Both Antoine Walker and Paul Pierce were chosen as reserves for the Eastern Conference All-Star team (original), which is as it should be. Paul Pierce clearly belongs. Despite his shooting slump, which is largely due to the lack of a break during the summer, he’s one of the best players in the NBA. Antoine Walker is a more interesting case. I suspect that in fifteen years Walker is going to be remembered as one of the most frustrating players in the NBA. There’ve been plenty of players who’ve sacrificed their talent completely, and there have been a handful of players who’ve realized their potential. But Walker is one of a very few players who are clearly capable of playing the game at an exceedingly high level, yet are content to merely be very good. Few come so close to greatness for such a long time without reaching out and taking the brass ring. ...

Huh. Perhaps DC has finally noticed what Marvel’s doing with their movies. Chris Nolan, director of Memento, has signed to do a Batman film. Course, that doesn’t mean it’ll happen.

“Unlike South Africa, which decided on its own to eliminate its nuclear weapons and welcomed the inspection as a means of creating confidence in its disarmament, Iraq appears not to have come to a genuine acceptance, not even today, of the disarmament which was demanded of it and which it needs to carry out to win the confidence of the world and to live in peace.” “For nearly three years, Iraq refused to accept any inspections by UNMOVIC. It was only after appeals by the secretary-general and Arab states and pressure by the United States and other member states that Iraq declared on 16 September last year that it would again accept inspections without conditions.” ...

Some commenters below were pretty skeptical about the viability of non-state sponsored terrorism. (By the way, I appreciate the time all of you took to post, especially the ones I disagree with. Thank you.) Strikes me as a good time, therefore, to talk a little more about the likely progression of terror technology. This is gonna tie into some of the stuff I’ve said about NGOs, by the by. ...

As of this moment, we no longer need Lileks or Moore. Dave Barry has a blog, unless of course it’s a hoax.

The Internet was hit by this attack last night. Parties unknown exploited the MS SQL vulnerability to launch a distributed denial of service attack which took down much of the Internet, as per this post. Meanwhile, I’d been mulling over a recent security alert (original) that discusses a vulnerability close to the heart of the HTTP protocol. Once again, Vernor Vinge got it pretty much right. His future computer nets weren’t something you jacked into, they were a vast network full of legacy code and unexpected consequences. Sounds about right.

The following has some spoilers. The weekend’s movies were Far From Heaven and Catch Me If You Can. Definitely a retro weekend, not even counting the incredibly hip Soma FM Secret Agent streaming radio station I’ve had tuned in since Thursday. I feel like a martini, and you’re just the sort of woman to drink me… Ah, sorry. The mood took me for a moment. More a Catch Me If You Can mood, I think; that’s the lighter of the two films. It has that jazzy sixties bliss to it, up to and including invoking James Bond with a short Goldfinger clip. That makes the contrast between the two all the more interesting, though, since they’re both about transgressions against the natural order. ...

Eric McErlain thinks Tampa Bay’s gonna win the Super Bowl. Might as well get my pick up to be mocked: it’s gonna be the Raiders. I even think they’ll beat the line. Why? Because they have the team of destiny patina. They’re pissed off about the playoffs last year, the veterans know they need to get it done now or perhaps never, and the team is tight. Contrast this to the distraction Keyshawn is capable of causing. Check out his ESPN diary and tell me that isn’t someone who thinks he’s bigger than the team. Note that he didn’t mention his quarterback once. I hear Brad Johnson isn’t that bad a player. ...

Says Mr. Reynolds: “This is also why I prefer a Mussolini-style ending in which Saddam is lynched by his own people to exile, or even a trial. I think that would provide a valuable lesson.” Yes, that’s what I always think about lynchings. They’ll provide a valuable lesson. Precisely. People get uppity, you know? But you know, I think Den Beste is right (original) when he says the world political order is about to change. He’s wrong about a bunch of other things; he clearly doesn’t understand the concept that international legitimacy may be important for any other reason than the immediately practical. I’ve written before about the sheer folly of assuming that the United States will always be in the privileged power position we currently enjoy, and I’ve discussed why enlightened self-interest leads us to the conclusion that we must not encourage a world in preemptively securing one’s own position by invading other countries is wise. Ah well. ...

This prank is what I call culture jamming. I wish I still lived in California; I’d take him up on this.