If you’ve spent a reasonable amount of time walking around D.C. at night, you’ve probably encounted the enigmatic Blelvis, the self-styled Black Elvis who can free-associate from any word you might choose to an appropriate Elvis song. He’s got a pretty good voice, actually, and seems to be able to back up his claim to […]

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Gene pointed out to me a while back that this blog gets a mention in a recent Slate article on blogmaps. The money quote: At the Metro stop for Columbia Heights, a run-down neighborhood that is emerging as a hipster enclave, the blog map provides evidence of the area’s dual nature: A blog called D.C. […]

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You’ve probably already heard the buzz about Spellbound, but just in case you think you’ve got better things to do with your time than watch a documentary about National Spelling Bee contestants… well, think again. Somehow, it manages to outdo Christopher Guest without being fictional, and you can’t help but pick a kid or two […]

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I was among the sellouts Radley took to task last week for winking at the national telemarketing do-not-call list. Now, I’m not altogether certain the position I sketched out on this issue is the right one, but I am pretty sure that Radley’s Commerce Clause analysis here is off base. He writes: Nearly every libertarian […]

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If you’ve ever studied political science, you probably know about Condorcet circles in voting. These come about when public preferences in an election are arranged such that, for any candidate under consideration, a majority prefers some other candidate. Since, under these conditions, any choice is arguably “irrational” (after all, a majority would prefer somebody else), […]

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From Tyler Cowen, economist and genius visitor from planet Vulcan, we get the following musing over in Volokhland: It is like the puzzle of why most teenagers (the bulk of the market) buy only new music. It is not that music is somehow “getting better” each year, but rather that only new music brings the […]

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Despite Radley‘s attempt to (ahem) pimp the New Pornographers for the better part of a year, at least, I’ve only just checked them out. High badass quotient. I was surprised to discover that, with the exception of Neko Case’s sometime-vocals, they sound a hell of a lot like Blur. Objectively speaking, they’re actually a lot […]

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The Fourth of July always struck me as an odd choice for a national, “patriotic” holiday. Sure, sure, from one perspective that initial dissolving of the old Political Bands seems the logical candidate. But from another, it’s perfectly weird. For one, the nation whose “national” holiday it is wouldn’t exist for some years yet. (“National,” […]

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The other night, idly channel flipping, I caught the last few minutes of the treacly Kevin Spacey vehicle K-Pax and was mildly surprised to discover that they’d borrowed Nietzsche’s idea of “eternal recurrence” and given it a Stephen Hawking spin to fit the sci-fi theme. It’s mentioned near the end that in the cosmological debate […]

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I recently took the SelectSmart presidential candidate quiz, discovered via Jim Henley, and while the first match was predictable enough, I’ll confess a little bit of surprise at the second-place contender: 1. Libertarian Candidate (100%) 2. Sharpton, Reverend Al – Democrat (55%) 3. Dean, Gov. Howard, VT – Democrat (50%) 4. Phillips, Howard – Constitution […]

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