Waitasecond: I think I know some of the people in the background.

Heh. And I was just looking for a good version of this song (this live version isn’t, quite).

PS: One free bardic tip. When you do an introduction or preface to a performance piece, take whatever time you’ve allotted to the introduction/preface and cut it in half.

You know, I understand that he’s supposed to be closing Gitmo, and everything…

…but I can’t help but notice that if I were trying to get out of a potentially disastrous PR meltdown (9/11 victims’ families versus “human rights groups”) while not immediately infuriating my base over Gitmo detainees I would start by getting a 120 day delay-of-game, too. After all, we could be very easily worrying about more important things by May.

No, seriously, think about it: why does he need four months for review? Didn’t he already have a couple of years to come up with a plan?

(Via AoSHQ.)

Geez, Netrooters: if all you wanted was another Bush…

…we actually had a spare.

We just assumed that you weren’t up for Jeb having his turn. But apparently this was a bad assumption on our part (original alert via MsUnderestimated):


…

Our bad, I guess.

Moe Lane

PS: How are your new unicorns settling in?

Well, one million at the Mall is nothing to be *ashamed* of.

That’s quite a lot, really.  Maybe not quite record-breaking, but still quite a lot:

A record crowd for inauguration? Hard to say

Reporting from Washington — More than 1 million spectators convened on the National Mall to watch Barack Obama take the oath of office Tuesday, but it was unclear if the crowd surpassed the record thought to have been set at Lyndon B. Johnson’s 1965 inauguration.

Though early estimates ranged as high as 2 million people, satellite images of Obama’s swearing-in suggested the crowd was probably about half that, said Clark McPhail, who has been analyzing crowds on the National Mall since the 1960s.

Not the three million or so that the consensus had come up with, but… passable. Very passable. Besides, tons of people watched it on television or online, no doubt.

After all, you wouldn’t actually have to do anything to see it that way.

Moe Lane

PS: How did Bush do? Bless your heart, if I didn’t care then, why should I care now? I’m sure that he had less than Obama did, if that’s what’s worrying you.

Universal Truths with no real relevance: 01/21/200.

Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I dropped out and devoted my life to being bad.

From Neal Stephenson book Snow Crash, which is good reading for anybody interested in the intersection of information technology, Sumerian / Babylonian mythology and the franchise system. Well, it’s good for everybody else, too.

Anyway. Universal truth, there – at least, it’s resonated with every guy I’ve ever shown it to – but there’s not really much you can do with the information, is there? Except wait for individual males to get past being 25, I suppose.

Looking for something to read? (Charles Stross)

(Today’s guy: Charles Stross)

If you’re the sort of person who thinks that mixing higher mathematics, spy fiction, and the Cthulhu Mythos is kind of cool… well, you’ve probably already read The Atrocity Archives and The Jennifer Morgue. On the other hand, if the idea’s never actually occurred to you before, or you’re just looking for a good couple of books, you should pick these two up.  Stross is a fun writer with a good eye for combining horror and science fiction; his alternate histories (the most developed being the Merchant Princes series; a couple of good ones can be found in his short story collection Toast) are likewise well-conceived.  The space opera that he’s done has not really reeled me in as much, but there’s nothing wrong with it; I’m just more of a E. E. “Doc” Smith type.