Acquaintances

This (by no means complete) page of Acquaintances (a term which shouldn’t be taken to imply some aren’t close friends, but this seemed broader) was first posted on Sept. 23, 2007 — some of the links are new or updated since then, some aren’t. This list is heavily skewed toward people whose websites might interest readers of my blog, so being off the list doesn’t make people worthless (AND I WILL UPDATE IT OCCASIONALLY).
NOTE: Acquaintances who’ve linked to me in a permanent, front-page way on their own sites can be found (unless I’ve missed someone) in the blogroll in my front page’s right margin, but this page lets me be more thorough.
Sarah Ackerman is a museum staffer, educator, and occasional actress who has the honor of being first in alphabetical order.
The American Council on Science and Health is where I work (and edit the blog HealthFactsAndFears), conveniently located at the intersection of science, media criticism, and market-friendly political commentary — the trifecta.
Andy Ager is a blogger who loves his lager — and loves his wife, Dartmouth librarian Laura Braunstein.
Keisha-Gaye Anderson writes sci-fi and poetry and helps educate the young folk.
Dave Barry wouldn’t know me from Adam, but back before he was super-famous took the time to write back to me confirming he’s a libertarian, and he’s easily the funniest newspaper columnist of all time, so I’m putting him on this list anyway.
The Anonymous Blogger must remain anonymous, I suppose, but I’ll give you a hint: he’s a big nerd (and no, he’s not anyone else on this page).
Adam Bellow shares my belief that the world needs more short, philosophical-yet-popular tracts, smaller than a typical book but more thoughtful than a mere article, and he’s doing far more about it than I am.
Chuck Blake, my comrade in skepticism since high school, is a physics-trained, computer-programming math whiz now in finance as a “quant.”
Michelle Boardman taught me in college that a woman can like libertarianism, Nietzsche, Star Trek, and alternative rock while existing outside my fantasies and has since become deputy assistant attorney general and married a fellow libertarian named Hill Beverly Wellford III.
Jolene Bouchon was a SEX COLUMNIST(!) for Maxim’s website (interesting for her husband, Bryan Christian) but went on to write about food for Epicurious.
Alice Bradley blogs about being a mom but was once as hip as she is amusing. Her blog’s name comes from a dream she had in which the government hired her to invent a new word for “dolphin.”
Liz Braswell writes fantasy novels under pseudonyms and is married to Scott Shannon under her own name.
Joe Brennan is a U.S. expat libertarian living near London, blogging, and doing a radio show that you can hear here from midnight to 7am most Sunday mornings.
Rachel Kramer Bussel is fairly naughty and writes about it professionally, having been a SEX COLUMNIST(!) for the Village Voice.
The Cato Institute, home to the likes of David Boaz and Tom Palmer, is one of the major loci of libertarianism on this tragically over-governed world.
Christine Caldwell Ames is probably the only professor of medieval history at the University of South Carolina who wrote for National Lampoon and MTV (continuing the comedy-writing habit she developed when we were at Brown) before going to Yale Divinity School. She is not to be confused with…
…patent lawyer Holly Caldwell, Christine’s equally-libertarian frequent comedy-writing partner at Brown, who is now married to fellow alum Jake Harrison, a biologist (who in his spare time has helped raise money to fight leukemia, a task with which you can help).
Tim Carney worked for the legendary Robert Novak and wrote a great book about industry-government collusion, and he has smart brothers like John Carney and Brian Carney. And to quote Yoda: there is another…
Dimitri Cavalli has written insightful articles on history and politics but is really fascinated by fishing.
Andrew Corsello writes for GQ and is married to an Episcopal minister who had to proselytize naked to a tribe in Africa once, which is pretty hot. Unless I’m misremembering the story, which would be unfortunate.
Molly Crabapple is a cartoonist and former artist’s model who started hosting her own series of avant-garde drawing sessions and who has, as Andrew Corsello once said after meeting Tyra Banks, huge friggin’ eyes.
Mark Cunningham edits the opinion section of the New York Post and co-founded the monthly Manhattan Project gatherings of conservative media folk I now co-host.
Tim Deroche has been a consultant or co-creator on everything from education reform plans to political campaigns, plus a website, screenplays, and possibly a smart and hip TV show about science, which the world could use.
L.B. Deyo is the host and organizer of Austin, TX debate series called the Dionysium and co-founder of JinxMagazine.com.
Lisa Dierbeck has written stories about things like having sex with Satan to advance your career and a novel about an Alice-like molestation victim — and she’s married to a libertarian (named Vito), which some ignoramuses would consider the most disturbing part of all.
