Sorry for the break - work got in the way - must...adjust...priorities...

USA Today: "Internet cafes seemingly dot every block in Baghdad, and new ones open often. That has led to a new phenomenon here: bloggers."  Excellent.  [ via Dave Winer ]

Andrew Sullivan posted an interesting (and encouraging) letter from Fallujah.

LGF notes the Media Mask slips.  "Falling all over themselves in an unseemly and ghoulish haste to publish photographs of American soldiers arriving home in coffins, the Washington Post, CNN, AP, and Reuters all ran pictures of Columbia shuttle disaster victims - wrongly identified as Iraqi war dead."  That's terrible.

Victor Davis Hanson recounts more Iraq myths.

David Burbridge reports DNA: a new twist?  "A few years ago in southern England a drunken teenager threw a brick at a truck.  The brick hit the driver's window; the driver had a heart attack and died.  The police forensic services obtained a DNA sample from the surface of the brick, but could not find a match.  Then last year the Forensic Science Service told the police that the newly developed process of 'familial searching' might help.  The police listed close relatives of the partial match, identified a likely suspect, and obtained a DNA sample from him which proved to be a perfect match.   After initially denying all knowledge of the crime, when confronted with the DNA evidence the suspect pleaded guilty to manslaughter."  Way cool.

Robert links the Electric Railway Historical Association of Southern California.  Awesome website.  I love this stuff.  And people say Los Angeles doesn't have any history!  What's weird is that 100 years ago, L.A. was a leader in public transportation, and today everyone takes a car everywhere...

Ottmar Liebert notes the SUV challenge.  "Isn't it outrageous that I could have a twenty-something thousand dollar tax credit for buying a Hummer vs a measly $1,500 tax-credit for a Hybrid car?"  Yes, it is!  This is a problem for Arnold :)

Adam Curry observes that on April 30 the Empire State Building will be lit orange, in honor of Dutch queen Juliana, who passed away recently...  That's cool.

Here's an interesting twist on the "are bloggers journalists?" debate: Time Magazine launches a blog.  "TIME's Eric Roston gives a daily commentary on the technology that will carry us through tomorrow - and the stuff that keeps us stuck in yesterday."  So be it.

Of course we're all waiting for Alien vs. Predator, and in the meantime we can contemplate the new Star Trek prequel.  What could be better than that?

Mark Cuban, broadcast.com founder and owner of the Dallas Mavericks, blogs about Success and Motivation.  "I did it too.  I drove by big houses and would wonder who lived there.  What did they do for a living?  How did they make their money?  Someday, I would tell myself, I would live in a house like that."

Man, this pisses me off.  Compression Labs has filed a lawsuit against 31 major companies for violating its patent, due to their use of JPEG compression.  These patent suits are ridiculous.

Ottmar considers the creative collective.  "I believe William Burroughs said once that an idea, any idea, doesn't belong to a person, but to a time period."  Exactly.  But with patents, the idea can belong to a company.  Which can then sue and stifle creativity.

This is pretty funny.  "Jed Ela exhibited a single role of a toilet paper he had thought of as a joke, called ‘Shitbegone’.  The exhibit was a great success, and Ela realized he could actually make money by mass-producing Shitbegone and selling it in stores.  What differentiates this from the sale of other artistic reproductions is that Ela markets Shitbegone as toilet paper, not as art: he sells it by the case ('96 double rolls for $44.99. That's 47 cents per roll!').  What started as something like Warhol’s soup cases turns into an idiosyncratic case of the product development and marketing of a basic essential commodity."  But that isn't the best part.  Now Michael Pulsford has analyzed 'shitbegone' in a business case study.  I am not making this up :)