"About 10,000 stray dogs are planning to destroy the government in Bishkek."

A headline (via David Bernstein). Once the idea of revolution is in the air, who knows where it might spread? The question is, how do dogs plan? Do they use Twitter? Don't be too quick to say no. Remember: On the internet, nobody knows you're a dog.

"Tweets from @MayorEmanuel — which the candidate reportedly called 'hilarious'..."

"... detail the vulgar and obscene adventures of Emanuel, David Axelrod and host of other big names in the political world."

Might as well say you find it hilarious. Wonder what he's said about it in private. It would be cool if that were on tape.

"Will.i.am said his attempt to tweet during the performance was thwarted after he discovered his cell phone had no service."

"His Twitter handle was silent until after the game, when he sent out a series of tweets beginning with: 'Att crashed ... ahhhh!!!! The worse.'"

Blame AT&T. AT&T is to blame for everything. Why not blame AT&T for how bad the Black Eyed Peas were?

The choice of the Black Eyed Peas was intended to bring some youthful vigor back to the halftime show after the NFL — feeling burned by the infamous "wardrobe malfunction" of Janet Jackson with the aid of Justin Timberlake in 2004 — chose a string of safe, near-geriatric icons for the halftime for the next six years, ending on a low note with a much-maligned concert by The Who last year.

You did "Sweet Child O' Mine" and near-geriatric icon Slash appeared. Then you did "(I've Had) The Time of My Life." Did near-geriatric icon Jennifer Grey back out at the last moment?

"The question for many Republicans is whether Ms. Palin is rewriting the rules of what it takes to run for president in an age of Facebook and Twitter..."

"... a world where, perhaps, there are no early visits to Iowa and New Hampshire, no need for policy speeches or press interviews – or whether this is simply part of an effort to keep herself in the public eye and to influence the Republican primary."

"On Twitter, folks have started using the Slate-created hashtag #sadbook to tweet about how Facebook makes them sad."

And what am I supposed to tweet if that makes me sad?

#NoMeta4s.

Twitter takes up arms in the War on Metaphors.

Everyone's all atwitter at the Sarah Palin re-tweet of a pro-gay tweet.

"I think @SarahPalinUSA RT my tweet is her first comment on DADT, treatment of gays & attempts to marginalize us–thank you Governor."

The original tweet, from Tammy Bruce, was:

But this hypocrisy is just truly too much. Enuf already--the more someone complains about the homos the more we should look under their bed

Pay $1 million or Lady Gaga (and other celebs) won't do Twitter and Facebook anymore.

It's Digital Life Sacrifice.

"It's really important and super-cool to use mediums that we naturally are on."

"Students chatting on Twitter both inside and outside the classroom got higher grades than their nontweeting peers..."

According to a recent study reported in The Chronicle of Higher Education:

At the end of the semester, the tweeters had grade-point averages half a point higher, on average, than did their nontweeting counterparts. And students who tweeted were more engaged. Twitter users scored higher than those who didn’t use the tool on a 19-question student-engagement survey over the course of the semester—using parameters like how frequently students contributed to classroom discussion, and how often they interacted with their instructor about course material.

I have a lot of colleagues who oppose computers in the classroom and even ban them, and I wonder if this will flip any opinion. I've always been very pro computers in the classroom.

"Top Tweets: Jonah Goldberg Rides a Plane Edition."

Well tweeted, I'd say.

"Reasonable gun control is one thing, this another. Chicago requires 1 hour on range for handgun permit but bars ranges."

A tweet, cited in a legal brief.

And all the nerds ask, what citation form was used? Answer: www.twitter.com/ adamwinkler, Aug. 16, 2010, 3:18 p.m. (citation omitted) (last visited Sept. 26, 2010). Is that properly Bluebooked?

"Jumping off the gw bridge sorry."

Suicide, announced on Facebook, after live-streamed internet exposure via secret webcam.

"Roommate asked for the room till midnight. I went into molly's room and turned on my Web cam. I saw him making out with a dude. Yay."

Isn't Camille Paglia afraid of sounding geezerly?

Even as she led the way in Madonna appreciation, Paglia was behind the curve in lavishing attention on Lady Gaga. What to do? Go negative:

Gaga's fans are marooned in a global technocracy of fancy gadgets but emotional poverty. Borderlines have been blurred between public and private: reality TV shows multiply, cell phone conversations blare everywhere; secrets are heedlessly blabbed on Facebook and Twitter. Hence, Gaga gratuitously natters on about her vagina…

Negative about Gaga and modern life in general. These kids today. Get off my lawn.

Tweets are so terribly transitory...

... unless... unless.... 

No. They are. Let it go.

I had this ideal of drawing the story of the day, the mundane stuff, as if it were a Twitter feed.

Even though there was no way to get it out.


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It was actually Mel Taylor who had died, and here's the NYT article I drew myself reading. There was a Don Wilson in The Ventures, as I can figure out now. I mixed up the names. I guess my sketchbooks are full of errors of the kind the internet would save me from today.

