This may be the funniest thing ever (HT Dave Weigel): Prague’s Franz Kafka International Named World’s Most Alienating Airport

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So, as a writer of a distinctly non-progressive bent, I’ve never been on JournoList, but I’m a little shocked to see it suddenly become such a topic of discussion. For one, I had been under the impression that the list’s existence had been rather an open secret in DC for a long time—at least to […]

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Could he really have said this? Seriously? Here’s how George W. Bush recently explained his motivation for writing a book about his time in office, according to the AP: “I’m going to put people in my place, so when the history of this administration is written at least there’s an authoritarian voice saying exactly what […]

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In the interest of deterring my own future self from defecting from my longstanding scheme to quit smoking at 30, I’m announcing publicly that I’m now officially smoke-free.  While I’d like to believe it’s possible for even ex-smokers to—eventually—enjoy the occasional cigarette without careening into a life of sin and degradation, I’m thinking that it […]

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As both a journalist and a former debater, this interview was just sort of glorious and terrifying to watch. Remind me to never, ever get on Jon Stewart’s bad side.

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I’m just joining the choir here, but I want to take a second to applaud the selection of Ross Douthat to replace Bill Kristol on the New York Times‘ op-ed page. (Even if it the proximity in our ages does provoke a bit of a Tom Lehrer moment.) As a social conservative with a taste […]

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Glenn Greenwald has been back on the warpath against journalitic reliance on anonymous or “background” sources. He argues—and this is clearly true—that officials often game reporters by using the shield of anonymity to provide spin without accountability. “Administration sources” can say different things to different people without being called on the inconsistency.  Moreover, “off the […]

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Some recent Ars stuff I thought might be interesting to a broader audience: A piece that ran Sunday on Blogger’s oddly opaque policy for dealing with DMCA notices, which seems designed to leave users targeted with C&D takedown notices with too little information to effectively counternotice. Not massively scandalous, but it does seem noteworthy that […]

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My very brief take, since all my more specific issues with the film have been rehearsed at some length by others already: Watchmen is best thought of as the cinematic equivalent of a Super Powers action figure.  As a freestanding work of art, it has negligible intrinsic value… but that’s almost beside the point, because […]

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Politico‘s Ben Smith writes about the lingering faction of Birthers still agitating to see Barack Obama’s original birth certificate, despite the total paucity of credible evidence suggesting any reason to doubt that he was, in fact, born in Hawaii. The focus of the story is conservatives’ fear of being associated with these folks: “At some […]

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