Good Monday morning... So my weekend involved a wedding in Mercersburg, Pa. on the campus of Mercersburg Academy...
and gardening...
In the news...
Breaking news from the sniper trial... VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (AP) Judge grants motion for sniper suspect John Allen Muhammad to represent himself.
Get up-to-the-minute sniper trial updates, check out the Virginia Pilot's sniper blog...
The WSJ has a package on copyrights and how they will change in the new electronic age...
Can Copyright Be Saved? [WSJ]
New ideas to make intellectual property work in the digital age
PORTALS, by Lee Gomes
The Business Software Alliance is a typical Washington trade group. But this well-oiled machine has influence other groups only dream of: It also can use policing powers to enforce copyright claims against companies using pirated software.
REAL TIME, by Tim Hanrahan and Jason Fry
Buying songs online, using a GPS device and three other now-geeky things you'll be doing next year. Plus, spam of the week.
WSJ.com - Radio Reporter Tests Wi-Fi For Filing Stories on the Go
Despite a New Outlook, Office 2003 Offers Little Reason to Upgrade [WP]
The best reason not to buy Microsoft Office is Microsoft Office. This suite of e-mail, spreadsheet, word-processing and presentation software so thoroughly dominates the market that it has become its own toughest competitor. When Microsoft has already jammed so many features into earlier versions, why bother upgrading to this year's model?
But ZDNet coos about the spam features of Outlook 2003
DC's public radio...
At WAMU, Deficits Of Money And Morale [WP]
Public Radio Station in Turmoil Amid Changes
From the outside, WAMU -- the NPR radio station that has been a Washington institution for four decades -- appears to be enjoying a peak of success. A fundraising campaign completed Thursday raised nearly $1 million. Listenership is at its highest in the station's history. Susan Clampitt, the station's executive director, is coming off a year in which she was named one of Fast Company magazine's "Fast 50," which honors "ordinary people doing extraordinary things," for her work at the station.
Fox Hits Big Ratings, Faces Tough World Series
Good news for Fox Sports executives: Last Thursday night's New York Yankees -- Boston Red Sox classic was a ratings smash.
The hit buy this holiday season... DVD recorders [WJS]
DVD recorders are poised to become the coming holiday season's electronics hit as manufacturers roll out new models and crank out the first big advertising campaigns.
Pride in Your Work
When It Comes to Motivating Workers, Some Things Are More Important Than Pay
"Reporter Reminisces on Years of Covering Computer Revolution" [OJR]
John Markoff of the NY Times covered the two Steves after they founded Apple. He was there right after Bill and Paul birthed Microsoft. And he's still there, fretting about the future.
Off-topic...
It is Monday... I don't have an issue to put out this week, so a larger than normal off-topic selection...
Saturday's Slate.com's Today's Papers noted...
"It's rare to spot an architecture review on the front page, but Frank Gehry's new Bilbao-esque Walt Disney Concert Hall gets below-the-fold treatment at the LAT. 'The hall is the most significant work ever created by a Los Angeles architect in his native city,' the Times' critic writes. 'What makes the building so moving as a work of architecture is its ability to express ... the recognition that ideal beauty rarely exists in an imperfect world. ... It is in this sense that Gehry's work is truly baroque. The word is derived from the Portuguese barocco, meaning 'a misshapen pearl.' " (Several years ago Slate's Jacob Weisberg explained how Gehry became America's greatest architect.)
The WP on Saturday fronted a dispatch from greater Seattle, where more than 1,000 minks are running wild after having been sprung from a fur farm in August by members of an animal rights group. The little critters sound like a handful: They smell terrible, caw like crows and, thanks to the unique anxieties posed by semi-domestication, are notably subject to "an insatiable desire to kill and eat each other" when confronted with unfamiliar members of their own species.
A piece inside the NYT registers unrest among the Amish in Pennsylvania over federal child-labor laws that prevent children under 18 from working in sawmills or woodworking factories. Legislation that would give Amish teens (who generally leave school after eighth grade to pick up a trade) a special dispensation to work on religious grounds is now pending before Congress, and to hear one sawmill operator tell it, much hangs in the balance: "If we couldn't put our boys to work and they didn't do nothing until they were 18, they'd be absolutely worthless. ... Next thing you know, you'll have a bunch of them getting into dope and drinking and partying."
A rolling Monopoly game that started on a chartered train dubbed the "Reading Railroad" ended Saturday with a victorious national champion. Matt McNally, of Irvine, Calif., took the top prize, walking away with $15,140 in real money - equal to the amount of funny money in a Monopoly game.
The Post's "In the Loop" columnist, Al Kamen, names the winners of his "Name that Scandal!" contest, which was called in search of an appropriate appellation for the apparent outing of a CIA agent. TP's favorite: Weapons of Mate Destruction.
Heart patients may soon be able to buy underwear designed to detect heart rhythm abnormalities and even call for an ambulance in case of emergency, according to researchers at Netherlands-based Philips Electronics.
Chop a centimeter or so off your tongue and become a fluent English speaker.
And finally...
Slate asks six plastic sergons what the California Gov-elect has done to his face...
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