Misc.

* Ezra Klein argues Nancy Pelosi is playing three-dimensional chess.

* "Tea Party" is now a registered party in Florida. Excelsior! The sky's the limit.

* John Hodgman now has a daily podcast.

* 40 House Democrats are now threatening to vote no on the health care conference bill unless Stupak is removed.

* Number of Ph.D.’s hired last year to “develop” carrot sticks for McDonald’s: 45. Is this on the usual job list? Interviews at MLA?

* Also at Harper's: Number of U.S. universities that have a Taco Bell Distinguished Professorship of Fast Service: just one. That's the tragedy.

Friday!

* Can't-miss upcoming events at Duke: a Sun Ra talk and accompanying art exhibit.

* Glenn Beck, art critic. Olbermann critiques the critic.

* This morning John Hodgman accidentally tweeted his cell phone number to all 82,000 of his Twiter followers.

* Ten sci-fi ways to change the climate.

* Turns out the White House drafting its own health-care reform bill. Steve Benen speculates as to what might be in it.

* Krugman on the causes of the Great Recession. Discussion at MetaFilter.

* MetaFilter also has your police brutality outrage of the day.

Hodgman at tonight's Radio & Television Correspondents Dinner: Part 1, Part 2. UPDATE: It's by no means a full Colbert, but there is a remarkable moment Colbert-like near the end:

You are clearly not exactly the person we hoped you would be. And perhaps it was wrong and impractical and unrealistic of us to lay such hopes upon you.

Still not sure whether the "Colbert" was pulled on Obama or on his disenchanted supporters. I think both.

Somewhere in the gap between "appointment TV" and "well-developed narrative" lies this week's Battlestar Galactica, which tied up so many loose ends at such a frenetic pace I hardly know where to begin. Couldn't some of this have been spread out, you know, over the last few seasons? And couldn't the exposition have been less of a ham-fisted contrivance?

[coconut falls on head] I remember everything!

Don't even get me started on the inevitable introduction of [SPOILER] another final Cylon mystery [/SPOILER]. Why, Gods, why?

Overall, it's (the start) of a decent series mythology, wrapped inside an absolutely ludicrous sense of plot. Even a pro like Dean Stockwell could barely sell it. John Hodgman, however, owned the screen...

As befits a gray-haired eminence, I have recently fallen in love with episodes of This American Life, which I now download and listen to constantly. Using a number of "Best Of" websites, I've had great results with Act V, Fiasco!, Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time, and the two most recent shows on the economy (1, 2), with eight more episodes waiting on my iPod.

The best one I've listened to yet is naturally Superpowers, just wall-to-wall awesome with appearances from Chris Ware, John Hodgman, Zora, and Jonathan Morris from the Gone but Not Forgotten blog—and best of all it turned me on to this very early Chris Ware story once hosted on TAL's website. If you've never heard one of the *really good* TAL episode, start here.

John Hodgman talks about his long history of contact with the aliens. Via Biology in Science Fiction.

It sounds like the setup for a lame joke, but Jon Stewart and John Hodgman draw on reports of al Qaeda application forms for some actually very funny jokes.