Internal Monologue

This is pretty funny: JERUSALEM (AP) — The outbreak of swine flu should be renamed "Mexican" influenza in deference to Muslim and Jewish sensitivities over pork, said an Israeli health official Monday. Deputy Health Minister Yakov Litzman said the reference to pigs is offensive to both religions and "we should call this Mexican flu and not swine flu," he told a news conference at a hospital in central Israel. I wonder if Hindu health officials want to re-name "mad cow disease".

Greenwald : (1) The idea that Specter is a "liberal" Republican or even a "moderate" reflects how far to the Right both the GOP and our overall political spectrum has shifted. Consider Specter’s most significant votes over the last eight years, ones cast in favor of such definitive right-wing measures as: the war on Iraq, the Military Commissions Act, Patriot Act renewal, confirmation of virtually every controversial Bush appointee, retroactive telecom immunity, warrantless eavesdropping expansions, and Bush tax cuts (several times). Time and again during the Bush era, Specter stood with Republicans on the most controversial and consequential issues. (2) Democrats will understandably celebrate today’s announcement, but beyond the questions of raw political power, it is mystifying why they would want to build their majority by embracing politicians who reject most of their ostensible views. Reports today suggest that Democratic officials promised Specter that the...

John Cole : At this point, the GOP might want to re-introduce the Schiavo legislation, just replacing the name “Terri Schiavo” with Republican.

Just heard on NPR that Senator Specter (R-PA) is now Senator Specter (D-PA). This was a shrewd move on his part. He'll probably beat Toomey handily now. The Republicans really gave him no choice. Now Specter has no incentive to tack rightward, which is a good thing indeed. He may still he hard to bring aboard a progressive agenda, though. I haven't yet read any progressive blogosphere reaction; will do so soon. [I sent this from my iPhone, so please excuse any excessive brevity or typographical errors.] --Zachary Drake Update: Sullivan rounds up some reactions . Anonymous Liberal has a thought similar to mine: First, from a political perspective, instead of facing serious pressure from the Right (because of Toomey's primary challenge), he will now face serious pressure to move to the left on various issues. That's because he's now going to have to run in a Democratic primary, and though the party will do what it can to clear the field for him, he'll still ...

Most progressive organizations I know of are coalescing around voting "No" on all six ballot measures in California's May 19th special election. The Bay Area Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club is one such organization. Calitics is another. The Unitarian Universalist Legislative Ministry is yet another (and their chart lists several other organizations also encouraging no votes, as well as some who are encouraging yes votes). I really think we need to get rid of the 2/3 budget requirement and Prop 13. Until those things are done, California will be hostage to Republican extremists and basically ungovernable.

Rick Perry, the Republican governor of Texas who recently had been flirting with secession , has decided to request help from the tyrannical federal government : SAN ANTONIO – Gov. Rick Perry has asked for 37,430 courses of anti-viral medicine from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention because of the swine flu outbreak. What, the Lone Star State doesn't have it's own Center for Disease Control? Tsk tsk. I hope the folks down there see that being part of Obama's Socialist Tyranny of Mandatory Gay Marriage does come with some benefits.

Your party is rapidly dwindling to laughable insignificance . One thing you could do to lessen slightly my contempt for your party is to allow Sebelius' confirmation to go through. We're facing a potential flu pandemic without a Secretary of Health and Human Services, thanks to your obstruction. And Olympia Snowe (R-Maine): Bet you feel pretty stupid for cutting flu pandemic preparedness out of the stimulus bill. And conventional wisdom is that you're one of the moderates. Sigh. Republicans are human beings. I must keep reminding myself of that.

"Bungalow" is a term that gets thrown around a lot in housing. But what is it, exactly? Jane Powell has an article on the subject in The Berkeley Daily Planet . Her definition: A bungalow is a one or one-and-a-half story house of simple design, expressed structure, built from natural or local materials, with a low-slope roof, overhanging eaves, and a prominent porch, built during the Arts and Crafts period in America (approximately 1900-1930). If it’s two stories it’s no longer a bungalow, though it can still be Arts and Crafts or craftsman (often known in Berkeley as a “brownshingle”). Both our current house and the house we are considering purchasing would qualify as bungalows.

