One of the things the Obama administration instituted during its first term was a "We the People" website, where anyone can set up a petition. The administration promised that any petition garnering more than 25,000 signatures would get an official response. Well, someone put up a petition to build a Death Star.

It got 34,000 signatures.

The administration has responded.

The title of the official response? "This Isn't the Petition Response You're Looking For." And it just gets better, including an estimate from the Office of Management and Budget on the cost of construction. I'm laughing so hard I'm crying at this, and the best part is that it's TRUE :D

...and having a quiet squee over Obama's speech. Clinton's last night was also brilliant (just a country boy from Arkansas, my happy a**).

If you've read Patrick Rothfuss' The Name of the Wind (excellent books) and also the Narnia books, you'll enjoy this short tribute fic / fan-fic / mashup, by Rothfuss himself. Though does it count as fanfic if you wrote the original book? But then, it's got someone else's character in it too. So yeah, I think it counts.

But I digress. Here it is: Kvothe vs Aslan

In other entertaining news, President Obama admits he's a Trekkie. Based on the photo I think he's got the girl geek demographic sewn up ;)

It's supposed to be in the 20s tonight. Freakin' spring in the northeast. Grrrrrr...

By happenstance I had to be in DC this week for meetings etc. I arrived at my hotel (a lovely historic one near Dupont Circle) on Sunday evening shortly after 10pm, just in time to turn on the television and be confronted by FOX and Geraldo Rivera's dulcet tones as he said, "...and we don't know what the President will say, but we know it's not a nuclear strike because..."

I nearly fell out of my chair. Way to start rumors, Mr. 70's Mustache Man.

So then I got to sit there for half an hour ALL BY MYSELF, racking my brains to figure out WTF might be going on. Comic relief came in the form of Wolf Blitzer being handed a sheet of paper and saying, "I've been told I can read this, so reading from what has just been handed me, the President will be announcing that -- uh, wait...I can't read it? I can't read it. Can I say it involves something overseas? No, apparently I can't say that either. I'm sorry, we're holding off on reading this until we get confirmation..."

Imagine that: responsible journalism and a refusal to spread unsubstantiated rumors. (Unlike Geraldo, obviously just spouting whatever exciting phrases pop into his head...)

Oddly enough, it never once occurred to me it would be about bin Laden. He'd pretty much fallen off my radar for quite a while, and after all that's happened in the Middle East over the last few weeks, he seems more irrelevant than ever. While I'm certainly not unhappy he's no longer out there plotting, I have to say that it was a bit disconcerting to see people dancing for joy over his death. I sympathize, I understand, I by no means condemn; still, I can't help but feel that sober relief and quiet gratification would be preferable to gleeful leaping about in celebration. A mob celebrating someone's being killed is no prettier a sight here than it is in Afghanistan or Iraq. Where is the line between justice and vengeance? I don't know. All I can think of is the 3,000 dead on 9/11 and how this won't bring them back. It seems a curiously hollow victory, after all these years.

Not sure how I feel about the not releasing of photos. The moral high road, I suppose; classy, but very very risky. Then again, people who don't believe it was ObL probably wouldn't believe photographs either, so maybe it doesn't matter that much.