Idle note of no particular relevance except that North Korea has this urgent need to be noticed right now and I want to do my part: The biggest audience ever for a professional wrestling match was in Pyongyang, North Korea in 1995. The venue was May Day Stadium, and the wrestlers were Antonio Inoki and Ric Flair. Attendance is variously estimated at between 150,000 and 190,000 people. Whooooooo! Also, because I stumbled across it while researching this entry, I want to share the unofficial Pyongyang Metro web site (original). Enjoy.

I pulled the Agonist from my war blogroll and added Stratfor; this won’t do anyone without a subscription much good, alas. Sorry about that. I’m pretty sure I had good reason, though. When Sean-Paul Kelley admitted he was pulling stuff from Stratfor without attribution cause of “time constraints” I chalked it up to newbie enthusiasm. It’s one reason I decided to get the Stratfor account — I’d been reading their reports for free over on the Agonist, which made me feel a touch guilty. However, it now seems that he misattributed several Stratfor bits (original) in order to gain credibility. In other words, he wanted people to think he had insider connections so he copied some Stratfor pieces and claimed they came from secret sources. ...

CBS has a live Baghdad webcam (original) running. I’m sure everyone else in the world but me knows this. So surreal. Stratfor pointed out recently that all this embedded exposure is a great way to pull attention from units without embedded reporting, which is utterly true. Right now, on CBS’ webcam, someone’s talking in Arabic from off-screen. I can see a tripod to the right of the picture, and that might be the talker just barely visible next to it. I hear the other Baghdad webcams are also set up on top of this building, whatever it is. ...

And lo… the new feature is live! OK, so it’s not really that exciting. But I like it.

Condoleezza Rice says the coalition gets the leading role in rebuilding Iraq (original): “It would only be natural to expect that … having given life and blood to liberate Iraq, the coalition would have the leading role. I don’t think anybody is surprised by that,” President Bush’s national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, told reporters. Well, sure, if we were doing for the reward. I was under the impression we were doing it a) to protect the West from terrorism and b) to give the Iraqis a better government. Rice makes it sound like we should get to rebuild Iraq… as a reward. Shouldn’t we be selecting the rebuilders with an eye towards who will best help reach those two goals? ...

Camelot: The Very Secret Diaries (original), in the fine tradition of those other Very Secret Diaries, takes the piss out of Arthur. Not really as good as Cassie Clare’s work, but amusing nonetheless. I’m sure the Very Secret Diaries of Sherlock Holmes will show up next. Watson will kill him if he tries anything.

Landmark Theaters is rolling out digital projectors in all their theaters. In Boston, this means the Kendall Square Cinema; in San Francisco, it means the Embarcadero, the Bridge, the Lumiere, and the Aquarius in Palo Alto. Biggest indie cinema chain ever. This has huge implications for independent film (good ones), which John Tynes explains better than I (original).

Women don’t belong among front-line troops? Yeah, right. My thoughts: I’m anti-this war, and I’m glad US soldiers are this brave. I think the article pretty much speaks for itself.

I am slow as molasses in January, but here’s my thoughts on WISH 40: Preferred Style (original). The question: What style of game do you prefer to play in? Style here does not mean genre, although certain styles work better under some genres than others. Style is more about the elements that predominate in a game: combat, politics, mysteries/puzzles, romance/interpersonal relations, etc. What three adjectives best describe your favorite game style? Does this style lend itself to particular genres or games? ...

Bush approved use of tear gas in Iraq today. This pretty much validates the possession of chem warfare suits by the Iraqis. Turns out that when the Senate ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention way back when, they added language permitting battlefield use of riot-control agents with presidental approval. The CWC defines toxic chemicals (original) as “Any chemical which through its chemical action on life processes can cause death, temporary incapacitation or permanent harm to humans or animals.” So tear gas definitely qualifies. It also mentions (in the same article) that domestic riot control is not prohibited. Iraq’s hardly domestic, of course. ...