Summer Fun: Opera: At the Spoleto Festival USA, early June offers the Weil-Brecht 'Rise and Fall of Mahoganny City' and more

Thanks to New York Times, music reviewer and ArtsBeat blogger, James R. Oestereich proses in English, "Strange, Faraway Fantasies of Hell and Paradise" (Jun1,2k7) from Charleston, South Carolina where the Italian Spoleta Festival spins off a week of performances to the delectation of connoisseurs.

Two more disparate works could hardly be imagined. And yet they have odd similarities.

As two of its three operas this year, the Spoleto Festival USA here is offering Kurt Weill’s collaboration with Bertolt Brecht, Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny (Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny); and Christoph Williband Gluck’s Île de Merlin, ou le Monde Renversé (Merlin’s Island, or the World Turned Upside Down). Both send peculiar creatures to faraway places, and both deal, in contrasting ways, with social issues.

(The third opera is Pascal Dusapin’s Faustus, the Last Night, which has its last performance on June 9.)

Summer Fun > Spoleto Opera Festival

In Mahagonny three fugitives establish a fantastical city in some realm far from civilization, but, as it turns out, within hurricane’s distance of Pensacola, Fla. In Merlin two Parisian wastrels wash up on a remote Arcadian island.

Mahagonny, a morality play awash in cynicism and pessimism, depicts a hellish world in which there is no such thing as peace and harmony, a world of greed and grasping ambition, a world in which you must do whatever you want before others do unto you what they want. The courts are “no worse than anywhere else.” It can only end badly.

Live Opera Music, by Audiosvisiotor

Merlin, a Panglossian comic effusion, offers a paradise in which the rich must marry the poor, artists earn more than businessmen or lawyers, and love is lasting and faithful. The courts know no corruption. It is, in short, the opposite of Paris. And all that is before Merlin appears to fine-tune the outcome.

Of musical genres there is no end, and opera is music with quasi-actorial qualities. Opera is a bouquet of arts with music the leading edge. I wish I could be in in Charleston for these, now that I've updated my US passport. But probably my only Opera-fun this summer will be found in reading NYT reviewers.

Sports: Major League Baseball: Toronto Blue Jays win 9 to White Sox 3; full MLB schedule in progress thru the evening

I'm proud to say Toronto's Blue Jays won their game today, and by a wide margin. You can read up on the game at CBS Sportsline.com's MLB page, "Jays' Hill, Rios team up to send ChiSox back to losing ways" (Jun2,2k7). Here's today's schedule, with several games just beginning or opening later across the continent.

Braves 5
Cubs 3

White Sox 3
Blue Jays 9

Diamondbacks 1
Mets 7

Yankees 1
Red Sox 3 Top of the 5th inning
...but Yanks rallied and the revised score is
Yankees 6
Red Sox 5 Top of the 7th inning

Cardinals 3
Astros 8 Game over.

Tigers
Indians
7:05pm

Dodgers
Pirates
7:05pm

Sports, by Sportikos

Padres
Nationals
7:05pm

Marlins
Brewers
7:05pm

Giants
Phillies
7:05pm

Royals
Devil Rays
7:10pm

Reds
Rockies
8:05pm

Twins
Athletics
9:05pm

Orioles
Angels
9:05pm

Rangers
Mariners
10:05pm

Sport: NHL Hockey: Ottawa Senators take on Anaheim Ducks for cross-continent Stanley Cup championships Game 3

The Stanley Cup play-offs for the National Hockey League's season-ending championships of all North America will enter Game 3 (of 7) tonite in Kanata, Ontario, with the Eastern Conference champs, the Senators, facing off against the Western Conf's Ducks.

The Sens are in a tite spot. They've already lost the first 2 games of the Stanley Cup finals series. They need a win, and the promises from coaches and players are thick that win it will be.

Technics: Internet: MySpace refuses to turn over sex-offenders names, cites Fed privacy law vs States attorneys genral

CNN.com email newsletter informs us informs us in "MySpace won't turn over names of sex offenders" (May16,2k7).

Story Highlights
• NEW: MySpace not turning over names of sex offenders
• NEW: MySpace attorney: Privacy act requires subpoenas
• Thousands of offenders might be MySpace members
• MySpace prevents children under 14 from setting up profiles

RALEIGH, North Carolina (AP) -- Citing federal privacy law, MySpace.com said Tuesday it won't comply with a request by attorneys general from eight states to hand over the names of registered sex offenders who use the social networking Web site.

MySpace's chief security officer said the company regularly discloses information to law enforcement officials but the federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act says it can only do so when proper legal processes are followed.

Technotes, by Technowlb

"We're truly disheartened that the AGs chose to send out a letter ... when there was an existing legal process that could have been followed," the security officer, Hemanshu Nigam, said in an interview.

In a letter Monday, attorneys general from North Carolina, Connecticut, Georgia, Idaho, Mississippi, New Hampshire, Ohio and Pennsylvania asked MySpace to provide information about registered sex offenders using the site and where they live.

Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal on Tuesday blasted MySpace for refusing to share the information and said no subpoena is needed for MySpace to tell the attorneys general how many registered sex offenders use the site "or other information relating to possible parole violations."

The whole article is well worth clicking up and reading in its entirety. Sad that MySpace can't find a way to comply.

Natural justice so prioritizes the children who will be victimized, above federal claims to its own h+er jurisdictional status over states in regard to such an offender's privacy r+ts, that the fed law seems to be an impediment in the real world of chat-room chickenhawks who apparently gravitate to MySpace in quest of little girls and boys. But now we find our topic has shifted from a technics focus to juridics and segzetics (yes, coined word).

Technics: Internet: MicroSoft, Yahoo to join in online search services, compete with Google

Bloomberg.com published with updates a report by Jonathan Thaw and Jason Kelly that relates to major changes coming to the battle of titans on the Internet, particularly the search services. Yahoo and Google are the major two, with Google far in the lead but not that far. "Microsoft, Yahoo May Partner to Challenge Google in Web Search" (May5,2k7).

MicroSoft has been unable to break effectively into the field, but wants part of the ad revenues that the search services routinely place on their pages. What is being presented to the public at the moment is called a "partnership," but the relation being explored seems to have in its background MS's intent to buy and swallow ("merge") Yahoo in six months time.

May 5 (Bloomberg) -- Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo! Inc. have held talks about a partnership designed to boost their share of the Web search and advertising market and catch up with Google Inc., people briefed on the discussions said.

The discussions are in the early stages and focus on a partnership rather than a merger, said one of the people, who asked to remain anonymous because the negotiations are private. Shares of Yahoo jumped the most in three years yesterday after the New York Post said Microsoft wants to buy the company.

Yahoo and Microsoft, the world's largest software maker, have struggled to dent Google's dominance in searching the Web and in the booming market for advertising spots next to search results. A combination would triple Microsoft's share of the U.S. search market to 38.4 percent, rivaling Google's 48.3 percent, according to ComScore Inc.

``It gets them enough economies of scale to be a viable force in search,'' said Walter Price, who oversees about $2 billion including Microsoft shares at RCM Capital Management in San Francisco. ``You have to ratchet up your capital expenditure to compete with Google.''

What this will mean for consumers (web users) hopefully will be more and better services, in the first instance, by Google. I could make some recommendations in that regard, as I don't think the ads I obstruded onto other's webpages when I search are sufficiently compensated by the time-consuming awkwardnesses I have to crawl thru when using Google. The Google ads on refWrite are not at all those I would select from their stable, tho usually they are tolerable, at other times downr+t obnoxious. But that's another story.

Technics: Juridics: Internet news-aggregator of content-URLs 'Digg' treated as pirate for code hack HD DVDs

CNet blogger Steven Musil reports "Unhappy Digg users bury site in protest" (May2,2k7).

Digg.com users, very upset at the news aggregate site for deleting articles containing an encryption key that could be used to crack the digital rights management on HD DVDs [H+Density DVDs], have inundated the site with thousands of recommendations to pages that contain the code. The protest was apparently heard by Digg administrators, who later reversed the ban.

On Tuesday night, the "All topics" category contained several pages of the most popular articles recommended by Digg readers populated only by links to sites that contained the code, as well as messages deriding the Motion Picture Association of America, a proponent of digital rights management and antipiracy measures. Many of the articles had upward of 4,000 recommendations from users.

A message purporting to be from Digg co-founder and CEO Jay Adelson posted to the site early Tuesday explained the rationale behind the site's former stance.

"We've been notified by the owners of this intellectual property that they believe the posting of the encryption key infringes their intellectual property rights," the posting reads. "In order to respect these rights and to comply with the law, we have removed postings of the key that have been brought to our attention."

Later, a message headlined with the code and credited to Digg co-founder Kevin Rose called Tuesday "a difficult day for us" and explained that site had reversed its earlier stance and would reluctantly allow articles containing the code to be referenced from the site.

"We had to make a call, and in our desire to avoid a scenario where Digg would be interrupted or shut down, we decided to comply and remove the stories with the code," according to the posting. "...[Digg website users ha]ve made it clear. You'd rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won't delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be. If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying."

"Living by the wisdom of the crowd is what made Digg popular, said CEO Jay Adelson in a telephone interview Wednesday, reports Chris Gaylord of Christian Science Monitor in "Digg's online crowd flexes its muscle--Backlash over the site administrators' attempt to squelch postings of a secret encryption code shows power of free-speech-minded Web users" (May4,2k7).