Jen Dziura is famous and funny (and smart and philosophical).
Dawn Eden wrote about rock for years, found religion, and turned her book about the virtues of chastity into a full-time job in DC encouraging her fellow Catholics (she converted) to wait until marriage.
Janice “Girlbomb” Erlbaum went from runaway teen to very nice and stable-seeming adult, comedian, and memoirist.
Michel Evanchik is my webmaster and the moderator of the Debates at Lolita Bar that I host each month. A mix of Russian, French, Swedish, and American influences, he is like a war on the Continent — but in your mind.
Diana Fleischman studies evolutionary psychology and explains it to me.
Jamie Foehl is in advertising, not politics, but jokes of being a card-carrying libertarian (she really had a card) and got Ayn Rand mentioned in a New York City-promoting poster campaign.
Jenny Foreit decided to become a lawyer but at heart will always be the kind of kickboxing teenage girl Joss Whedon dreamt of us all becoming back in the 90s.
Jeffrey Friedman is a Barnard polisci prof who edits the interesting political philosophy journal Critical Review, one of the few academic venues primarily concerned with issues of interest to libertarians and one of the few libertarian venues that holds the philosophy to the standards of mainstream academia.
Jill Friedman, by contrast, is a comics and sci-fi geek with some sort of connections to the porn industry or something (and her friend Hilary Thomas has done voiceovers for characters including the ring announcer on Pokemon).
Jonathan Funke, when he finds time, is one of the few people left on the planet still blogging from an explicitly Rockefeller-Republican perspective, not that there were blogs back in the days when there were other Rockefeller Republicans.
Michelle Gengaro is a designer and illustrator who has done sci-fi, kids’ books, and more.
Robert A. George is a columnist, editor, and stand-up comic, not to be confused with Princeton’s more-conservative Robert P. George.
Amanda Gersh vies with Alice Bradley for coolest mom-blogger.
Diane Greco writes fiction about science and other big ideas, as perhaps more people should — and her husband Matthew Josefowicz, her fellow Brown alum, likes her stuff. I was the first person to ask when their child’s birth was due — about a year before she was pregnant. In spite of that unfortunate incident, I swear she’s really good-looking.

Dan Greenberg is a state representative in Arkansas — and a libertarian-leaning Republican who graduated from Brown. He’s also managing editor of the aforementioned Critical Review.
Janet Harvey has performed as Jungle Girl, written a Batgirl comic book, and made short films.
Francis Heaney is a brilliant maker of puzzles, poems, songs, and comedy, often at the same time — and he is married to the yarn-obsessed Rose White, which is her real name.
Mark Hemingway and Mollie Ziegler Hemingway, collectively, write about rock, religion, and politics. She has also been a SEX COLUMNIST(!).
Charles Herold reviews videogames for a living, which has to be the cushiest job this side of Kyle Smith (see below).
Sander Hicks is basically a Marxist — a Marxist! — yet he is also one of the most entrepreneurial people I know, whether running his cafe or selling books about the left. Contradictions of late capitalism, I guess.
The Institute for Human Studies has been a great help to me — and many other libertarians — ever since I was in college circa 1990 (and it was IHS’s Marty Zupan who suggested back then that I try submitting my first professional article to Reason).
Jim Kalb is by some metrics the most conservative person I know — which is to say he’s a thorough (and thoughtful) traditionalist, not, as some might expect, an axe-wielding barbarian. Ironically, he was also one of the first people I knew to engage in lots of online debate, and he has the most robotic-looking URL of anyone on this page: http://turnabout.ath.cx:8000/node.
Julia Kamin organizes political discussions in a fashion after my own heart, plugged at CitizenJoe.org and ThinkDrinkNewYork.com.
Dave Kamp is a bit of a snob.
Pagan Kennedy has written nine good books (and counting) and should be a model for the rest of the lazy, no-account do-nothings on this page, including me.
Elizabeth Koch and Todd Zuniga founded the literary journal Opium.
Ali Kokmen hawks manga at Random House (with his co-worker Dallas, an old friend of DC’s Scott Nybakken) and has a long history of comics fanhood that includes support of places like MoCCA, the Museum of Comics and Cartoon Art.
Todd Kruse blogs about various causes of a libertarian bent.
Gersh Kuntzman, a Brown alum who is not a libertarian but is funny, is editor of a family of Brooklyn newspapers, among other things.
