“If there’s an upshot to the greening of blogs and Twitter, not to mention all the chatter generally, it’s that it seems to have forced the hand of media organizations, which are famously cutting back on foreign coverage, and hopefully convinced them that there’s still quite a bit of interest out there in overseas reportage, even if some of the reasons for it could be less awesome than they seem.”

“And what were the consequences for getting it wrong? Zip. In fact, most of the (then) pro-war writers have risen to greater heights within the foreign policy community and media world. (I didn’t just link to the Slate piece above for kicks–90 percent of them are doing better career-wise than they were in 2002, despite getting what will probably be the biggest foreign policy question of their lifetime wrong.)”

“I asked DeeDee if they had had a restaurant before, somewhere else, and she said no, they’ve lived in Chicago for 25 years, and cooked things for Indonesian festivals, and people always asked where there was an Indonesian restaurant, and for years they said they were going to open one. Now they finally have; and it’s a good one with potential to be a very good and culturally important one. Don’t just read the food media about it; support it now, and help it grow into what it could be.”

“A pair of open-government groups have settled their lawsuit against the state Office of Legislative Counsel now that a machine-readable database of lawmakers’ voting records has been made available.”

“At last, the worlds of cartography, vexillology and population statistics meet!”

“An array of new circumstances — Democrats in power, economic recession leaving states starving for revenue that could come from taxing cannabis sales, less funds for law enforcement and Mexican drug operatives moving into the US to grow huge amounts of untaxed pot, contributing to the horrible drug violence South of the Border — support the growing public support for legalization of pot.”

“These days, the Internet is so integrated into industry, government — life itself — that even in Iran, shutting it down is the political equivalent of going nuclear.”