"Digg is supposed to be the opposite of censorship," he said. "Our attorneys were advising us that it is always better to be safe than sorry and continue removing the stories. But the users clearly wanted it … and this was something we didn't want to suppress anymore."

What could have been an unraveling for Digg and other social websites – that peek behind the curtain to discover that the online community is not truly in control – turned into a solidifying event for the idea that the Internet is as much a tool for participating as it is for publishing. For many users, the code wasn't the point. The Digg deluge was about reclaiming the reins.

"This had the possibility of being a very dark moment, and it's turned out to be quite a strong statement about what it means to have socially driven websites," says John Palfrey, executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School. "It was civil disobedience on restriction of free speech – but in an Internet fashion."

Technotes, by Technowlb

Two days later, the story but not the code (!) made its way to a science blog in the field of physics. PhysOrg.com updates the early reports. The blog-entry's content goes so beyond my "Technics" category that probably I should re-designate my headline "Juridics" in the first cat. Come to think of it, the slant to legal actions in tech articles, seems to be something like a trend at the moment. Or, perhaps I should retitle the first slot "Social Networking" which also played a huge role in Digg's removal of the orginal post. Article: "Has Digg Dug a Legal Hole for Itself?" (May4,2k7). From the aritcle itself you can navigate to the site's PhysOrgForum, where you can discuss the whole phenom with many others who are keeping up with this development.

Call it the Internet's version of a bloodless coup. A revolt by users of Digg.com led the administrators of the Web site to reverse a decision to remove stories containing code used to circumvent digital rights management for HD-DVDs [H+Density Digital Video something or other].

But the change of course by Digg.com has not settled anything; instead the latest flare up regarding the now-infamous code highlights both legal and security issues facing HD-DVD technology and the Internet itself.

Digg.com's initial decision to take down the stories was spurred by a cease and desist letter earlier this week from the AACS LA (Advanced Access Content System Licensing Administrator).

The AACS LA licenses the encryption technology meant to protect HD-DVDs from illegal copying.
But the decision [by Digg to restore the offending code] could open it up to legal action by the AACS LA for a possible violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a series of provisions that prohibit the production or distribution of technology that circumvents DRM.

Copyright 2007 by Ziff Davis Media

By the way, I found the following ad text on the Phys.Org.com website: "How To Copy A DVD Movie Burn & Copy Your Home DVD Movies to Blank CD. Play Copy Anywhere $24."

As CSM's Chris Gaylord has noted, the Digg Episode (or Epiphany, as some Diggers mite regard it) is not an isolated case:

Other successful social sites have hit similar power struggles. In September, the popular college networking site Facebook.com thought they would further connect users by rolling out a "news feed" feature that would update everyone on nearly every change occurring on friends' profiles, right down to who rejected whose party invitation. This perceived invasion of privacy launched boycotts and rumors of a National Don't Log Into Facebook Day. Site administrators changed the feature after only two days.

The HD-DVD key was not the first story Digg administrators yanked. They regularly pull down links to pornography and hate speech, says Mr. Adelson. But with more than 7,000 articles submitted to Digg every day, he acknowledges the process is very reactive. Digg's most relied-on filter is its users – for sniffing out both the good and the bad.

Digg's crowd is a tech-savvy set, so when the movie-code posting sneaked past administrators, the readers dug it. Before anyone at the Digg office noticed that the story had slipped through the cracks, 15,000 users had recommended it – making its sudden disappearance all the more noticeable, Adelson says.

So the Episode takes its place among many, and surely will not be the last of them either.

Music: Gospel: Oldtime music revival in NYC with Bluegrass Gospel's 'Diane McKoy and a Small Few"

Veteran entertainer Diane McKoy combines her love of God with her love of music and forms Bluegrass Gospel band in the Big Apple. She's a veteran entertainer who's combining her love of God and Scripture, with her love of music, by forming a new Bluegrass Gospel band in the Big Apple in her second try in her home city. As far as she knows, hers is again the only one in that northern metropolis where the grass is scarce, green not really blue.

New York, Apr28,2k7 /Christian Newswire/ -- New York City may be famed for Broadway and Wall Street, but Diane McKoy hopes America's largest city becomes known as home to her Bluegrass Gospel band, Diane McKoy and a Small Few.

"New York City may not be the first place that comes to mind when you hear about a Bluegrass Gospel band," says McKoy, the band's leader, "but God put A Small Few in my heart and I live in New York." Although there are many Gospel music groups in the Big Apple, Bluegrass Gospel bands are otherwise nonexistent. There was one other. McKoy started it. It lasted 13 years before it disbanded.

Music, by Audiovisiotor

The newly formed band features McKoy and two musician/singer friends: Steven Antonelli and Daniel Marcus. Together they produce Bluegrass Gospel and Country Gospel, music that mixes the Good Book with strings and harmonizing.

Like many indie musicians Diane McKoy and a Small Few has a My Space page. Presently, the group is playing at various venues throughout New York City. The trio is making fans out of big city dwellers wherever the band plays.

I can think of other cities, further North, that may welcome authentic Bluegrass, especially of the key Gospel variety. Fascinating too is the the fact that Gospel has differentiated into three at least subgenres: traditional, country, and bluegrass. I wonder whether I could find these different varieties online at a digital music store.

Technics: Intenet: Law suit by UK football club tries to stop circulation of video clips on YouTube/Google

Techdirt's Mike Masnick, "Premier League, Jealous Of Viacom, Sues YouTube As Well" (May5,2k7)

Nick writes in to let us know that the Premier League, in the UK (football/soccer, depending on where you are) has decided to sue Google/YouTube for copyright infringement. Nick has his own analysis, but there are a number of interesting (or silly, depending on your perspective) things about the case. First off, it was almost exactly two years ago that we were surprised to hear the Premier League suggest that it needed to sue fans who were streaming its games online (pre-YouTube days). Here were fans who were so interested in following what was going on that they'd watch games online and help promote it to others who had no way of watching the games, and the best the Premier League could do was threaten to sue? That seemed backwards. Last year, the Premier League popped up again, complaining about videos on YouTube. However, while again it seemed like bad marketing to go after fans who are promoting your sport, we figured it was at least a positive that the Premier League wasn't so silly as to blame YouTube for the actions of its users. Apparently, we spoke too soon.

Technotes, by Technowlb

If anything, this is probably a reaction to Viacom's $1 billion lawsuit against Google/YouTube. The Premier League figured it might get a piece of that, or at least hope that Google would be willing to settle. Of course, Google's defense should be the same as it was for Viacom. The Premier League makes one different argument -- which is that it tried to use the anti-piracy tools provided by Google, and they didn't work. It's hard to see how the fact that the tools don't work very well is illegal. There is no magic bullet that can stop unauthorized copies -- so every "anti-piracy" tool won't work entirely. That's hardly something to sue over. The other difference is that the Premier League is looking to have the case declared as a class action suit, so that all copyright holders can get at Google in one shot. If this succeeds, then it seems likely that it will shut down YouTube, destroying one of the most effective promotional vehicles the Premier League has had in years. It's hard to see how that's beneficial for anyone.

More need to be said here, but I'll say it tomorrow. G'nite!

Sports: English Football: Ashton Villa wallops 3-0 Sheffield United in Barclays' Premier League game

Most of the game saw Sheffield struggle to hold the Villans down, as the tide just swept these Ashtonauts forward, while Sheffield gradually fell apart. They kept their faces brave thru-out the disaster in Barclay's English Premier League, in a game which I viewed live across the Pond in Toronto on Saturday afternoon our time. The crowd kept roaring thru-out, so the lads had all the encouragement they could use.

Sports / UK Football, by Sportikos

As the stats show, Ashton Villa is no paragon of football excellency, yet it soars 5 slots above Sheffield United in the standings. On the other hand, the Villa itself has to look 10 strata above itself to discern the august Machester United team at the top of Barclay's Premiership, with Chelsea breathing down their necks.

Technics: Internet: Whose counting your online clicks? and how!

When you go surfing the WordWideWeb and even the larger Internet of which www. is only the most prominent component, there are many technical means to monitor your moves or, lacking that thoroness, to sample a survey group of sizeable proportions that is most likely to be able to project/predict your most likely moves, statistically speaking. Obviously, if your own internet demographic profile is multiply-marginal, your own choices may not register in the prevailing samples.

Or, your Internet Service Provider (ISP, IP) may be selling your click habits to firms that buy them en masse. Otherwise, your obscurity would then be, perhaps mercifully, preserved--unless you are host to some other means ensconced on your own computer in the form of click-counters' cookies that send out signals as to what you are doing each time you make a move, check an ad, whatever. This is not necessarily bad, depending on your own concerns and privacy values.

MSNBC carries a report by Catherine Holshan, "Who's Counting Clicks, and How -- There are lots of ways to measure Web traffic. Here's a glance at some of the more common approaches " (Apr30,2k7).

A host of companies are doing their level best to keep tabs on how many people are visiting a given Web site, and what those users do while they are there. Some use tags installed on a user's Web browser, while others extrapolate surfing habits from a sample audience. A handful use a combination of several methods. Here's a glance at a range of approaches, with a look at what each has to say about one popular online video site, Metacafe.

Technotes, by Technowlb

Here's the varied list of click-counters and analysts, that Ms. Halshan evaluates as to What, How, Strengths, Weaknesses. Dare I advise readers to click-up her article?

