things are different: “The United States has started discussions with the International Atomic Energy Agency to make arrangements for IAEA teams to return to Iraq to determine what may have been stolen from nuclear sites, a State Department official said yesterday.” ...

WISH 48 (original) is all about loot. Real life loot, not the stuff you roll on the treasure table. The price and availability of miniatures goes up as more companies leave the market. Wood costs lead to extended paper costs, and supplements and gaming systems are becoming a serious financial investment. Is this affecting your gaming any? I’m pretty much with Ginger on this one. I’m pretty solvent, through a mixture of luck and brains, and I don’t really blink much at costs. Right now my threshold is about 25 bucks for a 128 page book (hardcover or not), and around 40 bucks for a longer book; I’ll buy those if I’m sure I want them, but I won’t buy ‘em as a casual purchase. On the other hand, a $20 128 page softcover? Sure, that’s in my budget. ...

I now own two walking sticks. They have sharp metal spikes at the bottom, and nice curved handles. One of them — the one my great-grandfather used as he hiked across Germany — has “Interlochen” carved into the shaft. I don’t know if he did that, during sunsets and sunrises, or if it came that way when he purchased it. Both of them, both my great-grandfather’s walking stick and my grandmother’s walking stick, have little metal badges attached to the shaft every inch or so. He apparently hiked more places than my grandmother, because he has more badges. Each badge is a new town, or a new sight on the horizon. If I took the time, which I will, I could trace their paths from the top of the stick to the bottom through the mountains of Europe. ...

I finally got around to breaking down the IOC members by coalition/non-coalition. Of the main Committee, 79 members come from non-coalition countries, not counting Mohamad Hasan from Indonesia, because he’s been suspended. Hm, make that 74 — there are five Swiss members and we’ll count them as neutral. 45 come from coalition countries, counting Taiwan as a coalition country even though the US didn’t list ‘em as part of the coalition. I kind of suspect that had more to do with mainland China than anything else. ...

The 2012 Olympics has turned into quite the little microcosm of the political split over the war on Iraq. Paris just tossed its hat into the ring. The other cities bidding are New York, London, Leipzig, Madrid, and Moscow. The choice isn’t made until July of 2005, so plenty can change between now and then, but it’s still a significant group of cities. Oh, OK. Cuba is bidding too. I can’t see New York winning, not so much because of the political issues but because of the corruption scandals wracking the USOC. Leipzig is really too small. Cuba isn’t seriously likely. The other four… well, the IOC always says there’s no political aspect to the selection, but I still think it’ll be interesting to see how it plays out.

Bruce R. is just destroying the initial responses to the Jessica Lynch story over on Flit. It’s the kind of impressively completist work that makes blogs look good. Start at the top and work down. Best quote so far, from Rumsfeld: “We are certainly grateful for the brilliant and courageous rescue of Sergeant, correction PFC Jessica Lynch who was being held by Iraqi forces in, in what they called a ‘hospital.’” ...

The UN Security Council will approve a resolution lifting sanctions on Iraq today. This resolution is the result of a fair bit of negotiation and back and forth; it’s not the resolution the US wanted, and it’s not the resolution France, Germany, and Russia want. But everyone’s fairly happy with it. Lo, the art of compromise. It gives the UN more of a voice in the post-war reconstruction, and extends the food for oil program for six months. Probably most importantly, from a practical standpoint, it doesn’t give Iraq permanent immunity from claims by creditors, which means that Russia and France have some leverage to encourage Iraq to enforce the pre-war contracts. ...