September 29, 2008: Just taking a brief moment to wish Admiral Horatio Nelson a happy 250th birthday.
Bearing the distinguished titles of viscount, knight, baron, most noble lord, vice admiral, duke and knight grand, I like to think of him as Mr. Trafalgar himself.
His defeat of the French and Spanish fleet during the Napoleonic wars is [...]

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CNN is reporting that Los Angeles just had a medium-sized earthquake at 5.8 on the Richter Scale. Located about 30 miles east of downtown L.A, it was about 7 miles deep, which means that the quake feels stronger and cause more damage. Over at the P+P home office in  Santa Monica, our wooden one-story apartment [...]

Read Breaking News: OMG Earthquake!!! »

Campaign letters are always at least a little comic — the faux-personal tone, the formal-informal style, the beggarliness. There are also the “artful” decisions made by the authors that are fun to explore for hidden meanings.
A recent Hillary dispatch to her supporters is a gem. Her campaign is over, the thrill of future campaign-related possibilities [...]

Read The Hillary ask: whatever you do, don’t say “Obama”! »

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Wesleyan University, my alma mater, is a small liberal arts school that gets a disproportionate amount of media coverage, usually for its uber-liberal ways. It has made the press for having a naked dorm and co-ed rooms. This time we made the headlines, and we didn’t have to take our clothes off. [...]

Read Obama crashes the party »

It’s late October.  It’s 3 a.m. There’s a phone ringing…
This sounds oddly familiar.
Right in the twilight of October, while we’re warming up to Winter’s fate, Obama and McCain will try to make the case: a vote for their ticket will be a vote to keep this country in perpetual Spring, the literary season of ebullience, [...]

Read Indiana Max and the crystal ball »

“You are the coolest place on earth right now!”
Prince exclaimed this at the beginning of his much-anticipated, $4.8 million set on Saturday night at Coachella. Looking around, it seemed like everyone believed it.
“From now on, this is Prince’s house!”
And that follow-up statement, that qualification of exactly what he meant, sort of felt like the [...]

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KEENE, N.H. (Main Street, Coffee Shops, My Car)— What follows are some very rough notes from Granite State Primary Day. Sate slogan: “Live Free or Die!” Do the Republicans know that, I wonder. Does Mitt “the most basic civil liberty is the right to be kept alive” Romney know that?

2:00pm
I park my car on [...]

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KEENE, N.H.— “Change” has trumped all of the other 2008 campaign buzz-words— words like “experience” “trust” “reliability.” It has come to dominate the rhetoric on the campaign trail and conversations across party lines. It was “change” that catapulted Obama to victory in Iowa, pushed Edwards into a second-place finish and edged its way into Hillary’s [...]

Read Coolness and candor in New Hampshire »

On the heels of the caucus results, where young voters had a large influence on the outcomes, we talked to Kat Barr, Education Director for Rock the Vote and one of the organization’s main bloggers, about what has been changing in youth politics since Rock the Vote opened shop in 1990. Read the interview and [...]

Read On youth voter swarm »