Iain Murray, who generally writes about conservative politics (he's one of the more libertarian, hence better, writers at National Review's The Corner blog) has a secret: he loves old-school pen-and-paper roleplaying games.

If your mental image of "National Review writer" involves a young man from Nantucket wearing a blazer, fraternity pin, and high-tiders as he hoists the jib aboard the good ship "Inherited Fortune," prepare to have your preconceptions busted.  Murray appreciates the goodness that is first and second edition Dungeons and Dragons, and agrees (with me anyway) that Greg Stafford's Runequest is one of the finest RPGs ever created.  I just wish he'd cover my personal favorite, Marc Miller's Traveller.  The blog is even written in campaign-form.

As perhaps the most prominent weblog in America that covers in equal measure law, politics, board and roleplaying games, and the merits and demerits of various swords for zombie decapitation*, we must encourage this sort of thing.

So visit Murray's blog, the Rune Under Water, and read about the horrible vengeance the Trolls of Pavis have in store for the Lunar Empire.

*(Ours is a very small field.)

In the post below, Patrick points to Joel Rosenberg's excellent Blawg Review about the United Nation's International Day of Tolerance.

What does the United Nations consider tolerant? Well, tolerance apparently means not criticizing censorship, even in the most mild terms, and even in forums devoted to debate. That's apparently why in the course of the U.N.'s Internet Governance Forum in Egypt, U.N. goons forced panelists to remove a poster that contained an unflattering reference to China's censorship policies.

The poster was thrown on the floor and we were told to remove it because of the reference to China and Tibet. We refused, and security guards came and removed it. The incident was witnessed by many," Ahmed reported.

The poster promoting ONI's forthcoming book, "Access Controlled" was removed by the IGF's organizers because a sentence in the poster apparently violated UN policy. The sentence in question reads, "The first generation of Internet controls consisted largely of building firewalls at key Internet gateways; China's famous "Great Firewall of China" is one of the first national Internet filtering systems."

That, naturally, was intolerant of China, whose differences we must celebrate.

To anyone who has been paying attention, it comes as no surprise that the U.N. continues to push values of "harmony" and "cooperation" over values like freedom of expression.

Via Boing Boing.

When we're told we must condone the intolerable.

Joel Rosenberg at Windypundit has what we can already proclaim the week's must-read blogpost and one of the best Blawg Reviews of the year:  a special celebration of the United Nations International Day of Tolerance.

You are Number Six.

Who are you?

Not the new Number Two.  Nor for that matter, the new Number Six.

The producers of AMC/ITV's renewal of The Prisoner had a tall order to fill: to reimagine and remake a television show so perfect in its strange mix of whimsy, paranoia, conspiracy, and adventure that over forty years after its debut, it is still ahead not just ahead of its time, but of our time.

Even shows like Twin Peaks, Lost, and Life On Mars, the programs that most nearly approach The Prisoner as ongoing mysteries meant to keep the audience guessing, didn't quite hit the mark of Patrick McGoohan's masterpiece.  As for the producers of this "remake," well, they tried.  And on the evidence of one episode, they've failed.

Utterly.

This is a Prisoner written by committee, full of pretty people and long stretches of … futility.  Oh they've taken the cosmetics, the plot, and the ideas behind the original.  They've sounded the notes, but they're not getting the music.  Where the original show featured a parade of memorable character actors such as the wonderful Leo McKern, and a star who could have worked for Hitchcock, this version gives us a cast that could have come straight out of a toothpaste commercial, and a star memorable only for his ordinariness.  James Caviezel, while certainly good looking enough, just isn't a big enough man to play the part of someone so extraordinary that a separate world would be set up to extract information from him, and to drive him insane.

If THEY wanted to get information from James Caviezel, they'd just have him mugged in some dark alley.

Even Ian McKellen, gamely trying his best to carry our interest as Number Two, can't carry the show on his back.

I feel like I'm watiching The Truman Show rather than The Prisoner.  I suppose this cast and these writers might have made a … decent program given the freedom to make something their own, but the problem with reimagining perfection is that you've got to do it perfectly.

Not recommended.

Update: For our friends Eddie and Ella:

I get more from the first minute of the first episode of the original than I got from last night's slogging abomination.