Alexa Internet, owned by Amazon (AMZN)
Compete Inc.
comScore
Google Analytics (GOOG)
Hitwise
Omnitecture (OMTR)
Nielsen//NetRatings (NTRT)
Qantcast

generic - internal server logs
used by individual net companies
to track the traffic that click
onto their own sites

Technics: Internet: WorkHack is an online personal to-do list that emphasizes simplicity

Simplicity of access, that's one of WorkHack's beauties. I encountered it on the email newsletter put out by Read/Write Web which features analysis of online writing for online reading. It does so quite excellently in the article, "WorkHack redefines 'simple' task management" (Apr26,2k7) by Josh Cantone.

Simplicity of privacy, but you don't even have to register to access your private page. How this is accomplished will amaze some old habitues of the web, with this Web 2.0 cutie.

Simplicity of preferences, whether you use each or not; there's a mercifully small number of pref options. Just to get stuff off my desktop and free up bits of memory-capacity, I've tried To-Do lists before, both online and off (on my computer desktop). So when Josh Cantone says--

To-do lists should be simple, or so claims WorkHack, a task list web app that takes simple to a whole new level. There are very nearly no features to WorkHack.

Technotes, by Technowlb

There is no sign up, no tagging, no due dates, no multi-user support. Just to-do lists, organized into three priority categories (High, Medium, and Low) and sorted by color or size.

--you'll have to forgive my skepticism. But besides skeptical, I was also intrigued. So, I've been trying WorkHackfor myself, in the mini-size. That way, I can have a desktopful of blogging windows in view, pause to call up WordHack for viewing or for making a quick new entry, then close WH and go back to my work at hand.

I've decided to give it a real try, and so far it is superior to any online To-Do list I've used (like Remember the Milk with 100,000 users and as many bells & whistles ... and most online calendars used for basic to-do matters, as well, like 30 Boxes that I tried to use for to-doing). Changing my previous use-strategies, my experiment with WH involves splitting my refWrite tasks off from everything else, and keeping on my desktop in the main menu-bar an app called Check Off where I store a list of all the other things I want to get done--but include no rW tasks. Sad to say, Check-off will not work for some of you, as this desktop menu-bar app is only for Mac OSX users.

Technics: Internet Software: MicroSoft promises truckload of upgrades and new products, said to produce a 'Big Bang,' but when?

From Mike Vizard's email newsletter on internet tech (IT), What's Hot Now (Apr27,2k7), where the lead note is "Big Bang Theory suggests that MicroSoft is about to explode," I found my way to Joe Wilcox writing on "Microsoft's 'Big Bang' Is When?" (Apr26,2k7) in eWeek's MicroSoft Watch. Wilcox:

Last night's release of Windows Server Longhorn Beta 3 is a monumental event for Microsoft, much bigger than the launch [earlier] of Windows Vista [MS's new operating system]. How big may depend on when Microsoft releases Vista Service Pack 1.

Windows Server is the nucleus of Microsoft's enterprise strategy, around which all other products—-even Windows Client—-revolve. Longhorn's eventual release, which Microsoft claims will be later this year, will likely set off major software upgrades, including Office 2007 and Windows Vista.

And thus challenge MS's wannabe competitors as never before, especially to the extent the new products are hack-proof. Hmmmm.

Laura DiDio, a Yankee Group research fellow, described the expected phenomenon as the "Big Bang." Other analyst firms' projections of Windows Vista upgrades, including Gartner, synch well with the Big Bang theory.

Technics > IT > Microsoft, by Technowlb

Since few of these prodcuts and their brandnames suggest anything directly familiar to me (I'm quite Apple / Macintosh / iMac OSX 3.9 (Panther) oriented in regard to my PC IT preferences), I have to remind myself that MS products still command about 80% of the software market for personal computers, while my own favourites are rah-rah-ed by Mac fans for achieving a mere 6% of PC market penetration--with the radical exceptions of iTunes Music Store and iPod which MS failed to displace from their ballooning dominance. And not just MS has been bested on this terrain: so has Sony fallen by the wayside, as far as I can tell. Now, Amazon has announced it will have a go at the digital-music IT retail market in direct competition with iTunes Music Store. I also noticed somewhere today (try this instead) that the non-digital recorded-music sales are quite stagnant; there's a downside to that as far as the musical experience is concerned.

But back to MicroSoft's banging its own big drum, skipping all too many beats these days.

Gartner expects a first major round of Vista deployments to start [Oct-Dec 2k7], with most businesses waiting until [May-Jun 2k8]. The timing is also right for Windows Server Longhorn's release and potential pull on Windows client upgrades. Many IT organizations are willing to wait for Longhorn Server as to coordinate multiple infrastructure upgrades around the same time, DiDio said.

When isn't When

But there is a wrinkle—-uncertainty which Microsoft has created. Back in November, Bob Muglia, Microsoft's senior vice president for server and tools, told eWeek that Windows Server Longhorn and Windows Vista Service Pack 1 would ship "simultaneously." Such a plan would be quite sensible, as, according to Muglia, "it is one source-code base" for both products. Since then, Microsoft has backed away from this coordinated release commitment.

So much ink has been spilled and keys tapped on the subject of MS's hegemony in the personal computer market that I couldn't add anything really new here. But I can say something from the standpoint of the h+ value I place on a pluralist market, where there are at least a handful of truly competing major corporations. And, where the trend toward open-source and interoperablity is much stronger than now. I'd like to see MicroSoft give way in its near-control of IT software generally, and also see Apple give way in its almost-monopoly in music IT. Of course, by "give way" I don't mean to suggest that either give anything. I'm just fantasizing how I'd like to see the market tumble things out in this cultural zone of life, to everyone's betterment hopefully.

Music: Pop: Rush Of Fools #1 on multiple radio charts, debut single 'Undo'

Unprecedented radio success positions band > 1st new artist to land a debut single at #1 on AC charts since 2004

Nashville, Christian Newswire (Apr25,2k7) -- "Undo," the first radio single from premiere new Midas Records band Rush Of Fools, garnered the #1 position on the Billboard Christian Chart, R&R Christian AC Monitored chart and CRW Comprehensive charts this week. Rush Of Fools is the first new artist to land a debut single at #1 on AC charts since Casting Crowns in 2004. The unprecedented multiple chart success positions the band as history makers in that no other debut artist on a new label has ever achieved such immediate success.

"We're so grateful to be able to help facilitate the ministry of such a dynamic and passionate group as Rush Of Fools," Robert Morrison, head of sales & operations at Midas Records said. "They are being used in so many wonderful ways, this is truly the beginning of something awesome!"

"Undo" is the first single from the group's forthcoming May8,2k7 Midas Records release distributed through EMI CMG. After going for ads at radio on Jan12, 2k7, the debut single rapidly climbed radio charts and immediately garnered the highest score in the history of 20 The Countdown Magazine's listener poll. In addition, Rush Of Fools have received a flood of My Space messages that describe incredible life-changing stories of hope and inspiration from listeners. Multiple requests have started to come in on a regular basis for copies of "Undo," in addition to personal stories told about how lives have been impacted by the lyrics, heart and message of the song.

Music > Pop, by Audiovisiotor

In addition to their recent radio success, Rush Of Fools are currently touring with By The Tree and The Turning on the multi-city World on Fire Tour in support of their debut release.

Rush Of Fools consists of Wes Willis (lead vocals, electric guitar), Kevin Huguley (lead vocals, electric and acoustic guitar), Jacob Chesnut (bass, vocals), Jamie Sharpe (drums, vocals) and JD Frazier (electric guitar, keys, vocals).

I'm going to be interested to follow what some Christian reviewers with broad music and videoclip interests may have to say about this work, so I won't attempt any comment here at the moment. Except something elliptical to the music itself--and that is to note the professional press-release hype from Midas/Christian Newswire, and the strategy of storming the radio pop-chart ramparts, yet with clearly expressed evangelical wordage and concerns. I wonder if Apple's iTunes Music Store is selling this song, since its new contractual arrangement with the mentioned EMI's Christian Music Group. After all, EMI's digital-download sales are presumably now without built-in DRM nonsense?

More Info:

Rush of Fools
My Space RoF page
Lab Media RoF page

Summer Fun: At the beach or the cottage, you may want to read about the city

Comment (print and online) is an amazing general-interest magazine with a reformational broad-cultural concern. The lastest issue carries one of those "Summer Reading" lists, this one by Eric O. Jacobsen, "The space between: summer reading on cities" (Apr27,2k7). To Jacobsen's list of 10 books, I've dared supplementarily to add Jacobsen's own title on his chosen topic. And then, out of sheer favouritism, I've also appended at list's end my own candidate, a volume that was such a wonderful read for me when I first ventured into its pages decades ago. I'm sure subsequent works covering the same ground have since added important new ins+ts; but my nominee, like the first title on Jacobsen's own list, is a classic on the subject it addresses.

1. Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities

2. Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater Zyberk, and Jeff Speck, Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream

3. James Howard Kunstler, The City in Mind: Notes on the Urban Condition

4. Richard Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life

5. Allan B. Jacobs, Great Streets

6. David Solomon, Global City Blues

7. Robert Fishman, Urban Utopias in the Twentieth Century: Ebenezer Howard, Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier

8. Daniel Kemmis, The Good City and the Good Life: Renewing the American Community

9. Ray Oldenburg, The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community

Summer Fun > Reading Books, by Owlb

10. Nicholas Wolterstorff, Until Justice and Peace Embrace: The Kuyper Lectures for 1981 Delivered at the Free University in Amsterdam

11. Eric O. Jacobsen, Sidewalks in the Kingdom: New Urbanism and the Christian Faith

12. Lewis Mumford, The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its Prospects

Jacobsen gives us more than my barebones reproduction of his list (with my two supplements, to which I could add a second Wolterstorff title, Art in Action that includes at least a chapter on the aesthetics of any city made for living in, pleasantly...but if I added that, I would move the list into the numerics of 13, instead of dwelling restfully in the numeric symbology of 12, one book title for each of the Apostles).

