Our man at The White House, Don Gonyea, just set foot on the tarmac at Stansted Airport, outside of London. For the last few hours, he has been on Air Force One, with the president, en route to the G-20 Summit. After that? To Salzburg, Prague, Ankara and Istanbul!

I meant to ask Don to confirm something I read in The Guardian earlier this week: President Obama traveled to England with "an entourage of 500 staff."

More than 500 officials and staff will accompany the president on his tour this week - along with a mass of high-tech security equipment, including the $300,000 presidential limousine, known as The Beast. Fitted with night-vision camera, reinforced steel plating, tear- gas cannon and oxygen tanks, the vehicle is the ultimate in heavy armoured transport.

In addition, a team from the White House kitchen will travel with the president to prepare his food. As one official put it: "When the president travels, the White House travels with him, right down to the car he drives, the water he drinks, the gasoline he uses, the food he eats. America is still the sole superpower and the president must have the ability to handle any crisis, anywhere, any time."

Well, not all the food he eats. Jamie Oliver, "The Naked Chef," is preparing dinner during the summit. What's on the menu? The Daily Telegraph reports that "the meal's show piece will be lamb from a Welsh hill farm in Snowdonia, served with simple flat bread and the strong-flavoured English herb -- wild garlic, which grows in shaded woodlands around the country and can be either cooked or eaten in salads." Mmmm.

Octopus necklace - pretty! Katie Cowden

Trend alert! Ellen Warren, the Chicago Tribune's "Shopping Adviser" is seeing octopi all over.

On YouTube, t-shirts, at craft fairs and greeting card shops. Seriously, look around. You don't need to go to the Shedd Aquarium gift shop to see octopi all over the place. Artists, crafters and -- especially jewelry designers -- seem to be captivated by the charms of these intriguing eight-armed sea creatures. (No, they're not tentacles. You're thinking of squid, which are often confused with the octopus.)

Me, I'll buy just about anything with a bird on it, but you, maybe you're all about the octopus. What's the animal whose image or shape you can't resist?

Vietnam had its soundtrack. The civil rights movement, too. Now, with Wall Street bailouts and AIG bonuses still hanging in the ether, there might be a new populist anthem. The Detroit Free Press reports that John Rich, of the country duo Big and Rich, got tired of what he perceived as outrageous greed, and belted out a new song called, "Shuttin' Down Detroit." As he put it:

I'm sitting there, getting madder and madder, watching New York and Washington D.C. sling billions of dollars back and forth to each other while the hard-working people in America were just going, 'What in the world is going on up there?'

Some of the lyrics from "Shuttin' Down Detroit":

My daddy taught me in this country everyone's the same. You work hard for your dollar and you never pass the blame, When it don't go your way. Now I see all these big shots whining on my evening news, About how their losing billions and it's up to me and you To come running to the rescue. Well pardon me if I don't shed a tear. There selling make believe and we don't buy that here. Because in the real world their shuttin' Detroit down, While the boss man takes his bonus paid jets on out of town. DC's bailing out them bankers as the farmers auction ground. Yeah while there living up on Wall Street in that New York City town, Here in the real world their shuttin' Detroit down.

One of the things I love about public radio is how you can turn the dial, and as soon as you hear that deep, round silence, followed by beautifully enunciated vowels, you know you are in the land of Stamberg and Simon. The flip side of that is the wildly frenetic sound of 1010 WINS -- anyone who's ever ridden in a NYC taxi, or lived in the fabled tri-state area, knows exactly what that sounds like. And what their promise is. "Give us 22 minutes, and we'll give you the world!" Today, while reading an online chat with one of Washington's commercial all-news radio gurus, I learned the secret to that famous phrase. Here's WTOP's Jim Farley on washingtonpost.com:

Arlington, Va.: Jim, since you once worked at WINS, can you answer a question that has bothered me for decades: if their broadcasts last 20 minutes, why is their slogan "You give us 22 minutes, we give you the world"?

Jim Farley: Thanks! You give us 22 minutes and we give you the world was designed (by a consultant) to make people THINK they listened longer than they really did and write that down in their Arbitron Diary.*

Brilliant! Read the whole thing for the secret behind "weather on the 8's."

*For those of you who don't know, Arbitron is like Nielson for radio -- for decades (and this is going to start changing thanks to new technology) people wrote down what they listened to in diaries.