I love how the injured birds perch so dutifully above the plaques explaining their history. Apparently, perching in one place for long periods of time is normal behavior for predatory birds.

OK, we've done some inspections. The house needs foundation work. As in, a new foundation. A bunch of people come over, lift up your house, put it on thingys, jackhammer the old foundation (or, in the case of this crumbly one, just kick it vigorously), build a new foundation, and attach the house to it. There are firms that specialize in this. The engineer thought that this would cost about $50,000. Oh, and it needs chimney work, electrical repairs, a new furnace, some roof work, and some of the kitchen appliances don't work. And that's just the high priority stuff. We're getting a bunch of estimates on Tuesday. They could easily come in at $80K total. Then we're going to present those to the seller and try to get the price reduced. If she does not do so sufficiently, we'll have to cancel our offer. (Since we'd do so during the inspection period, we lose no money except what we've already spent on inspections). So much education in so little time! SO MUC...

Our offer was accepted. Now the inspection period begins... EEEK!

Scene: a smoke filled back-room at Republican National Headquarters. Republican Strategist 1: How will we take back the Senate in 2010? The Democrats are very close to getting a filibuster proof majority! Republican Strategist 2: I know! We'll take a relatively popular, almost-impossible-to-unseat incumbent, Arlen Specter (R-PA), and have him knocked off in a primary by Club For Growth right-winger Pat Toomey! This way, we'll surrender the advantage of popular incumbency and put forward an unknown wingnut in a state that voted for Obama over McCain by 10 points! Other Republicans: Sounds like a fantastic idea! Yglesias : Specter would be basically unbeatable. Toomey, by contrast, could win depending on whether or not a strong candidate emerges against him. But you wouldn’t really bet on it. Pennsylvania’s not the bluest state in the nation, but there’s little evidence that an orthodox conservative can beat an orthodox progressive in a statewide race. Obama beat McCain by ten p...

You know how in your email inbox, the emails you've replied to have that little curled arrow next to them? How come when you click on that arrow, it doesn't take you to the reply you sent? Instead you gotta go dig through your sent items folder. I can't believe that this isn't a standard feature on all email programs.

Thank you very much, Internal Monologue readers. Your ad revenue has got me all of this, and I still have a few dollars left over. Despite the depression, my ad revune rate seems to be increasing even though my readership (i.e. people who stumble in from Google) has been pretty steady. Maybe Google is getting more generous with their revenue sharing, or cleverer at targeting their ads.

Democrat Jane Harman was a leading defender of the warrantless wiretapping done by the Bush administration. Now, she's pissed that her phone conversations were recorded as part of an investigation. Greenwald : So if I understand this correctly -- and I'm pretty sure I do -- when the U.S. Government eavesdropped for years on American citizens with no warrants and in violation of the law, that was " both legal and necessary " as well as " essential to U.S. national security ," and it was the "despicable" whistle-blowers (such as Thomas Tamm) who disclosed that crime and the newspapers which reported it who should have been criminally investigated, but not the lawbreaking government officials. But when the U.S. Government legally and with warrants eavesdrops on Jane Harman , that is an outrageous invasion of privacy and a violent assault on her rights as an American citizen, and full-scale investigations must be commenced immediately to get to the...

I think right-wing nuttery is demographically doomed. But the fact that its lost its grip on mainstream power (outside of certain regional ghettos) means that they are feeling bewildered, angry, and paranoid. Thus, we're seeing an increase in right-wing activity like the recent "teabagging" events. So I happy and worried: happy that right-wing extremism as an electoral strategy is going to be less and less viable. But I'm worried that disempowered right-wing extremists will resort to violence as their political power wanes. Here's a scary thought: What if someone figures out how to make right-wing extremism appealing to minorities in this country? Then we're in big trouble.

