2. Making Light is one of my favorite blogs, and I read at least the initial posts (even if I can’t make it through the entire discussion) daily. I still say it leans way left, and I still say that’s not a bad thing — I’d assumed that the sarcasm came through adequately via my faulty stats and effervescent prose.

I call myself a “moderate liberal” all the time, and that doesn’t change the fact that if you were to describe my political views to anybody east of San Francisco and west of Manhattan, they’d put me squarely on the sinister side of things. I have to wonder if centrists even exist anymore; the American political pendulum and our burgeoning theocracy have managed to slice the middle right out of the bell curve.

3. I take it you’ve never driven in the SF bay area. Leftist mantras are emblazoned on the back of every hybrid car and Honda Civic in SF, every SUV in Marin, and every beat-up VW in Berkeley. Many of them have a grain of truth, but as with any propaganda, repetition and dogma dilute the message. It could even be the case that because I’m 118% leftist myself, the mantras seem repetitious.

4. That’s the 26% I didn’t include in my initial stats.

Incidentally, for anybody happening to read this who hasn’t seen it: all the stuff Teresa mentions really is in the Making Light blog. What’s most interesting about it is how they manage to do a combination 49% blog and 94% discussion forum, more successfully than any other site I’ve seen.

5. Most interesting thing I’ve read in weeks.

1. Interesting stats there.

2. Making Light is more centrist than leftist.

3. There are no leftist mantras. There are, however, a surprising number of people who give credence to depressingly unsophisticated propaganda. I’m just sayin’.

4. To which of your two categories do you assign the posts about hamsters, sock yarn, cheesy videos, flying cars, emergency preparedness, knitting, socialists and UFOs, Second Life copyrights, scams aimed at writers, British sex scandals, humorous poetry, Nazi raccoons on the march in Europe, pre-Modern English texts, fondly-remembered TV advertising, deaf video blogging, miscellaneous science news, and the history and theory of fruitcake?

5. Glad you liked the Apache piece.