Karl Bade THE WEEKEND STARTS HERE:
FRIDAY TIMEWASTER: FlySui: “He who can catch flies with chopsticks can accomplish anything!”
THE HOLD STEADY may be getting more conventional on their the forthcoming Separation Sunday disc (out May 3rd), if “Your Little Hoodrat Friend” is any indication. But the Pitchfork digs it and so do I. You can read more at the link or go straight to the legal download from French Kiss Records.
MP3 BLOGS: An article in The Guardian rounds up a whole bunch of the blogs offering MP3s for download — often illegally. Some of the blogs mentioned, like Fluxblog, often appear in articles like this, but kudos to reporter Chris Alden for going beyond the usual suspects for blogs like Number One Songs in Heaven, which posts soul, funk and dance and Honey Where You Been So Long? which is dedicated to pre-war blues — both are worth a visit for fans of those genres.
GUIDED BY VOICES VS. 50 CENT: Speaking of downloads, Largehearted Boy has a link to this improbable mash-up, “Da Club Is Open.”
THE SHINS frontman James Mercer talks to Toronto's Now magazine about life after contributing to soundtracks for Garden State and The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie. “It sort of bothers me that we now tend to get the sort of guys coming to our shows who would've kicked my ass in high school,” sighs Mercer. “But with all the exposure we've been getting, I can't really complain.”
DO YOU KNOW JACK? At Coolfer, Glenn rounds up coverage of the “Jack-FM” format that tries to approximate an iPod Shuffle.
U.K. TERROR PLOT: During a sentencing hearing at the Old Bailey, cop-killer Kamel Bourgass was unmasked as Osama Bin Laden’s master poisoner — part of a gang that planned to smear lethal ricin on door handles of cars and shops in North London, open toothbrush packs in shops, daub them with ricin and re-seal them and launch a cyanide attack in the Tube, targeting passengers with a pump-style garden spray gun. The al Qaeda cell in London could still have the ricin. A British-based network of Algerian terrorists with links to al Qaeda are suspected of being behind the plot; the Metropolitan Police anti-terrorist branch’s attempt to break the network has led to more than 100 arrests, with investigations stretching from Bournemouth to Scotland.
DOGS ARE SMART: At Loránd Eötvös University in Budapest, scientists are studying just how much canine brains are capable of. Vilmos Csányi, founder of the University's department of ethology, says his research suggests that dogs can speculate on what we are thinking. UNRELATED: Women can rate men at Puppy Or Dog? But dogs can get into online dating themselves at Date My Pet.
THE WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENTS' DINNER: Donald and Melina Trump, Robert Duvall, Sideways director Alexander Payne, Ray director Taylor Hackford, hawt Lost star Evangeline Lilly, Desperate Housewives star James Denton, Everybody Loves Raymond's Peter Boyle, Phantom of the Opera star Emmy Rossum, Deadwood heavy Ian McShane, Mary Tyler Moore, Goldie Hawn, Helen Mirren, LL Cool J, supermodels Vendela, Elle Macpherson, Natalia Vodianova and Liya Kebede, Jack Welch and Bill Maher are all going. Will there be any journalists there?
ELEPHANTS were driven to extinction by man, not climate change, scientists say.
JURASSIC PARK IS MELTING IN THE DARK: Japanese scientists hope to find a frozen woolly mammoth specimen with sperm DNA, which would then be injected into a female elephant. By repeating the procedure with offspring, a creature 88 percent mammoth could be produced within fifty years.
JACKO JUSTICE: Sources tell Roger Friedman of Fox News that Michael Jackson will soon be pressed to sell most of his 50 percent interest in the Beatles' catalog to pay off hundreds of millions in debt and save his interest in his own Mijac Music Publishing, which owns Jackson hits such as “Billie Jean” and “Beat It,” as well as songs by Sly and the Family Stone and others. Freidman adds: “Jackson, mind you, is not likely to sign this deal. Insiders tell me that he's encouraged his fans to spread the word that he's the victim of a 'conspiracy.'”
THE BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA notified local councils last month that they would have to find private sponsors for troops that currently have formal relationships with public schools and other governmental entities. The directive followed a November agreement with the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, which said that the direct public sponsorship of Boy Scout troops posed a constitutional conflict because Scouts must pledge “to do my duty to God.” The settlement is in a case that now restricts the Scouts' use of the Defense Department's military facilities and personnel. The Scouts disagree that the formal ties binding public schools and Scout troops are improper, but volunteered to find new sponsors rather than strike the reference to God from its oath or put individual school districts at risk of being sued, said Robert Bork Jr., a BSA spokesman.
OUTKAST AND ROSA PARKS have settled a lawsuit in which the civil rights pioneer accused the group of wrongly using her name in a song title.