Marc Randazza — flush with recent heady victories and, most likely, grain alcohol — issues a call to arms in the Great War on Apes, a war we may already be losing. Europe has already fallen to the apes' legal barrage. Can we be far behind?

is there still hope?

Jealous of all those smug oncologists and neurologists getting all the money, while you're left with the scraps and an untreated brain tumor?  You need merely emigrate to the United Kingdom, where anti-discrimination law will guarantee you a living, and a medical degree:

Alan Power, who has been a member of a Spiritualist church for 30 years, argues that his belief in the power of mediums should be placed on a par with more mainstream religious and philosophical convictions.

He has already secured a legal ruling that his principles are covered by laws designed to prevent religious discrimination in the workplace, and is now seeking to prove that they were the reason for his dismissal.

Mister Power was dismissed by the city of Manchester because he consulted psychics.  Oh, did I call him Mister Power? That should be Detective Power. Power was fired from his job as a police trainer because he recommended that budding British cops consult psychics to solve crimes.

Of course it doesn't matter that British courts won't accept psychically derived testimony as evidence, any more than it matters that British tumors won't respond to sincere prayer or ginseng root extract.  Someone has been discriminated against.  It's unfair, and there ought to be a law!

Naturally we can't predict the future.  We can't know, yet, that British courts will recognize a right for Christian Scientists to work as physicians, free of the the twin tyrannies of biology and so-called "good medical practice."  Only a psychic could know that.  But the precedent follows naturally.

As for those wrongly convicted, or whose diseases go untreated as a result of this groundbreaking precedent, at least they'll be free of discrimination in their cells and hospices.

Via Overlawyered.

Often, our Friday time wasters are games or some other amusement. This time we have something that is beautiful, educational and captivating. It will also literally take your entire afternoon if you let it.

Here are over 1500 photos (a bounty of the New Deal, I might add) gorgeously shot in full color that reflect random instances of life from the Great Depression to World War 2. The pictures were a project of the Farm Security Administration followed by the Office of War Information. So, you get a lot of shots of rural life in the US and mobilization towards War. These photos come from a new exhibit at the Library of Congress.

The photos range from stirring shots of industrial works, to pure Americana, to cool action shots, to rural farm shots. There really are far too many amazing shots to mention. So, sit back and just keep clicking. I mean where else are you going to see a shot of a barrage balloon followed directly by a shot of a house being built in Houston?

This really is a great way to spend several days. Enjoy!

Actually, I'm not feeling fat today. I'm wearing a suit that I haven't worn in a while, and thanks to losing about 28 pounds, it's hanging sort of loose. I look like David Byrne on the cover of Stop Making Sense.

But in perspective, of course, I'm hugely, unimaginably fat. At least that's the impression I get by looking at this extraordiarily cool University of Utah widget that helps you visualize the size of microscopic and atomic thingamajigs in comparison to things we can see. Check it out. You're fat too. No, not as fat as me.

Hat tip: Neal.

Fascinating account of the great man's first visit to America, a visit that was intended to promote physics but also zionism, and his encounters with American "high-society" Jewry, including  Louis Brandeis, Felix Frankfurter, Arthur Sulzberger (those who claim the New York Times has an anti-Israel bias should note that this bias has old roots) and Bernard Baruch.  No math is required.  This is primarily a story about politics and culture.

Though the American Jews come off as small, short-sighted, and indeed a bit foolish considering what was coming, perhaps both sides were right, concerning their sides of the Atlantic:  assimilation and engagement with the Other have well served America's Jews, while European Jewry, in 1921, needed nothing so much as a prophet, warning them to get the hell out of Europe or be willing to fire a rifle.  They had one, in Chaim Weizmann, who accompanied Einstein, but not enough of them listened.

Parenthetically one wonders what the world would be like today if America had been more open to Jewish emigration from Europe at the dawn of the last century, or had stayed warlike after 1918, but of course America has never been able to save Europe from its barbarous self.  Europe is the cradle of our civilization, and its grave.

The mass murder at Fort Hood was horrific. If Nidal Malik Hasan did, in fact, commit it, there are indications that it was a terrorist act, at least by some relevant definitions.

Naturally, people are angry. People are angry that it's cruel and senseless and tragic.

