Blahg blahg blahg...

I love how self-reflexive the interweb can be. And blogs are no less, if not more, so. Here's a Slate article about a recent Pew survey of bloggers - front page title:
"Does Anyone Read Your Blog Besides Your Family?"



Plus a general Slate round-up of recent stuff I haven't been able to find a place for...

The Shamu story establishes once and for all that men are the new women. You can now use the New York Times to write the most dehumanizing and insulting shit about them and everybody will laugh in recognition.

Agreed, been saying it for years. TV commercials by far the worst. (Hit Article!)

In one of the strangest legal statements of all time, Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez on Friday said, "I think it's dangerous for us to try to make an evaluation, case by case, as we look at potential terrorist plots and making a decision, well, this is a really dangerous group, this is not a really dangerous group."

Big Brother is reading your mind. (Thoughtcrime!)

Iraqi officials, he declared, are "going to have to persuade as many people as possible that it's in their interest to support the government and participate in the political process. And anyone who doesn't want to, they're going to have to go find and do something about."

Woohoo! Rumsfeld should have been fired years ago. (Reality-based reality.)

Bush and Rice supported the participation of Hamas in the Palestinian elections in January on the strength of Abbas' prediction that he would win. Whoops. In Lebanon, the State Department has hailed the "Cedar Revolution," without emphasizing that the elections it led to gave one of the world's worst terrorist organizations a significant voice in the government.

On the flipside! (Some defense of Bush.)

Yet the rule, which should have vanished long ago, is enforced today at the Economist, where I work. (Our style book notes that "the ban is pointless. Unfortunately, to see it broken would be annoying to so many people that you should observe it.")

Everyone's favorite! (Grammar Nazis, grammar nerds...)