AMERICAN DUI: Chris Klein of American Pie fame is facing two drunken-driving-related charges following a February arrest in San Diego. His alleged booze cruise came just weeks before his high-profile split with former Dawson's Creek cutie Katie Holmes. The couple, who dated for five years, called off their engagement in early March.
ON THE PITCHFORK: Andrew Bird lists “Ten Songs or Albums That Still Bust My Bunker,” with selections ranging from Charlie Patton to Ravel.
DAVE MATTHEWS: “Listening to Radiohead makes me feel like I'm a Salieri to their Mozart. Yorke's lyrics make me want to give up.” Who am I to argue?
BRYAN ADAMS may be a better photographer than he is a musician; faint praise, I know.
COMPUTER MADE FROM FROZEN LIGHT: Scientists at Harvard University have shown how ultra-cold atoms can be used to freeze and control light to form the “core” – or central processing unit – of an optical computer. Such computers would transport information ten times faster than traditional electronic devices, smashing the intrinsic speed limit of silicon technology.
GOOGLE VIDEO DISTRIBUTION: Google is preparing a video distribution platform that provides a complete ecosystem of services for content producers, publishers and users. Google is already rolling out the first phase of its Video Upload Program. Eventually, users will be able to search, preview, purchase and play videos directly from within Google.
SUPREME COURT JUSTICE ANTONIN SCALIA, appearing at NYU, was asked whether government had any business enacting and enforcing laws against consensual sodomy. Following Scalia's answer, the student asked a follow-up: “Do you sodomize your wife?”
BLOG CENSORSHIP IS POPULAR: A new poll shows that most Americans believe bloggers should not be allowed to publish sensitive personal information about individuals, though more than one-third of respondents had never heard of blogs before participating in the survey, and only around 30 percent of participants had actually visited a blog themselves. Fifty-two percent of those surveyed said bloggers should have the same rights as traditional journalists, while 27 percent did not express an opinion.
EDU-BLOGGING: The tenth Carnival of Education is online.
IRAN: Did Israeli Prime Minister Sharon really rule out an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities? Mickey Kaus thinks the Associated Press botched the story.
HOW WILL THE WORLD END? Global warming or a robot rebellion? Terrorism or a super-volcano? Bellus or Zyra? The Guardian asked scientists then rated the chance of it occurring in our lifetime and the danger that it would pose to the human race if it happened.
PIG OLYMPICS: Thousands of Shanghai residents have turned out to a city park to watch a herd of pigs compete in what organizers are calling the “Pig Olympics.” The porcine Olympians run over hurdles, jump through hoops, dive and swim in shows twice daily for an urban crowd with few other opportunities to see farm animals in action. That’ll do.
HENRY EARL of Lexington, KY gets drunk and gets busted… a lot. As in “900+ times in the last 13 years” a lot. Check out the “Random Henry Mugshot ” at the link, which changes every time you hit the “refresh” button on your browser.
FILESHARING: Grouper, a P2P app which enables groups of up to 30 to swap files in an encrypted “space,” is praised by some for the ability to allow sharing of sensitive personal content. Unsurprisingly, Hollywood and the music biz are not happy.
UKRAINE: The old boss is trying to look the same as the new boss.
KYRGYZSTAN: Acting Kyrgyz President Bakiyev has assured U.S. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld that the U.S. military will not lose access to a base it established here in support of the war in Afghanistan.
PETA PROTEST ALL WET? Recently, I noted that Russell Simmons and the Rev. Al Sharpton tried but failed to broker a truce between People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and KFC, so PETA is protesting outside KFC franchisees around the country. In Brownsville TX, the franchisee decided it would be a nice day to turn on the sprinkler system.
PAJAMA PROTEST: South African nurses are wearing pajamas and nighties to work to demand a higher uniform allowance. And they are lucky I'm not the health minister.
OIL-FOR-FOOD SCANDAL: A Texas oil company owner and two oil traders from Houston and England were indicted for paying millions in secret kickbacks to Saddam Hussein's regime, cheating the United Nations' oil-for-food program of humanitarian aid funds. A criminal complaint, also unsealed Thursday in Manhattan, charged Tongsun Park, a South Korean citizen, with conspiracy to act in the United States as an unregistered government agent for the Iraqi government's effort to create the oil-for-food program. Tongsun Park also appeared in Koreagate, so he must be riding that 70s revival wave. The New York Times story on the charges notes separately that many member countries at the United Nations have refused to cooperate fully with Paul Volcker's independent inquiry into waste, fraud and mismanagement in the oil-for-food program.
CULT OF THE iPod: Now that we know what's on President Bush's iPod, the London Telegraph asked Members of Parliament (MPs) about their MP3s.
HEARTWARMING: A Pennsylvania judge dismissed misdemeanor charges against a 33 year old former assistant high school football coach accused of buying his 16-year-old girlfriend mixed drinks at a bar. And if you were wondering, the coach's former employer could not say what reason he gave for resigning from the high school.