Political Animal counts five prominent Republicans who have gone through the ritual of saying something critical about Rush Limbaugh, then subsequently kissing up to him.

I know this is too late, but I'm hereby advocating for the Star Wars intellectual property to be taken away from George Lucas and given to a consortium of fans. They could then hire directors and writers who can actually direct and write. This should have been done before Phantom Menace was made. I'll never forgive Lucas for making Natalie Portman look like a bad actor.

From Sullivan: Sent to you via Google Reader This Used To Be The Future Chino Otsuka makes double portraits : Images of Otsuka as an adult are craftily combined with snaps of the artist as a child, pinched from the family photo album. The resultant composite snapshots are both glaringly literal and astoundingly subtle musings on the contemporary relevance of the self-portrait. More here .

You gotta figure there are some modern-day ninjas who are jealous of all the mindshare that Somali pirates (and intellectual property pirates) are getting these days. There were those "NINJA" loans (no income, job, or assets), but that doesn't really count. So how are the ninjas going to make a comeback?

Ta-Nehisi Coates on Obama's statements about torture: Bearing in mind yesterday's revelations , this really sticks out for me: Mr. Obama condemned what he called a "dark and painful chapter in our history" and said that the interrogation techniques would never be used again. But he also repeated his opposition to a lengthy inquiry into the program, saying that "nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past." I think this is wrong. More than that I think it's dismissive, silly and bordering on insult to any literate human being. In point of fact "spending our time and energy laying blame for the past" is exactly what the justice system does. By Obama's logic murderers would go free in the streets. The real question is not whether you're going to lay blame for the past, but who your going to lay it on, and for which past. What Obama is really saying in this statement is he won't hold this particular...

It's almost too much to really let in. We were a nation of systematic torture , authorized at the highest levels. We knew this already, but the most recent memos make this crystal clear. To not prosecute those who authorized this requires throwing out any semblance of rule of law or moral standing in the world. If any other country did this things to us or our allies, there's no doubt we'd call it torture and demand justice. And I don't want to see a bunch of low-level people thrown to the courts while those at the highest levels go free. I hope the Obama administration resists the urge to cover things up. If Obama does so, he will become an accessory to those crimes. By the way, thanks to everyone who pushed for the release of these memos: in the Obama administraion, in the intelligence community, in the blogosphere, on television, in op-ed pages, in conversations. It was not clear that it was going to happen. Without a push for disclosiure, this would probably not hav...

My friend, Dr. Silvia Bunge, needs children for a research project involving children's cognition. They've got some very promising preliminary results (including significant increases in IQ after an 8-week after school program), but need to recruit more children. Here's the link to their lab . Disclosure: I might be working with the Bunge lab in the near future, so I have an incentive to be nice to them and help them recruit subjects.

UPDATE: Looks like he did . Mr. President, don't be a total douchebag like your predecessor. Release those memos. Stop this state secrets bullshit. Government transparency was something you ran on. Frickin' live up to it. I don't want to have to spend four years or eight years fighting you on this, but I will if I have to. Greenwald (and others) are on to you on these kinds of issues: In the last week alone, the Obama DOJ (a) attempted to shield Bush's illegal spying programs from judicial review by (yet again) invoking the very "state secrets" argument that Democrats spent years condemning and by inventing a brand new "sovereign immunity" claim that not even the Bush administration espoused, and (b) argued that individuals abducted outside of Afghanistan by the U.S. and then "rendered" to and imprisoned in Bagram have no rights of any kind -- not even to have a hearing to contest the accusations against them -- even if they are not Af...

John Cole : [...]why do we have to pay attention to 100K tea-baggers when 10 million anti-Iraq war protesters were considered a focus group ?

