BLOGFEST 2-3: Was lots of fun. Haven’t found a list of attendees (?) yet, but Balko, Healey, The Masked Person, Lex of Files fame, Sanchez, and lots more people were there. I showed up fashionably late (…Metrobus) and missed Tepper. I was antisocial as usual and talked mostly with Jim Henley–will post shortly on some of the stuff we discussed–and Kelly Torrance, who has only just started her site, but she’s got an interesting and accurate take on the world, so I expect to check in on her quite a bit if she gets the site up and roaring. We dissed Reason’s recent cultural coverage (recent = last two or three years); Henley suggested Liberty magazine as an alternative, so I’ll be checking that out.

Today on the site: some short dissents on Iraq; an exchange on mysticism and Christianity; and short takes from Nietzsche. And a brief blogwatch.

Just found an old email with this epitaph, quoted by George Orwell–apparently it’s by Skelton, but Orwell couldn’t remember the identity of the deceased. I love the gallantry of this:

Sepultus est among the weeds,

God forgive him his misdeeds,

With hey ho, rumbelo,

Rumpopulorum,

Per omnia saecula,

Saecula saeculorum.

Orwell was making a larger point about modern and postmodern (though he certainly didn’t use the latter term) attitudes toward death, but you can hunt that up on your own.