Internal Monologue

This is frickin' hilarious. A cut above the usual high standards for a Daily Show/Colbert Report clip, and a tour-de-force performance by Jon Stewart:

I regard it as one of my moral duties to respond whenever I see players of Dungeons & Dragons used as some sort of rhetorical shorthand for immaturity or social ineptitude. In this thread on Rod Dreher's blog , he asks "Why are there no old Randians?" A commenter responds: For the same reason there are no old Dungeons and Dragons players - eventually they find someone to date and what with the new experience of intimate human contact and socialization, their previous hobby sort of falls by the wayside. Except, as Sharon noted above, when two hobbyists hook up and reinforce each other. To which I responded: I must, once again, correct some notions about the players of Dungeons & Dragons. I'm 35, married, have a 3-year-old son, and I play D&D regularly. Most of the people I play with are in similar situations. While many people did stop playing Dungeons & Dragons after its fadish burst of mainstream popularity in the mid-1980's, I think D&D

The right wing managed to chase the Republican nominee out of the race, thus throwing a usually reliable Republican seat to the Democrats. Let us hope they do this a lot in 2010. The Republican civil war continues. They did pick up governorships in New Jersey and Virginia, and the Maine gay marriage vote looks like it may go the wrong way. Washington state kept its civil unions by a very narrow margin. What does this mean for 2010 and2012? Pretty much nuthin'.

Senator Lieberman (Lieberman for CT-CT) says he'll join the Republican filibuster of Senate health care bill if it includes a public option: "I told Senator Reid that I'm strongly inclined--i haven't totally decided, but I'm strongly inclined--to vote to proceed to the health care debate, even though I don't support the bill that he's bringing together because it's important that we start the debate on health care reform because I want to vote for health care reform this year. But I also told him that if the bill remains what it is now, I will not be able to support a cloture motion before final passage. Therefore I will try to stop the passage of the bill." There are two procedural issues at play here. Most people think of a filibuster as a minority blocking passage of a bill that's already been debated ad nauseum on the Senate floor. That's the most standard filibuster. But on major legislation, it's become more common for the min

I'm going to go out on a limb here and predict that before the 2014 mid-terms, the Republican party coalition will split, with the conservative wing going one way and the fundamentalist wing going another way. (Note that I'm using "conservative" in an Andrew Sullivan way rather than a Sarah Palin way.) This could happen in one of two ways: either the fundamentalist wing will solidify its control of the GOP, forcing the conservatives to set up their own party, take over a third party, or become Democrats (as many have already done). Or the fundamentalist wing will break off and take over the Conservative Party or form their own party. I sort of think the latter is more likely, as the right-wing movement thrives on its image as outsiders and insurgents (even when it simultaneously controls the government). Why do I think this? Two things are prompting me. The first is the special election in New York's 23rd congressional district : A three-way Congressional race in

There are two more chairs and 3 leaves to the table, not pictured. I love having a dining room table (and sitting at the head of it) a lot more than I thought I would.

Photo by Chris Jordan There's a huge region of the Pacific Ocean that's full of floating plastic garbage. Albatrosses pick up the plastic, thinking it's food, and feed it too their chicks. The chicks die. The plastic in these photos was apparently not moved. It's hideous to see. (Here's a video on the subject of all the plastic in the Ocean.)