The news, from Maniak, Internal Monologue 's rocketry expert: Effective yesterday, NASA declared the end of all shuttle operations not related to missions currently on the manifest. This includes things like manufacturing of spare parts, external tank and booster sets, and any payload not currently manifested. The shuttle operational budget terminates as of Sept 30, 2010, and all the budget previously designated for project continuation activities is now being redirected to an emergency fund that will be used to cover the period from October 1, 2010 to December 31, 2010 in case launch dates slip into this time frame due to delays over the next 18 months. After January 1, 2011, the shuttle program will have a skeletal shutdown-only budget that includes safing and inerting the remaining orbiters, and transport via Shuttle Carrier Aircraft to permanent storage/display. The transfer of shuttle facilities to Project Constellation is already in a slow startup phase. The...

Erika La Tour Eiffel with the building she considers her husband There aren't many, but apparently they do exist : Imagine a world in which people seem hostile while inanimate objects appear friendly – even affectionate. Imagine dreading the touch of another human but longing for a passionate encounter with a large public structure. This is the strange world of the "objectum sexual"– a group of people, mainly women, whose intimate lives revolve around objects with which they say they share romantic and sexual love. As a documentary film-maker passionate about exploring psychological aspects of human nature, I have made films about bigamists, domestic violence and co-dependent anorexic twins. Modern society is a never-ending source of these stories. It is still exceptional for a father to lock up his daughter for 24 years in a cellar, but scratch the surface and it seems that good personal relationships are rare. To fill their emotional needs, people are increasingly t...

Filling in an egregious omission : Question: Paul Simon has a song called “50 Ways To Leave Your Lover” but he only gives us three or four (“Get off the bus, Gus” “Get a new plan, Dan” “Drop off the key, Lee”) which is a bit disappointing given the title. Any help? I’ve got some boyfriend issues to be dealing with here. Don’t let me down! —Diana R. Answer: Diana, we feel your pain. Simon’s song, from 1975’s Still Crazy After All These Years , quotes some mysterious woman as saying there must be 50 ways to leave your lover, allowing lazy songwriter Simon to only offer five ways in the chorus: to “slip out the back, Jack; make a new plan, Stan; you don’t need to be coy, Roy; hop on the bus, Gus; just drop off the key, Lee, and get yourself free.” But what about escape routes for the world’s homosexual Daves? The world’s distraught Margos and emotionally damaged Bills? No worries, relationship-haters, this Non-Expert is happy to help fill the gap ol’ Rhymin’ Simon left 30 years ago (wit...

I've just "syndicated" this blog on my Facebook account. It now appears in the notes section. I'm not exactly sure how this will work, but if it saves me from "double publishing" certain things that would be great. I'm not sure I want every Internal Monologue post showing up on my Facebook friends' pages though. So I'll have to muck around with things a bit. I'm also worried about my bountiful revenue stream (~$10 per month): if everyone reads Internal Monologue on Facebook, who will click on my obnoxious Google Ads?

A rant against Christian celebration of the resurrection: In terms of Christian holidays, I’ve always found Easter to make the least amount of sense. Think about it---the central justification of Christianity is that Christ died for your sins, a giant human sacrifice to buy salvation for anyone who wants it, right? But since Jesus isn’t actually dead, and instead is up and walking around in the space of a long weekend, it’s not much of a sacrifice, is it? His is supposed to be the most important death of all of human history, but actually, it’s the least troubling since it didn’t stick like it does for 100% of everyone else. The resurrection always took the impact of the sacrifice away for me, and I suspect that’s somewhat true for believers, too, who dwell not on images of stones being rolled away or former corpses walking around, but on the image of Christ on the cross. Face it, the resurrection cheapens the whole thing, and reads like it’s tacked on to give people a happy endin...

Quinn hunts for eggs at our neighbor's annual egg hunt. Quinn didn't quite get the whole "collection" concept and would often re-hide the eggs after finding them. But he seemed to have fun and liked the treats inside. He quickly got overwhelmed by all the people though.