I must say that Jacobsen's discussion of each title on his list is brief, but not too brief that we get only hype and no ins+t. We do get ins+t about each book, Jacobsen's measure of each. Realizing this genre of writing an intro to several books at a time, in one article, is achieved quite artfully by the author. So much so that a reader (who finds her/his summer will allow sufficient leisure for the project) could decide to make one's way thru the entire list. For this purpose, the list offers the utility of selecting what you want to read first and what second; there's suffcient matter to make your choices according to your own reading-plan.

I suggest you click-up the Comment page (live-linked above) and enjoy a good read as served-up by Jacabosen. If you want to get any or all the books into your own hands as soon as possible, each of the works' titles are live-linked to Amazon's book retailing service. You can purchase direct, of course, or you could read the reviews, then go out and find what's available at Barnes and Noble,

Sports: Soccer: Do goalies cause direction of penalty kickers?

Cognitive Daily one of several ScienceBlogs carries an interesting sports item by Dave Munger, "Can soccer goalkeepers influence penalty kicks?" (Apr24,2k7).

Penalty kicks are nearly universally reviled among soccer fans, yet they remain an important part of the game. The sport is so exhausting that extending it beyond 30 minutes of extra time in a playoff game could be dangerous for the players. Typically in playoff or championship matches, tie games get decided by a penalty kick competition.

But penalty kicks offer such an advantage to the shooter that it often seems like dumb luck when a goalkeeper manages to make a save. The usual strategy is simply to dive randomly to the left or right, and hope you guessed right. Why not just flip a coin to decide who wins the match? Chris at Mixing Memory ["The Science of Goalkeeping" (Apr20,2k7) who/which in turn glosses: Masters, S.W., van der Kamp, J., & Jackson, R.C. (2007). Imperceptibly off-center: Goalkeepers influence penalty-kick direction in soccer. Psychological Science, 18(3), 222-223.] has found a study suggesting that the position of the goalkeeper just before the shot can indeed affect the shooter:

Sports > Soccer, by Sportikos

They found that in almost all instances (96%), the goalkeeper stood just slightly (and I mean just slightly) off center, creating a difference between the distance of the goalie from the two goal posts of about 9.95 centimeters, which amounts to a difference between the areas to the right and left of the goal keeper of about 2.9% of the total area of the goal. The side to which the goalie stood did not, however, influence the side to which the goalie dove as the ball was kicked. So goalies didn't seem to be aware of their position. However, when they looked at whether penalty takers were aware of the position of the goal keeper, they found that 103 out of 174 (I'm not sure what happened to the other 26 kicks) were to the side of the goal keeper with more space. So the position of the goal keeper does appear to affect the direction of the kick on a (statistically) significant percentage of penalty kicks. Penalty takers are, then, aware of the goalie's position.

I underscored the bit about goalies not seeming to be aware of their position sl+tly to one side, but if we follow the Ways of Knowing theory of Herman Dooyeweerd (philosophy) and Douglas Blomberg (educational research), and supplemented by Howard Gardner (cognition and education), we mite say there is a human pre-analytic way of knowing that is kinematic in its orientation to space and movement/s thru it. Dancers and many athletes are gifted in this regard, and spend a career in h+tening it. Gardner says it is a special kind of intelligence, among 6 or 7 others.

Music: Business:: Amazon tries to divert iTunes Music Store users

One and only, The Times [London, UK] published yesterday an article by Dan Sabbagh, "Amazon set to launch online music store" (Apr23,2k7).

Amazon.com, the internet retailer, wants to launch an online music store next month to challenge Apple and is working on plans to sell music with reduced protection against copyright infringement.

The internet giant has approached all the music majors in the past fortnight and said that it wanted to sell unprotected MP3 songs in May as it tries to follow Apple in shaking up the music industry.

However, it remains unclear if Amazon will meet its deadline. The internet retailer has been trying, unsuccessfully, over 18 months to break into the market dominated by Apple iTunes, which has a share of about 80 per cent.

Selling music without copy protection is controversial, because it makes digitally downloaded songs easier to copy. At the beginning of the month EMI broke ranks and signed an agreement with Apple to provide unprotected songs for a higher price.

Music, by Audiovisiotor

If Amazon’s MP3 service does launch as planned, music is most likely to come from EMI and independent labels. Speculation that Vivendi’s Universal Music was already signed up to test classical MP3 downloads is understood to be wide of the mark.

Amazon’s efforts have been held back by various problems. It originally wanted to launch its own music player to rival the iPod in tandem with the store and held discussions with manufacturers, but these failed to develop successfully.

The phrasing "provide unprotected songs for a h+er price" is sheer ideology, a reference to the so-called Digital R+ts Management idiocy [DRM] which the music industry has tried to maintain to satisfy its greed with an obsolete business model that is at once not pertinent and impertinent to the listeners using the new technical possiblities for sharing music. It is the individual purchasers of digitally-recorded songs whose songs are unprotected from DRM (a song-killing virus if you try to share your music with friends--all non-commercially!

Major League Baseball super-buzy tonite

In a few minutes today's full-to-the-brim Major League Baseball agenda will unfold from time-zone to time-zone across the continent (and on TV), as the season warms up with the weather.

Athletics
Orioles 7:05pm

Blue Jays
Red Sox 7:05pm

Braves
Marlins 7:05pm

Astros
Phillies 7:05pm

Yankees
Devil Rays 7:10pm

Sports / Baseball, by Sporktkos

Rockies
Mets 7:10pm

Mariners
Rangers 8:05pm

Brewers
Cubs 8:05pm

White Sox
Royals 8:10pm

Indians
Twins 8:10pm

Tigers
Angels 10:05pm

At the moment, 7:43 PM EDT, in the bottom of the second inning it's Blue Jays 1, Red Sox 0; bottom of 2nd, Braves 1, Marlins 2; top of 2nd Astros 1, Phillies 2; bottom of 2nd, Yankees 1, Devil Rays 0.

Sports: Baseball: Phillies (4) finesse triple-play against Cincinnati's Reds (1)

Philadelphia Phillies had a tumultuous, joyous 4-1 win over Cincinnati Reds yesterday, in a game where a rare play sent the action under pitcher Cole Hamels into a triple play by his infielders.

The Phillies backed Hamels with their first triple play since May 15, 1999, against the New York Mets. [Yesterday,] With Josh Hamilton on second base and Edwin Encarnacion on first in the fifth inning, David Ross hit a grounder to Phillies third baseman Abraham Nunez, who stepped on third to force Hamilton [out] and threw to second baseman Chase Utley to force Encarnacion for the second out.

The Phillies backed [pitcher Cole] Hamels with their first triple play since May 15, 1999, against the New York Mets. With Josh Hamilton on second base and Edwin Encarnacion on first in the fifth inning, David Ross hit a grounder to Phillies third baseman Abraham Nunez, who stepped on third to force Hamilton and threw to second baseman Chase Utley to force Encarnacion for the second out.

Utley's relay to first baseman Wes Helms caught Ross by a step. The Reds hadn't hit into a triple play since catcher Eddie Taubensee lined into one against San Diego on May 19, 1997.

Sports USA > Major League Baseball

"[Ross] was the perfect guy to do it," Nunez said. "I said to myself, 'If I get the ball close to the bag, I'm going to try for it.'"

The triple play helped the Phillies preserve a 2-1 lead.

"I'm sure it saved me 10 or 15 pitches," Hamels said.

"The triple play was pretty exciting," Utley said. "It's the first one I've ever been a part of. It happened so quickly."

There were five triple plays turned in the majors last season, the last by the Chicago White Sox on Sept. 18, against the Detroit Tigers.

The foregoing is a clip from the AP account on MSNBC's Recap on ESPN.com's Baseball page online.

Aesthetics: Music: Top pop songs that changed the world, says Rolling Stone mag

Here's the Top 10 of Rolling Stone mag's just released list of the 40 pop songs that 'changed the world.'

1. Elvis Presley, "That's Alr+t"
2. Ray Charles, "I Got a Woman"
3. Chuck Berry, "Maybelline"
4. Bob Dylan, "A Hard Rain's a Gonna Fall"
5. The Kingsmen, "Louie Louie"
6. The Ronnettes, "Be My Baby"
7. Beatles, "I Want to Hold Your Hand"
8. Martha and the Vandellas, " Dancing in the Streets"
9. Rolling Stones, "Satisfaction"
10. Bob Dylan, "Like a Rolling Stone"

Sports: Olympics 2008: Beijing claims complete bill of health for Games, leaves out mention of pollution

UPI via Earthtimes.com reports " 'Positive' review to Beijing Olympics" (Apr19,2k7).

BEIJING, April 19 Beijing Olympic officials received a positive review from an International Olympic Committee group checking preparations ahead of the 2008 Olympics.

The IOC Coordination Commission on Thursday wrapped up three days of meetings and site visits in Beijing to check on how Chinese officials are getting ready for the 2008 Summer Games. The commission has two other Beijing visits planned prior to the Aug. 8-24, 2008, games.

Commission members visited several sites, including the National Stadium and the Olympic Village. The overall impression was positive, the IOC said in a release.

