A Fanboy Moment
Today's theme is firsts, apparently. First SK&K incursion to National Mustard (does this make us "insurgents"?), the first external reference to the SK&K blog, first Stokes in the latest Whole Foods in Austin, and now, my first ever published email at Ann Althouse's blog.

She posted on the subject of bumper stickers, their usefulness, and the kind of people that apply them. During one of the many long runs that I ran with Dana while we were training for our never-to-actually-be-run marathon, I developed this idea that bumper stickers, regardless of the content, only delivered binary information: they told you that you were either "in" or "out". (My role as co-runner with Dana was the-guy-who-talks-to-distract-you-from-the-pain-of-running.) So if you got the joke, agreed with the message, or understood the reference you were "in". If you didn't get it/agree/understand then you were "out". (Possible corollaries: (a) each additional bumper sticker you add, you increase the information throughput by an order of magnitude, or (b) each additional bumper sticker you add, you increase the emotional message, "you're really 'out'," by an order of magnitude.) I emailed my theory to Prof. Althouse in a moment of gosh-maybe-she-might-care inspiration, and apparently she did! I also mentioned the fact that my only decal is the Despair "Frownie" emoticon :-((tm).

I really enjoy reading her blog, btw. She posts on all kinds of things, including law. She's also inspired me to post a sketch of mine, as she posts her own sketches from time to time. In particular, it's fun to read her blog as she lives in Madison, WI (and posts pictures), which I visit almost every summer as it's the home of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, my current employer.

Speaking of other blogs, Sean Meade, the editor of Thomas P. M. Barnett's blog (of The Pentagon's New Map fame), would really like the last in this series of hypothetical bumper stickers created by The Armchair Philosopher. While I won't speak for the Sean's reaction to the rest of the list, I can tell you that I thoroughly enjoyed most of them.