I may as well admit that I have been more influenced (as a person) by my childhood readings of Tolkien and Lewis than I have been by any philosophers I read in college and grad school. The events and characters in Narnia and Middle Earth shaped my ideals, my dreams, my goals. Kant just annoyed me. N. D. Wilson via Sullivan . I wasn't just annoyed by Kant; I think I managed to pull something from his dense prose with the help of my college professors. But Kant's creations certainly didn't get incorporated into my personal mythology the way Tolkien's did. Lewis I enjoyed, but somehow it didn't sink in as deep. The possible exception would be C. S. Lewis' Till We Have Faces , which is his best work that I've read.

Just for Mad Latinist, who loves gross things like this...

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart M - Th 11p / 10c Baracknophobia - Obey thedailyshow.com Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis Political Humor And here's a look at Obama's recent trip: The Daily Show With Jon Stewart M - Th 11p / 10c 00Bama - International Man of History thedailyshow.com Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis Political Humor

An email from Dave Arneson's family posted to Grognardia : Shortly after 11pm on Tuesday, April 7th, Dave Arneson passed away. He was comfortable and with family at the time and his passing was peaceful. The Arneson family would like to thank everyone for their support over the last few days, and for the support the entire community has shown Dave over the years. We are in the process of making final arrangements and will provide additional details as we work them out. We will continue to receive cards and letters in Dave's honor. We are planning to hold a public visitation so that anyone wishing to say their goodbye in person has the opportunity to do so. Cards and letters can continue to be sent: Dave Arneson 1043 Grand Avenue Box #257 St. Paul, MN 55105 Visitation will be on April 20th Time: yet to be determined Address: Bradshaw Funeral Home 687 Snelling Avenue South St. Paul, MN 55105

Some Arneson tidbits and reactions: Secrets of the City : I had the pleasure of playing Dungeons and Dragons with Mr. Arneson when I was a boy, at some convention or another, and he struck me as a very decent man who brought a great deal of personality to his games. Huffington Post : "The biggest thing about my dad's world is he wanted people to have fun in life," Weinhagen said. "I think we get distracted by the everyday things you have to do in life and we forget to enjoy life and have fun. "But my dad never did," she said. "He just wanted people to have fun." Geek Dad on Wired : Arneson had to fight to get credit for his contributions, filing multiple lawsuits (later resolved out-of-court) against Gygax over crediting and royalties. He nonetheless did return to TSR in the mid-'80s to work with Gygax again. Following that, he began a second career as an educator, working in several schools with a particular focus on how to use gaming as an...

Dave Arneson in 2002 at GenCon The other founder of Dungeons & Dragons, Dave Arneson, has now passed away : Dave Arneson, co-creator of the original Dungeons & Dragons game, passed away on Tuesday evening, April 7th, after waging one final battle against cancer. In 1969, when Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax first met at GenCon , both were dedicated tabletop wargamers, refighting historical battles with painted miniature armies and fleets. Their first collaboration (along with Mike Carr) was a set of rules for sailing-ship battles called Don't Give Up the Ship! By the early 1970s, Dave's far-ranging interests led him to a unique concept in wargaming -- a wargame where each model represented just one hero instead of many soldiers in an army. That idea in itself wasn't new; "skirmish-style" games had been around for years. What was new were the ideas that the same heroes could be played in a series of games, learning and becoming more powerful with each battl...

From Pandagon . We live in interesting times. There seems to be a rapid collapse of the political power of social conservatism. (The plutocrats seem to be doing just fine, as usual.) This is a good thing, but this collapse is leaving a lot of people confused and dispirited. A lot of ugliness is starting to come out : What’s startling about this is that it didn’t take long for a right wing nut to go off the deep end during the Obama administration. Because Obama offends the right in many more ways that Clinton ever could---being black, being urban, being a health nut, having a really tall wife, etc.---this shouldn’t come as a surprise. It took the right wing years to come up with enough paranoid theories about how evil the Clintons supposedly were before the proper air of non-stop paranoia had been established. But all the paranoid urban legends you could ask for about Obama were established during the campaign. Plus, you have something now that wasn’t around nearly as much during ...

