Protesting can be a fun, community-building experience. But is it effective? Sometimes narrowly targeted ones clearly can be, especially when they draw attention to a heretofore ignored issue. But in “What Democracy Looks Like,” I suggest that convention activism may be a gift to Bush.

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The popular meme among right bloggers who haven’t, like, actually fact-checked Zell Miller’s speech is that people are focusing on the batshit tone of it because they can’t answer the substance. (Maybe that’s why he went with the batshit tone…) Those who have fact checked it realize that the substance is mostly bollocks, so Michael […]

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Among the most effective parts of President Bush’s convention speech was the segment where he takes a few self deprecating pokes at some of the personal quirks and faults that people like to pick on. Not the substantive policy stuff, mind you, but the smirk and the verbal stumbles and so on. Even hardline Kerry […]

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Maybe MoveOn can run this message during Teletubbies.

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Lesson one: political conventions are deeply creepy events. Wading through thousands upon thousands of people who regard a monstrous little mutant like George W. Bush as the messiah was enough to make even the rabid leftism of the Thursday night leftblogger party at The Tank a relief. Lesson two: It’s time to change the picture […]

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Matt Welch, Tim Blair, and I are reporting from the RNC over at the Reason Convention Blog.

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While I’m up here wasting my time on a political convention, my DC compatriots are getting down to business at the national Rock Paper Scissors Tournament.

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I still remember the first time I played a King’s Quest game. I must’ve been 8 or 9, because I think King’s Quest III was already out, and distinctly remember being excited for the release of Kings Quest IV soon thereafter. My family had only recently gotten a computer—a beige, Volvoesque 286 running MS-DOS that […]

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Smoking ban notwithstanding, one of the many decisive advantages Manhattan still holds over DC is that everywhere I’ve been so far (various parts of Brooklyn and the East Village), there are about 8 WiFi networks accessible from any given location, at least a couple of which are open. I’m sitting outside at one of my […]

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I’ve been buying books of essays lately, on the theory that the best way to improve one’s writing is to read the best stuff in the genre you’re working in. Not–as some might imagine–because it gives you something to aspire to. There are limits to even my presumptuousness, and it’s transparent enough to me that […]

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