“A band’s greatest hit often becomes their least favourite song …Pop music has often been described as a disposable commodity, yet the music industry’s relentless repackaging of the past tends to ensure that pop songs are for life and not just for three minutes. But what happens when the artists themselves cannot but cringe at the enduring success of their more pathetic efforts?” (Telegraph.UK)

Washington Post music critic reviews “one of the worst performances of any opera I’ve ever seen… I pity the person who sees this ‘Trovatore’ as his or her first opera: Dumb, strained, pompous, old-fashioned and supremely illogical, it will serve to confirm every negative (and usually misleading) stereotype about the genre.”

“the equivalent of tens of thousands of years’ worth of extinctions in just a century”. 32% of all amphibian species face extinction. (Washington Post)

I am quite enjoying this recent New York Times series of columns by medical professionals called ‘Cases’. This one is a depiction of quaint medical ingenuity, 1956-style. Of course, for my money, it does not hold a candle to the best stories of medical ingenuity, Burton Roueché’s Annals of Medical Detection from the New Yorker of decades past. I was surprised to learn that one of the most memorable of Roueché’s stories, “Eleven Blue Men” had been resurrected (poorly) as the basis for that new medical investigation series CSI clone on network television (I didn’t watch it…).

“If you thought that quantum entanglement – the weird effect that allows two particles to behave as one, no matter how far apart they are – is too subtle to affect your daily life, think again. The phenomenon could be responsible for something as significant as the mass of everyday objects, yourself included, and could finally explain why the fundamental particles of matter have the mass they do.” (New Scientist)

“Whatever the outcome of the 2004 presidential election, there are bound to be unforeseen consequences…” — Alex Beam (Boston Globe)

And, on a more serious note: What if Bush Wins, a forum by 16 ‘experts’ (David Greenberg, James K. Galbraith, Grover Norquist, Kevin Drum, Gideon Rose, Cass R. Sunstein, Paul Begala, Mickey Edwards & Nancy Sinnott Dwight, Todd Gitlin, Sebastian Mallaby, Gregg Easterbrook, Christopher Buckley, Elaine Kamarck, E.J. Dionne and Jeff Greenfield). (Washington Monthly)

the first editorial position it has taken on a presidential race in its 80-year history. This is a wide-ranging and breathtaking indictment of the Bush record and a sober appraisal of the hopes invested in Kerry.

Any thinking person who reads this could only vote one way. A pity many aren’t, and won’t.

“This is the stuff the bad guys have been using to kill our troops, so you can’t ignore the political implications of this, and you would be correct to suspect that politics, or the fear of politics, played a major role in delaying the release of this information.” [quoted in Talking Points Memo] Marshall quite rightly points out that this story perfectly weds the misadministrations incompetence and its dishonesty; the Americans have known for the year-and-a-half since the occupation that this enormous amount of high-potency explosives had gone missing and had not revealed it, and took great pains that the story not emerge after supposedly ceding power back to the Iraqi transional authority. But what I am dying to hear more about, and what Marshall does not discuss, is how the Bush cabal lost control of this desperately necessary coverup at just the wrong time. Whoever in the Iraqi regime reported the theft to the IAEA just two weeks before Nov. 2 obviously knew the potential implications it would have for the Bush reelection re-defeat effort.

U.S. Chief Justice Undergoes Surgery for Thyroid Cancer (New York Times ). The Court is aging; only one justice is under 65 years of age. (Unfortunately, the youngest justice with the likely longest Supreme Court career ahead of him is the worst, Clarence Thomas, at 56, but what will he do after Rehnquist is no longer on the Bench, since he seems to ape Rehnquist’s position in the preponderance of cases?) There has not been a new appointment to the Bench in ten years. It is serendipitous that the news about Rehnquist breaks now, in the final run-up to the election, alerting the electorate as it does to the expected opportunity for one or more likely several appointments to the Court during the administration of whoever wins next week. Arguably, the upcoming Supreme Court appointments will be the most lasting legacy of the next president. That alone is reason to defeat the smirking chimp.

Rehnquist’s cancer appears to be advanced, to judge from the fact that he had a tracheostomy. Yet the Chief Justice says he will continue to work. There would be nothing to be gained from his resignation now even if he does want to hand an appointment to Bush before he leaves. A lame duck Bush appointment would be blocked by outraged Senate Democrats… one would hope.

7 Bush Cousins Launch Pro-Kerry Web Site (Associated Press)

“Awed at the pace of technological advances, a faction of geeky writers believes our world is about to change so radically that envisioning what comes next is nearly impossible.” (In other words, after the Singularity, no one can hear you scream.) Largely focused on Charles Stross and Cory Doctorow, with nods toward Greg Egan and Vernor Vinge. (Popular Science via Charlie’s Diary [Stross])