Greenwald via Kos : Note how warped our political culture is: Sen. Dick Durbin was forced to tearfully apologize on the Senate floor for accurately comparing our treatment of detainees at Guantanamo to the techniques used in Soviet gulags and by Gestapo interrogation squads, but those who perpetrated these war crimes have apologized for nothing, remain welcome in decent company, and are still shielded by our Government from all accountability. Greenwald rightly lays into Obama for continuing despicable Bush/Cheney era policies of concealment in this area: So candidate Obama unambiguously vowed to his supporters that he would work to ensure "full accountability" for "past offenses" in surveillance lawbreaking. President Obama, however, has now become the prime impediment to precisely that accountability, repeatedly engaging in extraordinary legal maneuvers to ensure that "past offenses" -- both in the surveillance and torture/rendition realm -- rem...

Ezra Klein quotes Julian Sanchez on the problems with debate in general: Give me a topic I know fairly intimately, and I can often make a convincing case for absolute horseshit. Convincing, at any rate, to an ordinary educated person with only passing acquaintance with the topic. A specialist would surely see through it, but in an argument between us, the lay observer wouldn’t necessarily be able to tell which of us really had the better case on the basis of the arguments alone—at least not without putting in the time to become something of a specialist himself. Actually, I have a plausible advantage here as a peddler of horseshit: I need only worry about what sounds plausible. If my opponent is trying to explain what’s true, he may be constrained to introduce concepts that take a while to explain and are hard to follow, trying the patience (and perhaps wounding the ego) of the audience. I think this difficulty illuminates a lot of the problems with our current political and civic di...

...but I'm posting it anyway:

When it comes to the banks, Obama is calling "Code Blue!" when he should be calling a funeral director and an estate attorney. Inspired by this post on Open Left by Mike Lux

The legislature overrode the governor's veto. Congratulations, Vermont! http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2009_04/017639.php [I sent this from my iPhone, so please excuse any excessive brevity or typographical errors.] --Zachary Drake

A teenager in Virginia was given a two week suspension for taking a birth control pill . It's this kind of stupid that makes me dread letting my son get entangled in the public school system in this country. I hope Albany (or wherever we end up) has a better system. You know, I kind of empathize with the conservative home-schoolers: I don't agree with why they want to take their kids out of the system, but I can share their fear of handing my child over to a system that doesn't reflect our values and doesn't seem created to address our child's needs. To be fair to the school, these kinds of "zero tolerance" policies don't just pop, fully formed, out of the stupid hat. They are encouraged by our national drug criminalization scheme, our litigious culture, our poor handling of adolescence, our over-burdened school system, and probably a bunch of other stuff. Maybe this school needed a "zero tolerance" policy in order to avoid lawsuits or deal ...

The new Israeli cabinet contains two women. A couple Haredi Orthodox newspapers in Israel don't like publishing pictures of women. So they had them digitally erased, or even replaced by men: I want to know how they picked the men who would be honorary cabinet members. Do they have a file of photos of men on hand when they need to replace women? How do the men thus used feel about it? Is it an insult to their masculinity? Or are they proud of their role in keeping the newspaper "female free"? Do they use the same men over and over again so that clever readers know that a particular image is a "beard"? (After reading this comment , I learned that they moved men from the outside of the picture into the positions where the women were.) What did these newspapers do when Golda Meir was prime minister? I would imagine that avoiding publishing her picture would lead to some rather comical situations. Cultures can be very different from each other. I can almost underst...

I don't know how it is that I never read this before. If you're a long time fan of D&D, you'll find it hilarious. The flumph, the gelatinous cube, the lurker above/trapper/stunjelly trio, giant space hamster, flail snail, and owlbear all get the ridicule they richly deserve. There's a sequel article , too.

