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.

Happy Saturday. You've earned it.

* On the Yankee payroll. Via Barking Up the Wrong Tree.

In 2002, the Yankees spent $17 million more in payroll than any other team.

In 2003, the Yankees spent $35 million more in payroll than any other team.

In 2004, the Yankees spent $57 million more in payroll than any other team. I mean, it’s ridiculous from the start but this is pure absurdity. Basically, this is like the Yankees saying: “OK, let’s spend exactly as much as the second-highest payroll in baseball. OK, we’re spending exactly as much. And now … let’s add the Oakland A’s. No, I mean let’s add their whole team, the whole payroll, add it on top and let’s play some ball!”

In 2005, the Yankees spent $85 million more than any other team. Not a misprint. Eight five.

In 2006, the Yankees spent $74 million more than any other team.

In 2007, the Yankees spent $40 million more than any other team — cutbacks, you know.

In 2008, the Yankees spent $72 million more than any other team.

In 2009, the Yankees spent $52 million more than any other team.

Congrats again on that World Series.

* Ryan recommends Paul Fry's literary theory course from Yale Open Courses. I've downloaded all the lectures and they'll be joining me on my run tomorrow.

* First, Let’s Kill All the Credit Default Swaps. Related: an NPR interview on The Greatest Trade Ever, which tells the story of how a middle-of-the-road hedge fund manager made billions during the financial collapse.

* Al Gore, revolutionary.

When making his Oscar-winning 2006 documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, Gore arguably had it easy: it's fairly straightforward to grip an audience when you're portraying scenes of apocalyptic destruction. The new book pulls off a considerably more impressive feat. It focuses on solving the crisis, yet manages to be absorbing on a topic that is all too often – can we just come clean about this, please? – crushingly boring. Importantly, it seeks to enlist readers as political advocates for the cause, rather than just urging them to turn down the heating. "It's important to change lightbulbs," he says, in a well-burnished soundbite, "but more important to change policies and laws." Or perhaps to break laws instead: peaceful occupations of the kind witnessed recently in the UK, he predicts, are only going to become more widespread. "Civil disobedience has an honourable history, and when the urgency and moral clarity cross a certain threshold, then I think that civil disobedience is quite understandable, and it has a role to play. And I expect that it will increase, no question about it." People sometimes express incredulity that Gore, who was groomed for the presidency almost since birth, seems so resolved that he'll never return to electoral politics. But here's a vivid example of the benefits of life on the outside: how many serving politicians would feel able to come so close to urging people to commit trespass?

A friend reminds me that Al Gore was elected President of the United States 9 years ago today.

* And Barbara Ehrenreich's new book argues that positive thinking is destroying America.

Michael Sandel's famous Harvard course, "Justice," is being broadcast this year online.

Iain (M.) Banks's new novel, Transition, is being podcast for free on iTunes.

Even if you think my periodic endorsements of This American Life are just so much hot air, you should really give a listen to this week's podcast, "Mistakes Were Made." Act 1 on the disastrous birth of the cryogenic movement is a great listen, and the William Carlos Williams spoofs in the second act are a good time too.

For those who aren't already regular radio or podcast listeners, it's worth noting that this week's This American Life is another good show on the economy and the banking crisis. Until the next episode goes up over the weekend you can download this one for free; the previous two installments, The Giant Pool of Money and Another Frightening Show on the Economy, you've got to pay for you can stream for free but have to pay to download. (Thanks, Eric!)

The "I Should Be Writing" podcast has an interview with Kim Stanley Robinson this week that's pretty good, though you have to be patient through some lengthy preliminary material. (Via Boing Boing.) It has to be said that KSR is extremely generous with his time; we're actually in the process of interviewing him ourselves for our "Ecology and Ideology" issue of Polygraph, due out sometime (we hope) early in 2010.

Poli-Sci-Fi Radio took my Urtexts posts from Sunday (1, 2) and ran with it on the show last week. The podcast (free!) is here; the conversation about SF and my post starts about 25 minutes in. Who knew so many of us had once been Star Trek geeks?

Late notice, but I'll be on the Poli-Sci-Fi Radio podcast again this week, sometime around the 5 PM hour.

Closing a few open tabs.

* The New York Times has an article on Fermi problems and the importance of intuition in mathematics. (There's a game.) (Via Boing Boing.) Kottke links to some such calculations at 3quarksdaily, saying they used to be part of the interview process of Microsoft and Google.

* Roger Ebert explains why some people say he gives movies too many stars.

* The new season of the Ricky Gervais podcast is out.

* More radio: an episode of This American Life from May that explains the origins of the mortgage crisis.

* And Bill Gates is investing heavily in algae fuel. We're saved!

That episode of Poli-Sci-Fi Radio I guested on is now online. I come on about halfway through the show, and in twenty or thirty minutes there's only two or three things I regret saying. A new record!

I'm about to be on Poli-Sci-Fi Radio, around 5 pm. Sorry for the late notice, but the podcast will be archived at the site around tomorrow...

Thursday joke remainders.

* An intellectual was on a sea voyage when a big storm blew up, causing his slaves to weep in terror. "Don’t cry," he consoled them, "I have freed you all in my will." Old jokes.

* And John McCain's problem with old jokes, blogged here the other day, is actually getting some media attention: Ben Smith wrote it up at the Politico this week.

* Ricky Gervais has announced on his This Side of the Truth filming blog that Karl Pilkington has finally agreed to a fourth and presumably final series of The Ricky Gervais Show podcast.