The national debt is getting bigger. In the last few months, the U.S. government has committed trillions of dollars, due in large part to the U.S. government loaning billions of dollars to the country's automobile industry, bailing out banks and insurance companies and waging war in two countries. How are we going to pay all our debts? In our first hour, Talk of the Nation news analyst Ted Koppel and Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank will talk about how long the country can sustain this kind of massive spending. Then at the end of the hour, Dawn Turner Trice, a columnist for The Chicago Tribune, will talk about a recent study from the University of Georgia suggesting that when it comes to approaching race, multiculturalism may be a better model than colorblindness. Which do you think is better?

Does this read familiar? "Thank you for holding. Your call is very important to us. For quality and training purposes, your call may be monitored or recorded. Please stay on the line." *cue cheesy hold music* AGH!!! Well, in our second hour, we'll talk with author Emily Yellin who will take us deep into the customer service industry and channel the rage we all feel when it's time to pick up the phone to get some %@$! help. Yellin's book is entitled Your Call Is Not That Important To Us. Then, Larry Magid, CBS News and CNET tech analyst, will give us an update on the new variation of a computer worm that could attack millions of computers... just in time for April Fool's Day.

There are times when the gloom and doom surrounding journalism, and particularly the newspaper industry, feels absolutely apocalyptic. Like today -- The New York Times announced plans to eliminate several sections, including ... wait for it ... The City section. From the Observer...

The City section, unlike the paper's local news section, has always tried to feel like a small-town paper nestled in the Sunday Times. Stories about how the South Brooklyn Casket Company inspires poets and artists sat side-by-side with paeans to Riverside Park. The section has also been a comfortable space for essayists like Sloane Crosley and Thomas Beller to muse on various off-news-cycle topics like dance or dropping an iPod on the subway tracks.

There are times when this whole thing feels like the beginning of a science fiction movie. Except Clark Kent is now... unemployable.

Bruce Schneier has an interesting piece at Wired.com on privacy and security and government surveillance. Right now, the idea of an "expectation of privacy" makes up the litmus test for US courts on what the government can and can not do when it comes to eavesdropping. The problem, he argues... Given today's information society, "that definition test will rapidly leave us with no privacy at all."

Between the NSA's massive internet eavesdropping program and Gmail's content-dependent advertising, does anyone actually expect their e-mail to be private? Between calls for ISPs to retain user data and companies serving content-dependent web ads, does anyone expect their web browsing to be private? Between the various computer-infecting malware, and world governments increasingly demanding to see laptop data at borders, hard drives are barely private. I certainly don't believe that my SMSes, any of my telephone data, or anything I say on LiveJournal or Facebook -- regardless of the privacy settings -- is private.

In other words... no expectation = no privacy. Things will change, he points out, but doesn't pretend to know how.

Earlier today, President Obama announced that his administration will offer GM and Chrysler more time to negotiate with creditors and to come up with ideas to get the American car industry back on track. But can a plan to save the two carmakers work? In our first hour today, we'll talk with Micheline Maynard, senior business correspondent with The New York Times, and Dan Neil, automotive critic with the Los Angeles Times, about how the plan could work, and what could happen if it fails. Then, in this edition of the opinion page, author and Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts talks about the current state of Black America and how growing disparities between blacks and whites could indicate that this country has not yet entered a "post-racial" era.

For all you fans of This Is Spinal Tap, Waiting for Guffman and A Mighty Wind, today's second hour will be a treat! Musicians and comedians Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer are hitting the road again and they are leaving the wigs, the costumes and the accents behind. Their tour is dubbed "Unwigged & Unplugged" and today the three longtime friends will make a stop on our show to talk about, well, being themselves. And of course they'll be taking your calls, and playing some tunes. Should be a good time! We're working on our ender topic for the second hour, so stay tuned.

There are likely few among us who haven't had an "Oh, crap!" moment after sending an email, often because we've sent it to the wrong person, or hit reply-all instead of just reply. My all-time favorite, though, is the drunk-sends that come through late at night*. Well, Google's here to help. The company has announced "what one of its managers referred to as a "Gmail embarrassment reduction pack." It includes an undo-send, pretty useful, which joins my favorite existing Gmail feature I didn't know about: mail goggles. According to Slate's Michael Agger, mail goggles "require you to answer math questions before sending late-night mail on the weekends." Hilarious! Do you use the goggles? What other Gmail features should I embrace?

