More stuff you didn’t really want to know. One gets the idea from this Globe and Mail story that those in power are trying earnestly to re-create the cold war (that was WW3; we’re now in WW4). There’s nothing like an imminent threat to keep people quiet, and to keep military budgets plump; but real wars are too expensive, on all sorts of levels. The solution: declare war on a philosophy, or (in the present case) a strategy. I haven’t read the whole thing, but check out the chunk about Djibouti (about a third of the way down, and the first occurrence of the word).

From the August 31st edition of Le Show, it is pointed out that while Arnold Schwarzenegger does not oppose domestic partnerships, he feels that gay marriage should be between a man and a woman. I, however, feel that anyone should be able to participate in a gay marriage, even gay persons.

The Grauniad summarizes potential connections between the ongoing War on whatever-it-is-today and the long-established goals of the Cheney-Bush junta.

Infrasound makes people feel funny. With experimentation, I should be able to identify the amplitude and frequency that will cause people to give me all their money, and I can finally start my cult.

According to this BBC report, the (very evil) RIAA is likely to offer amnesty to those nasty downloaders if they disclose the source and promise to delete the tracks (they’ll probably also want the pirates to destroy archived copies).

The Phrontistery‘s Compendium of Lost Words is a handy place to find all that stuff that’s in the OED, but that you don’t want to have to plow through everything to get to. The rest of the site may be interesting, too.
And, yes, phrontistery.com is taken (of course). Owned by yahoo, it appears. I didn’t check out the site, or even find out if one exists.

More news about the Firefly movie. Joss gets to make his directorial debut. Missing from the article (which is less firm on how much of the original cast we’ll see than previous articles have been): any mention of Tim Minear, co-creator and FP hero.

This sure looks like it actually happened: an exchange of views between (the very evil) Focus on the Family’s "expert on homosexuality and youth issues" and Will & Grace‘s executive story editor regarding a W&G episode about ex-gay ministries. (I mean that FotF is evil; the ex-gay "expert" is probably just a self-deluding closet case)

Let’s give a warm FP welcome to the lovely and talented (and one fabulous babe) guest-blogger Ursula de la Maison-Hache. Her musings can be found at La Maison-Hache, which is also reachable off to the side there, below the photoblog. We’re still experimenting with layout, so please bear with us.

Lately it seems like everybody’s talking about song clearance. If it’s not Matt Groening on the Simpsons DVDs, it’s somebody else on some other DVD. Or a WKRP in Cincinnati fan on his web site. I am unable to find the Ken Wahl letter that claimed the music replacement in the recent Wiseguy DVD release was due to recent licensing fee gouging, and blamed the gouging on Napster, et al. It’s interesting (though far from surprising) to see that the gouging has been going on much longer than that.