On What Pays on the Web, Expressed by the Order That HuffPo Launched Sections
Ah yes, I will always remember the day I made the lucrative decision to write about media.
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On Pope Knows All About What They Get Up To On Knifecrime Island
It's also worth noting that his Glasgow visit will be very, very near the stadium where the Rangers, the city's Protestant club, plays. A lot of Rangers' supporters are anti-Catholic hoodlums, so that event might get a little hairy.
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On The Boundless Sorrow of the Parking Lot Mayor
Kinda disappointed there aren't other posts tagged with "So Ronery."
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On JetBlue Flight Attendant Drama: The Director's Cut
What's up with that amphetamine commercial at the end?
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On Hero Surfer Saves Beached Great White Shark
I just saw Fast Times *for the first time in my life* this week. Honestly? Eh. Not my generation.
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On Real America: Dan Baum's Sexy Gun
Thanks for responding. It was clear to me--and, I imagine, most Harper's readers--that Lott's data is not to be trusted, and that by providing some extremely damning ways in which Lott was "weird," Baum is engaging in ironic understatement. (Incidentally, an online alter ego blogging one's praises=sock puppetry.) To use your facile Iraq analogy, if I were to list several calamitous consequences of the war in Iraq, and then refer to it as "perhaps not America's greatest foreign policy triumph," I would be risking indulging in facetious understatement, but I wouldn't be an apologist for the Bush regime.
As for the color coding, we both have an ingrained dislike for color-coded alert systems. I would venture that most concealed carry holders feel very differently. It seems clear to me that (for better or worse) I am in a different sort of mental state--of wariness, of alertness--when I am stumbling home from the nearest bar than when I am leaving work late and walking through the projects. Some people have decided that it's worthwhile to demarcate these different levels of alertness. Baum makes two claims about "Condition White" that are unsupported but strike me as rather plausible. 1) A tradeoff for being warier is that one is less introspective (almost certainly) and more creative (arguable). Baum is making the questionable point about creativity to increase Condition White's side of the ledger. 2) Carrying a (legal) concealed weapon makes one more aware of one's surroundings, and less likely to impair oneself. (Baum provides examples of how he is more aware while carrying his gun, and I find them persuasive that many concealed carriers feel likewise. I know I would.) As far as the issue of armed under the influence goes, some states do not allow concealed weapons in bars. Clearly some people drunk and high in public have legal concealed weapons, but I would imagine most do not, and that many armed, impaired people are not have their guns legally.
P.S. I bought a newsstand copy of this issue to read the Bissell piece on The Room. Normally I find Harper's boring, but this issue was quite good.
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On Real America: Dan Baum's Sexy Gun
I find this post exceedingly frustrating, because 95% of its readers (due to Harper's paywall) will not be able to read the article that he is criticizing. As the sort of liberal gun non-owner Baum is trying to address, I found his piece to be an effective explainer of what gun people like about guns. The article is generally an emotional, not statistical argument in favor of guns. Baum does not seem convinced that concealed carry necessarily reduces crime, and he goes further than Sauer claims he does in criticizing Lott, pointing out his sock puppetry and the lack of reproduction for his findings.
Clearly our country would be better off with a gun ownership rate closer to Britain's (that's why they get all the knife crime). However, guns are a key part of our country's culture, and they're not going away anytime soon.
Finally, Sauer's paragraph on the Cooper Color Code is just bizarre. Condition White is defined as being unaware of possible threats. So Sauer in attacking for not "challenging" Condition White is making one of three claims: either one can be unaware of threats but aware of certain other surroundings (a purely semantic issue), or there is no such thing as different levels of awareness of possible threats, or that there are different levels of awareness but that greater wariness does not lead to greater safety. I find all three claims to be unsatisfying. One hardly needs to be a gun nut to believe that it's important to be aware of when one might be in danger.
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On Understudies! "Carrie": The Worst Musical Ever
Um, hello, Moose Murders? (Maybe not a musical, but a legendary flop.)
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On Loveless Internet Shrew Attacked
It's a bit scary to watch this whole thing unfold, with Cohen completely oblivious to the massive internet shitstorm he's kicked up. I feel bad for the guy: he's obviously in a completely whacked-out place emotionally, and he's responded in a manner that could be to his eternal detriment.
Clearly he's unfamiliar with certain facts of the internet (though he's got the navel-gazing and oversharing of internet writing down pat). He sent a crap email to someone WHO HAD JUST REFERENCED posting crap emails on a widely-read blog, and I promise you he never for a second conceived that it might get posted. Dude's in the vortex now; he's going to lash out again, and keep feeding this story.
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On The Ten Worst Augusts of the Last Ten Years
I hate to be that guy, but Gary Condit only lasted another 18 months in office after August '01.