Guess who’s having a baby?

(no, not us. Congratulations, Mer and BJ!)

And while I have no link, I may have other congrats to pass on — maybe it’ll rear its head in comments…!

Babies! EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

EDIT: Please see comments below.

Here’s something I can’t believe I missed (and from the ol’ Alma Mater, too):

Poll: Anti-government anger spurs 9/11 conspiracy belief

More than a third of the American public suspects that federal officials assisted in the 9/11 terrorist attacks or took no action to stop them so the United States could go to war in the Middle East, according to a new Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll.

The national survey of 1,010 adults also found that anger against the federal government is at record levels, with 54 percent saying they “personally are more angry” at the government than they used to be.

Widespread resentment and alienation toward the national government appears to be fueling a growing acceptance of conspiracy theories about the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Suspicions that the 9/11 attacks were “an inside job” _ the common phrase used by conspiracy theorists on the Internet _ quickly have become nearly as popular as decades-old conspiracy theories that the federal government was responsible for President John F. Kennedy’s assassination and that it has covered up proof of space aliens.

Seventy percent of people who give credence to these theories also say they’ve become angrier with the federal government than they used to be.

Thirty-six percent of respondents overall said it is “very likely” or “somewhat likely” that federal officials either participated in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon or took no action to stop them “because they wanted the United States to go to war in the Middle East.”

Emphasis mine, obviously. Other creeptastic findings from the poll: 16 percent of respondents (!) think the towers were blown up with explosives, not a plane crash; 12 percent think a cruise missile was the cause of destruction at the Pentagon. Understand that in a poll sample of 1,010, that’s 161 and 121 people, respectively.

Found all of this via this even more creeptastic story about 9/11 conspiracy theories and the people propogating them — including former members of the Bush administration.

We are becoming a nation of Oliver Stones.

Overcoming the — shock? surprise? shrug? — of Steve Irwin’s untimely death, and I came across this:

People have taken me to task for the tone of my Irwin post, fine. But Andy’s one-line link to the news had a tagline that’s haunted me all day: “died doing what he loved.” It’s a statement, rationale, explanation that’s meant, I guess, to help make sense of an otherwise senseless, random event.

I wanted to type ‘accident,’ but the whole point is that it’s not referring to some banal everyday activity like crossing the street or a sudden illness like stage 2 pancreatic cancer, or even something stupidly avoidable like standing under a tree in a lightning storm. Beyond the basics, though, we regularly put ourselves at varying degrees of risk doing “what we love” whether that’s our jobs, our hobbies, our compulsions, or our passions. And when that risk-reward calculation goes south, it’s not just we who pay the price, it’s our families.

So, add “sick with guilt” to that list of options, above.

Oh my goodness.

(YouTube / Ohio politics / don’t watch without a sense of humor)

For those of you who didn’t see it, the very best part of the Emmys from Sunday night: Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert presenting the award for Best Reality Series.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNMBbzx6JKY]

‘Tis a pity, matey, that I do not live in Iowa’s First Congressional District, and therefore do not have the opportunity to cast my ballot in November for James Hill, Pirate.

[via David Weigel, guestblogging over at Sullivan‘s

In a confession that will surprise absolutely no one who’s ever met me for more than five minutes, the first album I ever owned was WEIRD AL IN 3-D. Although I spent a lot of time in choir and music class during elementary school, I’m fairly certain that everything I know about singing I learned from “One More Minute” off of DARE TO BE STUPID. Oh, how I love that man.

Thus and so, the internet bestows upon me the gift of a new Weird Al single, “Don’t Download This Song“, all about the evils of music piracy:

Weird Al Yankovic – Don’t Download This Song (mp3)

God bless Weird Al.