] No sooner has digital tunes really started to catch on,
] we hear that the $0.99-per-song -- or less, if you go to
] Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) -- price tag is being threatened.
] According to The Wall Street Journal, the recording
] industry has been trying to cook up ways to charge folks
] more for music. Even Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL) iTunes and
] Roxio's (Nasdaq: ROXI) Napster services have been
] charging premiums for some of the big names and hot new
] releases, the article said.

[ Yeah, awesome. Lets kill this whole music downloads thing before it even starts. -k]

The Death of Dollar Downloads? [Motley Fool Take] April 7, 2004

] The government announced Wednesday that it has issued the
] first license for a manned suborbital rocket, a step
] toward opening space flight to private individuals for
] the first time.
]
] The Federal Aviation Administration gave a one-year
] license to Scaled Composites of Mojave, Calif., headed by
] Burt Rutan. He is best known for designing the Voyager
] airplane that made the first nonstop, unrefueled flight
] around the world in 1986.
]
] "This is a big step," FAA spokesman Henry Price said.
]
] The Scaled Composites craft consists of a rocket plane,
] dubbed SpaceShipOne, and the White Knight, an exotic jet
] designed to carry it aloft for a high-altitude launch.
] SpaceShipOne, made of graphite and epoxy, has short wings
] and twin vertical tails. It reached 68,000 feet in a
] trial flight.

[ Very cool. One step closer to commercial spaceflight... -k]

Government licenses first privately built, manned rocket

"The days of dull, grey concrete could be about to end. A Hungarian architect has combined the world’s most popular building material with optical fiber from Schott to create a new type of concrete that transmits light."

[ That's fricking awesome. -k]

It's like X-ray specs.....but not

] A software company voluntarily released the source code
] for its paperless ballot verification system on Tuesday,
] marking a first in the increasingly controversial
] electronic-voting market.

[ No, not Diebold, but at least it's a step in the right direction. The company is called VoteHere and apparently anyone can dl, though I'd read the licence carefully... it's most definitely not GPL ;) -k]

MSNBC - E-voting firm opens up its code

] A few months before I went to the Congo, I'd had a
] discussion here on Slate with Luc Sante, during which I
] argued that American news venues had not just the right
] but the duty to publish photographs of atrocities. At the
] time I had, of course, seen those sorts of pictures, but
] I'd never taken them. Now that I have, I'm not so sure.
] It's not that the public deserves to be spared such
] things, because they don't. It's just that I no longer
] think that what happens when horrifying pictures are
] published has anything to do with journalism.

[ italics mine

This is a fantastic article from Slate, which I encourage everyone to read. It treats a meme that's been floating around at various levels of conciousness for a while now, but which has new currency in the context of the Falujah desecrations and the probable increase of violence in the Iraqi resistance. This meme has also shared DNA with the controversy about The Passion and the graphic nature of the film... where is the line between intense storytelling and pornography? This is a definite keeper. -k]

Front Page Horror - Should newspapers show us violent images from Iraq? By Jim Lewis

] By crunching demographic numbers (in collaboration with
] the paper's statistical consultant, Robert Cushing),
] Bishop has been able to demonstrate that the United
] States isn't merely separated by Red (Republican) and
] Blue (Democratic) states; it's also separated,
] increasingly, by Red and Blue counties. The likelihood
] that you will ever argue politics with your neighbor is
] diminishing rapidly, because it's less and less likely
] that, politically, you and your neighbor will ever
] disagree.

[ An interesting little piece about the county-level political homogeneity the nation has been experiencing in the past 25 or so years. This was sort of striking to me, though I guess not surprising... i just hadn't thought about it before.

The conclusion the article makes is possibly valid (and I won't spoil it -- go read).

After reading it though, I'm more curious if this trend isn't countered somewhat by the increasing role of the internet and phone in our social lives... I may not discuss politics with my neighbor, but i do so daily with you folks online...

I'm also curious why it's happening, and by what mechanism. I've never said a word about politics to any of my IRL neighbors. Does political ideology carry an aura with it? What are the visible traits a particular political party imprints on a county -- school arts funding levels, number of trees and parks, wealth, distance from nightlife? Fascinating. -k]

Mister Landslide's Neighborhood - Red versus blue states isn't the half of it. By Timothy Noah

[ Ha! -k]

Doonesbury@Slate - Daily Dose

] Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi is used to taking heat
] from other countries when he goes to the Yasukuni Shrine,
] a century-old war memorial seen by many Asians as a dark
] reminder of Japan's militaristic past. But he got an
] unprecedented rebuke at home on Wednesday, when a court
] ruled he had violated the constitution when he paid his
] respects at the shrine after taking office three years
] ago.
]
] In Japan, peace activists and others have challenged the
] practice on legal grounds, arguing it violates a
] constitutionally mandated separation of religion and state.
]
] On Wednesday a district court in the western city of
] Fukuoka ruled Koizumi had done just that because he
] was deemed to have visited in his capacity as a public
] official, not a private citizen.
]
] Koizumi used his title when he signed the shrine's
] visitors book and arrived at the grounds in a government
] car.

[ Always interesting to take a look at other country's politics as well as our own... -k]

Koizumi Shrine Visit Said Unconstitutional

] Voters in Inglewood, Calif., a racially diverse and
] economically struggling suburb of Los Angeles, soundly
] rejected on Tuesday a ballot initiative to permit
] construction of a Wal-Mart complex that would have
] exempted the 60-acre development from virtually all local
] oversight.

Yay.

California Voters Reject Wal-Mart Initiative

[ Rad... cool japanese tech preloaded w/ English versions of stuff. -k]

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