Wes Phillips

Of course, being cats, Huckleberry and Bagheera said it to my luggage, not me.

"When you're carrying a book with the big fat title Embalming." Lisa Takeuchi Cullen has written a gentle update to The American Way of Death. Putting aside her statement that "death is a big, huge bummer," it sounds interesting.

Technology Review, which is one of the magazines I not only eagerly await, but read from cover to cover, published a">http://www.technologyreview.com/printer_friendly_article.aspx?id=19845"… 14 page screed against network news by John Hockenberry in the January/February issue.

The (insert adjective here) recording and entertainment lobbies have sneakily maneuvered to have language inserted in http://www.copyright.gov/docs/regstat051606.html">
Section 115 Reform Act (SIRA), which is being considered by the House Judiciary Committee, that will destroy fair use as we know it. The language is vague but it appears to require licenses from copyright holders for "every digital copy made in the transmission of digital media—including cached copies on servers or on your hard drive, and even temporary copies in RAM," according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

Haven't heard of it yet? You will. It's an opportunistic pathogen that is extremely resistant to antibiotics—some people call it a super bacterium. Jon Carroll writes about it in his columnhttp://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2007/…; today, which, like all of his columns, is a great read.

The Chronicle of Higher Education makes the case that Idol's popularity reflects "a hunger for realistic evaluation."

If you're in search of a great read, full of heart and in love with the way language can sing, Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys is the book you've been looking for.