"The venues that we have just seen will be truly magnificent for the athletes to compete and live in and for the media to live and work in at games time," said commission Chairman Hein Verbruggen. "Personally, I found the visit to the National Stadium a particularly emotional experience because I can now see that the opening ceremony is nearly upon us and also just how far we have come together over these past six years." Beijing Olympic officials have scheduled 26 test events this year to help fine-tune preparations, the IOC said. Copyright 2007 by UPI

Sports > Olympic Games, by Sportikos

The particularly roseate report above is not just propaganda, it is directly tied to advertizing for airfares and Beijing Olympics packages. It's propaganda that is at the same time misrepresenting an aesthetics-sports product to make money by deleting the fact that the Beijing Olympics 2008 is a hazard to your helath.

I suspect that Earthtimes.com is a front for the Chinese Communist Party's Olympics promotion, or that the UPI story has been clipped to remove the UPI writer's coverage of the IOC's distinct unease about pollution and gridlock, or that UPI has become part of the corruption of the news. Or, all three of the foregoing simultaneously. Because, just as particularly, the cited report makes no mention of the IOC's concerns about air traffic, street traffic congestion, and the dangerously polluted air of Beijing.

More info:

Sooty air and traffic congestion in Beijing concern IOC inspectors (Apr19,2k7). The foregoing is a Canada.com page; the same story is available on MSNBC; both versions derive from an Associated Press story by Steven Wade.

IOC Commission Concerned About Beijing 2008 Pollution (Apr19,2k7, GamesBids.com)

Boycott Olympics 2008. There's no uptodate material on the 2008 Olympics, but only critical material on the big subject of China's Communist repression of human r+ts, including freedom of religion. The Boycotters note the repression of Tibetans and other Buddhists, and of the Falun Gong. They do not mention the repression of China's largest religion, Christianity. I think the Boycotters are a Falun Gong front with themselves an anti-Christian bias. Sad thing, because carrying such a bias to the point where it itself becomes repressive of info about the repression of a wide religious freedom that also embraces all Christians in China, such a selectivity is a poor strategy, even a stupid one. It is stupid to carry such a bias into reporting human-r+ts news of repressions in China, because the best constituency for the boycott project hypothetically would be North American evangelical Christians who cheer on the unregistered Protestant house-church movement, and North American conservative Catholics who cheer on the underground Roman Catholic Church aligned in China with the Papacy in defiance of the Communist govt and its registered churches. I'm not joining a Boycott Olympics 2008 movement so unwise and so biased itself, to the point of erasure of other Chinese religions besides Falun Gong and Buddhism--tho these too have indeed experienced the same horrors as unregistered-church Christians. The Boycotters should get their own act together if they want to unite all people of conscience. Otherwise, let the Games begin!

Sports: Soccer: Italy denied next Euro Football Tournament allegedly because of violence

A blog-entry at Eursoc shares info about the internal politics of soccer (called "football" in Europe). At stake are the location of the 1012 all-Europe games (Apr18,2k7):

Euro 2012 For Poland

Football: Italy may be world champions, but the country's recent history of crowd violence and match-fixing seems to have damaged its standing with European soccer's governing body, UEFA.

Today it was announced that Poland and Ukraine will jointly host the Euro 2012 football championship, not Italy, which was previously a firm favourite for the tournament.

Sports > Soccer/Football, by Sportikos

The head of Poland's football association Michal Listkiewicz said he "couldn't believe" UEFA's decision.

EURSOC can't really believe it either: Italy isn't the only nation facing a match fixing scandal. In Poland, over 80 people have been arrested in an enquiry into match fixing. The government suspended the entire football board, but was forced to back down following pressure from world football body FIFA.

Italy played host to the 1990 World Cup Finals.

This will be the first time since 1976 that a former Iron Curtain nation has hosted a major football tournament. Back then, Yugoslavia hosted the competition, which was won by Czechoslovakia.

The current champion of Europe is Greece. Next year sees the 2008 tournament, held in Austria and Switzerland.

In any case, not counting match fixes, the violence in Italian "futball" has been horrendous, like North American hockey.

Sports: Hockey: Sidney Crosby guy to watch in today's playoffs

Sid the Kid is the guy to keep an eye on in today's pro hockey playoffs, where he hits the ice for the Pittsburgh Penguins. The series is the 2007 Stanley Cup Conference Quarterfinals. It pitted the Pens (4) versus the Senators (3) in Game 2.

Sports > Hockey, by Sportikos

In Game 1, Pens lost 3 to the Sens 6. Despite the win yesterday, he satisfied neither himself nor his team-mates, but his record and rep still put us on alert for Game 3: Sun, April 15 @ PIT 6pm ET.

Did I menion that Crosby is a NovaScotia-born Canadian?

More Info:

"Crosby will get by with some help from his friends" (Apr14,2k7) by Evan Grossmann

Sports: Pro Baseball: Yanks pull win from 13th inning

NYT's Tyler Kepner reports on a fantastic Major League Baseball game worthy of history-laden New York Yankees.

Oakland, Calif., April 14 – The Yankees lead the majors in errors, with 13 in their first 10 games. Their starting rotation is depleted by injuries, and their bullpen is exhausted. But they are always a threat to change a close game with one swing.

Alex Rodriguez hit his seventh home run of the season in the fifth inning.

It happened on Saturday at the Coliseum, when Jason Giambi belted a home run to right center off Lenny DiNardo in the 13th inning, leading the Yankees to a 4-3 victory over the Oakland Athletics.

"This could be a big early-season win," said Giambi, who had been 0 for 5. "We might look back and say, 'That was the beginning.' Hopefully, this is the one that really turns it around for us."

Kepner is an excellent sports writer; and you can well imagine, as this game continued 4 more innings beyond the 3-3 tie at the end of the 9th, the tension built up to give Kepner a game worth his skills. Then Giambi homered the tie-breaker, to show his batting prowess.

Technics: Internet Web2.0: Google buys DoubleClick to continue lead in online advertizing

Read/WriteWeb email newsletter carries word of "Google to Acquire DoubleClick For $3.1 Billion In Cash." (Apr13,2k7)--also at R/WW website.

In a move predicted by R/WW's Sean Ammirati and New York Times a week or so ago, one of the big Internet companies has acquired online advertising system DoubleClick. And the buyer is none other than Web 2.0's big spender, Google! According to the press release just out:

"The acquisition will combine DoubleClick's expertise in ad management technology for media buyers and sellers with Google's leading advertising platform and publisher monetization services.

The combination of Google and DoubleClick will offer superior tools for targeting, serving and analyzing online ads of all types, significantly benefiting customers and consumers..."

This is a huge deal - because for DoubleClick, Google is paying nearly twice the amount it paid for YouTube late last year ($1.65B in that case).

The deal appears to have been hastened by DoubleClick's announcement earlier this month that it plans to launch an exchange for online advertisements. Sean analyzed this development on 4 April, noting that it may lead to more profitable monetization of online ads.

Technotes, by Technowlb

As if Google isn't profitable enough already in that department! One thing's for sure, this is a blow to Microsoft - whose AdCenter product was designed as a direct competitor to Google's Adsense/AdWords. But now Google has - yet again - trumped the competition (Microsoft and Yahoo) by taking its online advertising technology into new territory.

MarketWatch reporter Gabriel Madway takes up the optimatics aspect in monetary terms, "Google agrees to buy DoubleClick for $3.1 billion" (Apr13,2k7):

San Francisco (MarketWatch) -- Google Inc. (GOOG: GOOG466.29, -1.10, -0.2% ) said late Friday it has agreed to acquire digital marketing company DoubleClick Inc. for $3.1 billion in cash from private equity firms Hellman & Friedman and JMI Equity, and [Google] management. The deal is expected to close by the end of the year. DoubleClick is based in New York. "It has been our vision to make Internet advertising better - less intrusive, more effective, and more useful," said Sergey Brin, Google's co-founder, in a statement. "Together with DoubleClick, Google will make the Internet more efficient for end users, advertisers, and publishers."

Hopefully, the new DoubleClick-able Google will allow both websites and blogs to have greater control over their ads when dealing with Google's system.

I interviewed rW's General Editor, Owlb, on our advertizing perspective. He said: "I have been very sad about the lack of editorial fit between Google Adsense ads that we run on various pages of refWrite. I'm definitely looking for something competitive in regard to the possiblity of our choosing--say, from an Adsense massive list--a menu of advertizing that wholely fits with our editorial policy and regular-readers as our best-market niche. Adsense has an alogarithm by which to choose and place ads here, but often that mechanically-applied numeric formula is so skewed in its determination of the editorial slant of what should be the best ad-content for us, that Google's search for profits here is so mis-structured it seems to reduce itself to absurdity. Let refWrite choose which ads to place, as part of our own overall editorial/advertizing identity. We remain non-commercial, but we would prefer that our own selection of adverts (at least give us a veto power!) be given the first chance to make a marginal profit off our existence." That's our General Editor, Owlb.

As to my own view, I tow the line but still enjoy the suprizes we encounter strait from the Google mathemical ad-machine.

Technics: Games: Top game company shifts to bigger later model, cuts off low-end customers

FoxNewsreports on top game company's abandonment of the little guy--both the low-end buyer and smalller console model of PlayStation 3 (call the newer models "PayStation"), "Sony Discontinues 20GB PS3" (Apr12,2k7).

SAN FRANCISCO — Sony Corp. has discontinued the 20-gigabyte PlayStation 3 game console so it can focus on a more popular--and expensive--model that has a bigger hard drive.

