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From last night’s press conference: “The report itself, I’ve characterized it as mainly history. And I think when you look at it you’ll see that it was talking about a ‘97 and ‘98 and ‘99. It was also an indication as you mentioned that that bin Laden might want to hijack an airplane, but as you said, not to fly into a building but perhaps to release a person in jail. In other words, serving as a blackmail. And of course that concerns me. All those reports concern me.” ...

WISH #92 (original) asks: Have you ever gotten burned out as a gamer? What did you do to combat burnout? Which things you tried helped, and which ones didn’t? Which ones would you recommend to a gamer with burnout? I actually feel a little burned out right now — not a lot, but a bit — so good timing. Hm. I think that burnout is a life phenomenon for me, not a gaming-specific phenomenon. My work is keeping me too busy to think about gaming as much as I’d like, and there’re a bunch of other things swirling around, and I have trouble working up the enthusiasm to generate characters or think about GMing or anything. Which saddens me. (Yes, this is a typical symptom of depression; yes, I know.) ...

WISH #90 (original) asks: What do you think about system updates (Paranoia XP, Amber 2.0, DnD 3.0/3.5) and conversions (d20 Silver Age Sentinels, GURPS Traveller)? What about world/setting updates that result in system reboots (the end of the Age of Darkness)? Do you buy them, run them, or use them for resources? Why or why not? I don’t have a generic answer. I really liked the D&D 3.0 update. I didn’t much care about the D&D 3.5 update. Many of the Traveller updates sucked. The Hero 5th Edition update was great. The Vampire Revised update was quite good, for entirely different reasons. Etc. ...

A few days ago I was listening to Michael Lewis (author of Moneyball) on the morning sports show on WEEI. He didn’t say anything deeply surprising, but he did mention that he’d run into Bill Belichick at his agent’s office in New York the other week. Apparently, Coach Belichick is writing a Moneyball-style book about football — no surprise, since he takes the same value for money approach as Billy Beane. I’m looking forward to it, assuming he successfully navigates the publishing rapids.

N is another evil Flash game. It’s sort of an action platformer physics simulation. I like it a whole lot.

I’m booked for GenCon Indianapolis 2004, in the Omni Severin. I’ll see some of you there, I’m sure.

If you’re a Red Sox fan who’s wondering why the hell Mark Bellhorn is on the team, this article may help. His unintentional walk percentage is tenth in MLB; if he could hit, he’d be dangerous. Doesn’t make him a starter (unless, say, Nomar’s on the DL) but it explains why he’s out there right now.

It turns out that the Subservient Chicken was created by the Barbarian Group, a Boston-area Web design group. I note this mostly as an excuse to link to another site they did for my brother’s design collective, Release1.

Ah, the Disney experience: It’s wholesome! The photo is from the Adventurer’s Club, which is a 1930s pulp-themed bar on Pleasure Island. The gimmick is the actors playing parts, who do skits and shows and songs (see picture) throughout the evening. I spent a lot of time there last week.

The 2004 Hugo nominees are out. I have very little opinion. I do find it interesting to compare them to the Nebula nominees, insofar as the Nebula nominees include quite a few stories originally published online.