Al Sharpton is a demagogue of a fairly virulent sort, and I have little sympathy for him. However, the news that his offices burned down this morning is potentially very disturbing. According to Susannah of cut on the bias, it was a two alarm fire, which means it’s more than a cigarette in a trash can. It took out his civil rights group HQ and his presidential campaign HQ. ...

Martin Kimel (original) has an interesting blog.

My incredibly cool brother Ben’s design group has just been asked to design an environment for the International Contemporary Furniture Fair. You can see some more of his work here (original); the table won an award for student design distinction from ID Magazine. ID Magazine also recently gave Release1 an award for Best Concepts (original). Ben’s a cool guy.

I’m at the Apple Store watching the Macworld Expo keynote broadcast. Lots of audience shots onscreen right now, so I got into the spirit of the thing and snapped two pics, visible at Hiptop Nation. I’ll update this if Jobs says anything interesting. My, this is an excited crowd locally. Steve can’t hear you clapping, you know. OK, an iPod jacket with controls on the sleeve is cool. More integration between the iApps is pretty cool. Updates for all of ‘em, it sounds like… ah, except iTunes, which had hiden features in 3.0. iPhoto 2, with integration plus really slick retouch. Wow, very solid integration. ...

Apparently Robin Laws (original) will soon be [writing Iron Man](http://web.archive.org/web/20250325004002/http://web.archive.org/web/20250325004002/http://www.comicon.com/pulse/ (original) “Mile High Comics presents… COMICON.com PULSE”) (original). Yes, as in the Marvel Comics Iron Man. Tony Stark. Buh! For those of us not versed in roleplaying games, Robin Laws has been an influential figure in the industry for the last decade or so. He contributed to the classic RPG Over the Edge, which found its inspiration in William S. Burroughs and David Lynch, an entirely new source of ideas for the roleplaying community. He went on to write GURPS Fantasy II, which kicked the normal fantasy RPG tropes in the balls and then went off to get drunk by itself on cheap tequila. With Feng Shui, he abruptly shed the “weird non-commercial designer” tag and demonstrated his ability to write sound mechanics that actively support a game’s genre. Since then he’s worked on Star Trek, various White Wolf games, and whatever else caught his interest. ...

Virginia Heinlein passed away yesterday; thanks to Kevin Drum for the news. I’m saddened.

The America’s Cup challenger has been selected (original). It’s the Swiss team, Alinghi (original). In the most important yacht race in the world. You have no oceans! The Soci

The Libertarian Party has broken new ground; they’ve successfully petitioned the FEC for the right to sell their mailing lists (original). By “sell their mailing lists,” I mean “sell them to any random bulk mailer who wants to send me more junk mail.” This allows the LP to work around some of the unfortunate side effects of the BCRA (original), which prohibits political parties from accepting money from corporations. ...

Orin Kerr nails it over at the Volokh Conspiracy, which is as good a time as any to launch into a discussion of my own anti-war feelings. This post summarizes my opinion on a lot of the arguments we’ve seen on both sides. I believe that Bush wants to invade Iraq in order to expand American presence in the region. I think he also believes, quite accurately, that Saddam is a very bad leader and that regime change in Iraq will be a net good for the world — but that’s not the primary reason, it’s a nice side effect. ...

Caf