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Felix Salmon has the only blog I know of coming to us live from the Antarctic, unless you count Big Dead Place, which is a pretty interesting site. But not every interesting site is a blog, even if it posts cool stories. Word to the wise, yo.

Actually, I don't think it's Felix Salmon posting the Antarctic stories, now that I look at it again. It's someone named Rhian. One imagines there's a story there, but it's opaque to me... until I spend five seconds with the site and learn that Rhian is Felix's sister. The Internet: tomorrow's personal transparency today!

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A long time ago, in the heyday of Webrings, I thought about setting up a link exchange along Nomic lines, but I was too lazy and never got around to it. BlogNomic is sort of like that, except it centers on weblogs. If I was a diehard Nomic player I'd get involved in this but I should keep reminding myself that it's all I can do to get through a game of PbEM Diplomacy without losing interest.

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Baddish news on the UN front, from my point of view. Well, potentially bad. France, Germany, and Russia are working on a Security Council resolution which would do a number of things none of which include sanctioning a war on Iraq. It does include peacekeepers, which is interesting. Powell is upset that he learned about it from a press report. Takes respect to give respect, which Powell no doubt knows but he's gotta register a complaint anyhow.

I regard this as potentially bad because I would like to see the Security Council agree on something, and increased divisiveness between the various factions ain't gonna help anything. On the other hand, there's a distinct possibility that this is a diplomatic ploy. The countries wanting something other than a US-led non-sanctioned war on Iraq haven't had any coherent counter-proposal yet. If the Security Council winds up considering something like this, it gives in particular Turkey and the rest of the potential US allies in the region something to rally behind.

As Bush has demonstrated with his aggressive diplomacy vis a vis Saddam, it helps to have a stick. A resolution which might sap support for the US is definitely a stick. The question in my mind, however, is whether there's a carrot in the other hand. Hope so.