*This past year is the first I've had email at home since dorm living, so I've been spared this particular embarrassment. Texting, though, is a whole 'nother story.

Today on Talk of the Nation, our first hour becomes Talk of the World, where we ask our listeners here in the United States to sit back and hear what people around the world are talking about. We'll focus our hour on the economic recession. The financial crisis is not only affecting the United States. Countries such as China, India and Brazil are also seeing their economies shrink as well, primarily in finance, labor and manufacturing. We'll hear from listeners around the globe who will tell us their stories about how this economic recession is affecting their part of the world.

This month, the Pew Center on the States, a public policy research group, released a report stating that it costs twenty times more to keep someone in prison rather than in an alternative program, such as parole. The report also reveals that state spending on prisons is the fastest growing expense than anything else, with the exception of Medicaid. In our second hour, the director of that report will take a close look at how states are trying to cut back on corrections budgets by keeping fewer offenders behind bars. We also want to hear from people who have had experience in the corrections system-- as cops, parole officers or prisoners. Did the system give you what you needed? Then, at the end of the hour, we will talk to Louise Arbour who served as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. Arbour will talk about her experience with war tribunals, international arrest warrants and human rights abuses, and what her first priority will be when she begins her new position as President and CEO of the International Crisis Group in July.

On his blog, Letter from China, Evan Osnos, once a foreign correspondent for the Chicago Tribune, now a staff writer for The New Yorker, draws attention to new, sad news from 435 N. Michigan Ave.: The Tribune has cut its foreign desk. From now on, the newspaper will rely on the Los Angeles Times for news from abroad. As Osnos points out, the move didn't get much of a mention in the Tribune itself.

Osnos, in this interesting paragraph, says he saw it coming:

The truth is that the merging of the foreign staffs was already inevitable long ago. I remember visiting Chicago, on a break from Iraq a few years ago, and being invited to observe a focus group in which a dozen readers were asked for their opinions of the Tribune's foreign reporting. They had about as much to say as they might have on the mating habits of the red-footed booby. That's not a criticism, because it's not unique to them.

Dr. Bill Thomas at Summer Hill in September, 2006. Jim Morrison

 

Dr. Bill Thomas graduated from medical school passionate about emergency medicine. He was a "real" doctor, working long hours in an exciting ER packed with the promise of blood, guts and glory. One night the phone woke him up from a deep sleep. He said, "hello," and the man on the other end asked him if he'd ever thought about being a doctor in a nursing home. Thomas scoffed and hung up, but when the man called back, after another punishing ER shift, Thomas agreed to check out the retirement facility. He took the job to offset a night in the ER, and bustled about, speaking loudly to his elderly charges. One day, when he visited a resident with a rash on her arm, the woman pulled him close to her. As he tells it, he looked into her beautiful light blue eyes, and she said one thing to him.

"I'm so lonely."

Thomas bustled out of the room, wrote her a prescription, and tried to move on, but her words haunted him.
Ever since then, Dr. Thomas has worked tirelessly on behalf of the elderly. He developed the Eden Alternative, an initiative that worked to bring plants, pets and children into formerly cold, institutional nursing homes.
His more recent effort is the Green House Project. NPR's Joseph Shapiro took a look at the effort early on.

It's based on a simple idea: Older people will thrive in a nursing home if it's built to resemble living in one's own house. Others have tried to make existing nursing homes more homelike. The Green House Project makes the nursing home over from scratch, the goal being to give residents more privacy and more control over their lives.

Nearly four years after Shapiro's visit to the first Green House community in Tupelo, Miss., Thomas's project appears to be a success. It has partnered with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to support a broad and inclusive Small House Networking Initiative across the country. The Foundation calls the Green House model "what the future of elder care should be." And a longitudinal study conducted by Dr. Rosalie A. Kane from the University of Minnesota found statistically significant improvements in the quality of life at Green House Projects.

We'll be speaking with Dr. Thomas on Thursday, April 2 as the first entrant in our "What Works" series. He had a simple idea for fixing a problem, and indications are that it works. What are your experiences trying to solve the problems found in typical nursing and retirement homes? How have you handled issues like staff turnover, resident happiness, and the satisfaction of the residents' families?

