I didn’t think much about the Johnny Cash cover of “Hurt” (Quicktime video) when I heard about it. I figured it’d be a kind of novelty thing, like most of the aging star covering once-edgy alternative music songs are. OK, I was wrong. It’s amazing. Go watch the video. Wow.

What I’m thinking is this: a vast, ancient elven empire, called simply the Empire, that dominates the western half of the continent. The elves are neutral, shading towards a kind of practical lawful evil, but only a little way. Just a dark grey. The only exception to the elven domination in this part of the continent is a northwestern peninsula, which is populated by a resolute kingdom of mountain dwarves. Underneath the peninsula, there’s a kingdom of drow which survives with assistance from the Empire. The drow kingdom is a cult of personality, worshipping the Living Presence of their goddess. The Living Presence tells lies about his kingdom’s power, and his people believe him. The mountain dwarves would like to reclaim the tunnels and caverns, and they could probably manage the drow on their own, but the Empire? No way. ...

Heh. I was speculating earlier today that the Iraqi National Museum looting might have been pro art thieves. Through sheer luck, it looks like I was right. Someone should tell those Marines to redo their sign in Arabic, but I’m glad they’re awake now. The FBI is on the job (original), too. Right reactions, even if we got the initial actions wrong.

A lot of people are saying that Michael Jordan had the best year ever for a 40 year old NBA player, and I guess I gotta agree with that. Look at these numbers: .483 from the field, .363 from three point range, .826 from the stripe, 7.7 assists and 1.7 steals per game in a mere 27.7 minutes… Oh, sorry. That’s John Stockton at 40 (original). OK, OK. Shooting .462 from the field, with 7.8 rebounds per game, 4.7 assists, and 20.6 points per game, it’s… damn it. Karl Malone (original). ...

I might as well make some bad predictions about the NBA playoffs, right? First Round Spurs over the Suns, because rookies can only lift you so far. Kings over the Jazz, because… well, it should be obvious. The Kings are hungry. Mavs over the Trailblazers, cause the Trailblazers just can’t handle the playoffs. Lakers over the Timberwolves, because the Lakers have enough talent to get past the first round. Pistons over the Magic, despite Ben Wallace being out. The Magic are nowhere this year. ...

This guy popped up in my referer logs the other day, and it turns out that he actually links back to an old post of mine. I’ve changed my opinion a bit since then, after I realized that it’s fairly trivial to write a script that validates referers. All need to you do is grab the page listed as a referer and check to see if it really contains a link back to your site. It’s only a first level technique — there are ways around it — but it would certainly catch what Joel is doing. Thus, while Joel says there’s nothing that can be done about his technique… he’s wrong. Admittedly, I haven’t integrated my script with my general purpose log analysis scripts but in the cases where I have noticed referer spam I just update my config file and tell the scripts to ignore those referers. I stuck my script in after the cut. It runs over an active log file, tosses out referers it’s seen before, validates new referers as per the technique above, and emails me a note when it sees a valid new referer. It will not work out of the box on your server, but it should be kind of clear what needs to be updated if you’re a perl coder. Vanity, vanity, all is vanity.

Kevin Drum catches the BBC changing articles on the fly. Add another reputable news agency to the list of those who do this. There was a small tempest a year or so ago regarding bloggers who adopted this practice; it’s odd that fewer people seem to care when it’s journalists. Or maybe I’m missing something, dunno.

Robert Fisk has the most poignant things to say (original). I don’t know what I could add to what he wrote. An observation, perhaps, that this is a deeply apoliticial column. Frustrated? Oh yes. But not political. (Via Making Light.)

For the first time in years and years, I’ve registered for Gen Con (original). That’d be the Indianapolis version, not the London one, although if anyone wants to pick up my plane ticket I’ll certainly hit the latter. In a surprising display of competence, I even preregistered for events. Woot!

The buried mobile labs we found last week weren’t chemical weapon labs after all. It’s unclear whether or not these are the labs Powell was talking about in his UN speech — from the CNN article, it looks as though they’re cargo containers rather than actual vehicles, but those are designed to ride on flatbed trucks. I’m thinking they’re at least the same type of lab. Well, maybe Iraq had 18 mobile chemical weapons labs plus 11 mobile labs that had nothing to do with chemical weapons and it’s just a coincidence and we’ll find the chemical weapons labs later. ...