Glenn Reynolds wrote about this case (original) as an example of Homeland Security out of control. I figured I’d take a look at it and condemn it; from his description it looked pretty open and shut. In fact, from the article, it looked pretty open and shut. Sure, the guy’s a right winger, but that’s no excuse for persecuting him. On the other hand, if he’s really taking a job at a gun store in order to collect names and home addresses of police in preparation for violent activity, that’s kind of the sort of thing you’d expect the cops to be worried about. So is Wynn telling the truth? ...

“So,” he said, “What’s ‘ discovery science,’ anyhow?” “UFOs,” she replied. “Cattle mutilations. That sort of thing. More coffee?” It pays to talk to waitresses.

Mindboggling. The first debate of the election (original) and there’s no way I can find to watch or listen to it live. There’s not even an Internet feed. If I lived in South Carolina I’d have gone and bootlegged a feed somehow.

So, what’s up in the world this fine morning? Stratfor (original) kindly converted my US/Iraq war subscription into a general subscription, so I have a wealth of material to speak of. India and Russia are conducting joint naval exercises, which are pretty much symbolic — they want to remind the world that they’re allies. It’s a good thing to remember, considering that India fully intends to become a world power over the next twenty years. Bruce Sterling wrote a great article (original) about the India/China space race, which echoed this Guardian article from January. It might be somewhat disturbing to consider the fact that China, India, and Russia are all cheesed off about Gulf War II. Or not, if you think we’ve reached the end of history and no other nation will ever rise in prominence. ...

While I think this change will be good for baseball, I have to wonder if the people criticizing the mid-season decision to stretch the NBA first round to 7 games will criticize baseball for doing the same thing. (Winner of the All-Star Game now gets home field advantage in the World Series.) Parenthetically, I approve of it because strength of schedule is not something controlled by the World Series teams. For example, right now, three of the teams with the four best records are in the AL. Should the National League World Series team suffer because there’s more parity? I don’t think so. The Giants (say) can’t control who wins the All-Star Game, but they can’t control everyone in the AL falling over for the Yankees either. ...

Not terribly surprisingly, some Democrats are more than willing to jump on the terror bandwagon. Want to push your domestic agenda? Bring up the war on terror! Bah. The proposals, not unlike much of what Bush has been pushing, assume that terrorists are inept idiots. In this case, you’d have to assume terrorists are incapable of stockpiling weapons. Seems an unlikely assumption to me. Via Light of Reason, and while you’re there read Silber’s quietly painful memories of growing up gay in the 60s.

TPB, a lawyer specializing in family law, got jury duty recently. I found his thoughts on jury duty from the lawyerly perspective to be particularly interesting. “There’s nothing like using fear as a motivator for people who were kind enough to show up for their civic duty.” From my experience, his suggestions on getting removed are not entirely accurate. “Act like you’re reasonably intelligent, have a decent income, and a clue about what the hell’s going on, and you’re pretty much guaranteed to get removed from a jury.” Didn’t work for me, alas. But the bit where he debates with himself as to whether he can put aside his interpretation of the law… that was the hard question for me, too, and I’m just an opinionated potzer.

There’s a hefty little thread over on the Forge about ad lib GMing. (Well, it starts out as a thread about player fulfillment and winds up as a big discussion about “No Myth” roleplaying, but you know, it’s still rock and roll to me. Ad lib GMing, with player acceptance. OK.) The early advice from Le Joueur is very solid and can be turned to slightly less extreme ends. My experience is that many players need the possibility of failure in a way that his Complication theory doesn’t really address. To put it differently: ends must be mutable in play. And… hm. Ah. ...

Coolest random name generator ever (original). It uses the US Census as the data source, and you can tune the commonality of the names. Set the obscurity factor to 1, and you get names like Jesse Hagler and Hannah Walcott. Set it to 99, and you get names like Palmer Glimp and Harland Arrindel. The big bonus utility factor is that each name links to a Google search for that name, so you can find out if it’s already been used in a way that would screw up your story.

The SF Chronicle has an interesting article (original), which claims the most watched station in post-war Iraq is Iranian national television. The New York Times backs this up. I’m a wee bit skeptical, considering how long Iran and Iraq were at war, but even if I discount the reports by 50% it’s still more reason to think that the Shia, Iran-influenced majority will be fairly hostile to American influence. I was listening to NPR the other night and some guy called in to bitch about the ingratitude of the Iraqis. He’d paid thousands of dollars in taxes to help free ‘em and they weren’t properly grateful. All I can say is that the ingratitude was predicted — but I guess since it was the left predicting it, he figured it was just more meaningless fiskable noise.