EDAR Homeless Shelter from takepart on Vimeo.

It's really hard to open a newspaper and not see a story about tent cities popping up as a result of the recession. (And, as a sidenote, it's really hard to open a newspaper nowadays. Check out this heartbreaking layoff. Sigh.) The indispensable Marketplace (and earlier, the Los Angeles Times) reported on a tent improvement today -- in California, where nearly 70,000 people are without homes. It's called EDAR -- an acronym for Everybody Deserves A Roof. It's a sort of portable home. Peter Samuelson, a film producer and philanthropist, sponsored the competition that created the EDAR, which is basically a shopping cart that folds out into a cot, complete with a canvas zip-tent for privacy. However, the mobile units aren't cheap; they cost around $500 dollars. And of course, Samuelson stresses that they're not as good as a real home. But -- it's a modest, yet temporary solution to a problem that doesn't seem to be getting much better.

This morning, Scott brought this bit of genius to us in the morning meeting... a book about the history of infomercials. I'm a total lover of the As Seen On TV genre (I'm the proud owner of a Slanket, which is the PRECURSOR to the Snuggie) as well as several different lint removers. That's why I watched the Shamwow Vs. Zorbeez smackdown with real interest. I do not own either product, but anything Billy Mays endorses, I wanna clean with. That's why I was so invested -- and shocked -- by the outcome! From Popular Mechanic:

The Zorbeez measures 19-1/4 x 27-1/4 inches. The Shamwow, at 19 x 23 inches, soaks more despite its smaller size. A cold-water rinse of the beer-soaked rags caused heavy saturation of the Zorbeez, but the Shamwow sprung back after wringing and seemed to have already shed most of the moisture. Dry times in the sun proved otherwise--after 5 hours in cool air, the Zorbeez had become dryer than the damp Shamwow, though neither clammy rag felt ready for storage. After one use, the Zorbeez began shedding fibrous blonde tufts, while the Shamwow retained its rubbery integrity. Both products smelled awful.

Bad smell? Sounds like a job for Orange-Glo, Billy!

Recession cavities? The New York Times reports this week that when we're not drowning our sorrows at the pub, we're feeding those budget worries at the candy shop.

Theories vary on exactly why. For many, sugar lifts spirits dragged low by the languishing economy. For others, candy also provides a nostalgic reminder of better times. And not insignificantly, it is relatively cheap. "People may indulge themselves a little bit more when times are tough," said Jack P. Russo, an analyst with the Edward Jones retail brokerage in St. Louis. "These are low-cost items that people can afford pretty easily."

That's right, this is a company town, people, much like Hollywood. In L.A., the paparazzi follow blonde starlets in and out of restaurants and boutiques. In Washington, one particularly enterprising paparazzi outlet, TMZ, has begun doing the same thing with lawmakers, (most of whom seem to be wearing underpants, you'll be relieved to know). Harvey Levin is TMZ's founder, and he had this to say in today's Washington Post.

Levin sees politics as fertile ground. Individual lawmakers might not be well-known beyond their districts, Levin says, but sprinkling a little celebrity dust on them -- even if it involves mild mockery -- might give them more of a platform for their views. Besides, he says, "how many stories can you do about Lindsay Lohan?"

Um, a lot.

I'm not going to lie... I've had the TV on since noon. I watched Memphis pull off a squeaker, and I saw L.S.U. best Butler. That last game hurt. My first missed prediction on the ol' bracket...

What am I looking forward to? Watching the ACC teams play, of course. But, as a semi-loyal and semi-fervent alum, I'm going to do my best to catch the Cornell game tomorrow. That's right, Cornell. The Big Red is in the NCAA tournament! (Read more about it here.)

In the elevator, Barrie asked me if I, hailing from Chapel Hill, always pick UNC to win it all. No, I was ashamed to say. Did I predict that Cornell will advance at all? I'm even more ashamed to answer that question with a "no." That said, it'd be an upset I could stomach. I'd be willing to get that one wrong on my bracket.

