Ben Brown, Internet Rockstar Feverish Velocity

Where The Conservative Things Live

There seems to be a feeling of disappointment amongst leftist bloviators that their conservative cohorts did not disappear in a puff of logic the moment Obama was elected. Perhaps they have forgotten the years of mind numbing, dittohead rallying propoganda during the Clinton years that culminated in, lest we forget, a successful attempt to [...]

A Lot of Hot Air

I think a lot about the transition in common language from using future tense to using present tense. For example, Dakota and I had a running wager on when people would start saying “we are in a recession” instead of saying “a recession may be coming,” long after it was pretty clear that [...]

Build a Garden!

We built a planter box and planted a garden in our yard over the Thanksgiving holiday. It was very easy to do, and we had a lot of fun working on it together. I highly recommend it! If you learn how to grow your own food, you will not die immediately [...]

Red Oceans vs Blue Islands

When we lived in San Francisco, we were frequently confronted by pretty rabid anti-Texas attitudes. We’d have conversations like this:
BEN: Yeah, we’re actually from Texas.
SF: EW! Oh man, that is terrible.
BEN: It’s actually really nice there and most people are very frie…
SF: Yeah, nice for cows and Republicans!
BEN: Well, actually…
SF: Oh, but you [...]

More on Generations Shifting, Eras Ending

The long-running, internecine baby boomer cultural feud just isn’t that relevant to Americans who came of age after the civil rights, gay rights and feminist revolutions. Even many younger evangelicals are broadening their agendas beyond abortion, stem cells, school prayer and gay marriage. And just as younger Protestants found JFK less threatening than their parents [...]

Transfer of Power

The politics of your generation is giving way to the politics of mine. The WORLD of your generation is giving way to mine, and the one my children will live in.
Courtney Skott from a letter she wrote her parents to convince them to go Obama.

Terrifying Halloween Internet Movies

Is it annoying to see me link to our podcast on every site on the internet? Maybe if more people watched it, I would link less.
And while I’m embedding videos, check out the Aphex Twin Windowlicker video, one of the best music videos ever made. (Aphex Twin made all the other [...]

Rosa sat…

Twitter’s election coverage just told me that “Martin” is a recent political buzzword. Why? People are quoting this All Things Considered piece from this evening:
Rosa sat so Martin could walk. Martin walked, so Obama could run. Obama is running so our children can fly.
Inspiring!
Using the Twitter search, I went back a few hours [...]

NYTIMES DATA VIZ API “IN OBAMA’s POCKET”

The New York Times has been busy lately releasing data sets and APIs so that developers can tap into the wealth of information they’ve collected. Their rhetoric behind all of this is very appealing to me - they hope that by releasing the data, they’ll create new opportunities for discovering stories hidden within. [...]

Forecast in Hell: Chilly

Mr. Waxman pressed the former Fed chair to clarify his words. “In other words, you found that your view of the world, your ideology, was not right, it was not working,” Mr. Waxman said.

“Absolutely, precisely,” Mr. Greenspan replied. “You know, that’s precisely the reason I was shocked, because I have been going for 40 years [...]