D.C. BLOGFEST 2 AND/OR 3: Gene Healy has the scoop: “Date: September 19 Time: 7ish. Or thereabouts. Place: Rendezvous Lounge, 18th and Kalorama (same as Blogorama, the first) [No it isn’t!–ed.] “All D.C. bloggers, friends of bloggers, readers of blogs, friends of readers of blogs, loathers of blogs, and those indifferent to blogs are invite and encouraged to attend. Bloggers are encouraged to promote the event. On their blogs. Of course. Blogorama I was a smashing success. Somewhere in the... Read more

TEAR DOWN THIS FIREWALL: Harvard Law School has a site where you can find out which sites are and are not blocked by the Chinese Communist government’s Internet firewall. Link via AgendaBender, which you can read in Beijing. Interestingly, the Cardinal Kung Foundation, Freedom House, and the Laogai Research Foundation are accessible in China–so this ain’t exactly a flawless operation. Here are some sites that are blocked though–lots of stuff with “tibet” or “sex” in the URL. But also www.equityfeminism.com,... Read more

Don’t watch a blog for me now Save it ’til the morning after… Agenda Bender: Lots of fun stuff, including some catcalls for the Taj Mahony, and something important enough that it’ll get its own post. The Old Oligarch: Interesting stuff about the Oath Against Modernism (which you can find here), plus a truly awful tale of an Engaged Encounter. O.O.’s wife: “If we had gone through this marriage prep seminar when I was still unsure, I probably wouldn’t have... Read more

DEATH PENALTY: WHAT I’M NOT ARGUING. This John O’Sullivan piece addresses mainly the least compelling arguments against the use of the death penalty in America. Let me take his points one by one (but quickly, since, like I said, he didn’t really engage with the better arguments against capital punishment). 1) Ending the death penalty is undemocratic, since a majority favors it. No kidding. That’s why I’m trying to, you know, change people’s minds and stuff. (This criticism only applies... Read more

DOWNED CITY RISE: I’m about 100 pages from the end of Jane Jacobs’s terrific book The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Go read it! It’s wonky (chapters on population density, number of streets in a neighborhood, that sort of thing), but lovingly coated with clear, passionate writing and sharp observation. Jacobs loves cities, and she loves watching neighborhoods to see how and why they work–and how and why they fail. The book is a must-read for people who... Read more

INSERT RELEVANT SMITHS LYRIC HERE: Over the weekend I re-read Diana Wynne Jones’s novel Power of Three. This is a truly terrific kids’ fantasy book–one of Jones’s best, and that’s saying a lot. (I think my other picks would be, in about this order, Fire and Hemlock; Dogsbody; Cart and Cwidder; Witch Week; The Time of the Ghost; The Ogre Downstairs; Witch’s Business (aka Own Back Ltd., I think); Charmed Life. Wow, that’s a lot.) As usual, Jones carves out... Read more

“Your incompetence sticks needles into the flesh of my honor.” –Robert Patrick to henchman, “Double Dragon” Read more

THE ONLY THING I DON’T LIKE ABOUT THIS PROTEST OF THE “RAVE” ACT is that apparently, in order to protest Congress’s bizarro anti-drug/glowstick bill, you have to listen to rave music. Sorry, not my idea of ecstasy. Nonetheless, I’ve marked my calendar for September 6. I note that depending on how this bill gets interpreted, something like 20 or more of my friends could get pulled in on charges. (And that’s not even counting charges for actually ingesting illegal substances.)... Read more

RICK BROOKHISER SHOULD GET A BLOG (of his very own), so that he can offer us daily reflections on how various founders (especially Gouverneur Morris) anticipated modern-day events… like the Sex for Sam contest. I note that http://rakishfounder.blogspot.com is not taken, nor is http://propheticroue.blogspot.com. Read more

OK, I SUSPECT THERE’S A LOT OF HYPERBOLE in this article about whether crows are disappearing from DC due to West Nile, but the article does give a great picture of why people love the big bad black birds so much. (Link via Roy Sheetz.) UPDATE: TAPPED agrees that the “ring the alarm… another crow is dying” angle is bogus. But again, the article is worth reading for its loving portrait of corvine life. Read more