Real's Rhapsody music service is now available as a web service. So those of you who have been avoiding it no longer have an excuse!

Rhapsody now available on Mac and Linux computers

Because I live in a small town where I cross paths with promiscuous book lenders all the time, I have lately taken to hiding in subterranean caverns, wearing clever disguises while concealed in tenebrous alcoves and feigning rare tropical illnesses to avoid being saddled with any new reading material.

I do not avoid books like "Accordion Man" or "Elwood's Blues" merely because I believe that life is too short. Even if life were not too short, it would still be too short to read anything by Dan Aykroyd.

No More Books!

Which famous people and institutions are due for a comeuppance in the coming year?

I think the worm is about to turn on Google. The company's ascent has been too rapid, its successes too extravagant.

Cool just moved on.

Better get that Memestreams server upgraded!

Breaking Up With Google

The waves of riots that swept across France this year have had an unexpected consequence for the French music industry.

Last week, 200 politicians backed a petition by MP François Grosdidier calling for legal action against several hip hop musicians for their aggressive lyrics. The 200 MPs have accused the rap world of causing the recent riots, forcing Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin to state that the French government is not anti-hip hop.

Laws designed to protect the "French identity" helped create a movement which is now seen as a threat to that identity.

I can't wait for Hillary to hook up with 50 Cent in an effort to court the rap vote. Maybe Pharrell will produce her TV spots. Can you see a duet with Beyoncé and Chelsea?

Should hip hop take the rap for rioting?

Companies in China pay thousands of people, known as “farmers”, to play MMORPGs all day, and then profit from selling the in-game goods they generate to other players for real money.

One day soon, you'll see digital protestors gathered outside a WTO chat room in which a treaty on the trade balance in virtual goods is being debated.

In one case in South Korea, the police intervened when a hoard of in-game money was stolen and sold, netting the thieves $1.3m.

Worlds without end

The instructions that accompany Sudoku often reassure the number-shy solver that "No mathematics is required." What this really means is that no arithmetic is required. You don't have to add up columns of figures; you don't even have to count. As a matter of fact, the symbols in the grid need not be numbers at all; letters or colors or fruits would do as well. In this sense it's true that solving the puzzle is not a test of skill in arithmetic. On the other hand, if we look into Sudoku a little more deeply, we may well find some mathematical ideas lurking in the background.

Do you Sudoku?

Unwed Numbers

I want my MTV — and my TiVo, Palm Pilot, iPod, podcast and, of course, blog. So does America still have any interest in the big, lumbering, predictable media of Hollywood and Manhattan?

Mass media's last blast

Kaplan is not alone in arguing that America must embrace an imperial destiny. While they may not talk of empire, many neoconservative and some liberal commentators have presented a similar view of the US as the final guarantor of global security. Where Kaplan is distinctive is in claiming that America's imperial mission follows from a realist analysis of contemporary international relations, and asking how the sections of the American military that have the task of implementing this mission perceive their role.

In Imperial Grunts: The American Military on the Ground, he reports on his travels to US military bases in every quarter of the globe. Kaplan enjoyed a degree of access to US military bases and personnel that is rare if not unique among contemporary journalists.

The result has many weaknesses; but it is a consistently thought-provoking and vividly evocative book (the first of several he plans to write on the subject, he tells us) that challenges many preconceptions about the place of the military in American life and the world.

The Mirage of Empire

This was funny.

'Lazy Sunday' available free on iTunes...

It turns out that looking at the aggregation of billions of search queries people type into Google reveals something about our curiosity, our thirst for news, and perhaps even our desires. Considering all that has occurred in 2005, we thought it would be interesting to study just a few of the significant events, and names that make this a memorable year. (We’ll leave it to the historians to determine which ones are lasting and which ephemeral.) We hope you enjoy this selective view of our collective year.

Google Press Center: Zeitgeist