So President Obama will be the first sitting President to grace the sofa of a late night talk show. Jay Leno, 11:35p, ET tonight. Is this a smart way to reach an audience that wouldn't normally tune in? Or does it demean the office of the president to appear on a late night comedy show, as Mary Kate Cary argues:

There's a reason presidents don't do comedy on television, especially in tough times. The president sets the tone of the conversation in America. As much as President Obama would like to be a man of the people, a "regular guy," he's not anymore. His job description encompasses being Commander-in-Chief, leader of the Executive Branch of government, and Head of State. He's "The Leader of the Free World." Doing Jay Leno lessens the stature of the office, and diminishes the man. On Leno, he becomes just one more talk show guest, a celebrity on the circuit promoting his latest movie or book. It's a decision that speaks volumes about Obama's approach to the office.

One hundred and sixty-five million taxpayer dollars are going to the same employees at AIG who were responsible for it's downfall, and public anger and resentment continues to build. A new Gallup poll shows that three-quarters of Americans want the government to block or retrieve that money. In our first hour, we'll talk about the populist backlash against the rich and the political elite, and find out from you what people are saying in this ANGRY moment. Then, we will talk to actors Cynthia Nixon and Josh Stamberg, the stars of an off-Broadway comedy called "Distracted." Nixon and Stamberg portray a couple wondering if their son has ADD and if so, whether medication is the answer.

Since the most recent episode of Big Love aired on HBO, many Mormons are outraged, believing the show's producers crossed the line by depicting an endowment ceremony that prepares faithful Mormons to leave for a mission or to be married. The ceremony normally happens in secret, behind the closed doors of a Mormon temple. In our second hour, we'll talk about whether or not there are lines within religious rituals that Hollywood should not cross. Then, we will say goodbye to Battlestar Galactica in its final frakking hours. Are you a fan of the sci-fi series? Quick, tell us the fate of the human race!!! At the end of the hour, Vanity Fair editor Michael Lewis will describe his recent trip to Iceland and why he believes the country's financial system there has collapsed (and why the Range Rovers are exploding).

Well, according to Slate, the Washington Post article I parroted here is a crock of, well, IT. Jack Shafer dug into the numbers, and concluded,

The press corps gives into their readers' worst fears when reporting about drugs, embracing the most sensational or dramatic aspects of the story. And worst of all, the press routinely fails to cross-check information provided by law-enforcement sources. When reporting about PCP, Klansmen, child molesters, and terrorists, most reporters would just rather not challenge anybody's preconceptions.

I fell right into the crock, easy prey since I live in the city, and while my block is lovely, there's plenty of police activity all around. Thanks and props to Shafer, and I look forward to seeing whether the Post responds.

Not that anybody's paying attention. Source: DG Jones

I know I dropped a few choice expletives when I saw (what's left of) my retirement account. One woman calls it "market rage" (in this MSNBC story). Why?

According to Los Angeles psychotherapist Nancy Irwin, a foul economy is prompting more outbursts of foul language. "There are a lot of elements that are out of our control right now and as a result, there's a lot more frustration, a lot more fear and anxiety," she says. "When people feel that, many cuss. Swearing is something that gives us an instantaneous release."

Well, no $*&%. (oops).

Anyone else dropping a few extra expletives into their conversations lately?

It's Wednesday and time for the political junkie. NPR's political editor Ken Rudin will talk about this week's political news, including the testimony of AIG Chairman and CEO Edward Liddy in front of a House Financial Services subcommittee on Capitol Hill. Also, David Gergen, who worked in the Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and Clinton administrations, will talk about the challenges facing President Obama now as taxpayers express outrage over AIG bonuses. After that, we'll continue our "This Economic Moment" series with writer Gustavo Arellano. In a recent op-ed for the Los Angeles Times, Arellano explained how this recession has affected his "American Dream," and pointed out that while his parents are better positioned to find work in hard times, he and his peers have few tools for coping in a failing economy. We'll talk to him about his story and his op-ed, "The Arellanos of Anaheim." And we want to hear from you. Has this recession forced you to re-think your American Dream?

Last week, R&B singer Chris Brown was charged with two felonies against his girlfriend, pop singer Rihanna: assault by means likely to create bodily injury, and criminal threat. The fight that broke out between the two singers has brought the issue of domestic violence into the forefront. In our second hour, we will focus on the perpetrators of domestic violence. How true is the conventional wisdom that "abusers never change"? Then, at the end of the hour it's all about March Madness! The opening rounds of the NCAA basketball tournaments are getting underway - as are the highly competitive bracket picks. Which teams are you placing at the top of your bracket? What do you love about your favorite team? We'll also talk to the editor of the Grand Forks Herald about one Cinderella team in the tournament this year: North Dakota State University.