Wolf Blitzer is angry. But he's not just angry about those things. He's outraged that Col. John Galligan (Ret.) agreed to represent Nidal Malik Hasan, who after all, is an accused mass murderer.

They asked me, how could a retired U.S. military officer, a full colonel, go ahead and represent someone accused of mass murder? And I want you to explain to our viewers why you're doing this.

The proper response — the one I would give — is "why, it's because fuck you, you shallow, totalitarian-sympathizing talking head." Maj. Galligan did better.

The rights that I'm asking be accorded to Major Hasan are the rights that service members live and die for.

But Wolfie couldn't resist the parting cheap shot:

I'm sure he will get a much fairer hearing than those 13 Americans who were brutally gunned down the other day. I'm sure he will get all of the rights that are applied by the military code of justice.

That's the typical whine of barstool philosophers everywhere about how it doesn't make sense that brutes, who are no respecters of the law and order, enjoy due process of law. Such people disregard that we have decided not to be brutes — a hard-fought decision of millennia. We don't summarily execute the accused murderer (who summarily executed his victims) because we've decided to be better than murderers and thugs.

Somebody forgot to tell Wolf.

The Secretary of State of California pretty much has one job. She runs the State's elections. So, you might consider it a problem that the Republican candidate, Damon Dunn, has voted exactly once in his 33 years on the planet. Dunn, who (in a great quote from the article) "says he's wealthy", is a tailor made candidate (young, Republican, African-American) except for this inconvenient not participating in elections business.

In fact, if you are scoring at home, this means that almost every major Republican candidate in California has not been bothered to vote in almost any elections during their lifetimes. What is up here? I mean, I know that voting and making decisions create those annoying records that can be so inconvenient when you are trying to be all things to all people, but come on.

A run down of the electoral excellence of the Republican slate:

Wannabe Secretary of State Damon Dunn: 1 time voting in 15 years he was eligible to vote (and that one was last May!)

Wannabe Senator Carly Fiorina: voted in 6 elections since moving to California in 2000, lived in New Jersey prior to that and never voted.

Wannabe Governor Meg Whitman: (ignorning the kerfluffle over whether she was registered to vote ever or not, because those records are a mess, but it doesn't look good) even when she was definitively registered (like in Santa Clara county in 1999) she didn't vote almost as much as she did vote. And, she didn't vote at all from 2000 to 2002.

It's funny, all 3 of the candidates use similar language in describing their non-voting sprees. "no excuse" and then proceed to provide a litany of excuses. What is it about Republicans that makes them not vote? To me, voting is the most important part of being an American. I have never missed an election, since I took the Freeman's oath in Vermont in the early 90s.

If you are running for any public office, or think you might someday, vote. In fact, even if you aren't, vote. If you can't take the time to vote, why should we think you will take the time to properly represent us?

Remember Steve Beirfeldt? He's the Ron Paul campaign staffer who was detained and interrogated by TSA employees in St. Louis for the crimes of carrying a bunch of cash and for, in effect, contempt of cop. TSA cops were outraged that Beirfeldt refused to tell them why he was carrying about $4,700 in cash, and that he insisted they clarify their basis for detaining him. The whole affair would have been swept under the rug, dismissed based on a he said/she said dispute over what happened, except for the fact that the TSA cops were so powerfully stupid they didn't notice that Beirfeldt was recording the whole thing on his phone. Armed with the evidence of TSA's treatment of Beirfeldt, the ACLU sued.

Recently the TSA caved and agreed to issue new rules clarifying what its cops ought to know already:

The new rules, issued in September and October, tell officers "screening may not be conducted to detect evidence of crimes unrelated to transportation security" and that large amounts of cash don't qualify as suspicious for purposes of safety.

Those are two propositions that were already perfectly clear as a matter of constitutional law, for all the good that did.

The ACLU is dropping the suit in response.

Good for Beirfeldt for standing up for the Fourth Amendment. Good for the ACLU for effectively representing him. Note that this continues to undermine the folks who have a Glenn-Beck-comic-book vision of what the ACLU does. I don't, by any means, agree with every legal or political stance they take, but they are an important and effective force in defending constitutional rights against government intrusion.

