While doing some fact-checking for Pulp Guns, a set of pulp-novel sourcebooks for the GURPS roleplaying game, I found the FBI file on Giuseppe Zangara's failed attempt to assassinate Franklin Delano Roosevelt. After Roosevelt spoke at a Miami park on Feb. 15, 1933, Zangara fired several shots with a cheap .32-caliber pistol as he was perched on a wobbly bench. He missed the president-elect but hit others, including Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak, who died from his wounds 19 days later. Zangara, a 32-year-old Italian ... read more

Roadside America, a site devoted to the cheesiest tourist attractions in the country, reports the sad news that the International Checker Hall of Fame in Petal, Miss., was destroyed by fire 10 days ago: On September 29, 2007, a still-unexplained fire started in the tower and quickly engulfed the rest of the Hall. Everything: the giant checkerboards, the library, the statue, was destroyed. "What has been lost is one of the finest checkers collections the world has ever known," said Don Deweber, director of the ... read more

The National Arbitration Forum just released its decision in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. v. World Readable c/o R.L. Cadenhead, the domain-name dispute in which the film studio tried to take Wargames.Com away from me because it owns a trademark related to the 1983 film WarGames and the upcoming sequel WarGames 2: The Dead Code. A three-member panel of arbitrators denied MGM's claim on the grounds that I established my legitimate interest in selling wargames at the domain: The picture that emerges from this ... read more

Nathan J. Hole, the Loeb & Loeb attorney representing MGM in the effort to grab Wargames.Com, has won four more UDRP arbitrations the past eight weeks: Dell Inc. v. Gail Wright for the domains dellcart.com and dellpccart.com The National Collegiate Athletic Association v. Namia Limited for the domain frozenfour.com Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. v. fslc wf-b for the domain thepinkpanther.com Dell Inc. v. Oguz Ozdemir for the domain dellpc.net In all four cases, domain owners didn't file a response, giving ... read more

MGM's effort to grab Wargames.Com is now in the hands of a three-member panel of arbitrators for the National Arbitration Forum, who will read the filings of both sides and decide the matter in the next two weeks. Under the forum's rules, each side got two chances to make its case: Dec. 19, 2006: MGM challenged my ownership of the domain in its original complaint, paying a $2,600 fee and requesting a three-member panel of arbitrators. Jan. 8, 2007: I made my response, which attorney Wade Duchene filed at the ... read more

My attorney Wade Duchene has filed our response to the Uniform Domain-Name Dispute Resolution (UDRP) complaint made by MGM Studios over Wargames.Com. We're getting closer to the day where a panel of three arbitrators decides whether to give the domain to MGM, which owns a trademark registered in 2003 for the 1983 film WarGames. UDRP arbitration is an increasingly popular tool for intellectual property lawyers trying to acquire domains for clients, as MGM's firm is attempting here. If they lose, all it costs is a ... read more

After hearing about the battle over Wargames.Com, the Los Angeles weblog LAist asked me for a list of the top 10 wargames of 2006. Since this could be the last year I'm legally allowed to use the word "wargames" in a sentence, I jumped at the opportunity. 10. Naruto CCG: Every time I play a seven-year-old kicks my ninja's ass and tells me I bring shame to my family. 9. Advanced Squad Leader Armies of Oblivion: Published by Curt Schilling, who spends his time between pitches calculating how to keep his supply ... read more