Did I have you for a moment?
GROUNDHOG DAY AND PAYOLA: Can you crack college columnist Melody Joy Kramer's code?
THE BRAVERY recently won the BBC's annual Critics' Poll and are generating some buzz on music blogs. You can hear some of their vintage 80s-U2-Cure-New Orderish sound at the band's site.
THE KINGS OF CONVENIENCE are profiled at Flagpole.
ON THE PITCHFORK: former Pavement frontman Stephen Malkmus is set to release a new album in May.
BIRTHDAYS: Don Everly has turned 68. The late Ayn Rand would have turned 100. Geddy Lee probably celebrated both of them.
BPOC: Apple's iPod is the most popular music player on campus, which is a problem when it's Microsoft's campus.
ARE WE BECOMING CYBORGS? Ann Althouse blogs that her car affects her personality. Wired quotes an academic suggesting that your iPod becomes an extension of your memory and your self.
BATTLEBOTS: This spring, the United States armed forces are expected to deploy 18 Talon robots to Iraq. The semi-autonomous machines will be capable of firing rifles, machine guns, grenade launchers, and rockets with better accuracy than human soldiers. In development is the R-Gator, built by IRobot, which will use off-the-shelf robotics to serve as an unmanned scout or “point man,” guard a perimeter, do reconnaissance, or haul supplies up to 1,400 pounds guided by GPS.
ROBOTS, PART 3: The Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Project Agency has granted a contract worth at least 400,000 dollars to two professors who are trying to build a machine that can learn by reading.
ACTION FIGURE HOSTAGE UPDATE: Cody tells his story.
MIXING BUSINESS WITH PLEASURE: The New York Post reports that American workers have found a way to cope with the stress of Iraq and the uncertain economy — office romances, which have surged 25 percent in the last two years. Oddly enough, the President did not take credit for increased hijinx atop the office copier in his Wednesday night address: “My Fellow Americans, though we have had much hard work to do these past years, the State of the Union is horny!”
SPEAKING OF WHICH, THE STATE OF THE UNION address (on the off-chance that you found something else to watch or do Wednesday night) can be read in full at NPR. The Democratic response was tougher for the search engines to find — at least right after the speech — but I found it at the Omaha World-Herald.
ARE BLOGGERS JOURNALISTS? Do they deserve press protections? Two prominent bloggers of differing politics were asked these questions by The Christian Science Monitor, which also looks at the question of whether bloggers should be protected by laws that give journalists a privilege to protect confidential sources.
IMHO, the answers to those questions are not difficult. Are bloggers journalists? Sometimes, but not often, yet. Do they deserve press protections? Yes. Journalists, bloggers and everyone else should enjoy the same rights to free speech and freedom of the press. The First Amendment protects freedom of the press because the Founders were against the colonial system which required that the press be licensed by the government. Legislatures and courts should not become involved in deciding who is “the press,” but that is what would happen if “the press” has greater rights than you or I.
ARROGANCE AT THE ASSOCIATED PRESS: In a semi-related story, the AP announces it will provide a blog to its premium clients in a tone that mocks blogs as junk journalism. Did it occur to anyone at the AP that this might not be the tone to strike one day after being hoaxed by a terror gang's picture of an action figure?Probably not, sadly.
BOB GELDOF: The former Boomtown Rat and Band-Aid organizer complains that the media has confused the roles of politicians and celebrities and has choice words about visiting Africa: “More often than not, it bores me profoundly – the pace of change is far too slow, and Africans excuse their own complicity in exactly the same way as our politicians.”
THE SLITS reunite (sort of). Reissues and tour to follow.
MICHAEL STIPE tells Blender way more than you want to know about him.
JOHN PERRY BARLOW, a lyricist for the Grateful Dead and co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation — a cyberspace civil liberties group — told the World Social Forum (an annual protest against the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland) that poor nations can't solve their problems unless they stop paying expensive software licensing fees. “Already, Brazil spends more in licensing fees on proprietary software than it spends on hunger,” said Barlow.
GEORGE STEPHANOPOLOUS AND TED KOPPEL switching shows? Or is it a celebrity edition of Trading Spaces?
MTV UNDER FIRE: The Parents' Television Center — a group responsible for many of the indecency complaints lodged with the FCC over the past year — has issued a report accusing MTV of peddling smut to teens. MTV called the report unfair, saying it ignored the network's public service efforts, such as its Emmy-winning Choose or Lose campaign during last year's presidential race.
That is as lame a defense as Hugh Hefner telling everone about the great articles in Playboy. MTV would have been better off to note that the PTC studied the channel's Spring Break coverage. This is not regular MTV programming. Moreover, most of the raciness of MTV's Spring Break coverage is showing partying college students. MTV could have replied that the Parents Television Center should be concerned about the parenting that led to those displays instead of the fact that MTV televised them.
TERI HATCHER UPDATE: On an upcoming Primetime Live, the Desperate Housewife tells Diane Sawyer, “I breast-fed for two and a half years. I mean you don’t want to see me out of my bra — that’s why I haven’t had sex in however many years and I’m shy about the whole thing!” Hey, she cannot call the whole “spectacular” thing into question without offering proof. That is simply unacceptable.
NANOTECH: Extending battery life for cellphones.
DAVID BOWIE encourages his fans to mash-up his new material with his classics.