The US is now floating a compromise resolution in the UN, which would not mandate military action if inspections fail. It would leave the door open for an invasion, but it wouldn’t explicitly link the two. This comes after strong criticism from most of the world in open UN debate. You’d expect Middle Eastern countries to be edgy about the whole thing, but even Australia recommended against linking military action to failed inspections. I should perhaps be more confident in the system. ...

Eugene Volokh has some interesting discussion about the limits of free speech. The Supreme Court commented this morning on the question of free speech as it applies to explanations of how to commit a crime. In short, they refused to hear an appeal of a decision in which a lower court essentially claimed such explanations were protected. However, the Supreme Court also explicitly stated that they were not agreeing with the lower court in that decision.

This is probably illegal, but here’s the transcript of the Supreme Court arguments in Eldred vs. Ashcroft (original). (I say illegal because I’m pretty sure Lexis/Nexis has some sort of copyright on the collection of transcripts. Consider it civil disobedience.)

Every little boy in the world wants to be a rock star, a knight (or samurai, or anyhow somebody with a sword), and a pilot. Bruce Dickinson, former lead singer for Iron Maiden, managed the trifecta. Not just casually, either; he’s got a real job as a jet pilot, and was at one point ranked seventh in the UK in foil (original). I expect in a couple of years we’ll be reading about Bruce Dickinson, fireman. Astronaut can’t be far behind.

Aimee Mann will be appearing on Buffy later this fall. For the obsessive Mann fans like myself, this will mark the second time Aimee Mann’s music has been featured alongside Sarah Michelle Gellar. “You Could Make a Killing” showed up in Cruel Intentions, a sadly underrated… well, OK, not so underrated. I kind of enjoyed it, in a sleazy Wild Things kind of a way. And the director says charming things about Aimee Mann on the DVD commentary track.

This atrocity (a word I use carefully) is deeply regrettable and not at all surprising. Possibly, if the right wing thinks about it a little, they’ll understand why it’s also such a good illustration of the stupidity of this attitude. Yes, throwing milk on PETA protestors is funny and ironic. But in a civilized society, we do not adopt the belief that it’s OK to reply to bad behavior with more bad behavior.

Knockaround Guys is probably the last chance you’ll get to see Vin Diesel in a supporting role for a while, but that’s not why you want to see it. You want to see it because it’s a nifty little ensemble drama with a nasty sense of humor and a tight story structure. Sure, Vin is good and he gets to beat people up, but Barry Pepper and Seth Green and Andrew Davoli are pretty good too. Dennis Hopper’s kind of phoning it in, but John Malkovich is delightful. Solid stuff. ...

Now that my MT -> LJ bridge is finally working the way I want it to, I’ll take the time to do a little documentation. The basic architecture is as follows. I have an MT template containing a verbose RSS .91 feed, which is an index template, so the page it produces is rebuilt every time I post. I added a CGI script residing on my server to the list of URLs to ping when my blog is updated. The CGI runs blagg (an RSS aggregator) with the LiveJournal (original) plugin, which pushes the post to my LiveJournal. ...

Glenn McDonald says, “I’ve been asked, more than once, how I can be a music fan and a soccer fan, when there is usually, at least in this country, such a gulf between art people and sports people.” I could say the same of sports and computers. Many of my friends could care less about sports. Sports are where the jocks play, and we define ourselves as very much other than them. ...

Quick update to my last entry: Osama bin Laden (or someone claiming to be him) has taken responsibility for the French oil tanker attack. He did not take credit for the recent bombing in Bali, although Indonesian officials have made that link. Why is Al Qaeda so eager for us to attack Iraq?