Astronomer Seth Shostak speculates on Why ET Will Be More Advanced than Humanity. Why will our listening experiments – if they
succeed – find only highly advanced aliens? space.com

Hatch pledges to keep online music accessible. “Putting the recording industry,
entertainment conglomerates and even
the future AOL-Time Warner on notice,
the chairman of the U.S. Senate
Judiciary Committee warned that he
would work to ensure that online music doesn’t fall under the control of a few
powerful distributors.

At a two-day conference on the future of digital music that pitted such parties as
Napster and the Recording Industry Association of America against each other in
panel discussions, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, pledged to use his position to keep
the Internet open for the benefit of fans and artists.” CNN

“Be All You Can Be’ is out; Ads Now Seek Recruits for ‘An Army of One’.

News Analysis: Lessons of a Swift Exit. The Linda Chavez embarrassment, which seems to be treated by the press as a casualty of the foreshortened transition period and hasty vetting of candidates rather than a reflection on Dubya’s judgment or ideology, may yet “embolden
Democrats, unions and
environmentalists with other nominees
in their sights, particularly John
Ashcroft, the religious conservative
attorney general- designate, and Gale
A. Norton, Mr. Bush’s choice to run the
Interior Department.” I certainly hope so. New York Times

Satisfied With U.N. Reforms, Helms Relents on Dues. The Clinton administration had long struggled to “conduct diplomacy under the stigma of being a deadbeat nation.” New York Times

Calls for Change in the Scheduling of the School Day. A groundswell of support for lengthening the schoolday and the schoolyear joins increasingly rigorous curriculum design and the imposition of exit-exams as the latest thrust in educational reform; designed to address “a troika of sociological forces:
more parents working outside the home; research showing
that children get into trouble during the late afternoon and
lose educational ground during summer breaks; and the
higher standards that have been embraced from coast to
coast over the last decade.” But how does having our children spend more hours in school square with the stultification they already face in the classroom, where financial constraints have increasingly stripped any richness and breadth from what they’re taught? New York Times

Ancient DNA gives debate a new life. An Australian scientist, who claims that his analysis of the oldest DNA recovered from human remains — an aboriginal skeleton from New South Wales claimed to be 60,000 years old — casts doubt on the common genetic ancestry of all modern humans, is embroiled in two sorts of controversy. He is besieged by challenges to his dating techniques from leading Australian scientists on the one hand. On the other, there’s this buried in the last paragraph of the news story — Aboriginal leaders are apparently upset that they were not kept abreast of the DNA findings and issued a statement yesterday that they did not need scientists to inform them that their ancestors had “been here forever.”

Clinton To State No Gun Ri Regret — but not issue a formal apology for the apparent massacre of South Korean civilians by U.S. forces in July 1950, during the Korean War. The “statement of regret” may be something as generic as lamenting civilian casualties throughout the war. The U.S. has already decided not to pay reparations to the families of the victims. The Pentagon’s official conclusions of its investigation of the incident, due out on Thursday, will reportedly emphasize “that the U.S. troops who were
sent to fight in the early weeks of the war were ill-equipped, poorly trained and led by
commanders who were not prepared for the chaotic conditions.” The American white knight is further besmirched.