Since the launch of the PlayStation 3 in November, consumers have been buying the 60-gigabyte model 10 to 1 over the cheaper unit, said Dave Karraker, spokesman for Sony Computer Entertainment America Inc.

Technotes, by Technowlb

Both models have much of the same hardware inside, but the 60-gigabyte console, which costs $600, has built-in wireless support and slots for memory sticks and other storage media.

Retailers still have several thousand 20-gigabyte models on store shelves, Karraker said Thursday. The 20-gigabyte consoles will continue to have a suggested retail price of $500 until supplies run out.

"Better to put resources toward the ones that retailers want," Karraker said.

Severe production shortfalls in the months after the PlayStation 3 debuted meant that thousands of consumers had to wait in long lines and still couldn't buy a console.

On eBay and other auction sites, bidders were willing to pay several times the suggested retail prices so they could have consoles for the holidays.

The discontinuation racket is the real game here, displaying Sony's contempt for its low-end customers in the country where it is a guest business.

Sports: Swimming: Phelps wins 7 golds at world aquatics meet

"American Michael Phelps Sunday became the first swimmer to win seven gold medals at a world aquatics championship. He set the mark by breaking his own world record in the men's 400-meter individual medley in Melbourne, Australia." I found this item on Christian Science Monitor email newsletter. I'll have to check out the further facts, hunt down the info about this amazing competitive swimmer.

Sports:Hockey: Toronto's last chance for the playoffs, tonite vs NY Islanders

Toronto's Maple Leafs face their last chance to gain entry to the end-of-season tournament for the National Hockey League's championship. In a racy pre-game psych-up, Bill Lankhof of Toronto Sun writes, "Somehow, Leafs keep hanging on" (Apr5,2k7)

If it is true that the most dangerous animal is one that is wounded and cornered then the Maple Leafs should be a fearsome sight to behold the next couple days.

They've got the Islanders and Montreal [Saturday, Apr7,2k7] right where they want them. The rest of the NHL just doesn't know it yet.

This team has more nicks, scratches and blemishes than a frat-house beer fridge. Parts keep falling off, the door is hanging by one hinge but somehow it keeps getting the job done.

When they beat the [Philadelpia] Flyers Tuesday they did it on goals by three defencemen, against a hot goaltender, with a No. 1 line centred by goal-slump ridden Mats Sundin and a second line centred by someone with the injury yips.

For three-quarters of the season this team couldn't win at home. Now, when it had no choice, it's won eight in a row.

They have had more man-games lost to injury than any other team. Kyle Wellwood, the lynch-pin of the power-play is back from hernia surgery, but skates like he's carrying a Ming Vase in his hockey pants. But, he'll play tonight because without him the Leafs might as well decline the penalty.

"He does so many great things even at the speed he's going. But my concern is the cautiousness in his skating. He can still create some things. But the Kyle that we remembered before the injury was quick to holes. He's not at that point right now," coach Paul Maurice said yesterday.

Here's hopin'!

FINAL SCORE & STATS: Sports Illustrated

Sports: College Athletics: University of Florida in Basketball, Football, and Women's Gymnastics

A fan of the bastion of atheletic prowess, the University of Florida posted on That'sFit blog: "My Florida Gators win second straight NCAA basketball title and teach life leason" (Apr3,2k7). Altho he left out some key details, Fitz's blog conveys the spirit of an enamored fan after his team reached the top of the National Collegiate Athletic Assocation for the second time in a row these last two years (and we mite add, it's football team earlier won the NCAA championship as well. Whether it's Gator Basketball or Gator Football (that's American-style football), this fan exudes his joy and gives us a bonus sermonette to boot:

Last night I watched and cheered as my Alma mater's basketball team won the Big Dance. Again! It was a spectacular feat which was well earned. I've had the luxury to sit court-side at many games this year, and as wonderful as they look on television, they're even more impressive in person. I have tons of respect for this team.

The Gators are composed of incredible athletes who play selflessly every second of every game. Each Gator works hard in the gym and on the court more for the guy next to him than for himself. They are quick, agile, strong and smart. Each player is a coach's dream. Since they play for one another, they never made excuses or trained half way.

Gators' basketball coach, Billy Donovan, was so roundly supported thru-out the Florida ranks for his second championship in a row that he turned down a contract offer to coach his sport at the more prestigious University of Kentucky.

While Donovan is staying, four of his players, not even yet seniors, are turning pro to enter the National Basketball Association.

...[J]uniors Corey Brewer, Joakim Noah, Al Horford and Taurean Green will all give up their final year of college eligibility to enter the National Basketball Association. The quartet and senior Lee Humphrey teamed to become the first starting five in National Collegiate Athletic Association tournament history to win back-to-back titles.

``They need to take the next step,'' Donovan said at a televised press conference with the players in Gainesville, Florida.

Each of the players are considered by scouts to be first-round picks. College underclassmen have until April 29 to declare for the June 28 draft. They can withdraw their names by June 18 if they don't hire an agent.

``We did everything we could possible do in college basketball,'' Brewer, the Most Outstanding Player of this year's Final Four, said. ``It's been so much fun, but we all know it's time to move on and take new challenges.''

The four players accounted for 83 percent of the scoring from Florida starters this season. Green averaged a team-high 13.3 points, Brewer and Horford averaged 13.2 points each and Noah 12 points.

Florida captured its second straight national title April 2 with an 84-75 win over Ohio State. The Gators are the seventh team overall and first since Duke in 1991 and 1992 to win consecutive titles.

After winning the championship last year, Noah, Horford and Brewer were projected as first-round NBA draft picks and opted to return to Florida for their junior seasons. The Gators returned to the Final Four this year, beating UCLA in a rematch of last year's title game and Ohio State.

Donovan has a 261-103 record in 11 seasons at Florida.

Without his stars on hand next year, Donovan will be building again on younger players at the university for their sophomore and junior years. He must see prospects, and have a real appetite for challenges.

As tho all that weren't enuff, New York Times weaves the men's stories in basketball and football into an account featureing UFlorida's women's gymnastics team.

last weekend’s Southeastern Conference championships in Arkansas.

The Gators’ gymnasts, using the success of the university’s reigning national champion football team and its resplendent men’s basketball team as a springboard, vaulted Georgia and Alabama to win the title, becoming the first college other than the Bulldogs or Crimson Tide since 1989 to wear the crown.

With the NCAA regionals looming in two weeks — followed two weeks later by the national championships in Salt Lake City — the gymnasts did not dare take a practice off, even to acknowledge the team whose success has spurred their own.

Here, at the center of the college sporting scene, while other athletic programs ponder how to catch up to the Gators, the Gators are busy chasing one another. After the football team equaled the success of the basketball team, the basketball team raised the bar by repeating, becoming the first university to win the football and basketball Division I championships in the same academic year.

Samantha Lutz, a senior gymnast, said, “I feel like all the sports are feeding off each other, like the entire athletic association has caught fire.”

Gators, it seems, are surfacing everywhere. Ryan Lochte, a former Florida standout, last week set an individual world record and won five medals at the World Aquatics Championships in Australia. An ex-Gator golfer, Camilo Villegas, is playing this week in his first Masters.

There has to be some kind of special social-psychological phenom in process at University of Flordia--as well as a lot of hardwork and discipline on the part of the student athletes, and good coaches.

Music: Internet: Now you can download pay-for songs on iTunes from EMI--without DRM copy blockade

Associated Press via CNN carries the news "EMI-Apple pen deal to sell songs" (Apr3,2k7). The EMI side of the partnership means that you can purchase for a little more per song thru Apple's iTunes improved digital recordings of Rolling Stones, Norah Jones, Coldplay and a whole lot more artists too (but not songs of the Beatles--no loss, to my ears!). And you can do so in about a month's time without those hi-tech blocks called DRMs (Digital R+ts Management technowreckers) that are currently installed in most online music downloads when you make your purchase.

EMI Group is the first and perhaps the only one of the Big Music corporations to break with the DRM technoblocks that prevent an owner from copying a song and perhaps sending it on non-commercially to friends, etc. You know, P2P file-sharing, person-to-person.

The announcement followed calls by Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs earlier this year for the world's four major record companies, including EMI Group PLC, to start selling songs online without copy-protection software.

Music, by Audiovisiotor

The Big Music holdouts are Sony BMG, Universal, and Warner.

The technology, known as digital rights management, or DRM, is designed to combat piracy by preventing unauthorized copying or sharing, but it also can be a consumer headache. Some music players, for instance, support one type of DRM software but not others.

The DRM used by Apple does not work with competing services or devices, meaning that consumers can only download songs from iTunes to work on their computers or iPod music players.

The lock between the download services and players has drawn criticism from European industry regulators, who argue that it limits buyer choice.

"Doing the right thing for the customer going forward is to tear down the walls that impede interoperability," Jobs told a London news conference.

Yes indeed!. Mr Jobs, but what about the point the Eurocrats are making--interoperability! Got a strategy for achieving that? And surrender your grasp on the digital music market thru your reigning advantage in the brilliant combo of iTunes Music Store and iPod? I doubt it.

Sports: Horse Races: World's best assemble in Dubai for leading sports event

This afternoon on the nationwide American TV channel ABC, I watched the Dubai World Cup, which consisted of several events of magnificent horses racing, jockeys astride seeking the large purses offered. Quite stirring to see the great beasts in top condition going for it, of course prodded by their masters.

As a viewing experience, I was disappointed that the zoom-in lenses weren't used more often; also pre-race and post-race close-ups, still-standing and promenades would have been greatly appreciated. Maybe in the future, as the local TV arrangements fine-tune they camera work for the events of what promises to become, if not already, the premier location of world horce-racing sports.

