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Hey, let's do that thing I see the hip kids doing where I stuff a bunch of links into one post!

The Crossgates Mall, quite appropriately, has dropped the charges against Stephen Downs.

Steven Kaye, in comments, pointed me at Eurasianet. Looks like a really good source of info on Turkey and other Eurasian states. (Hey, Steven's looking for players for an 1890s CoC game. Or, anyhow, was in 1999. Hm.)

It's easy to forget that Roger Ebert is an intelligent, thoughtful, well-spoken guy. He's the fat guy who does movie reviews on TV. Read this and admire his pinpoint distinction between vertical and horizontal prayer.

This is post number 500. The most common search leading people to my site is "meaning of population". Um... it's not that tough a concept, really. I've had 32,637 visitors in the last six months and I love you all the same, damn it.

[Population: One] <A HREF="http://popone.innocence.com/ar

I'm not normally much on the wishlist thing but if anyone out there is overcome with the desire to blow a few thousand bucks on me? Get me this. I can't even begin to express how much I want this object.

Wait, that's a lie. I can easily express how much I want this object: less than five thousand dollars worth of want. I gotta say, this whole "money" concept is a very clever invention.

[Population: One] <A HREF="http://popone.innocence.com/ar

The DoD kicked out a press release today about Iraq's oil. About what you'd expect no matter what you believe: promises to preserve the oil for Iraq, warnings that Saddam may intend to destroy the oil, ecological warnings, etc. I found this quote interesting, though:

"Oil is a natural resource of Iraq that provides commerce, income for education and other needs, and infrastructure. The department considers destruction of that resource as an act of terrorism."

That's bullshit. Destroying strategic reserves, even in a scorched earth strategy, is not an act of terrorism. It's a wartime strategy. It's saying "You can conquer this land, but you will not profit from it." It's the kind of thing that's considered noble resistance when it's your side doing it -- a last act of defiance. Terrorism? Hardly.

[Population: One] <A HREF="http://popone.innocence.com/ar

So Charlie Daniels is explaining life to the Hollywood types. Yeah, well. I don't know about all these people who keep saying "and you risked lives!"

I grew up, for some of my childhood, in the small state of New Hampshire. I think it had more of an effect on me than I realized at the time: ten solid years of looking at the damned license plates, see.

"Live free or die."

Four words. Four deeply meaningful, deeply felt words.

I'm so tired of people who tell me that I have to give up my freedom in order to save lives. Sean Penn may be an asshole -- I think there are other celebs who would have been a better choice, particularly if you look at what Sean Penn actually said -- but that's really beside the point. He's got the right to free speech: to freedom. Calling him a traitor because he exercises that right in a way Charlie Daniels doesn't like?

I'll tell you what. I call that cowardly. I call that running scared. I call that giving up on freedom.

The second you cross the line from "I disagree" to "You shouldn't say that," you're crossing the line from supporting free speech to opposing free speech. And I think that's a lousy idea. Charlie Daniels crossed the line. Does it make him a traitor? No. Does he have the right to say what he did? You bet.

But by saying it he reveals himself as a pathetic individual and a coward. He's so scared of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein and the like that he's willing to give up the fundamental freedoms that made this country great, and he's hiding his fear behind the red white and blue. In my book, that makes him a sad, sorry little man.