"Weigel v. Kaus Detwitterfied."

When something interesting happened on Twitter, can you save it from oblivion? Mickey Kaus tries, but it's a tedious tangle of terseness. Twitter is the Memory Hole and you don't want to stick your arm down there.

Over at Media Matters, Eric Boehlert is writing about me.

Eric Boehlert. Eric Boehlert? Oh, I know where I read his name recently. He's a character in Iowahawk's brilliant "I'll Take a Cashier's Check, Mr. Breitbart." He's the one handing out the assignments:

EZRA KLEIN: hey boehlert whats the assignment

ERIC BOEHLERT: 3 part essay

ERIC BOEHLERT: 1. Explain why unemployment report shows stimulus is working

ERIC BOEHLERT: 2. link BP oil spill to teabaggers

ERIC BOEHLERT: 3. spin latest Gallups

JOSH MARSHALL: crap crap crap and I have a lab assignment for global warming due

ERIC ALTERMAN: o fack me looks like an all niter...

Ha. But why is he on my case? "Ann Althouse continues to blog about Journolist; appears to have no idea what it was," he says. Well, then, release the archive so I can cure my terrible ignorance. That's all I want.

Althouse continues to post item after item about Journolist, despite the fact that... Althouse has no idea what Journolist was.

Stop me before I blog ignorantly again, Eric. Send me the archive. Or send it to Breitbart and collect $100,000 and I'll get to it that way.

Boehlert goes on to quote me saying that if I were to sue a Journolist member for defamation — something I'm not inkleined to do — I would be able to get discovery into the archive. Eric B. says:

Althouse, a law school prof and very public blogger, was thinking out loud about suing the owner of Journolist to find out if any of the 400 journalists on the listserv ever wrote anything nasty about her in their private emails. (Ego much?)

Eric Boehlert continues to write about me like that even though he has no idea what the thing I wrote that he just quoted says.  I cited a specific item of defamation against me that was published on the web and that remains there. If I were to sue based on that remark, I would be able to get discovery into relevant evidence about that claim. Moreover, I know that there are specific, related remarks about me in the Journolist archive, because that remark was tweeted, in Ezra Klein's own words, "after I was alerted to her thread on Journolist."

Boehlert imagines that one of my commenters nails his argument for him. Here's that comment:

I would think a law professor might have a better grasp of this. But on what grounds would you seek the archives? To borrow a popular argument of the right, where in the Constitution does it say you have the right to know what others are saying about you, especially when you have no proof they are saying anything defamatory about you.

Clue to Boehlert: Not all law is in the Constitution. The tort of defamation is a matter of state law. The extent of discovery is a matter of procedural law. I don't need a constitutional right. (Conceivably, there is a right that would bar my access to the archive, but I don't need a constitutional right to discovery if I bring a defamation claim.)

So, Boehlert, your post is incredibly lame, but, as a law professor, I'll give you a rewrite. I think Media Matters portrays itself as a champion of truth, so... see if you can get a little closer to something that feels a little more truth-y.

***

On a related note: Yesterday, James Taranto, in Best of the Web, opined that a journalist's shield law would prevent discovery into the Journolist archive in a defamation suit:

Seems to us it would depend on the venue. Most states have some sort of shield law protecting reporters from having to disclose confidential sources, but the specifics vary from state to state. In federal court, however, there is no such privilege.

The privilege is about shielding confidential news sources — informants. The Journolist archive contains the statements of journalists talking to each other. I don't see how the privilege could apply.

[Journalists] should, of course, have all the legal protections of the First Amendment, which among other things mean that Althouse almost certainly would not win her defamation suit against Klein. His offending tweet, it seems to us, is a constitutionally protected opinion rather than a false statement of fact.

One reason I have no interest in suing is that I want the broadest First Amendment rights here. I would not want to have to argue that the statement in question — "Ann Althouse sure has a lot of anti-semitic commenters" — is not an opinion but a false statement of fact. But I'm afraid it is, quite plainly, a false statement of fact.

The TV series based on a Twitter feed.

The Twitter feed is Shit My Dad Says. The show is "S#*! My Dad Says." It's on CBS, so dad can't say "shit." The dad is William Shatner....



I'm not able to give a sane assessment of whether the show could possibly be any good — and I love the Twitter feed — because the jaunty music track that ran through that whole clip redirected all my energy into the struggle to retain the will to live.

"Haven't had a burger in a while. Lunch with Obama at Ray's Hell Burger."

Dmitry Medvedev tweeted.

"Why has Twitter become a black thing?"

"I think this word-of-mouth sharing by black tweeters could be the continuation of the griot tradition (the keeping of tribal history) brought to America by West African slaves who, according to Paul Oliver's book Yonder Come the Blues, 'extemporize on current events, chance incidents and the passing scene.' The Edison study found that 'many of the 'trending topics' on Twitter on a typical day are reflective of African-American culture, memes and topics.'"