"You talk to people, these small online startups, as Len Downie and I did, the optimism is absolutely infectious. Even journalists who have left or been fired from or been let go from traditional mainstream organizations now are working at lower wages for some of these organizations and they are grinning ear to ear. They have never had such a good time." -Michael Schudson, academic sociologist and faculty member of the Journalism School at Columbia University, in an interview conducted at Yale, as quoted on media's unhappy pallbearer Jim Romenesko. Well! READ MORE

2008 Pulitzer Prize winner Steven Pearlstein warns today in his Washington Post column that he is going to go "over the line." This sounds exciting! But actually he just asserts some basic facts in this bullshit, fabricated, ridiculous and saddening summer-long political propaganda fest over healthcare. For instance! "The recent attacks by Republican leaders and their ideological fellow-travelers on the effort to reform the health-care system have been so misleading, so disingenuous, that they could only spring from a cynical effort to gain partisan political advantage. By poisoning the political well, they've given up any pretense of being the loyal opposition. They've become political terrorists, willing to say or do anything to prevent the country from reaching a consensus on one of its most serious domestic problems. "

Man has always loved his airplanes. But what about when the airplanes say "NO MORE"? (*) MSNBC will teach you, in an hour-long intensive fright video airing this weekend, to understand the terror of airplanes and why they want to kill us! Why must we all die in the sky? In 2008, there was one plane crash for every eight million take-offs. Possibly MSNBC should be reserving its TERROR DOCUMENTARIES for adult-onset diabetes?

According to the Global Language Monitor, "a Web site that uses a math formula to estimate how often words are created," the English language added its millionth word at 5:22 this morning. Paul J.J. Payack, "president and chief word analyst for the Global Language Monitor," acknowledges that the millionth-word estimation is actually the basis of an imprecise analysis designed mainly to gain attention and traffic, but that it shows the depth and complexity of our constantly-evolving language. The word, by the way, is "scrotmunch," which refers to the licking of the scrotum or those who engage in such activity.

You know, I lean left, but I consider myself a fairly rational person who does a decent job of not being blinded by his biases in the face of overwhelming evidence which contradicts my own political beliefs. So I saw this thing on Reason-a publication I enjoy even though there's a lot of it with which I disagree-about how the "tea parties" were a lot more successful than those on the left were prepared to give credit for. And I thought to myself, okay, maybe I was wrong, I should read it and see what they have to say. READ MORE

A famous Masters and Johnson study cited as proof that homosexuals can be "converted" into penis-in-vagina practitioners turns out to be pretty much bullshit. This should be a difficult blow for proponents of the conversion theory, whose previously touted methods of "constant prayer," "personality-altering medication," and "marrying Liza Minelli" have all proved to be similar failures.