Long time no blog

Helloooo... Anyone left?

I've been checking those Sitemeter blog traffic reports every week and watching sadly as everyone wandered away ("nothin' to see here"), but the long dry spell could not be helped. School, work, moving...

However, my papers are turned in, the grant deadline at work has come and gone (and the portion on which I've been working feverishly for the past few months turned out not to even have been necessary at this juncture; but I'm not bitter...), and the Ten Year Move (that's how long we lived in the old place) has mercifully come to a close. The move, in fact, took 10 long days; isn't that symbolic? And it would have taken even longer were it not for the assistance of some of the best friends in the world - who gave up their long holiday weekend in order to help us (including my co-blogger, abc): unending, eternal thanks to all of them! The new house looks a bit like we backed a dump truck up to it and poured the contents in through the roof, which - come to think of it - is more or less what we did. But these wonderful people even tried to help us organize. Many, many thanks to all of them!

The forced news abstention during this too-busy time has been quite good for the soul, I must say, but I've saved up a few things that simply must be shared. I promise also to update and clean up the links over on the sidebar this week.

First, I thought this Eric Alterman post was one of his best in a long time:

...Call me shrill, ideological, or whatever you like, but I think we’re losing our Constitution, our civil liberties, and in many significant respects, our country. When future historians look back on this period, they will wonder, most of all, I think, how we let it go without a fight.

Please read it all!

Second, I suppose the media will shrug off this news just as blithely as they've shrugged every administration attack on science and health realities.

Third, it has been fascinating to "watch" as the Downing Street Memo revealed by the UK Times was so effectively buried by our Braindead Media (Think Progress is probably letting them off a little too easily with this tagline; some of this is outright complicity). When I "googled" it the other day, there wasn't a single major news outlet linking to the story -- all of the first hits linked to blogs and activist sites! The Christian Science Monitor virtually pronounced it dead on arrival in the U.S. But it lives. Go here and help keep it alive!

Finally, via Sirotablog, Bernie Sanders wonders what outrage means anymore. It's good stuff.