The New York Times cheers the purchase by

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In a recent article at TCSDaily, Atheist Karl Reitz provides a prime example of what Dan Dennett calls “belief in belief.” That is, though his prose style actually seems calculated to undermine any possibility of belief in a merciful deity, Reitz wants to argue it’s a damn good thing people adhere to false religions, not […]

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In the comments to the post “Rock Heresy,” Andrew writes: So, is there an album that is beyond reproach? It would have to be something that doesn’t aim too high, wouldn’t it? I don’t know that I’ve got an answer to that one, but it did get me thinking about the category of the “overrated” […]

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Just in case those of you who typically read this site in your RSS feed care, I’ve added a couple of sidebar widgets to the blog-proper. On the right, there’s now a sidebar of quick-hits links to articles or blog posts that looked interesting, but about which I either have nothing especially valuable to add […]

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We’ve got another month before Spoon’s new album hits stores, but you can stream tracks at the Merge Records jukebox now.

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Via Boing Boing, I find this howler in an article on a joint MPAA/RIAA effort to get Congress and the executive branch more serious about cracking down on the scourge of piracy: “Our law enforcement resources are seriously misaligned,” NBC/Universal general counsel Rick Cotton said. “If you add up all the various kinds of property […]

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I’ve just noticed that my quondam neighbor, libertarian comic book artist extraordinaire Paul Pope, has started a blog. He’ll have a compilation book of his art out later this month.

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Jim Henley links to an interesting roundup in The Guardian of various rock musicians picking the classic or critically-acclaimed album they think is overrated. A few are cop outs—is it really all that ballsy to slag Neon Bible?—and you probably will disagree with a fair number, but they’re mostly interesting. Though I’ll exempt Franz Ferdinand […]

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An excellent post at Obsidian Wings explains why the structure of upcoming spectrum auctions will importantly influence the development of wireless services in coming years. Follow-up here.

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Andrew Sullivan links this clip from Britain’s equivalent of American Idol (with Simon Cowell and everything!) of a cell phone salesman belting out (bits of) “Nessun Dorma” from Turandot. On the one hand, I’m delighted to see someone can get a standing ovation singing opera on a show like this, and never in a million […]

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