An acquaintance who works for the Kerry campaign (who I met through a cousin in the Bush campaign) sent this look at several post-RNC polls, published by John Zogby, himself a master pollster. What's interesting is the first-person quality of it. It really changes the tenor of reading poll results to have them announced firsthand by the pollster himself, like Steve Forbes's"My flat tax ..." or Frank Purdue's "My chickens. ..." Somehow, "owning" the results makes them both more fluid and more credible. Maybe just because of the rudimentary transparency. I wonder if some pollsters would never lift the curtain even as far as Zogby does because it might diminish the power and mystique.

If your friend gives you a mix tape, is it "piracy just between friends?" When a stranger gives you a mix tape, have you entered a completely different ethical universe? The video jukebox on my TV showed a famous quote on piracy from the Barenaked Ladies, saying ""When the Gap went online, T-shirts didn't become free." This is undoubtedly true, and I need to remember to keep my anti-authoritarian instincts in check when I see rockers, who I expect to be rebels, saying things about obeying the rules. (And no, I would not really call the Barenaked Ladies rockers...) But what makes interactions among strangers categorically different than interactions among friends? If I host a party and make a "Jed's Party '04" mix tape as a party gift, is that categorically different than creating a free download site with all my iTunes playlists? Is friendship a private space, with some…

John Kerry's campaign train passes a planned stop in Kansas, and the apology reported by CNN comes not from an interview or press release, but from the campaign blog."We raised our hand to wave, but the engineer hadn't slowed, and by the time we had waved even a little to the signs and cheers and camera flashes, it was dark again," wrote Edwards' wife, Elizabeth, on the campaign's Web log. "We sat frustrated, but we knew we were not as frustrated as the people of Lawrence, Kansas." Increasingly, the press is turning to blogs as primary sources. And blogs themselves have become the railways of the modern campaign, delivering a personal message directly to voters where they live. A snub is still a snub, and when hundreds of people show up in real-space after midnight to see you, you shouldn't whisk by at 19th Century speed. That's why John Edwards…