Romenesko points to Jon Friedman's column on MarketWatch, where he asks why C-Span categorizes callers by political affiliation? He says:

"When people choose to call in to C-SPAN and comment about the day's news, they can use one of three phone lines: one supporting President Bush, one for the Democrats in the audience and one for people with other political beliefs. ...I think this idea is potentially polarizing at a time when America has never been more divided along political lines."

I've always wondered that too; and I guess the reason is so they can have a rough balance of opinions over the hour, and make sure that mass callers are filtered out as far as is possible, but the principle (a controlled marketplace of ideas) has always kind of sat badly with me.


I was having a pretty good Friday until now.


We all know the hotel sector is desperate to fill rooms right now, but how can one resist this amazing feature ..... on the Hotels.com web site about the Sheraton in Baltimore's Inner Harbor: "Coffee addicts can indulge in their pajamas, as in-room coffeemakers are a standard amenity."

Indulging in one's pajamas cannot be over-rated, I find.


Great headline on AP this evening: "View from Katie Holmes’ hometown: what are the nuns thinking?"


Here's a tip-ette for all you PR types out there... Like newsdesks everywhere, we get bombarded every day with press release emails. It helps us not put your pitch straight into the recycle bin if the subject line is a tad more interesting than this:

"PatchLink Scanner Integration Module™ to Support Microsoft Baseline Security Analyser (MBSA) 2.0"

A grabber, huh?



However, here's some techie news that is pretty interesting:

Next version of Windows will include support Internet data feeds
By ELIZABETH M. GILLESPIE
SEATTLE (AP) Microsoft Corp. said Friday that the next version of its Windows operating system will have built-in support for Internet data feeds, an increasingly popular way to get news and other information channeled straight to a computer.
snip
In the long-delayed Windows upgrade, code-named Longhorn and expected to be released late next year, an RSS icon will appear in the Internet Explorer Web browser to make it easy for people to find, much like Apple Computer Inc. has done with its Safari browser.





Whoo...er, Hooo! (and it would have to be 'Big Boy Productions', wouldn't it?)

Ah, the perils of New York living....

But of course that's nothing compared to the great Boston molasses disaster of 1919.

Whatever else they may be, kittens are not good helpers when it comes to putting together pedestal fans. Don't let them fool you, with their mewing and pawing; they're useless at holding tools and as for reading the instruction book, forget it...

Today, of course, is Father's Day.

Thanks very much to Linda for sending this on.

I love my kids more than anything in the world, and it really hurts to be apart from them. But I know that whatever we're all going through right now will pass.

If at the end of it all they come to have anything approaching the affection for me that I have for my own dad, then that's much, much more than I deserve.


So if you're a father, or the child of one, have a wonderful day.

And remember, we're all just trying to make our way as best we can, so sometimes we have to cut each other a little slack.

As Loudon sang to Rufus (Wainwright, that is....):

"When I was your age, I was a mess.
On a bad day, I still am I guess."

Hottest day of the year here today. But before I get too carried away, I should perhaps think of colleagues where that maybe ain't such a good thing....

Our LA correspondent, for example, is in the middle of this right now.

He just sent us this message:

FT desert office (where I am) is threatened by huge wildfire, 1m away as one types. I have a 7,500 gal water tank and am consuming beer at alarming rate. Should be enuff to douse flames. If not: hasta la vista, babies.



#2 son and I went to Pericles yesterday at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, a short walk from my apartment. Lots of death, exile, fleeing, conspiracies/backstabbing, unrequited love/lust, weeping. Typical Bard, though not one of his jollier plays.

The staging was superb, though. If anyone knows The Globe, it's built as an accurate representation of how theatres were in Shakespeare's day, so the upper gallery walls can be used to recreate, say, the rigging of a ship. The storm at sea sequence yesterday was just excellent.

Tom was particularly taken by the notion that, since theatre was to the Elizabethans what TV is to us, there was a lot of heckling/drunkenness/general misbehaving by both audience and actors.

As if that wasn't depressing - sorry, life-affirming - enough for the poor kid yesterday, I also took him here. He seemed ok with a quick trip through deadly earnest German and other modern European painters, but he had to ask: "Why do artists never smile?"

Which, when you consider everything they should be smiling about, (see recent post re DJs) is a fair point.

He could also have asked: "Why do they always dress in black?" "Isn't that just some paint splatters?", "Do people seriously pay them to do this?"...

I'm pretty open-minded when it comes to modern culture, and I'm always ready to be shocked/challenged/have my preconceptions of society trashed.

But in truth, it would be difficult to find a group of folks who are further up themselves than these guys. The least they can do is not take themselves so freakin' seriously.


Speechless. Just speechless.


Ahhh.... England!