What do you do if you love (or need) marijuana brownies and go on an Atkins diet?

Each atom in a diamond crystal is bonded to four neighbors. Games of go played on such a lattice ought to be similar in some ways to games played on a standard board – unlike on a board tiled with triangles, for instance.

Two collections of variations on go.

“Remaking the World in Our Image: Interventionist Globalism vs. Libertarian Localism,” by Lee McCracken. (From Rational Review again.)

Remember those gymnasts whose nudity has done so much for my hit-counts? (Search strings leading here in recent weeks include an amazing number of variations of “romanian gymnast(ic)(s) women nude naked dvd japan tokyo chiba”.)

Bucharest Mayor Traian Basescu says he wants to show his support for the girls’ gesture of having the courage to do what they want with their lives

by giving them the key to the city. (Ananova, link from Rational Review, January 02.)

US judge rules that The X-Men (and a number of other Marvel characters) are not human. Worse, she did so at Marvel’s request. (Link from Eliezer S. Yudkowsky, from John Hughes.)

I haven’t heard much discussion of the casting of LotR.

I’d cast Merry and Pippin the other way around, for two reasons. Billy Boyd as reckless young Pippin is (to my eye) much more mature in demeanor than Dominic Monaghan as his slightly older and soberer cousin Merry. Boyd’s Glasgow accent would fit more naturally on a Brandybuck, a clan on the fringe of the Shire whose names have a Celtic flavor against the English of the Shire proper.

Saruman was noted for his seductive voice, so I’d cast Ian Richardson. Christopher Lee can be Denethor.

I wonder whether statistical “deaths by firearms” include victims of blunt trauma with an empty gun; though I doubt it’s a big number.