I received I giant package from Smithsonian Folkways today with about two dozen albums that I will sit and listen to and review this month. Countries represented include Uganda, Indonesia, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Ghana, Mexico, and some weird, far-off land called Canada. Also included were several archival disks and traditional anthologies. I’m very excited to hear it all.

I have to pull this entry off rather quickly, as I’ve got plans from 4pm on into the night. Fortunately for me, there was not much in the way of information this week, as a singular story about a stupid spoiled whore dominated the news landscape. Here’s what I was able to uncover:

• Porn used to be relegated to a video hidden in the bottom drawer, or a magazine under the mattress. Today, it’s part of everyday life.” The rest of the article goes on to state that we’re all obsessed with sex and our culture is dominated by porn. Apparently the dramatic change in porn perception came via the Internet, where pretty much everyone can satisfy their inner perverted sex freak. [story]

• “Internet culture, often portrayed as the vanguard of progress, is actually a jungle peopled by intellectual yahoos and digital thieves,” according to a Silicon Valley entrepreneur-turned-dissenter. Well, since I’m not a digital thief, I guess that makes me an intellectual yahoo? I guess it’s not as bad as being an amateurish blogger! Oh, wait… [story]

• Life is returning to Chernobyl. [story]

• Somebody has stepped up to pen the top ten (wonder where he got that idea!) Inconvenient Truths about file-sharing. The list includes factoids such as, “Organized criminal gangs and even terrorist groups use the sale of counterfeit CDs to raise revenue and launder money.” This might be related to the ban on selling used CDs in Florida. I can’t imagine how much money they’d be making from such an endeavor. The last time I went to Princeton Records I got maybe $15 for a dozen CDs. While that could conceivably enable me to afford crack, I don’t see how its going to contribute to buying arms or laundering any money. [story]

• In related news, the RIAA has been accused of extortion and conspiracy in a new Tampa, Florida case. The counterclaims filed charge the RIAA with trespass, computer fraud and abuse, civil conspiracy, civil extortion, and deceptive and unfair trade practices [story]. Meanwhile, a lawsuit in Oregon that I reported on in the past has been dropped by the RIAA. [story]. Maybe the record labels are too busy worrying about making music louder than they are about successful litigation.

• If you’re looking for alternatives to AIM, Yahoo, or MSN, here’s an article comparing six different clients. It seems like Trillian is the program to beat. Personally, I like Adium. [story]

• Online gambling might be legalized again [story]. If so, maybe I won’t need a new job. I can just play poker all the time.

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