It's been a long time since I've written a Questions column, but now that we have so many new contributors and commenters, I think it's about time we get to know each other a bit better.

Alas, now that online poker has sapped my soul and absconded with my muse to a faraway island, I am forced to look to Cosmo magazine for inspiration.

I've been a very bad dagblogger of late, but I'm full of good excuses for my badness. First, there was the whole engagement to plan and pull off (and already a fair amount of wedding madness), and then right after that I had to help plan my brother's 40th birthday party, which included a week-long visit from the folks (a surprise to my brother).

What a shock. A reporter (fearing for his own job, perhaps?) asked White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs if the potential imminent closure of the venerable Boston Globe calls for yet another government bailout, this time to save the flailing newspaper industry.

First of all, let me just say how awesome dagblog has been of late. In the past few days, we've had fascinating posts and reader discussions about Sri Lanka, California healthcare, incipient deflation, Twitter's raison d'etre, NSA wiretapping, CIA torturing, etc. etc.

I often wish we had more bloggers, a larger audience and even more active commenters, but the folks we do have are so good I worry that if that were so all we'd end up with would be a disappointing dilution in the strength of our output and our community.