It's time to drop the apocalyptic rhetoric about a split root file and start looking beyond the age of a U.S.-dominated Internet. Breaking up is hard to do, but in this case, the alternative would be worse.

Breaking Up Is Hard to Do

Stewart Baker, assistant secretary for policy at DHS, described industry efforts to install hidden files on consumers' computers.

"It's very important to remember that it's your intellectual property, it's not your computer," Baker said at a trade conference on piracy. "And in the pursuit of protection of intellectual property, it's important not to defeat or undermine the security measures that people need to adopt in these days."

Sony to Suspend Making Antipiracy CDs

The challenge? Take any movie and cut a new trailer for it — but in an entirely different genre. Only the sound and dialogue could be modified, not the visuals, he said.

Mr. Ryang chose “The Shining,” Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 horror film starring Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall. In his hands, it became a saccharine comedy — about a writer struggling to find his muse and a boy lonely for a father. Gilding the lily, he even set it against “Solsbury Hill,” the way-too-overused Peter Gabriel song heard in comedies billed as life-changing experiences, like last year’s “In Good Company.”

His 'Secret' Movie Trailer Is No Secret Anymore

I came here today because I believe that American democracy is in grave danger. It is no longer possible to ignore the strangeness of our public discourse . I know that I am not the only one who feels that something has gone basically and badly wrong in the way America's fabled "marketplace of ideas" now functions.

It is important to note that the absence of a two-way conversation in American television also means that there is no "meritocracy of ideas" on television. To the extent that there is a "marketplace" of any kind for ideas on television, it is a rigged market, an oligopoly, with imposing barriers to entry that exclude the average citizen.

Al Gore tells it like it is

A lot of really good pictures in this series from someone who stayed in the French Quarter through the disaster.

Kodakgallery.com: NOLA Slideshow

Damn.

Whoopsi Gras 9/7/05

... as a collection of bossa nova versions of new wave classics by fetching French and Brazilian chanteuses ...

This unlikely, but mostly happy, marriage of new wave and bossa nova will probably disappoint or displease purists who believe that every version of "Love Will Tear Us Apart" should have the brooding intensity of the original, but everyone else can enjoy the album's playful elegance.

Selected dates of live performances:

SAT 09/10 NEW YORK: Joe's Pub
TUES 09/13 NEW YORK: Joe's Pub
WED 09/14 NEW YORK: Canal Room - CMJ
SAT 09/24 SAN FRANCISCO: Bimbo's
MON 09/25 LOS ANGELES: the Hollywood Bowl with DEAD CAN DANCE

Nouvelle Vague

Now a PBS series which start airing tonight...

Guns Germs, & Steel: Home | PBS

Download all nine of Beethoven's symphonies here the day after they are broadcast.

Grab Beethoven, free, while it lasts ... the first five symphonies are available now; the last four will be posted at the end of the month.

BBC - Radio 3 - Beethoven Experience - downloads

Is it possible in America today to convince anyone of anything he doesn't already believe? If so, are there enough places where this mingling of minds occurs to sustain a democracy? The signs are not good.

Is Persuasion Dead?