Jonathan Leaf writes good, highbrow, realistic, historical plays. Thank goodness someone does.
David “Lefty” Leibowitz is proprietor of Endeavor 43, founder of the Gotham Roller Girls, and co-founder of JinxMagazine.com.
Jacob T. Levy is a McGill polisci prof and a much-needed (Brown-minted) libertarian contributor to The New Republic.
Lisa Levy is a comedienne and has hosted such clever stage productions as a live revival of Groucho Marx’s You Bet Your Life.
Marilynn Larkin is a freelance writer, editor at large of The Lancet, nanotech commentator, and personal trainer, having achieved the whole sound-mind-sound-body combo without resort to being remade by nanobots.
Heather Lowe has been a rock band promoter, biotech promoter, and Russian Orthodox religion-promoter. I like hybrids.
Caren Lissner writes novels that are sometimes about nerds.
Shawn Macomber has leapt from blogging for American Spectator to blogging for Shawn Macomber.
Michael Malice is the Renaissance man who co-created the “Overheard in” websites, a book with Harvey Pekar, another book with Ultimate Fighting champ Matt Hughes, and assorted confusion and fear.
The Manhattan Institute is probably the most important thinktank in New York City — as opposed to the Foundation for Economic Education, the most important thinktank just outside New York City. MI publishes MedicalProgressToday and City Journal and is home to Walter Olson, among others. If you’re reading this in 2009 and a President Giuliani has done something right, it may be because of this thinktank’s influence on him.
Megan McArdle, a.k.a. Jane Galt, has gone from The Economist to Atlantic Monthly and from hippie to capitalist.
Reid Mihalko (Brown alum) and Marcia Baczynski (libertarian) run CuddleParty.com, an implausible yet highly popular scheme whereby people pay them to be part of safe, non-sexual group cuddling sessions — and they have a far-flung array of friends, fellow Burning Man participants, and co-cuddlers.
Deroy Murdock may be the best political columnist of my generation — no insult to anyone else on this page.
Chris Nugent, another of Brown’s comedy-writing libertarians, is now a professor of ancient Chinese at Williams. He has met actual communists.
Scott Nybakken has original art for sale from the Phish video he co-created years ago. Like several people I know, Scott works for DC Comics.
The Phillips Foundation has now produced a small army of Journalism Fellows like me, each richly deserving of his or her own link, but my hands are getting tired. They’ll gradually be noted, I expect.
PiecesOfFlair is probably the smartest links-to-wacky-stuff site there is, perhaps because people like Meredith Kapushion edit it (you can also buy t-shirts and mugs of me through the site).
Paul Pope doesn’t seem to return phonecalls or have a publicly-visible correct e-address, perhaps because he’s behind on some deadlines and trying to lay low, but he’s one of the few libertarian comic book writer-artists and once had time to do things like this sketch of David Bowie for some guy who likes pictures of David Bowie (pointed out to me by Chris Nugent).
Virginia Postrel was the first editor to pay me for writing (a regular humor column for Reason in 1992 and 1993), a nerdy and libertarian icon.
Tracy Quan was a prostitute — that’s right, a prostitute — and went on to write about it.
Daniel Radosh has written for New York Press (where we met as supposedly ideologically-opposite columnists), The Week, New Yorker, and many other venues, but a lot of funny stuff is right there on his blog. Ironically, he and his wife Gina Duclayan, who works for the Population Council, have twins.
Reason — both the magazine and the Foundation — boasts such libertarian allies as Nick Gillespie, Brian Doherty, Jacob Sullum, Kerry Howley, Ted Balaker, Katherine Mangu-Ward, and more.
Derek Rose writes for the New York Daily News, one of those crucial libertarians who writes actual objective journalism instead of just blogging about libertarianism.
Marah Rosenberg does art and business and does both well, contrary to culture-war stereotypes.
Richard Ryan is the sybarite, polymath, and armchair philosopher behind Verse Theater Manhattan.
Unlike skeptical me, Dr. Sangeeta Sahi is a “quantum healer.”
Allen Salkin is a writer whose work has appeared in the New York Times, who has traveled to many exotic locales, and who literally wrote the book on the do-it-yourself holiday Festivus.
Julian Sanchez is so libertarian that he has worked for Laissez-Faire Books, Cato, and Reason. He’s pretty easy-going for a deontologist.
Diana Schoenbrun makes art, including neat illustrations and puppets.
Read Schuchardt founded Metaphilm.com and teaches rather lefty/crunchy-sounding media theory when not raising a half-dozen or so Christian children with his wife, Rachel.
