Photo credit: Thomas Hawk, Book and Wine
Outstanding shot, kudos and thank you.

Let me please suggest a book and a wine, each gets my highest recommendation.

The book: Beautiful Evidence by Edward Tufte. Amazon info here

The wine: Pol-Roger, nonvintage brut Champagne. At less than $50 an excellent first night value.

"Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known." Carl Sagan

Brian Lamb is, again, fighting the good fight. Brian has written to incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi requesting her to give C-SPAN control of the House video. Not one good reason to turn the request down, however, stay tuned for business as usual. Bravo Brian! LA Times' Editorial on the issue, C-SPAN gets real, here. Please join me and write to your representative and to the incoming Speaker.

The consistently amazing Lee Arnold got in touch suggesting a good read by MarketWatch writer Frank Barnako...

"By the end of next year, you might be able to listen to any of thousands of Internet radio stations on your iPod or Zune." Thanks Lee, can't wait to hear your audio! Read Barnako via Lee's blog here

Time magazine finally comes around: You being Time's Person of the Year. A TW staffer writes to me "Got it! You equals N=1, we are down with that" Well, OK, and thanks.

Good advice is never cheap, cheap advice is never good: The brain trust, or at least one genius, at Air America comes to the understanding "that the radio component of this requires a radio professional". Truly a Homer Simpson "doh" moment. Hey guys, it ain't rocket surgery. Air America could yet be a major success provided they hire some skilled radio folk. Coverage of the latest from NYT, Elizabeth Jensen and Lia Miller on the case, here (thanks to my friend in the city for the email on this).

How Art Can Be Good a new essay by Paul Graham...

I wrote this essay because I was tired of hearing "taste is subjective" and wanted to kill it once and for all. Anyone who makes things knows intuitively that's not true. When you're trying to make art, the temptation to be lazy is as great as in any other kind of work. Of course it matters to do a good job. And yet you can see how great a hold "taste is subjective" has even in the art world by how nervous it makes people to talk about art being good or bad. Those whose jobs require them to judge art, like curators, mostly resort to euphemisms like "significant" or "important" or (getting dangerously close) "realized."...one of the reasons artists in fifteenth century Florence made such great things was that they believed you could make great things...The idea that you could make great things was not just a useful illusion. They were actually right. So the most important consequence of realizing there can be good art is that it frees artists to try to make it. To the ambitious kids arriving at art school this year hoping one day to make great things, I say: don't believe it when they tell you this is a naive and outdated ambition. There is such a thing as good art, and if you try to make it, there are people who will notice. Read Paul's entire essay here (my thanks to JoHo for the tip).