As the New Republic celebrates its 100th birthday, how are we best to understand the magazine's century of ostentatious chin-stroking? As an attempt to declare by fiat a consensus politics for a nation of divided interests and purposes? An expression of the fundamental conservatism that underlies liberalism? A performance of whiteness?

There must be plenty of people who think about politics who have reactions to Tuesday's election results. Rather than bringing in any of them, though, the New York Times opinion section decided to run a piece today by the fraud and shill Frank Luntz.

Now (for now) we're down from three gunmen at the Navy Yard to maybe one, and the one—the certain one, the dead one—is on his second reported identity. He got 16 years younger between iterations, and is now a civilian contractor rather than a member of the Navy. Who knows where or what he (or they) will be in another hour?

Slate cites a deeply implausible statistic in an item about masturbation habits: "A 2010 survey found that 75 percent of 16- and 17-year-old boys had masturbated in the past year." Seventy-five percent, you say. The other 25 percent didn't have their writing hands free to answer the survey.

Hoping to maintain some sway with both the young and those Upper East Side parents desirous to understand their children's IM conversations (that they're surreptitiously recording), Sunday Styles this weekend featured a guide to emoticons, those signifiers of emotional life expressed with punctuation marks that are so popular with the kids. How very dotcom and youthy! Our reactions started with I:-/ then a little %-( but finally ended up :I. Emily, on the other hand, was more like :) so we ('') (chatted).