Something was bothering me as I watched Jonathan Zittrain‘s excellent and engaging talk at PDF the other day. I mean, beyond the fact that he looks approximately my age, which would cause me to weep bitter, bitter tears of shame and envy if it were true. No, it was something awfully familiar about his gestures, […]

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I’ll be participating in this week’s TPM Book Club discussion of Clay Shirky’s excellent new book Here Comes Everybody. Check it out; there should be an intro essay from Shirky sometime today, and I’ll post links periodically as I chime in.

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Instapundit: DAVE WEIGEL: “The ‘Michelle Obama tape’ rumor mill started churning a lot more slowly this weekend, a development that, I’m sure, had nothing to do with Hillary Clinton’s exit from the race. It would be odd if Clinton supporters were only spreading the rumor to keep superdelegates on the fence before it was too […]

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A few months back, when my roomate was heavily covering the whole Ron Paul R[EVOL]ution, I would swing by  a Ron Paul discussion forum every now and again to see what was on the minds of the Paulistas. As the Republican primary rolled on and it became clear that John McCain would be the nominee […]

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There is, I think, something to this analysis at PowerLine, though the “something” isn’t quite what the authors think it is: One of the several reasons why the mainstream media have consistently underestimated the significance of the Trinity/Wright/Pfleger story is that, to a considerable degree, conventional reporters and editors tend to agree with Rev. Wright’s […]

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One of the most interesting panels at CFP this week concerned reputation and privacy on social networking sites,  and two of the panelists drew special attention to the often repugnant—and sometimes criminal—abuse and harrassment directed at female bloggers. What I found particularly fascinating at the time was the problem (potentially, if not in the specific […]

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Samitha at Feministing offers up a bit of a thumbsucker about Stuff White People Like, which reminds me that I’d meant to second Megan’s take from last month: The vast majority of the stuff there has always felt a bit like one of those fantastic Onion headlines that’s followed up by a lame article. It […]

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So, uh, yeah: If you’re a girl in your early teens and have no option but to carry to term an unplanned, unwanted pregnancy when you’re in no real position to care for a child, and when the burden of doing so is very likely to derail your future educational plans, the word for this […]

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Jessica Valenti is pissed that a relaunch of the Sweet Valley High series has retconned the twin protagonists from a “perfect size 6” to a “perfect size 4.”  I’m sympathetic to the idea that kids literature probably shouldn’t be compounding young girls’ body image issues by stipulating a “perfect” size, whatever it might be.  But […]

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The Speech is really quite impressive—a richer, more thoughtful, and more honest speech on race than I recall hearing (or expecting to hear) from an American politician. I can pick out in advance the ones that are going to be flagged and quoted by angry conservatives and angry progressives. Watch for those; they’re probably the […]

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