I am currently on indefinite furlough from my employer, so I've been thinking a lot about what I want my next job to be. I'm happy to say that I've thought of the perfect job for myself: Lead Program Manager for the Humanity 2.0 mandatory software upgrade This would use my project management skills, my cognitive psychology background, my insufferable arrogance, and my conviction that I know what is wrong with the human race.

The more I read about Obama's handling of the financial crisis, the more he sounds like a shill for the financial industry. Paul Krugman and Glenn Greenwald , both of whom were extremely outspoken in their criticism of Bush's policies, have been scathing in their critiques of Geithner's bailout plans. And the close ties between the financial industry and Obama's economic advisors are rather chilling. Dday on Hullabaloo : Here's the story so far: Banks lost a ton of money by making terrible bets based on fanciful notions that housing prices would go up 20% year over year approximately forever. All the while the executives sat on each other's boards and handed out giant bonuses and compensation packages to each other while the financial sector grew essentially out of control. In the process, they used their money and power to effectively buy Capitol Hill and make sure their portion of the economy could keep growing, whether through usurious interest rates, a total...

Here's one I didn't know: "Beat Sweetener". A beat sweetener is a flattering article written about someone in power with the object of getting access to that person later (in order to get scoops or inside information). Here's Atrios : I recently learned what is apparently a term of art in the world of elite pristine journalism. It describes the standard and accepted - and well understood by all involved except the readers - practice of writing sycophantic source-favoring articles based on the idea that such things will buy you access so that later you might be able to be the one to share actual important information with readers. Never fear, dear readers, no blogger ethics panel is necessary for this journalist-approved practice, even if certain uncomfortable facts never quite make to readers... Next time I read a profile of some new government official or CEO or entertainment figure, I'll ask myself "Is this a beat sweetener?"

Combine Democratic dominance of federal government with an economic catastrophe and add a lot of incendiary language from the right wing and things could get ugly very quickly . All those right-wing domestic terrorists that went to sleep during the Bush administration are going to come out in force now. The fact that they are losing the major political battles means they will be more alienated, more radical, and more desperate. We as a culture are going to have to start taking this problem very seriously. I don't even know where to begin.

(via DailyKos ) Dude, this thing looks totally cool. If I'm ever in Cornwall, I'm going to go see it : Jumbo Worm: This 4-foot-long sea worm was devastating coral reef and terrorizing fish at an aquarium in Cornwall, southwestern England, the Daily Mail reported Tuesday. The creature, known as "Barry," devoured bait traps -- hooks and all -- and bit through a 20-pound fishing line before staffers finally managed to capture it. The worm was moved to its own tank. I love that it was acting evil as well as looking evil. Maybe the Monterey Bay Aquarium will get one, and then I wouldn't have to travel so far to see it. Much cooler than a bunch of sea otters (though those are pretty cute). More info here : The creature is covered with nasty bristles that sting and can cause permanent numbness in humans, the newspaper said. It's even dangerous to humans! How awesome is that? (For those who don't know what "Giger-esque" means, look here .)

I signed it. You can, too . Nobody thinks Coleman has any chance of winning. It's widely known that he's just stalling the process to keep Franken out of the Senate to make things more difficult for Democrats. Not cool. It's time the media started calling out Coleman for being a sore loser and ridiculous obstructionist.

Here's his take on passing gay marriage bans : It turns out that you can build a very effective model by including just three variables: 1. The year in which the amendment was voted upon; 2. The percentage of adults in 2008 Gallup tracking surveys who said that religion was an important part of their daily lives; 3. The percentage of white evangelicals in the state. These variables collectively account for about three-quarters of the variance in the performance of marriage bans in different states. The model predicts, for example, that a marriage ban in California in 2008 would have passed with 52.1 percent of the vote, almost exactly the fraction actually received by Proposition 8. Unsurprisingly, there is a very strong correspondence between the religiosity of a state and its propensity to ban gay marriage, with a particular "bonus" effect depending on the number of white evangelicals in the state. Marriage bans, however, are losing ground at a rate of slightly less th...