Jessica Seigel is a professor of journalism who probably thinks half the other people listed on this page are unreliable sources of information but is very amiable nonetheless.
Stephanie Sellars was a SEX COLUMNIST(!) for New York Press and now makes films and blogs.
Bernadette Malone Serton edits Penguin Books’ conservative imprint, is extremely nice, and likes guns.
Bretigne Shaffer Calvert — like her father, anarchist law professor Butler Shaffer — is about as libertarian as it’s possible to be and makes her husband Guy look fairly moderate in comparison.
Karol Sheinin is a blogger, political consultant, and co-host with me of the monthly Manhattan Project gatherings of conservative media folk.
Ken Silber writes for brainy venues like Scientific American Mind and now blogs.
The Donald and Paula Smith Family Foundation is a debate society that I had a tiny role in helping to start, writing their pro-civil-discourse mission statement and for the first year or two their debate announcements, though the Smiths were apparently unaware who was serving the latter function.
Kyle Smith reviews movies for the New York Post, writes novels, and functions as husband to Self editor Sara Austin — and the contrast with this other Kyle Smith is striking.
Spiked-Online is my favorite cabal of British post-Marxists, and the same bunch begot the Science Media Centre, the Institute of Ideas, the Manifesto Club, and Timandra Harkness, to the consternation of predictable ideologues of all stripes.
Nichelle Stephens promotes comedy and cupcakes.
John Stossel, through whom I met numerous other ABC News personalities like my former officemate Deborah Colloton, is about the only libertarian correspondent on network news.
Sarah Tanksley is a scientist and writer but also a participant in this cynical political site.
James Taranto decides what’s the Best of the Web, or at least what’s on the website of the Wall Street Journal editorial pages, which is an important start.
J.R Taylor, New York Press veteran, loves to blog about RightWingTrash, analyzing kitsch and implicitly reclaiming conservatism from the self-parodic aristocrats and elitist bluebloods.
Katherine Taylor is the award-winning fiction writer whose first novel is Rules for Saying Goodbye.
Paul Taylor has been a big influence on my life since we were in kindergarten but has no website — however, he works as a lawyer for the House Subcommittee on the Constitution, which does.
TCSDaily.com is Nick Schulz’s swell wesbite of a science-loving, libertarian bent, on which I’ve been honored to have my work appear (and go here for a fairly complete list of other Seavey venues — including American.com, which was founded by TCS veteran James Glassman and ACSH veteran David Robinson — though the list leaves off the defunct Tim Deroche site Psych-o-Babble and the old, low-budget magazine Comic Effect, about comics).
A few people I know have been part of the Volokh Conspiracy, the libertarian blog started by brothers Eugene and Sasha Volokh.
Emily Votruba is, among other things, one of the people who helped start the brainy journal n+1.
Virginia Vitzthum has written a book about online dating, been a SEX COLUMNIST(!) for Salon.com and others, and made it pretty clear she’s farther to the left than I am.
Omar Wasow was one of the first MSNBC commentators and says he’d like to fuse traditional civil rights thinking with libertarianism.
David Whitney was another comedy-writing Brown student and is now a libertarian architect, but unlike Howard Roark he’ll pretty much do the job the way you want.
Chris Whitten founded perhaps the first major libertarian website (Free-Market.net) as well as more profitable ventures such as FAQFarm.com.
Tibbie X is a punk rocker. Tibbie X is a punk rocker.
I have probably “left out virtually everyone” in the short list above, which I dashed off in a couple hours off the top of my head (while on cold medication), but I will add to it, so please resist the temptation to start your e-mail with phrases such as “After all we’ve been through, how could you possibly forget…”
AND FINALLY, TEN THINGS THAT I LIKE — IN CASE I SOMEHOW FORGET TO MENTION THEM ELSEWHERE:
Jack Kirby
Libertarianism
The Marx Brothers
New Wave and alternative rock
Peace and quiet
Philosophy
Science
Skepticism
Star Wars
Strong Bad
UPDATE: Well, I have rarely updated this site’s five permanent explanatory pages (on Principles, Bibliography, Acquaintances, FAQ, and Work) between its launch in 2007 and 2010 — and may not necessarily even agree with everything I said in them — but an important entry from April 11, 2010 describes a big mid-2010 shift in my activities that at least gives you an idea what the future should look like (NOTE, while I’m at it, that e-mails to this site’s URL do not reach me, or indeed anyone, but you can find my real e-address on this site without too much trouble).