JAYHAWKS OLSON AND LOURIS REUNITE IN AMES, IOWA: Why did I have to read this from Reuters!? Next time I come through town, heads will roll!
KINGS OF LEON: PC people (i.e., non-Mac people) can listen to a stream of their new disc at VH1.
SHINE ON, YOU CRAZY DIAMONDS: The Guardian asks: “Why do depressed, drug-addled loners make such irresistible rock stars?”
JEFF TWEEDY talks to Fort Luaderdale's Sun-Sentinel about the lack of progress of humankind, technology as an artisitc impulse and surrealist influences on his work.
BRAD PITT: I previously noted that Brad had been seen with a model; she claims she turned him down, once after she accepted a plane ticket to New York. She also added that Pitt spoke about Angelina Jolie “like she was a goddess.”
CBS MEMO SCANDAL: The independent report commissioned by CBS to investigate how 60 Minutes Wednesday relied on unauthenticated memos in a story about President Bush's Air National Guard service appears to be leading to a confrontation. Executive producer Josh Howard and two other CBS staffers—his top deputy, Mary Murphy, and CBS News senior vice president Betsy West— were asked to resign, but have refused to do so. According to the New york Observer, Howard, Murphy and West have all hired lawyers; all three remain CBS employees and collect weekly salaries. There are also questions remaining about the investigation, which excluded recording devices or transcripts of interviews with the 66 people who were involved in the segment.
EDUCATION BLOGGING: The second Carnival of Education is already online.
CULT OF THE iPod: Gawker notes that CNBC “Money Honey” Maria Bartiromo has been taken by the Pods. She's one of 22 million pod people — though that figure includes competing MP3 players.
STEREOGUM points to a list of legal downloads from “newish and upcoming albums.”
SLEATER-KINNEY begs its fans not to download promo copies of their forthcoming disc.
WHEN GOOD NEWS FEELS BAD: Former Spy magazine editor Kurt Anderson writes in New York Magazine that he “disagree[s] with the Bush administration politically, temperamentally, and ontologically most of the time,” but thinks that liberals should root for success in Iraq.
ARE 50 PERCENT OF BANKRUPTCIES HEALTH RELATED? Todd Zywicki looks at the study that prompted such headlines and concludes that the estimate cannot be supported based on what that study actually examined.
“DOGS” FETCH BIG MONEY: Two rare paintings from Cassius Marcellus Coolidge's 1903 series of “Dogs Playing Poker” paintings were auctioned for 590,400 dollars. Although Coolidge's name is not commonly remembered, the auction house believes his images are “permanently seared” into the American conscience. The sale was part of Doyle New York's annual Dogs in Art Auction, which coincides each year with the Westminster Kennel Club dog show.
THE KYOTO ACCORD, which aims to curb the air pollution blamed for global warming, came into force Wednesday. Rob Lyons writes that as long as the climate change debate is fuelled by politics, the science will remain up in the air. Lyons notes that several scientists associated with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change or otherwise sympathetic to the global warming thesis are alarmed at the politicization of the issue.
…AND YOU MAY ASK YOURSELF, “HOW DID I GET HERE?” The Association for Computing Machinery plans to announce Wednesday that Vinton G. Cerf and Robert E. Kahn will receive the 2004 A. M. Turing Award — widely considered to be the computing field's equivalent of the Nobel Prize — for creating the Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol, or TCP/IP, a set of standards that define how data moves over the internet.
HAD ENOUGH OF JAMIE FOXX YET? That question was posed in a New York Post article arguing that while Foxx “has been universally acclaimed for his performance as Ray Charles in last year's biopic 'Ray,' his shameless campaigning for an Oscar has become draining to watch.” Let me me hear you say, “Yeah!”
AND WHERE ARE THEY NOW, THE LITTLE PEOPLE OF… STONEHENGE? Perhaps they are in New Zealand, where the Phoenix Astronomical Society has constructed a Kiwi Stonehenge, built to work for the Antipodes.
STOP THE PRESSES: People are suing companies making pills that supposedly enlarge a part of the male anatomy for false advertising.
LIONS AND TIGERS AND BEARS, OH MY! What do you get when you cross a tiger with a lion? A liger — Hercules stands 10 feet tall on his back legs.
A COFFEE A DAY KEEPS THE CANCER AWAY: Liver cancer, that is, according to a report in this week’s issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. A separate study reported in the same issue of the journal reported no relationship between drinking caffeinated coffee or tea and the rates of colon or rectal cancer. However, that analysis did find a 52 percent decline in rectal cancer among people who regularly drank two or more cups of decaffeinated coffee. Decaf? Decaf!?