Critical Mass

Last week, from June 27 to June 30, the Critical Mass Blog had its first annual editors meeting, where two of the founders (Dan Gelernter and Peter Johnston) gathered with two newly appointed editors (Guy Benson and Maynard Hutchins) to discuss upcoming changes and updates that will soon be made to the Critical Mass Blog (see below).

Mr. Johnston and Mr. Hutchins flew into Massachusetts all the way from Chicago. Mr. Benson met them at the airport, picked Mr. Gelernter up along the way, and with Rush Limbaugh on the radio the four evil conservative minds moved in on the Benson family’s summer home for a half-week of baseball, feasting, and plotting.

The highlight of the trip was a midnight barbecue accompanied by an attempted screening of the musical 1776 (“see John Adams sing!”). After no less than three phone calls a copy of the movie was located, and the sympathetic Mr. Benson’s mother roared out to rent it while the four editors were en route to a baseball game. (Mr. Benson spends his summers as a radio broadcaster for the Chatham A’s)

After a dramatic and nearly rained-out 10^th inning victory by Mr. Benson’s home team, the party managed to abscond with the VCR from the press box at Chatham field, and returned to the Benson estate, where an HDTV and a cable box were waiting.

Then ensued a series of technological fiascos, resulting from the HDTV’s wall-mounting, which obscured its external inputs. The editors made a heroic effort to route the VCR signal through the cable box, which failed at first due to the AV cables not being plugged in at both ends.

A full half-hour was spent trying to figure out how to use the AV inputs on the front of the cable box. Mr. Johnston then spent a further half-hour on the phone with the Comcast People, at the very end of which it was revealed that the cable box’s external inputs serve no purpose whatsoever, and are merely there for decoration.

Following our barbecue and aborted movie screening, the editors went into conference for three hours, and have decided to make the following changes to the blog layout:

• The main blog will run a weekly features section, with full-length articles of the sort you’re used to seeing.

• We will open a second page called “The Quad” which will be updated frequently with short posts from our inner circle of writers.

• A third page will be created (“Submissions”) which will run posts from any of our readers (whether they attend college or not) on any topic. This will be the most informal of our sections and we encourage anyone who has a favorite political subject to submit a piece.

• Finally, be sure to keep track of a new biography section as writers earn the right to write for the “Quad” and post biographies and later photos of themselves.

We will be instituting these changes over the course of the summer (during which time we will, of course, continue blogging). Stay with us through the fall for our fresh layout and a new batch of collegiate contributors.