How times change. April 24, 2003 (original): The world must focus on the issue of nonproliferation, says President George Bush. “One of our goals and objectives must be to strengthen the nonproliferation regimes and get the whole world focused on proliferation of weapons of mass destruction,” he told Tom Brokaw of the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) during an April 24 interview aboard Air Force One on his way to Canton, Ohio. ...

Much to my joy, Family Guy is out on DVD. The first set is season 1 and 2; season 3 is out in September. The video quality sucks, with way too much pixelation, but it’s not like the animation was the real attraction anyhow. I wouldn’t call Family Guy great art, but it does a nice job of parodying all the tired old sitcom plots while stuffing itself on pop culture one-liners. It’s also more surreal than almost anything else on television — utterly deadpan. Plus you gotta love Stewie, and Chris is voiced by Seth Green. What’s not to love?

Colin Powell’s concerned about Guantanamo Bay, it seems, or at least he’s writing Rumsfeld concerned letters about it. Man, there’s a wealth of implied information in that article. Not the least of which is anything you can glean from the fact that Powell’s writing letters rather than sitting down for a chat. He wants to be on the record? He can’t get a slot on Rumsfeld’s calendar? He wants amateur political observers like me to make random unfounded guesses? ...

Teeny little new feature over on the right, entitled “Recent Leisure.” If your browser supports title attributes, you ought to get a nice little mini-review when you hover your mouse over the links (or whatever the remaining lynx users of the world do to view title attributes). I like PHP.

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.