Posts

Under the Banner of Heaven is the new book from Jon Krakauer, who appears to want to shed the outdoors adventure label. With this book, he does a pretty good job. One thread of the book is the story of Ron and Dan Lafferty, fundamentalist Mormons who killed their sister-in-law and niece. It’s an exploration of how two relatively typical men became — pardon the freighted language, but it’s accurate — insane religious fanatics. The brothers believed that God ordered them to carry out the killings. ...

Via the Dead Parrots, one of the more painful pictures (original) I’ve ever seen. That sucker’s in there.

Well, it’s not as good as the Walken original (original), but if you’re going to remix Fatboy Slim songs with stick figures, this is the way to go (original). I can no longer believe that Flash is evil.

The clever and studious Brant has discovered and shared with us Deb’s Historical Research Page (original), which is simply brilliant. As Brant says, “Generally I don’t trust sites whose title involves the name ‘Deb,’ but I’ve made an exception in this case.” Awesome collection of links.

Some have argued (original) that the UN Baghdad bombing, the oil pipeline sabotage, and the water pipe sabotage mean that the Iraqi resistance/terrorists have given up on attacking military targets. Three British soldiers (original) in Basra, an American soldier in Hillah, and a convoy of Humvees in Baghdad would disagree with that argument.

The California recall election is definitely the most hope-inspiring thing to happen to third party politics since Perot. Here’s a theory (original) laying out how a libertarian could win it all. Look, like it or not, the whole line about winning with 15-20% of the vote is wishful thinking. Either the Democrats or the Republicans are going to come together behind one candidate. The winning candidate is going to have upwards of 35% of the vote. ...

WISH 61 (original) asks: Come up with a character concept for one to three other gamers you know. System, genre, stats (if you even bother with stats) up to you. How did the gamer(s) influence the concept(s) you came up with? Would you play the character(s) you came up with yourself? OK, that’s an awesome question. So, let’s see. System will be Exalted, cause I’ve kind of been on an Exalted kick of late. And I will pick on the core members of my old group back in California, because I miss them. ...

After a lot of futzing around caused by my own lack of coordination, the server that brings you this very blog is up to a hefty 1 GB of memory. With any luck, this’ll cut down on mysql crashes. Can’t hurt, anyhow. Total cost: under $100. I love the future. (Damn. That post seemed faster… too subjective to know if I’m really getting improvements, though.)

CNN ran a nice story on Warren Zevon (original) the other day. The new CD comes out Tuesday; there’s a VH1 special airing 10 PM on Sunday, Eastern time. Set your TiVos.

If you’re interested in CafePress Publishing, you ought to check out this report (original) from someone who’s tried it. He’s pretty positive, on the whole, but he provides enough information so that you can easily decide for yourself. They still aren’t doing perfect bound books, and they still plan to put CafePress advertising in each book, though, so my interest level is pretty low at the moment.