Satellite radio quickly causes changes in traditional radio

According to The New York Times > National > As Satellite Radio Takes Off, It Is Altering the Airwaves, the quick rise of XM and Sirius satellite radio has caused some changes in local radio already...shortening the time of commercials in an hour from 11.7 to 11 minutes and changing of playlists.

I stopped listening to music radio years ago. In the car I listen to mostly news or business, when I'm not listening to the iPod we keep in the car. At home it's a blend of iTunes and Bloomberg Radio.

In the interest of full disclosure, I own stock in Sirius.

Too many drones in the sky

The number of drones (Unattended Air Vehicles or UAVs) in the air over Iraq has increased to 700, causing a variety of problems ranging from stress an d burnout for the drone controllers (pilots? don't think so) to collisions between drones and other aircraft: The New York Times > International > Middle East > U.S. Drones Crowding the Skies to Help Fight Insurgents in Iraq: At a command hub spread among a half dozen dimly lit trailers at this air base just off the Las Vegas Strip, the future is now. Small teams of remote-control warriors nudge joysticks to fly armed Predator aircraft 7,500 miles away. Once the Predators take off in Iraq or Afghanistan for missions, the air crews here take over. Perhaps they could rehire some PATCO controllers to help out.

Ten Reasons why China should move its peg and pull the plug on the US reckless policies

Continuing my education on China and the US economy: Nouriel Roubini's Global Economics Blog: Ten Reasons why China should move its peg and pull the plug on the US reckless policies: it is increasingly in the interest of China to pull the plug on the US as maintaining the peg and accumulating increasing amounts of forex reserves is increasingly costly.

Triple J podcasts

I haven't played with podcasting much, for no particular reason. I tend to use my iPod sporadically, mostly while driving, ocassionally when working out. That may end soon. Triple J is an Aussie radio station (network?) which I listened to when in Sydney. Even today, years later, I buy the yearly Triple J Hottest 100 CD collection (though this year's is getting decidedly negative reviews). Triple J has apparently started podcasting: triple j podcasts, I'm going to grab a couple and try them out on a drive to Poughkeepsie tomorrow.

Vital Cities: an interview with Jane Jacobs

From Whole Earth: Vital Cities: an interview with Jane Jacobs: It [the internet] interests me as one more remarkable self-organized system, but there are lots of other self-organized systems. When the civil mail system began, it was self-organized and was only later taken up by institutions and systematized. It got quite organized by people who would go to taverns where they knew that travelers were and earn a little money by picking up letters to deliver, especially around waterfronts or coaching stations.

The archivist

From Slate: The Archivist - Brewster Kahle made a copy of the Internet. Now, he wants your files. By Paul Boutin. It's a brief history of the Internet Archive (http://www.archive.org/) and an even briefer mention of the Ourmedia project, a free archive for all content (video, audio, text, etc), the catch, if any, being that you have to make the content available to anyone for free.

The Amazing Adventures of Lethem & Chabon

Via Making Light: The Amazing Adventures of Lethem & Chabon: Yes, our favorite dynamic literary duo is back again, folks; saving the world from the clutches of bad literature... or are they???