Breitbart
Who is ACORN's scourge, the lion of the online right, Andrew Breitbart? He's 40, went to Tulane, grew up in Hollywood, worked for Drudge, knows Huffington, had a conservative awakening when he was 22, and hates the relentless left-wing bias of the MSM. The Wall Street Journal's James Taranto tells the Breitbart story, with even more information on the Acorn scandal. It's worth a quick read.
Seen at that WSJ Article
Breitbart's new site: Big Government dot Com. Based on a three-minute surf of the site, I can't say I'm highly impressed, but I'll start to frequent it and see if it gets better.
Obama Isn't Smart?
Vox Populi has a pithy-yet-engaging post about Obama's IQ:
Obama is far from the genius he is often portrayed as being. There is an absolute ceiling on his IQ of 130, based on his attendance at a high school where students took the PSAT and his failure to achieve any National Merit recognition. I estimate his IQ to be around 116, which is one standard deviation above average, but two standard deviations short of the level loosely described as a genius-level intelligence.
I wouldn't have thought it's proper to speak of a god's IQ. Doesn't he somehow transcend such conventional measures? What's next, questioning his real height? The man towers, he doesn't merely stand, so what's it matter how tall he actually is? The same with IQ. With that much charisma, good looks, fantastic intentions, and rock-starredness, raw intelligence is irrelevant.
Not Sure Why I Found This Interesting
But it's the Halloween season, so I'm posting it:
While a Rent.com survey found 11% of renters believe they have lived in a home inhabited by ghosts, others would be willing to do so in order to save money. In fact, 69% of renters would be willing to crash with Casper for the right price. More than half (51%) would do so for free rent, and 27% would do it for half off the rent. About 30% said they'd bunk with the boogeyman for free utilities, while 23% would do it for a free flat-screen TV with cable. However, 31% of renters said no deal. Nothing, “not even a million bucks,” would convince them to conquer their phasmophobia (fear of ghosts).
Link.
A Follow-Up
On Saturday, I wrote about Alex Jones. Sunday evening, I popped over to his site to see what was cooking. I found this lead article: Obama Will Surrender America To World Government. It had been posted two days earlier, and it had already garnered nearly 500 comments. That's flipping amazing. I spend a lot of time looking at various sites. If I see over 50 comments, I think, "Wow, this site is kickin'." If I see over 100, I figure I'm dealing with a site that has a MSM connection. But 500? That's a true Internet rarity.
A bonus: One commentator has the best pen name I've ever seen: "Earl the Earl of Earl." Slayed me.
TDE Needs Your Input
Can a blog survive on one post a day? I'm told it can't. TDE, meanwhile, does fairly well. I'm averaging 7,000 unique visitors monthly during 2009. During 2008, it was about 4,500 per month. I'm happy with those numbers, and with a large family to feed and a dearth of profits from blogging, I can't really take the time to make the blog much better. Still, I'm always interested in improving.
I would like to hear suggestions about how I can make this blog better, especially if you have some ideas that would allow me to spice things up without taking up a lot more time. And no, "Pay someone else to write it b/c you suck" isn't what I'm looking for.
I'm interested in any specific criticism. Too much econ talk lately? Tell me. Not enough Catholicism? Tell me. Want more political philosophy and discussion of the classic political writers? Okay.
I'm also curious to know what approaches might make it more popular. If you don't mind giving it 15 seconds of reflection, I would love to hear a response to this: "If I were Eric, I'd do ___________ to make the blog more popular." Possibilities: I'd emphasize his large family life more, with more pictures of his children. I'd use his background with Chesterton and Belloc more. I'd use his legal knowledge more. I'd use more short bites (the Twitter-type posts), or I'd focus more on weightier posts, or I'd try to be more humorous, or I'd try to engage readers in the comments box more, or I'd try to come up with more continuity (focus on one or two subject matters, instead of the eclectic approach).
Also: Do you like the one daily post approach, with an occasional multi-post day? I could easily break it up into posts that go up during the day, but I think this approach is more efficient for readers.
Email or comments box is fine. If you think this is something that merits discussion or you have some really big ideas, email me with your phone number and we'll talk. Thanks.
