Knowing all about politics, teeth, and mammoths.

We recently floated the idea of Fray DNA—a line from a Fraypost, from which expert posters could reconstruct the whole argument. The line we gave was Pherdnut's "you do realize 'swiftboating' is a derogatory term now, right?", coming from this "War Stories." This week's example: "After all, what chubby wingnut chickenhawk out there doesn't munch Cheetos as he plays computer war sims and urges President Bush on to invade Iran?"—Larry 2, not overreacting at all to an article about ads for the cheesy snacks.

The thought of expert posters obviously led us to the "Best of the Fray" board—no longer attached to any article, it is home to many long-established posters who like to get together to discuss affairs of the day and swap jokes and insults. They have been suggesting—some politely, some not so much—that the Fray team should pay more attention to them, so we went and took a look. Big topics this week were Barack Obama's race speech  and Tibet. There was unexpectedly little about Iraq, but a fair amount about St Patrick's Day: family history from Fritz Gerlich in "Why I am not Irish"; and seizing any excuse to bring in Van Morrison, even if he is "a fat old guy in a fedora." We very much enjoyed Gregor Samsa's "The Titanic Test" thread, in which the sinking boat was reimagined as being captained by various presidential candidates and past presidents, e.g., "Nader: Ha, ha, ha, I told ya! Now I'll be captain for life."

Best post title was Baltimore Aureole's on current financial excitements: "[I]ts 12:15 pm - do you know where your pension is?", though we also liked Topazz's "hot slutty governor action" which started a thread on hotels suitable for romantic assignments. Dawn Coyote's post on women and shopping was obviously part of a long-continuing debate.

Inspired by the idea that the Fray is the place to find communal expertise, we went looking on some other boards and found a joyous Fray on finding the right babka—recommendations for bakeries and links to recipes all over. And a welcome post called "I blame Ayn Rand" from Slasher14, commenting on the "Moneybox" article on "The Rise of American Incompetence"—as we've mentioned before, we do like an Ayn Rand post.

Teeth don't feature much in Slate or the Fray, but posters enjoyed the article on dental work in the time of John Adams, and scoot'r-d took the opportunity for an expert sideswipe at foreigners:

I'll not question whether or not the actors in John Adams were appropriately, dentally attired…But.. if they wanted real actors with teeth in deplorable condition they should have gotten English actors.

Just as we were recovering from this low blow, our interest in the film 10,000 B.C. (articles in "Explainer" and "Movies") and the search for paleontology expertise led us to dig up this from Paxterminus:

Modern man (Homo sapiens) was the only species of man left living on planet Earth 12,000 years ago. They all looked like us and behaved like us. Some of them were probably much sharper than an average Slate employee (sorry guys, I cannot picture any of you inventing pottery).

We may question that, but did appreciate the semiserious posts on accuracy, and sensible contributions like Don Schenck's: "The thing is, while the movie is probably just a politically-correct fairy tale we can't be completely certain about the way things were back then." And then thisfrom Scott C Clark:

This movie sounds like it kicks so much ass that I would go home and look at myself in the mirror and punch myself in the face for being born like12,000 years too [late]. They had elephants in Lord of the Rings and I wanted to ride one after watching it, and now I think when I see this movie I'm going to be mad and sad that I can't ride a woolly mammoth because they're stupid and extinct. So basically, that sounds like the one thing about this movie I wouldn't like.

Clear, vivid and to the point—a perfect Fray post. But please don't punch yourself in the face, Scott. MR...4:00 p.m. GMT

Wednesday, Mar. 12, 2008

Here's a question: There's a Slate  article—Erik Sofge's "Orc Holocaust"—on a very well-known game, and many many readers respond to the article. Is it better if those posts are read by someone who is an expert in the field, or someone who knows nothing whatsoever about the popular culture under discussion? It seems obvious that a little expertise wouldn't come amiss, but we have decided to go with the naive user, whose only qualification is that once, years ago, she did Fray Notes about arcade games, and it is her favorite of all the ones she ever did, ever: ("the stony Fray heart, totally immune as it is to computer games of all kinds, was melted by the many posters who said they loved the article just because it reminded them of their young days in the arcades." Please go and read the whole thing here). Oh, what's that you say? Arcade games are not at all the same as Dungeons & Dragons? Oh. Oh well.