The governor will probably veto, but they may have enough votes to override .

Finacial Industry: "Hey, let's just buy each others crappy assets using Geithner's plan. We'll end up with the same amount of stuff, but further losses would be paid for by the government! Heads we win, tails taxpayers loose! No downside for us! Whoohooo!" (via Kevin Drum ). Joe Weisenthal at The Business Insider (via The Wonk Room ): Banks buying assets from each other to inflate their books has nothing to do with "price discovery" or any such nonsense. It's all about using taxpayer money to create bids that are higher than what the market currently prices those assets at. And if it turns out those bids were too high and the cash flows never materialize then, oh well, it's the taxpayer left holding the bag. See also this . These guys are like me and an exploitable set of role playing game rules: they zero in on unforseen implications of the system and take advantage of them in the biggest possible way. Of course if there's a way to get fr...

The Economist decides to open a theme park : AS PART of a strategy designed to broaden the revenue base, leverage content over new platforms and promote The Economist brand to a young and dynamic audience, The Economist Group is delighted to announce the development of a public-entertainment facility that combines the magic of a theme park with the excitement of macroeconomics. After six months of negotiations with the British government, The Economist Group can confirm that Econoland will be built on a former industrial estate in East London, close to the beating heart of the City and thus to a large potential market of financial-sector employees. Thanks to issues relating to its previous use, the site has been acquired at an advantageous price. Most of the toxic wastes have been cleared and levels of carcinogens appear to have returned to normal. High unemployment in the area will only increase the facility's attractions, as former City workers seek to recapture some of the exc...

Mad Latinist sent me a link to this over Facebook . Turns out it was an April Fool's joke (which I fell for; I don't know if Mad Latinist did or not). But they (ThinkGeek) got overwhelming interest and are now trying to get permission to actually make this product : ATTN Tauntaun Fanatics! Due to an overwhelming tsunami of requests from YOU THE PEOPLE, we have decided to TRY and bring this to life. We have no clue if the suits at Lucasfilms will grant little ThinkGeek a license, nor do we know how much it would ultimately retail for. But if you are interested in ever owning one of these, click the link below and we'll try! I hope Lucasfilm lets them do it. Why not? It's basically free licensing money for them. There's all kinds of stupid Star Wars stuff already out there. If they actually make this sleeping bag, I'll get one for Quinn.

From the recently released decision allowing gay marriage in Iowa, as quoted by Marc Ambinder : We begin with the County's argument that the goal of the same-sex marriage ban is to ensure children will be raised only in the optimal milieu. In pursuit of this objective, the statutory exclusion of gay and lesbian people is both under-inclusive and over-inclusive. The civil marriage statute is under-inclusive because it does not exclude from marriage other groups of parents--such as child abusers, sexual predators, parents neglecting to provide child support, and violent felons--that are undeniably less than optimal parents. Such under-inclusion tends to demonstrate that the sexual-orientation-based classification is grounded in prejudice or "overbroad generalizations about the different talents, capacities, or preferences" of gay and lesbian people, rather than having a substantial relationship to some important objective. See Virginia, 518 U.S. at 533, 116 S. Ct. at 2275, ...

This won't end well: A once-obscure accounting rule that infuriated banks, who blamed it for worsening the financial crisis, was changed Thursday to give banks more discretion in reporting the value of mortgage securities. The change seems likely to allow banks to report higher profits by assuming that the securities are worth more than anyone is now willing to pay for them. But critics objected that the change could further damage the credibility of financial institutions by enabling them to avoid recognizing losses from bad loans they have made. Critics also said that since the rules were changed under heavy political pressure, the move compromised the independence of the organization that did it, the Financial Accounting Standards Board . During the financial crisis, the market prices of many securities, particularly those backed by subprime home mortgages, have plunged to fractions of their original prices. That has forced banks to report hundreds of billions of dollars in lo...