Sports > Horse Racing, by Sportikos

By the way, Dubai is a Gulf State emirate and as a Muslim-ruled country, it does not allow betting within the country. Dubai is in a major buidling boom, both on land and in the Gulf where islands have been created. One is a sea-surrounded hotel, approached underwater, I believe; that facility uses its helicopter-roof as a major tennis tournament.

Reporting on the key event of the day, Associated Press' Jim Krane gives us a glimpse of the competion:

Dubai, United Arab Emirates – Call it sibling rivalry at its most lucrative.

Dubai ruler Sheik Mohammed watched as his unbeaten horse Discreet Cat finished last in the world's richest horse race Saturday, while his brother's horse Invasor ran off with the $6 million Dubai World Cup.

Invasor, the 2006 Horse of the Year, avenged his only previous defeat and ran a thrilling duel with Premium Tap, a horse owned by Saudi King Abdullah.

Trained by Kiaran McLaughlin, who spent nearly 10 years as a trainer in Dubai for the ruling Maktoum family, Invasor took charge down the stretch and won by about two lengths.

“It's an awful good year in one night to win in a $6 million race,” a grinning McLaughlin said after capturing the showcase event on the $21.25 million card, the richest in the sport.

Even tho the competitive racing of horses, at least at Dubai, did not have the visual razzamatazz that accompanies a NASCAR race, a viewer at the track or on TV enters another dimension with live beasts, even given the go-faster prods, than one experiences in the mechanical boxes on wheels. I think I enjoy viewing the horses even more than human athletes racing to the finish line. Can't say why exactly, but I discovered that sports preference in myself during today's telecast from Dubai.

Technics: Internet/Computers: Vern Seward has some complaints about Apple softaware "Mail.app"

Mac Observer internet mag carries the confuzzle-ated twists and turns that critic Vern Seward discovered as he attempted to line up certain expectations and what he thawt was implied by using both Apple's webmail on DotMac (.Mac) in sync with Apple's software application for your home or business computer, aptly called Mail.app (or, more simpy, you guessed it, Mail (which itself can be confusing if you are using or acquainted with other mail applications, or even merely talk with users of such others.

Technotes, by Technowlb

Vern calls his piece Mail Weirdness. If you're interested in many things Apple, and weirdness, you mite want to read this piece thru in its entirety. I did, and found myself intrigued, but at times a wee lost in the the labyrinth of Apple/Mac's obfuscatingly complex computer mail technics.

More later ... present text was cross-posted from Technowlb's new Technics blog.

Music Video: Greg Pattillo: An inspector-gadget remix of beatboxing flute on theme from Super Mario Brothers ... enjoy!

YouTube says this regarding its current top video (3.25 minutes): "Beatboxing Flute player Greg Pattillo ... with a twist like nothing you've heard (unless you've been wandering through Washington Square park [NYC] and heard him there)." The ellipsis in my foregoing sentence deletes the words "inspector gadget" because I don't know what this techterm means, but maybe you do. Added to the freedomworksfilms repetoire on YouTube on Jan19,2k7, in two months this experimental-music creation has now been viewed 3,451,174 times, commented upon by 13214 people, and favourited in 45,716 subscribers online accounts.

Movies: Propaganda: New biography of Hitler's film-maker Leni Riefenstahl & fascist aesthetics

Stephen Bach has written a new book on Leni Riefenstahl, Leni: The Life and Work of Leni Riefenstahl (Alfred A. Knopf, 400 pages, US$30). His study is reviewed by Juliet Lapidos in Forward, "The Real Leni Riefenstahl" (Mar23,2k7).

LR, as I shall call her, was "Hitler's filmmaker" who claimed, says Lapidos, "she was an apolitical artist who knew nothing of the Holocaust." Bach, however, smashes this claim (as well as many others made by LR) with new documentation that renders the book historiogrphically well-researched. LR made the propaganda movie Triumph of the Will glorifying Hitler at the 1934 Nuremburg Rally of his military forces; I'd long ago seen the movie's unshortened original version, copies of which were rare at the time of my viewing it in the screening room of a Toronto old-films collector, Reg Hart--altho now TV has made snipped versions more accessible to those who bother. It must be said that this movie becomes quite tedious in its monumentalism, actually, and its repetition (some of which is dishonest in that it gives a sense of larger numbers than was actually the case at the event, as big as it was). Lapido:

Using new primary sources, Bach proves that Riefenstahl was not compelled to make “Triumph of the Will,” as she maintained until her death in 2003. Rather, she specifically requested permission to direct the film that institutionalized the so-called “fascist aesthetic[s].” Furthermore, although Riefenstahl was adamant about the purely documentary nature of her work, Bach argues convincingly that “Triumph” is not a straightforward depiction of the 1934 Nuremberg Rally.

Riefenstahl had written so much about herself, as a postwar justification of her role in the cultural war of the Third Reich, in her 700-pages of autobiography (1987), that Bach's sleuthwork in previously unexamined original LR papers allows him to capsize self-exonerating, self-aggrandizing self-portrayals, one by one.

Bach also puts to rest the notion that Riefenstahl knew nothing of the racial policies that led to the Final Solution. After Hitler invaded Poland, Riefenstahl obtained war-correspondent status and traveled to Konskie, where she witnessed the murder of unarmed Jewish civilians. In September 1942 she visited Maxglan, a Gypsy internment camp, and requisitioned 23 prisoners to serve as unpaid extras in “Tiefland,” an epic film financed by the Reich.

Riefenstahl, it seems clear, was not a virulent antisemite. As she mentioned whenever the opportunity arose, she had Jewish friends, colleagues and even, in her youth, a Jewish lover. Bach makes the case that Riefenstahl was not motivated by political or racist zeal. Rather, she glorified Hitler because she was an opportunist with no moral compass. It was her lifelong ambition to become a famous artist — and if cozying up to the Führer was her best chance at fame, then ethics be damned.

One work of LR's that I really liked, to be honest myself, was her large-size photobook on the Nuba people from south Sudan and bordering Kenya. Decades ago I had read some astute dialectician who argued that her photowork in that volume was racist, but I remained utterly unconvinced.

According to Lapidos, LR was not a virulent antsemite, perhaps not a virulent racist either (I add), but "a pathological narcissist who used her talents to lionize Hitler and thus ease the path of the Nazi regime." Thus, advancing her own standing as an artist and tailoring her self-expression in horridly opportunistic ways.

TV: Movie: The Chronicles of Riddick was not as ridiculous as expected

Yesterday eve and again tonite, I watched the 2-eveningsful scifi epic starring Vin Diesel, The Chronicles of Riddick (2004). Vin has an animal-eyes thing, and can't stand the lite, especially can't stand the glare of day lite. He's a Furian. The marathon was billed as "The fite of evil against evil," so I assumed that animal has something ontologically to do with evil. Thandi Newton and Judy Drench (she's an Elemental, so she glides ephemerally).

But in the moral shakedown of these Riddick filmic events, Vin was on the side of good after all, with his chief opponent the godlike leader of the Necromongers (yes!, the deathmongers who had surrendered their souls and adopted a religion against all religions, a secularistic anti-religion so absolute it had become a religion itself).

TV Movies, by Audiovisiotor

The extremes of weather, climate, environments natural and unnatural, with shifting landscapes to complement shapeshifters all added to the superhero cartoonic quality of the scenes thru which Vin travels, mostly at h+ speed.

Want a plot summary? See Daniel Williamson's write-up.

TV: Series Watching award-winning action series 24's character Jack Bauer reaches saturation-point, as formulas lose lustre

The saturation broadcasting of Kiefer Sutherland as Jack Bauer has made the younger Sutherland less known than his character and his weekly show 24. The episodes of the show however have begun to blur into one another--counterterrorism, CIA and FBI renegades devoted to conspirators even h+er up, enemies bent on the destruction of America by bombs and mass-epidemic virii. The show seems to have worked thru its previous monotonous preoccupation with Arab/Muslim conspirators in the USA. But chases, explosions, illnesses, and narrow escapes continue to litter relentlessly the plot, in what is now becoming a nauseating routine. Tonite's episode, like recent ones, has for its chief enemies (besides internal oldstock American traitors) antgonists are bearing Slavic-sounding names (which echo the entire Cold War). In any case, it's time for this viewer to look for something less repetitious and predictable when I'm up for a breathless action flick on the tube each week. Trouble is, Jack Bauer and 24 remain far superiour to most other plot-driven fare. Ho hum, nothing new under the sun, or in the late n+t TV hours.

TV: Internet: New media combos open spaces for new unregulated contents, genres, and communications disciplines

An important TV article by Neil Midgley is slanted by the headline-writer toward a mere battle of the giants, "BBC plans to compete online with iTunes" (Mar7,2k7), Telegraph (UK). But there are several other facets of the story that widen out into major shifts around technical changes and organizations, to changes in content-trends where new opportunities for freedom of expression are opened by the media-combos involved.

BBC Worldwide, the commercial arm of the BBC, has unveiled ambitious plans to compete with music and video download service iTunes.

John Smith, BBC Worldwide's chief executive, laid out a far-reaching commercial vision for the BBC's new iPlayer software.

The iPlayer has been developed by the BBC itself, and is expected to be approved by the BBC Trust later this spring. It will fulfil a public-service remit by giving UK licence-fee payers a seven-day "window" to catch up with BBC shows online, but Mr Smith said that BBC Worldwide also wanted to generate revenue with advertiser-funded content and pay-for downloads.

