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Impending WISH deficit! But this week (original): Pick three to five genres and name the best RPG for that genre. Why do you think it’s the best? What makes it better than others? What are its downsides? Pulp: Adventure! This is a very close race, because Feng Shui has better core mechanics which are better suited to the genre. Feng Shui really gets damage and fighting and stunts right, which is important for a pulp game… but it’s an action movie game rather than a pulp game, and while the genres are similar they aren’t the same. So the detailed and comprehensive power list brings Adventure! ahead by a hair. ...

Ray Bradbury has pretty strong opinions about Michael Moore (original). “Michael Moore is a screwed a—hole, that is what I think about that case,” Bradbury said according to an English translation of the story. “He stole my title and changed the numbers without ever asking me for permission.” Continued the author: “[Moore] is a horrible human being – horrible human!” When asked if he agrees with Moore’s political positions, Bradbury replied, “That has nothing to do with it. He copied my title; that is what happened. That has nothing to do with my political opinions.” ...

John Tynes claims, accurately (original), that Dirty Pretty Things is the “best damn film of the year.” So far, true. Stephen Frears has turned out another little gem. He paints the story using the edges of society, creating art with the conventions of the dark thriller genre. It’s not just a thriller, and it’s not just one of his social pieces; it’s an elegant braid of both. Audrey Tautou kind of slips into the impish Amelie persona once or twice, which is a little odd for someone playing a Turkish immigrant, but it more or less works. The rest of the acting was superb. Benedict Wong was especially good, and got the best line in the movie in the best scene of the movie. Lucky guy. ...

Public service announcement: City of God comes out on DVD tomorrow. It is so very good. Big-time recommended.

Juan Cole has an excellent essay on Sistani’s view of the ideal Iraqi government. Since Sistani more or less got his way with yesterday’s UN resolution, it’s worth reading.

Eric Muller may have somehow gotten his hands on the first 56 pages of the March 6th, 2003 memo on torture. I haven’t read it yet. Note that there’s no pedigree attached, so it should be considered suspect until and unless more evidence rolls in. Update: MSNBC has the same thing. Except not exactly the same; it’s a different scan. The PDF MSNBC has looks like a photocopy of the version that was scanned to create Eric Muller’s PDF. Someone’s leaking those 56 pages all over the place.

One liner framework for an Adventure game: “Huey Long’s Men of Action!”

The working-group report elaborated the Bush administration’s view that the president has virtually unlimited power to wage war as he sees fit, and neither Congress, the courts nor international law can interfere. It concluded that neither the president nor anyone following his instructions was bound by the federal Torture Statute, which makes it a crime for Americans working for the government overseas to commit or attempt torture, defined as any act intended to “inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering.” Punishment is up to 20 years imprisonment, or a death sentence or life imprisonment if the victim dies. ...

I’m normally not much of a Harry Turtledove fan. I found the Worldwar series to be incredibly long and dull with poor characterization and fairly uninteresting aliens. He clearly knows his history, but he wasn’t so good at getting the story across. For some reason I took a plunge on American Front anyhow. Surprise, it was remarkably readable. I think this is perhaps because there’s a whole lot of populism in it, and I’m a sucker for populism at the moment. So I went ahead and read the whole trilogy, and then the second trilogy set in the same timeline, and now I’m waiting for the next one. ...

Since I posted my pieces on the upcoming draft and Congress.org, I’ve gotten 687 hits on the first and 493 on the second. Total traffic: 1180 hits, most of which is probably not everyday visitors who saw it on the front page anyhow. Over half of those came within the first couple of days; the counter-meme spread very nicely within LiveJournal. These days I’m getting hits from message boards of various stripes. I got few links from blogs outside LiveJournal, interestingly. I think it’s because the original rumor didn’t spread much in the blogosphere.