Yearly Kos

In a few hours Future Spouse and I will be hopping on a plane for Chicago. All sorts of fun things are planned, but the nominal excuse for the trip is to attend the second annual YearlyKos convention, where perhaps we'll score some party invitations. On Friday afternoon at 2:30 I'll be speaking on the science panel, along with fellow bloggers Chris Mooney and Ed Brayton. The moderator will be Tara Smith of Aetiology, and we've even corralled Lindsay Beyerstein to be the official photographer; Stephen Darksyde, who put it together, unfortunately won't be able to make it, but we hope to do him proud. Unconfirmed rumors suggest that the panel will be taped by C-SPAN for later broadcast, so don't be shocked if you tune in hoping for some hot congressional-subcommittee action and catch science bloggers instead. It's also supposed to be broadcast in Second Life, although I don't know that means. Tara will also be moderating a science bloggers caucus on Thursday afternoon. Any CV readers who are at YK should certainly drop by and say hi. Politics is a funny thing. Like last year, I anticipate being moved by the sincere passion for effecting political change in evidence among the participants, and also being a little creeped out by the attitudes of the less reasonable among them. Among the latter we are currently faced with the spectacle of Mike Stark, who decided it was a good idea to harass Bill O'Reilly at his house, putting up signs and stuffing reports of O'Reilly's sexual-harassment lawsuit into his neighbors' mailboxes (via Balloon Juice). This was Stark's idea of a clever response to O'Reilly's ludicrous attempts to smear Kos as a "hate site" by trolling thousands of diaries and millions of comments for outrageous remarks. Now, reasonable people can all agree that Bill O'Reilly is an obnoxious twit. But even twits shouldn't be bothered at their homes, and that's even true if they themselves have engaged in the tactic. "Two wrongs..." and all that. So it was depressing to read so many of the comments at Kos coming out in defense of Stark (although there were also many that took him to task). Nevertheless, I have not given up my ambitions to someday be a big-shot A-list left-wing blogger. From my close readings of The Poor Man Institute and other sites, I gather that the accepted strategy is to post YouTube videos of progressive rock bands. All I can say is, if that's the game you want to play, then don't mess around. Don't. Mess. Around.