Many tabs are open on my browser. Now I must kill them.

* Ross has written two excellent posts correcting Christopher Hitchens. Here is the first and here is the second. I’m not a Catholic, and I’m certainly not an expert on the abuse scandals that are rocking the Church. I am, however, very wary of feeding frenzies and I’m glad that Ross is on the case.

* Marc Ambinder has written a fascinating, eye-opening account of how he managed to beat obesity.

* Tyler Cowen has highlighted new research from Jesse Shapiro and Matthew Gentzkow, two of my favorite economists, on the dynamics of “epistemic closure,” as Julian has put it. Cowe highlights an interesting finding:

Visitors of extreme conservative sites such as rushlimbaugh.com and glennbeck.com are more likely than a typical online news reader to have visited nytimes.com.

* Ezra has a splendid interview with Andy Stern, but it raises a burning question: if Stern doesn’t build the new model labor union he evokes, who will? Suffice it to say, I don’t think the following is a good characterization of the status quo.

I think the labor movement needs to be more industry based, more sectoral based, and more focused on the needs of workers. I don’t think it can be simply as based on work site by work site, work rule by work rule, as opposed to industry by industry. In SEIU, in places like New York or California, we’ve built a different kind of partnership in health care. When St. Vincent’s Hospital closes, there’s a way for workers who lose their job in one hospital, in our labor-management partnership, to be retrained to move to another partnership. We take a lot of the employment costs off individual employers and share them amongst a group of employers. So I do feel like trying to figure out how to partner with employers, appreciating that it takes two to tango, is important. Our work has always been best when we try to make our employers successful and we share in that success.

* Neil Irwin is fast-emerging as one of the best, most straight-shooting reporters at a major newspaper, as evidenced by this report on how we should think about the U.S. economy’s near-term trajectory. If Irwin had a dedicated blog, I’d read it.

* Some of you will hate this, but Howard Gleckman has a pretty intriguing idea at Kaiser Health News for how to pay for long-term care:

What if your state, in effect, helped you turn unused home equity into cash to pay for the care you need when you become old and frail? To sweeten the deal, what if the state let you have easier access to Medicaid to supplement your own long-term care contributions?

You could use the money to make your home wheelchair accessible, or pay for a special van, or even for adult day care or that home health aide. You’d have far more flexibility than with regular Medicaid. In return for this upfront cash, your heirs would repay the state with modest interest after you die, usually by selling your house. The state wins by saving the cost of caring for you in a nursing home. You win by easily accessing the equity that could allow you to stay at home.

Definitely worth thinking about.

Much more tomorrow, I hope.