The Washington Post's blog coverage of the Supreme Court's handgun unbanification is generating plenty of comments. Best comment so far:

"I believe guns are unnecessary. I've lived in the District for over 5 years and have successfully defended my home from armed intruders with a Samurai sword on two seperate occaissions. Throwing stars and nunchucks are also very effective against guns. If you practice two to three hours a day and are fearless, you will not fail."

Posted by: razorsedge | June 26, 2008 11:44 AM

My scooter was stolen last Thursday afternoon, brazenly purloined from the motorcycle parking area of my Arlington apartment complex.

Sucks, right? Yeah, sure, you don't care. That's cool. But here's a funny thing:

On Thursday night, City Paper held a party downtown to celebrate Dave Jamieson's receipt of the Livingston Award for his amazing story "Letters From an Arsonist," which chronicled the career of a prolific serial arsonist in D.C.

I had planned on attending this event, but ended up pulling an all-nighter at the office on Wednesday in order to get the online version of Hoods & Services going. (Check out the Rankinator--it sort of works!) By 2 p.m. Thursday, I was running on fumes. Party or sleep? I chose sleep, scooted home and passed out.

Wrong choice.

Read More "Scooters For a Larcenist" »

Coworker Max Linsky cruelly Brookrolled me this afternoon with a column entitled "The Alpha Geeks." The bulk of the piece is a whirlwind rehash of the evidence supporting what Brooks calls an "ascent of nerdism in modern America," a thesis which I don't disagree with, but don't find particularly novel either. At the tail end of the big F, though, Brooks suddenly whips out the Holy Grail of overloaded culture references:

"Barack Obama has become the Prince Caspian of the iPhone hordes."

This statement has already started to gain memetic momentum, and it may be destined for greatness. But what does it mean? Is there really a metaphor here, or did Brooks simply pluck the words at random from the bestsellers section of the paradigmatic axis? I consider myself a pretty standard-issue geek, and I can't parse it.

As much as I hate to validate David Brooks's business model by thinking about anything he's ever written ever, I'm going to have to print this sentence out and tape it to the wall next to my monitor, to ponder as a sort of koan until I achieve geek enlightenment. Or until I finish writing this Wordpress tag-conversion plugin. Whichever comes first.

Behold: the Arlington County Police Department MySpace page.

According to Thursday's press release from the ACPD, the goal of this project is to get kids to add the police as a friend, warding off sexual predators as vampires to garlic. From the release:

“We don’t want to mislead any kids or their parents into thinking this will completely protect them online,” said Chief Scott. “But if they add a link to our page, hopefully the police emblem will scare off anyone with unscrupulous motives.”

I don't really have an opinion about how effective this strategy will be. But I will commend the interns who designed the page. From the S.W.A.T. soundtrack to the "black and yellow on bright blue" color scheme, they've really captured the essence of the MySpace aesthetic. Coupled with the actual content of the page (safetey tips and whatnot), their profile has a pretty decent hip-to-be-square thing going on. If they can keep it fresh by adding interesting content on a regular basis, and ideally put a human face on it, they might have a shot at building something that's meaningful to the kids they're reaching out to.

Now where's our Twitter-based crime blotter?

Continuing our expansive coverage of the biggest story in Adams Morgan, this time in musical form:

Pretty much sums it up, right?

We're deep into tallying the votes from our Best of D.C. Readers' Poll, in preparation for next week's issue. The paper ballots have been entered and now we're sorting out the winners. With over 50,000 nominees, it's been more than a little tedious and occasionally surprising. Some examples:

• "Best Outdoor Venue" There are exactly as many ways of spelling "Merriweather Post Pavillion" as there are people who voted for Merriweather Post Pavillion. But we persevere.
• "Best Caps Player" One popular nominee's last name is spelled with at least one and not more than three instances of the letters "c," "k," "i", "o," "v," "e," "n" and "h," but the final order of these letters appears to be a matter of personal preference.
• "Best Jumbo Slice" Many people simply voted for "Jumbo Slice." Well, okay.
• "Best Art Gallery" Someone voted for "Hooters."
• "Best Exhibit" Without naming the overall winner or even the runners-up, we can reveal that Ansel Adams was soundly beaten by Stephen Colbert.

Five days late, but moving fast!