Quickie

Ok, this is disturbing. I’ve logged over 100 hours playing

The makers of Virtua Tennis 2 are going to use spray-painted pigeons to advertise their game at Wimbledon this year. Just how long before it becomes easier to raise genetically modified pigeons with the logos on them?

Was I not paying attention and missed the start of a wave of Hollywood generosity? I notice that stars from both the Sopranos and the Matrix have passed large hunks of their paychecks along to co-stars and crew in recent weeks. It makes me like these guys even more.

You actually don’t need hate groups in the modern world, when the rhetoric of your own debates over peace plans reach this level. Or this. (Read the last paragraph)

I love graduation speeches. No, not to sit through them. Heaven’s no. The graduation speeches I attend usually suck. However the graduation speech is one of the modern podiums that provides a required aura of thoughtfullness for both the speaker and audience. And, quite often, there is significant breakout potential for the good one, as…

Last month’s Atlantic Monthly has an excellent piece by Robert Baer on the state of the ruling family in Saudi Arabia, and their precarious position. Though the article isn’t available online (it’s being folded into an upcoming book by Baer), I found this interview with Baer that touches on the same themes. Check it out.

Although I often find Mark Fiore too trite for his own good, I consistently consider him to be the most innovative web satirist around. In particular, his use of sound in his Flash animations is nothing short of brilliant. Take a look at his stuff.

Fickle crowds switch. Tired of Iraq-O-Tainment. Just turn it off, please. The war officially ended yesterday, by the way – not with any White House pronouncement but with the decision by the cable networks to dump out of a Donald Rumsfeld press conference to cover a California coroner talking about missing woman Laci Peterson. Iraq?…

Explain to me how this works. The Iraqi people are looting their museums, their banks, their hospitals, and suddenly, it’s the fault of the U.S.? If you don’t have enough respect for your own community to even make an attempt at protecting it, how is it my fault? While it’s all tragic, I think it’s…

Help me understand this: We’re blamed for causing the failure of the UN because we failed to obtain Security Council approval for the War in Iraq. But where was this blame when the Russians roll tanks through Georgia? For Israeli tanks in the Palestinian refugee camps? The list of UN resolutions that are ignored is…