Kerry said today that his first choice as Secretary of Defense would be John McCain. Nice move — it’s less threatening to the Democratic base than McCain as VP, and it’s less damaging in 2008 when McCain runs for President in his own right. It also still brings a lot of the advantages that McCain as VP brings. This could also be a trial balloon to move the McCain as VP idea forward. We’ll see how McCain reacts. Good move on Kerry’s part either way.
Want to see unedited photos directly from the cameras of American soldiers in Iraq? Check ‘em out (original), from the people who brought you Yet Another Friendster Clone and Am I Hot Or Not. Via Clay Shirky (original), who points out that information cannot be contained in the digital era.
For the record, I spent most of Saturday having a pleasant Mother’s Day celebration with my family. Sunday was the day I spent mesmerized by City of Heroes. And there is a screenshot album, which will keep getting updated as long as updating it amuses me. “Some villains do not wish to end their lives of crime. The Teleonaut uses his mystical shadow powers to reason with them.”
Tim Bray wonders if the use of “stand up” to mean “deploy” is a defense/intelligence IT coinage. I think the answer is yes. I hire ex-military IT people when I can (see below), and they always use “stand up” like that. Sidenote: in my experience, IT people who’ve spent a while in the military are diligent and responsible and get things done. I look for people who’ve reenlisted a couple of times, rather than people who’ve done one term and left. The kind of discipline they learn is incredibly useful. For example, military IT people will invariably write runbooks. (Hire a veteran today!)
Feeling fitful. Posting to be light or non-existent until such time as feeling goes away. Nocturnals M&M book v. good. Adventure! D20 as expected; not v. good but solid. Pavis/Big Rubble omnibus reprinting v. good. Believe I have finally cracked the Glorantha mindset. Much like perl mindset, but with less punctuation. (Previous sentence, while jocular, is not a joke.) Still not king.
OK, but I will take a second to note that my respect for Pat Tillman grows more and more the more I learn about him (original). Sounds like he thought a lot. Sounds like he didn’t care much about convention. I already knew that he turned down big money to go fight for his country, and I already knew that he turned down a large contract earlier in his career so he could stay in Arizona with his team. I didn’t know he attended a christening in drag, or that he read as much as he seems to have. ...
Any MMORPG in which I can create a big bruiser wearing a green suit and a sleek black shirt, with a wrestling mask to match? That’s an MMORPG which is perfectly OK by me. I had a refreshing evening of beating up thugs and muggers, during which I looked a lot like this (click the thumbnail for the big picture): Now, that’s what I call entertainment.
The eloquent Bill provides his own Kaiju review, which touches on all the Lovecraftian elements I ignored. Plus he opens a much needed discussion on the subject of Super Wrong, and how Super Wrong’s valets failed to do right by the budding superstar.
In April, people grabbed the index.xml file at the root of this site 499 times, presumably hoping for an RSS 2.0 feed. Mostly it was two aggregators politely retrieving the file once per hour. Sadly, that file hasn’t gotten any new content for three months, since I decided to only maintain an RSS 1.0 feed and an Atom feed. I was going to hand-craft a new item for that feed explaining that I had given up on it, but then I noticed that it was already in RSS 1.0 for some reason, so I just linked it to the RSS 1.0 feed and had done with it. This entry may or may not reach the eyes of the people behind those two aggregators, but if they’re paying attention they’ll see it. (Hi, guys! I’d switch to /index.rdf, but you don’t have to if you don’t wanna.) ...
I girded my teeth. I gritted my loins. I ventured out, bold and unafraid, into the strange world where art students meet wrestling and nothing is safe; where every entrance theme is J-Pop; where the heels are square and the faces are from Mars. I did it — for Johnny. I dunno, man. It’s like wrestling, but they wear big Japanese monster suits made out of foam rubber. And it happens in my city. Like I wasn’t gonna get down to a show eventually. ...