PlasticBoy

The album of last week was The Shins’ Wincing The Night Away.

Speaking of Other Music, they are launching a digital music store. They’ll offer DRM-free high-quality MP3s at slightly higher than iTunes prices.

Like last year, I made a playlist from the Other Music year-end recap.

George Clooney will executive produce a miniseries of Neal Stephensons’ The Diamond Age for SCI FI Channel.

When a prominent member of society concludes that the futuristic civilization in which he lives is stifling creativity, he commissions an interactive book for his daughter that serves as a guide through a surreal alternate world. Stephenson will adapt his novel for the miniseries, the first time the Hugo and Nebula award winner has written for TV.

This is why I shred credit card applications and those annoying checks they send you that let you borrow money at insane interest rates.

Robert Anton Wilson passed away yesterday at 4:50 AM.

A funny take on the original Star Wars movies that posits that R2 and Chewbacca are top Rebellion operatives manipulating everything behind the scenes.

20 years earlier, Chewbacca was second in command of the defence of his planet. He’s there in the tactical conferences and there on the front lines and is a personal friend of Yoda’s. When he needed reliable people to join the embryonic Alliance, who else would Yoda turn to but his old friend from Kashykk[sic]? Given his background, there is no way that Chewie would spend the crucial years of the rebellion as the second-in-command to (sorry Han) a low-level smuggler. Unless it’s his cover. In fact, Chewie is a top-line spy and flies what is in many ways the Rebellion’s best ship.

Another take on the Paleolithic diet.

Ms Garton looked for inspiration to the plant-based diet of our closest relatives, the apes, and devised a three-day rotating menu of fruit, vegetables, nuts and honey. The prescribed menu was:

• safe to eat raw;
• met adult human daily nutritional requirements; and
• provided 2,300 calories - between the 2,000 recommended for women and 2,500 for men,

Volunteers could also drink water. In the second week, standard portions of cooked oily fish were introduced - a nod to a more hunter-gatherer lifestyle.

Cory Doctorow is podcasting his entire novel, Eastern Standard Tribe.

There have been a couple of interesting articles about vi recently. This essay describes why the vi input model is great for laptop keyboards. Also, The Register has a bit from Bill Joy on the origins of vi.

I’ve moved the Rhapsody Featured Mix Archive over to Wordpress.com. The new URL is rhapmix.wordpress.com.

Paolo Nutini’s Picks by Paolo Nutini on Rhapsody

Best Of Latin 2006 by Sarah Bardeen on Rhapsody

Best of Alternative 2006 by Michele K-Tel on Rhapsody

Best of Jazz 2006 : 1. Pithecanthropus Erectus - Paul Motian 2. Someday I’ll Find You - Sonny Rollins 3. Autumn Variations - Alan Broadbent 4. The Elephant Sleeps But Still Remembers - Jack DeJohnette 5. Infinito Particular - Marisa Monte 6. Summer Day - Pat Metheny 7. Trista - Tomasz Stanko Quartet 8. Evan’s-ville - Chico Hamilton 9. Isn’t This A Lovely Day? - Diana Krall 10. Woke Up This Morning - Taylor Eigsti 11. He puts on his coat and leaves - Jason Moran 12. With The Wind And The Rain In Your Hair - Harry Allen 13. Jack Baker - Branford Marsalis 14. I Saw You Do It - Russell Malone 15. Midnight Cowboy - Ben Allison 16. Inutil Paissagem (Useless Landscapes) - Ignacio Berroa 17. Namana - Julia Sarr 18. Hero As A Boy - Donny McCaslin 19. Strike A Match - Cassandra Wilson 20. The Leak - Dave Holland 21. Isn’t It A Pity - Scott Hamilton 22. Perdoa Meu Amor - Marisa Monte 23. Her Lost Smile - Bob Belden 24. Sem Compromisso - Celso Fonseca 25. Kensington High - Ted Nash