Controversially, Mr Smith invited other broadcasters to participate in the iPlayer, comparing it to an online version of Freeview or BSkyB's digital satellite platform.

The move is just the latest announcement from the BBC about its new media ambitions. Last week, it put some of its clips on video-sharing website YouTube, and it has announced that it is working with IBM on a video-based search facility for its library of children's programmes.

On-demand services from broadcasters like Channel 4 and Sky have as yet failed to capture the public imagination, but this online territory has already been staked out by a rag-bag of niche players.

TV, by Audiovisiotor

"We're trying to break away from the established idea of what a television channel is," said Iain Dale, from www.18doughtystreet.com, a video website about Centre-right politics. "We have shows like World Wide Widdecombe, but we have also asked Peter Tatchell to create video for us."

Opinionated websites rely on the fact that the internet, unlike television, is completely unregulated. "If we were on Sky, we'd be bound by Ofcom's impartiality rules," said Mr Dale.

The freedom of the internet has also attracted other opinionated groups, particularly Christians. Premier Christian Media Trust has expanded from its Premier Radio base to offer evangelical TV on demand over the internet.

The buzz jargon differentiates between "lean forward" and "lean back" video content. Short clips, like those on YouTube, are the kind for which users "lean forward" to their computers. Traditional television, particularly entertainment, is intended for viewers to "lean back" on their sofas.

"There are different disciplines for programmes for the internet," said Nigel Dacre, of Ten Alps Digital, which operates www.public.tv, a website offering public sector, business and training videos. "You want to avoid complicated graphics and lengthy opening title sequences, and you include fewer separate sequences."

Newspapers such as The Daily Telegraph are also using short videos to drive traffic to their websites.

Clive James, the veteran broadcaster, started making a chat show in his living room and showing it on www.clivejames.com. "But on the internet, you pay for every signal you send," said James. "If you have too many viewers, you can die of success very quickly."

James has therefore taken to forging "alliances". His chat show, Clive James Talking, is still made in his living room, but has now made the reverse transition and has its first broadcast on digital TV channel Sky Arts.

Technics: Google Blogger: One step forward, two steps back, to the X power

Google has gained fame, and now notoriety, upon the purchase and re-jigging of the blog host, Blogger thru which refWrite Backpage is published. In recent months, the re-jigging has included a Blogger Beta which lately has been transformed into Blogger Beta or New Blogger.

When a Blogger-user follows the corporate lead, and converts over to New Blogger, certain new features become available. A small feature has been relevant to refWrite's overall blogging vision and strategy. We've wanted to advance the vision of a multi-member work-community for reformational journalism online in the blog-medium. That's now possible but tedious to establish; it just ain't easy, not inviting.

First, to bring a second blog-poster into the picture, you need to join blogger with an email address distinct from your new Google email addres (functionally, Google seems to want all of these prefereably to be be, you guessed it, Gmail addresses; something hard to attain without separate computers). In any case, to post a blog-entry to a given page, like rW4, a blogger has to go thru the maze of signing-into Old Blogger, get re-routed from there to another page for signing-in to New Blogger, only to then have the username and password rejected, with a note appearing in fine print to click on, if you want to enter as a different user.

Of course, as in my case, you're still you--but you don't get a list of your various user names where you can click the one to use for a given blog-entry post. Instead you have innumerable steps to undertake before you can get your alternative username and password signed-in for purpose of presenting to you a fresh posting-composition page, that will come out in the blogosphere for your readers, but under a different name following "Posted by ..." at the bottom of the blog-entry.

This anti-blogger rigamoroll is contrived to allow integration around Google's own poorly-conceived needs. But what you want is integration around you as the center of your various Google-served bloggerly activities. There are several reasons why a blogger may want to use three or four different names following "Posted by ..." on a given page, or set of inter-linked pages. Some of these have to do with classifying the different kinds of content regarding which a blogger may be actively blogging. In my case, for years I blogged with a signature line in each blog-entry, differing the signatures acccording to the category of the content. I used the semiotic mark "--" followed by the blogger name appropriate to that content.

But always all the posted blog-entries were further designated by Blogger on its own terms (contradicting mine and confusing my readers). Then, upon purchase of Blogger, the Google machinery kicked in with what in the end amounts to the the same old, same old "Posted by ..." single signifer. I respnded to a new feature, that did a little something along the lines I wanted, but at considerable cost.

Technotes, by Technowlb

When I left Blogger behind to become part of Blogger Beta by Google, I got the chance to use my DotMac email addresses, instead of only the newly required Beta address at Gmail: but only if I took on all the arbitrary rigamaroll involved in signing-in differently to one or another of my posting names newly establised with Google Blogger.

(I only mention in passing two other reasons for strongly preferring multiple user names and email addresses: branding; and fictional work woven into the texture of a given blogpage. Branding by use of a distinct posted-by name that is indigenous to a given content, helps to build name-recognition for that kind of content attributed to that particular name, while a different posted-by-name becomes associated strictly to a different kind of content. There could be perhaps two or three or four kinds of content (each kind with its distinct brand/username) interwoven into a single timeline of posts on a page devoted to those posts.

The fictional element would occur when the different posted-by names on a given blog-page or set of inter-linked pages are laced with characterizations, whereby one "character" emerging around a particular posted-by name may include a passing comment about a different "character" (bearing a different posted-by name), so that a perhaps quite-thin but real and perhaps fascinating buildup of distinct blog-literary characters occurs as you blog about different contents that may be diversely juridical, political, economic, pisteutic (faithic / explicitly religious), scientific, aesthetic, technic, etc.)

However, the problems of being enmeshed in the rigours of using Google's New Blogger are compounded when one finds use of other features of Google's Web2.0 suite, whether directly in conjunction with New Blogger or not.

For instance, if you use New Blogger in relation to several posted-by names, you have to be extremely and tediously careful in trying to use simultaneously Google Bookmarks. In turn, each posted-by name by which you sign into Google (Blogger) gets a different Google Homepage (which I hate, I want one Google Homepage with quick access to all Google Blogger posted-by names). Going to any newspage from any one of your Google Homepages (which happens whether you personalize it/them or not) determines in advance where your bookmarking will occur. I want to use Google's Bookmarks in a set according to different posted-by names, again according to my basic categories of content. But that means, when I surf the news and pickout valuable bookmarks for three or four different topics (each associated separately to a different posted-by name), I have to stop, sign into New Blogger, go thru the labyrinth to get to the specific username and password for which I want to enter a given bookmark. This is so clunky, time-consuming and dispriting that it dehydrates the joy of blogging out of the process, replacing it with elaborate technical routine only. Nonsensical from the standpoint of the blogger.

Google has lost s+t of the living blogger who may wish to combine journalism, opinion, and new forms of textual artistry thru differentiated posted-by naming, designed to interlace fictional elements that build up a sense of characterization, name by name. Instead, Google has made its Web2.0 suite a corporate n+tmare based on a qualitatively different point of view from that of the serious blogger. It determines for the blogger a different and alien point of integration for her/his own complex and aesthetically-nuanced blogging process--namely, its own corporate machinery and machinations.

Movies: Oscars: Elbowing out Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent, the Oscar cult celebrates its week

Roger Friedman reports in his Fox 411 email newsletter (Feb19,27):

Oscar Week Begins:
All Hail Helen and ForestAt last, we are at the start of Oscar week. It’s a good thing, too. Dreamgirls needs about a day and a half to reach $100 million. The snubbed musical came “this close” over the weekend to the magic number, but fell short about $750,000.

But Oscar week 2007, if there is any justice (and usually there isn’t) in Hollywood, should belong to Martin Scorsese. After near misses with The Aviator and Gangs of New York, America’s finest director looks certain to pick up Best Director this Sunday night and maybe even Best Picture. I can only say maybe. Scorsese fans have been disappointed too many times.

What is certain about Sunday night? This much: Helen Mirren, Forest Whitaker, Eddie Murphy, Jennifer Hudson.

Queen Helen is so certain that Dame Judi Dench, whose performance in Notes on a Scandal is incendiary, is skipping the show to have knee surgery. She’s not being a sore loser, but simply practical in a Dame Judi way. She’s got to get back on the London stage. And she already has an Oscar (1999, Shakespeare in Love).

What’s uncertain: Is Peter O'Toole going to come back to Hollywood just to watch Whitaker win? O’Toole had a grand time at the nominees’ luncheon and then went home to England. Making the long trip back does seem pointless if he doesn't think he'll win, but O’Toole’s presence should enliven things.

And what about the spoilers? Little Miss Sunshine, a dark-horse film that was birthed at Sundance, could upset everything with a Best Picture win. Based on its Screen Actors Guild award for Best Cast — as well as producers and writers’ guild nods — Sunshine could throw a dark shadow across Scorsese’s The Departed. Stranger things have happened.

Meanwhile, the real drama of the weekend may wind up with the Independent Spirit Awards on Saturday. After a few seasons of paralleling the Oscar nominations, this year the Spirits have chosen more of an independent path.

Best Feature should be a dog fight between Little Miss Sunshine and Half Nelson. Best Male Lead, I hope, will go to Ryan Gosling for Half Nelson.

As for Best Female Lead? The real fun would be if Catherine O'Hara gets it for For Your Consideration. Talk about making a catty statement to the Academy Awards!

Mr Friedman's judgment is always at the top for me, but I dare say the darkhorse has its own merits. So I'm divided on what to look forward to on that one matter.