Lurking Made Easy
Lurking
Made Easy
"Lurking," in Webspeak, means reading what others are saying in discussion
forums and chat rooms without joining in yourself. In "The Fray,"
Slate
's
discussion forum, we don't discourage lurkers--though we'd rather have you join
in. "Fraygrants," as regular participants call themselves, live all over the
world and conduct energetic discussions of everything under the sun. To give
you a taste, we've started a new department called "Best of the
Fray." Written by the Fray manager, who calls himself Fray Vader (and runs
it from his home somewhere in Asia), it summarizes, quotes from, and links to
some of the livelier ongoing discussions. If you haven't yet entered the Fray,
start with Best of to get the general idea, then go and lurk a bit, then jump
in.
Krugman
Between Covers
The Accidental Theorist
and Other Dispatches From the Dismal Science , a collection of essays by
Slate
's economics columnist Paul Krugman, will be published May
11 by Norton. Through the magic of publishing industry nonsense, though, copies
exist now. You can order it directly from the publisher at www.wwnorton.com (or if that's
more w's than you can handle, call [800] 233-4830), or you can buy it from
Amazon.com. Or you could walk into a bookstore the
old-fashioned way and buy it with doubloons.
Of course if you're a real
Webster you can get much of the book online without actually buying it. About
half the essays originated in Paul's "Dismal Science" column for
Slate
and are available in our archive, "The Compost." And other Krugmaniana are available on
Paul's own Web
site. But we certainly don't want to discourage sales. So let us be clear
that the book contains a few excellent essays not available on the Web and that
it is a delightful physical object in its own right.
--Michael Kinsley
