The usual Slate plus a spate.

So I forget to check Slate for a few days, and about a hundred new articles go up. What the hell? They've got the usual Slate plus a spate of extra things marking their 10th anniversary.

Were you reading back in 1996? I was. I also was buying lots of crap on Amazon and running email lists. I'm still doing all those things. I cut way down on my Amazon habit quite a while ago, after buying it seems like a thousand DVDs. (Why not buy every good movie that comes out on DVD?) And I've abandoned my candy-colored belief that email lists will make us free and good and happy. (I think that about blogging now.) But I'm still reading Slate -- even after so many other "content providers" have swamped the internet.

Oh, Slate is exasperating at times. Jacob Weisberg keeps cranking out his Bushisms, maybe just to keep Slate critics from noticing other problems. They're so damned distracting. Look, he's got a new one up there now:

"I tell people, let's don't fear the future, let's shape it."

What's even supposed to be wrong with that? The phrase "let's don't" is standard English. Is there something off about thinking people fear the future? Is the idea of shaping the future too arrogant and unrealistic? Come on, Weisberg, that's no "Is our children learning?"

But you've got to give Slate credit for celebrating its 10th anniversary with a page of links that begins with four articles on the subject "What's Wrong With Slate." And let's don't focus on whether they all bitch about Bushisms. Let's read Michael Kinsley's history of Slate... and maybe pick up this anthology of old Slate articles. And check out this slide show of Slate's graphic design changes. Ah, yes, it's interesting to see the old designs that were so familiar. You don't notice that they're gone until you see them again.