News of the surprising: Sci-Fi Channel is gonna be airing a Riverworld pilot (original) on March 22nd. Alex Proyas, director of Dark City, is producing. The only notable name I see is Emily Lloyd. No Richard Burton in the story, either.

I dunno, it’s like I feel some weird obligation or something. Saith Professor Reynolds: “essentially a pro-democracy, anti-dictator — and hence pro-war — student organization…” It’s kind of hard to tell, since that’s a pretty terse argument, but I think that’s a fallacy of composition — he’s pro-war, as a consequence of his anti-dictator and pro-democracy stance, so everyone who’s anti-dictator and pro-democracy must therefore be pro-war. But since he doesn’t lay out the steps, preferring to just leap to the conclusion, one can’t be sure.

A long time ago, in the heyday of Webrings, I thought about setting up a link exchange along Nomic lines, but I was too lazy and never got around to it. BlogNomic is sort of like that, except it centers on weblogs. If I was a diehard Nomic player I’d get involved in this but I should keep reminding myself that it’s all I can do to get through a game of PbEM Diplomacy without losing interest.

Felix Salmon has the only blog I know of coming to us live from the Antarctic, unless you count Big Dead Place (original), which is a pretty interesting site. But not every interesting site is a blog, even if it posts cool stories. Word to the wise, yo. Actually, I don’t think it’s Felix Salmon posting the Antarctic stories, now that I look at it again. It’s someone named Rhian. One imagines there’s a story there, but it’s opaque to me… until I spend five seconds with the site and learn that Rhian is Felix’s sister. The Internet: tomorrow’s personal transparency today!

Four or five episodes in, and by my reckoning, Mister Sterling has pretty much jumped the shark. Wasn’t much of a shark, at that. There was a lot of promise in the premise of a Senator appointed to fill out a term who turned out to be an independent, but it’s squandered by making him a Democrat in independent clothing. So far, other than a quick list of issues in the first episode, there’s really nothing about him that doesn’t follow the liberal line. Which isn’t a bad thing per se, but don’t tell me he’s an independent thinker. Heck, his true blue Democratic staff anointed him as “the guy we always wanted to work for” last episode. ...

You gotta love these little self-fulfilling prophecies. The New York Sun tells us, in the course of arguing that anti-war protests should be forbidden, that “His [Thomas Friedman’s] point was that if terrorists strike again at America and kill large numbers of Americans, the pressure to curb civil liberties and civil rights will be ‘enormous and unstoppable.’ What we took from that was that the more successful the protesters are in making their case in New York, the less chance they’ll have the precious constitutional freedom to protest here the next time around.” ...

Weird gaming idea of the day: You hand out character sheets that are folded up like origami, and instruct the players not to unfold them. They start out with the stats and skills and self-knowledge that are visible on the outside. At various points in play, you instruct them to make certain unfolds. New information is thus revealed, and put into play. If you wanted to randomize things a little, you could use a cootie catcher, but I’m not sure the associations are right. ...

OK. This is the movie trilogy game. It’s really simple. Pick three movies that form a trilogy, but weren’t meant to. My personal favorite is this group: Henry V (the Branagh version), Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, and Henry and June. The Henry Trilogy. See? It’s easy. You can go thematic, too. Heavenly Creatures, The Young Poisoners Handbook, and The Butcher Boy. The Children of the British Empire Behaving Badly Trilogy. It’s best if it’s a trilogy with a weird angle, which is why the Henrys beat the Children all hollow, but the Children are an OK entry because who’d ever imagine three movies like that? Also, they don’t share many other elements, although Ireland (where The Butcher Boy is set) is a bit close to England (where Young Poisoners Handbook is set). You want as little in common between the movies as possible other than the linking theme… no, that’s not quite right. Elements have to either be the same (the linking theme, the location, etc.) or different. You can’t have two movies set in swamps and one set in mountains, but if all three are in swamps, that’d be OK. ...

HKFlix.com has a new edition of Battle Royale in stock, which may be of interest to — well, it’s of interest to me. I’ve wanted to see this for a while. The plot is simple; a few dozen Japanese teenagers, all from the same high school class, are put on an island. Each one gets a weapon. Last one off wins. Refuse to fight and you die. ...

This picture is probably the coolest picture I have seen in years. No kidding. It’s a no kidding high tech not yet perfected invisibility cloak. Go look. Now. It’s a guy standing in the middle of a park and you can see right through him. It is incredibly science fictional. It’s not Photoshopped.