Via Stich in Haste

You may remember Kelo v. City of New London, the abysmal decision in which Justices Stevens, Souter, Kennedy, Ginsburg, and Breyer decided that the takings clause of the Fifth Amendment permitted the City of New London, Connecticut to condemn private property so that it could hand it over to private developers, on the theory that the private developers would develop things that would provide jobs and tax base and rainbows and unicorns, and New London would become like unto Shangri-La. The five justices' reasoning, to use the term generously, was that though the government cannot take property from citizens to benefit some private party, it may do so for any purported public purpose. That means your state and local government can take your property if it can come up with any half-assed scheme that meets the rational basis test, a low bar indeed.

The majority in Kelo waxed rhapsodic about New London's plan:

Those who govern the City were not confronted with the need to remove blight in the Fort Trumbull area, but their determination that the area was sufficiently distressed to justify a program of economic rejuvenation is entitled to our deference. The City has carefully formulated an economic development plan that it believes will provide appreciable benefits to the community, including–but by no means limited to–new jobs and increased tax revenue. As with other exercises in urban planning and development, the City is endeavoring to coordinate a variety of commercial, residential, and recreational uses of land, with the hope that they will form a whole greater than the sum of its parts.

Wow! That sounds great! So New London must be thriving now that SCOTUS shut down those whiny property owners and approved condemnation of their property, right?

Right?

Well . . . .

Now, four years after that decision gave Susette Kelo's land to private developers for a project including a hotel and offices intended to enhance Pfizer Inc.'s nearby corporate facility, the pharmaceutical giant has announced it will close its research and development headquarters in New London, Connecticut.

The aftermath of Kelo is the latest example of the futility of using eminent domain as corporate welfare. While Ms. Kelo and her neighbors lost their homes, the city and the state spent some $78 million to bulldoze private property for high-end condos and other "desirable" elements. Instead, the wrecked and condemned neighborhood still stands vacant, without any of the touted tax benefits or job creation.

In other words, state and local government forced American citizens out of their homes so to help a ginormous corporation, hoping that the corporation would drop some crumbs to the locals, and even plowed $78 million in taxpayer money into a big heap of dirt, and was left with nothing.

This was completely unforeseeable. Unless, of course, you have any familiarity whatsoever with economic fluctuations, real estate markets, or state and local government — not to mention the sort of dimwitted sacks of protoplasm who tend to staff state and local government.

I avoid eliminationist rhetoric. I try to eschew overheated threats. But let me say this: the New London politicians who countenanced this face ought to end it twitching at the end of a rope.

Scrabble. For many people it is the alpha and omega of wordgames. It's really just the beginning, and there are a ton of different wordgames out there. Today I'm going to discuss one that has a hook that will appeal to us all.

Unspeakable Words is worth whatever you pay for it just for the little Cthulhu figures that come with the game. That the game itself is a clever wordgame mixed with some great inside HP Lovecraft jokes is a pleasant bonus.

The game is simple, you are dealt a hand of 7 cards and 5 mini-Cthulhus (these reflect your sanity, which will inexorably reduce as you spell words), each with a letter on it. The letters are worth a certain number of points each (humorously, they are worth one point for every right angle in the letter, so S is worth 0 points. Non-Euclidean Geometry is built into the game!) you play a word down, total the points on the card and record your score. Two things happen after you score your points, one – the word you played is written down, and no one else can play that word, two – you have to roll a sanity check. The sanity check is simply rolling more than the points you scored on your word on a D20. If you succeed nothing happens and your turn continues. If you fail you lose one of your little Cthulhus. Lose all your Cthulhus and you are out of the game, no matter how many points you have. First to 100 points wins.

It's a fun, light cardgame with some interesting strategy. Not being able to use words that have been previously spelled can really complicate matters. Deciding whether to play a large word (and face a daunting sanity check) or a small one, and having to keep track of which words have already been played is good fun. The sanity check mechanic makes the game faster, and also adds a hint of unpredictability.

A special note has to be made about the art and theme of the game. The cards are wonderfully illustrated, with all sorts of visual sight gags for fans of the Mythos. The cards are like Mythos flash cards. "M is for Mi-Go" and my personal favorite "H is for _______________" (I won't say his name either..)

Not only is it a nice little filler game, but it will have an extra layer of fun for anyone who is a fan of HP Lovecraft. Unspeakable Words is definitely worth checking out!