I dropped by Tom Kratman’s web board the other day to find out what my favorite Baen author had been up to lately, and found this excerpt from an upcoming novel: Thomas felt unwelcome tears. He forced them back only with difficulty. So gallant, so brave they were, those boys over there fighting and dying against such odds, and with so little hope. Gribeauvil, seeing the boy’s emotions written upon his twisted face, said, “Yes, son; give them their due. They are a great people, a magnificent people. And we are damned lucky to have them, now.” ...

Compare and contrast: Peshawar Lancers and Shanghai Knights. We’ll do the movie first so you have time to skip it in the theaters. OK, that’s a little harsh, but it was really pretty uninspired. Good martial arts from Jackie, good comedy from Owen Wilson, rather lackluster script. I’m a sucker for Victorian pulp adventure, but this was really by the numbers without anything to distinguish it conceptually. I think moving the setting was a mistake. Leave the duo in the Old West where they’re working against our Western tropes, don’t move them to London and run them through the same dull paces every pair of Victorian pulp adventurers goes through. ...

Rumsfeld, Rumsfeld, Rumsfeld. “And the idea that inspectors can go in there and discover things, and find things, if they were be that, they would have been named ‘finders’ or ‘discoverers’ instead of ‘inspectors.’” Damn! Do my local health inspectors know about this? Do home inspectors know about this? Does Inspector Clouseau — well, OK, that last is a bad example. But geeze, guy, inspector does include the concept of finding out when someone’s lying. Hm; I think the word he’s looking for as an alternative is “investigator,” which definitely has more connotations of someone uncovering hidden truths. Still, inspector carries some of that weight as well. ...

“He was known throughout the world for his engineering accomplishments, also.” “He was probably one of the greatest living experts on geology and archaeology.” “He was a wizard with electricity.” “Ham looked what he was - a quick thinker and possibly the most astute lawyer Harvard ever turned out.” Excellence is a core aspect of any good pulp game. In order to establish this for Huey Long’s Men of Action, I’m going to steal a trick from San Angelo: City of Heroes and write down some top ten lists. Top ten doctors, top ten boxers, top ten research scientists, top ten aviators, top ten criminal masterminds, top ten archeologists, top ten diplomats… what else? Suggestions for more lists are welcome. ...

And after a bit of quick perl hackery, we have the results from my Oscar contest! Kyle entered twice; I took his later entry as the final one. This seems reasonable, particularly since his first entry took second place, tied with kodi and yukon_jack. Kyle, drop me an email and we’ll talk about your banner. As a whole, our collective predictive intelligence was not as good as Kyle’s final set of picks, and wasn’t much better than the second place finishers (depending on how you count ties). C’est la vie. Full results after the break.

Lexical FreeNet is neat. I’m not sure if it’s good for anything, but it’s neat. The next time I want to generate connections between two random words, it’s the first place I’ll go.

I just realized that what I really want out of the Internet is a Television Without Pity for comic books. Chris led me to this revelation. Can someone do something about that?

Now I know what to do with my excess books. Money is good, too.

Let’s turn it around. Let’s say a 78 year old lawyer shot Dick Cheney in the face while hunting. Think it would have taken an entire day before the news was released? Think the lawyer would have had at least made a statement within a couple days of the incident? Think the lawyer would be able to skip being interviewed by the police until the morning after the incident? It’s kind of an unfair comparison; you have to be a little more careful when someone shoots an elected official. Still and all, it’s not as if Vice Presidents shoot people that often. You can probably treat such incidents as serious — rather than “sure, we’ll come back tomorrow and talk about it” — without placing an undue burden on the institution of the Vice President.

I currently have 13 entries for the Oscar picks, as follows: Kirby, Chris T., dancingshaman, telepresence, michele_blue, doogs19, Chad U., kodi, Wyatt, Cass, Brant, Kit, and twillitts. I’m dead serious about the sponsorship thing. I’m gonna throw up a banner for the winner. There is very little love for one movie as Best Picture, but I won’t tell you which one. Poor thing. I’ll post a summary of entries after the event itself, though.