Stuff I’ve read and enjoyed this past week, from the blogosphere and beyond . . .

* If I hadn’t already been reading “Wonkette”:http://www.wonkette.com/, I’d want to start after “Gary Farber”:http://amygdalagf.blogspot.com/2004_01_25_amygdalagf_archive.html#107528358496514348 mentioned her. But I already was, and she continues to be great snarky fun.
* “Glen Engel-Cox”:http://www.engel-cox.org/iArchives/001425.html#001425 pairs up the Democratic candidates and other political luminaries with their Tolkienian counterparts.
* In _The Atlantic_, James Fallows “fisks the SOTU”:http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2004/01/sotu-address.htm. I like James Fallows a lot.
* Greg Costikyan, one of the original authors of the classic RPG “Paranoia”:http://www.paranoia-live.net/, speculates on the “role of PDAs”:http://costik.com/weblog/2004_01_01_blogchive.html#107547544736650899 in the life of your average Troubleshooter. Hilarious. Oh, and: Serve the Computer!
* What’s that you say? You like roleplaying games, but you wish you could sink your teeth into more writing about their structure and design, preferably something with a cartload of terms that require a detailed glossary? Ron Edwards is here to help you out, with his recent pieces on “Simulationism”:http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/15/, “Gamism”:http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/21/, and “Narrativism”:http://www.indie-rpgs.com/_articles/narr_essay.html. If you’re interested in this stuff, I promise you already know who you are. Hat tip to “Bryant Durrell”:http://popone.innocence.com/index.php.
* Everything I was going to say about the Administration’s latest sleight-of-hand regarding failures of intelligence has already been said. “Matthew Yglesias”:http://www.matthewyglesias.com/archives/002462.html#002462 has the short version, Josh Marshall has some concrete examples “here”:http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_02_01.html#002512 and “here”:http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_02_01.html#002518, and “Slacktivist”:http://slacktivist.typepad.com/slacktivist/2004/02/more_revisionis.html has some links for further reading. The fact that they’ve pulled a complete 180 with respect to the CIA should be at the front of the story, but when I read about it at all in major media, it’s buried a few paragraphs down. Example from the “Post”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6915-2004Feb2.html today: “Critics of the war and many congressional Democrats have said it is crucial to know whether White House policymakers cherry-picked the CIA’s intelligence on Iraq — dropping the many caveats and using only the most inflammatory assessments — in making its case for war.” One buried paragraph, no followup. Argh.