I’m still working on my full answer to this, but Walter Cronkite gets at least some of the answer right: if you’re going to call yourself a journo, be prepared to be held to those standards — not that that’s saying much these days.

Earthlink, the online service, has bought the PC manufacturer (well, assembler) PeoplePC. This is interesting for a bunch of reasons.

• They only paid $10 million (plus assuming $34 million in debt). Though I haven’t looked at any financials — what, you want me to do research at these prices? — that seems low for a company that had established itself as a national brand through some pretty good advertising.


• Why would an online service buy a hardware company? It surely isn’t because hardware has such terrific margins. Earthlink plainly wants to be a one-stop shopper for online access. Communications turns out to be the killer app after all. Getcher e-mail, web, access and smarter-than-the-average terminal all in one place.


• The next step, I bet, is for Earthlink to not sell the computers at all, but include the hardware in your monthly fee: $35 for dialup access, $60 for DSL access, $100 for DSL with hardware.


• When online services begin giving you the hardware, and the hardware becomes solely a communications device, Microsoft’s position on the desktop becomes tenuous indeed. Earthlink could use pretty much any OS it wants — even a custom one — if all they’re providing is a computer terminal.


• The last interesting point is that I learned about this story in The Hollywood Reporter. Interesting place for tech news, no?

Stumbled across this ‘blog, apparently published over in Park Slope. Pretty good stuff, especially this item.

The accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers has changed its name. Henceforth, it will be known as:

Monday

No joke. Monday. As in www.monday.com. As in, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences will have its Academy Awards tallied by Monday. (Since the Oscars telecast is usually on a Sunday, that could be a problem.)

Sheesh. Monday. As in “I Don’t Like Mondays.” And they paid someone for this?

(By the way, domains for the other days of the week are already taken.)

A colleague on one of my e-mail lists sent around a list of “more wierd facts.” The bold comments are mine.

More Wierd Facts: Did you know…

It is impossible to lick your elbow.

How did they find this out?

A crocodile can’t stick its tongue out.

I’m not worried about a crocodile licking me.

A shrimp’s heart is in its head.

Big deal. I know lots of men with their heads in their dicks.

In a study of 200,000 ostriches over a period of 80 years, no one
reported a single case where an ostrich buried its head in the sand.

How could they? An ostrich with its head in the sand is invisible.

It is physically impossible for pigs to look up into the sky.

That’s why there are birds; to watch out for them.

A pregnant goldfish is called a twit.

Lots of things are called twits.

More than 50% of the people in the world have never made or received a
telephone call.

Many of them are assigning editors.

Horses can’t vomit.

Have they ever watched Mr. Ed?

The “sixth sick sheik’s sixth sheep’s sick” is said to be the toughest
tongue twister in the English language.

I’d say that, too, if I couldn’t say the tongue-twister.

If you sneeze too hard, you can fracture a rib. If you try to suppress
a sneeze, you can rupture a blood vessel in your head or neck and die.
If you keep your eyes open by force, they can pop out.

If you keep making faces, your face will freeze like that.

Rats multiply so quickly that in 18 months, two rats could have over a
million descendants.

All of them will be Mormon.

Wearing headphones for just an hour will increase the bacteria in your
ear by 700 times.

Does it make a difference if you’re listening to Barry Manilow or death metal?

If the government has no knowledge of aliens, then why does Title 14,
Section 1211 of the Code of Federal Regulations, implemented on July 16,
1969, make it illegal for U.S. citizens to have any contact with
extraterrestrials or their vehicles?

Think about who’s in Congress, then ask the question again. The answer will be obvious.

In every episode of Seinfeld there is a Superman somewhere.

His name is Kramer.

A duck’s quack doesn’t echo, and no one knows why.

Because ducks are outside, and things don’t echo outside. Except in canyons, and ducks are too smart to go into canyons.

23% of all photocopier faults worldwide are caused by people sitting on
them and photocopying their butts.

A similar proportion is caused by copying dumb-ass memos.

Most lipstick contains fish scales.

There’s a “tastes like fish” joke here, but I can’t bring myself to write it.

Like fingerprints, everyone’s tongue print is different.

How do you clean the ink off?

Over 75% of people who read this will try to lick their elbow.

38 percent will try to lick someone else’s.

I’m not much of a fan of Michael Wolff. For those who came in late, Wolff invented the NetGuide series of books in the early ’90s, and “sold” CMP Publications a) the right to start a magazine called NetGuide (which I later edited) and b) his database from his NetGuide book, all for the bargain price of $1 million. The latter was worthless and the former wasn’t his to sell. Then Wolff went on to found an online service that cratered memorably, all of which recounted in his book Burn Rate.

Wolff somehow parlayed all this failure into a gig as the media columnist for New York Magazine. The column impressed me so much that I let my subscription to the magazine lapse, but this column about the music business impressed me mightily.

Wolff argues that the economics and the structure of the music industry have changed to the point that rock stars won’t be able to act like, well, rock stars anymore. Rather, the record businesss is looking more and more like the book business. Provocative and persuasive stuff.

Timex has a new watch that uses GPS to tell you how far and how fast you’ve excercized. The GPS unit, by Garmin, straps onto your upper arm, and connects to the watch part using low-power FM (what — no Bluetooth?).

The 50-lap version costs $200; a 100-lap version costs $225. It occurs to me: if you’re doing laps, why precisely do you need GPS to tell you where you are? Interestingly, the watch does not seem to display your location — only how fast you’re moving, how far you’ve come.and similar lap-related functions. And, of course, the time. But not your actual location, making it kind of worthless for a lot of applications. (Question: can this be hacked?)

They’re out of stock, but they promise more by Father’s Day.

Mc-Graw Hill is closing its wonderful bookstore in the basement of its building.

“The space is so subterranean that it’s more suitable as a destination like a health club than as retail space,” said Faith Consolo, vice chairman of Garrick-Aug, a real estate firm.

She misses the point. The stuff in the MGH Bookstore was so specialized and esoteric, that only a motivated buyer would want to seek it out.

The space will become a health club (sort of the opposite of the bookstore, no?); it’ll be the third health club within a three-block radius. Seems that no one wants to go out of their way to hit the gym — which makes just tons of sense, doesn’t it?

My friend Miriam Lewin went down to lower Manhattan to witness the final procession from Ground Zero, and wrote a brief report:

The crowd around me clapped but did not cheer.  We were respectful yet somehow  exuberant — I was smiling through my tears.  I didn’t clap — I had put  my hand on my heart when I saw the beam and I could not wrench it off my  chest.

It was a beautiful day.  A little hotter and muggier than September 11,  but still beautiful.  There was a nice breeze off the river, and New York felt like home, and a good place to be.

I’m in Charlottesville, VA right now and saw the ceremony on television, so I’ve got no right to comment. MSNBC’s coverage was most remarkable: there was not a word from a talking head for the entire time — more than 30 minutes.

From the AP:

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Three federal judges on Friday threw out a federal law that would have forced public libraries to equip computers with software designed to block access to Internet pornography.

In a 195-page decision, the judges said the Children’s Internet Protection Act went too far because it also blocking access to sites that contained protected speech.

“Any public library that adheres to CIPA’s conditions will necessarily restrict patrons access to a substantial amount of protected speech in violation of the First Amendment,” the judges wrote.