How the Blackout Affects Us

It occurred to me that the blackout in the northeastern states gives us a unique opportunity to figure out where our readers are. It seems fair to assume that since early this afternoon, few people in the northeastern states have been able to access our site. So the extent to which our hits are down is a rough measure of how many of our readers live in that region.
Sorry, northeasterners, but you have yet to catch up with Power Line. As best I can figure it, we are down less than 10% today. (I’m counting unique visitors since the fact that today is a pretty big news day may have encouraged repeat hits.) In fact, we are up a little compared to a couple of weeks ago in unique visitors, probably due to the high-quality links from NRO etc. that we had last week.
So I think it’s fair to conclude that the northeast, once the nation’s intellectual trendsetter, holds that distinction no longer. Our apologies to our northeastern readers when they tune in tomorrow.
Which reminds me of something else that has been preying on my conscience: A couple of weeks ago I ran this photo of a “woman on the street” whom I encountered wearing a Power Line t-shirt. I thought the tongue-in-cheek nature of my post was obvious, but apparently not: our good friend, former client–therein lies a tale–and reader Peter Swanson sent us an email saying that if we are encountering random people on the street wearing Power Line t-shirts, maybe it’s time for a convention of PL readers.
Well, I must confess: that was no random lady, that was my wife. Your chances of encountering a PL t-shirt on the street remain slim, which is a good reason to check out our store via the weird-looking guy to my left. They are good, high-quality cotton shirts…blah, blah, blah…in fact I’m wearing one at this moment. An ideal Father’s Day gift, if you can wait that long.
As to the idea of a convention, if our emails are any guide, it would have to be held in southern California. So let’s hope there are no power outages in that area any time soon.