Yes, there is such a thing as the US Pole Dance Championship.

Source: Ian Waldie/Getty Images

Look, people. I've been all kinds of feminist. I even went through that obligatory college period where I read a lot of Judith Butler and Simone de Beauvoir and came to the passionate conclusion that gender didn't exist. (Awkward.) Now, I'd describe myself as a li'l of this, a li'l of that -- charcuterie plate feminism. And one piece of cheese -- well, meat, really -- I do not want on my butcher block is the normalization of pole dancing. I swear to all that's Swayze I am fully appreciative of the merits of uninhibited dancing (good thing Uninhibited Dancing was not the title of that movie, huh?), and have spend years shaking it in clubs, fields, and the privacy of my bedroom from age fourteen up. But this -- this US Pole Dance Championship -- * it's too much. I know all the arguments about stripping, and taking control of the narrative, and blah, blah, blah, but please, when we're talking about something many people are forced to do, every bone, every ab muscle, every hip flexor in my body, tells me this is wrong. Frankly, it's related to my feelings about boxing as well -- any time you come close to that gladiatorial model of voyeurism, I get the creeps. Now, I'll watch a belly dancer any day, and I can probably do the whole video routine to "Baby, One More Time," which comes perilously close to the pole, without an actual, well, pole. (Euphemisms abound.) But can we please take a breath and collectively agree that we might not want our daughters to participate in a sport that contains in its dress code this warning: "No nudity, no G-strings or thongs. Violation of this requirement leads to immediate disqualification." Um, yeah, THANK YOU FOR THAT WARNING. And can we agree that we certainly don't want our sons watching this particular sport -- unless they are private investigators following a lead? That's right, y'all. Nobody puts Baby in a corner. Or on the pole.

*Curious about how Wikipedia defines pole dancing? Me too! "It involves dancing sensually with a vertical pole and is often used in strip clubs and gentlemen's clubs, although more recently artistic pole dancing (Chinese poles) is used in cabaret/circus and stage performance in a non-erotic environment."

Knock on wood, I still have a job. That said, I have tremendous interest in the plight of the laid-off, and time and time again, it comes back to how does it feel to be furloughed, fired, let go, or laid off. Well, one unnamed Seattle Post-Intelligencer staffer made his or her feelings clear. This Thomas Jefferson quote lived on the office wall...

Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate to prefer the latter.

Amended to add...

Or at least an online version with a greatly reduced staff and lots of links.

Hat-tip to Gawker.

Reconcile these two stories... A new survey covered in the New York Times shows that Americans are concerned about online privacy:

When asked if they were comfortable with behavioral targeting - when advertisers use a person's browsing history or search history to decide which ad to show them - only 28 percent said they were. More than half said they were not. And more than 75 percent of respondents agreed with the statement, "The Internet is not well regulated, and na??ve users can easily be taken advantage of."

Yet, Google continues to roll out new targeted ads, few people bother to read privacy statements, and only a fraction of people use their web browsers privacy options to control things like cookies and scripts. Last summer, L. Gordon Crovitz summed it up in the Wall Street Journal: "Privacy? We Got Over It."

We now seem happy to trust companies with our information for benefits such as one-click buying and online searches for personally relevant results. In a digital world where it is possible to know more than ever about everything, including one another, the new vice may be the flip side of privacy -- concealing information about ourselves of legitimate value to others. In the physical world, surveillance cameras, satellites and bio-recognition systems have redefined privacy expectations. We have learned that "privacy can be very dangerous," as federal appeals judge Richard Posner has observed. "Obviously if you're a terrorist, privacy is enormously important. So the more we think of privacy as endangering us, that will reinforce these commercial incentives to surrender privacy."

In the battle between convenience and privacy, I'll bet on convenience.

In The Washington Post this morning, columnist Richard Cohen claims our anger toward Jim Cramer, whom Cohen calls CNBC's "excitable analyst," is misguided. The headline says it all: "Don't Blame Jim Cramer." Who is the real culprit, besides a growing group of financial analysts and economists? Jon Stewart.

Stewart, too, rides the zeitgeist. The hunt is on for culprits and scapegoats, and Stewart has served up a cliche: the media. As with the war in Iraq, for which credulous media should take some responsibility, the sins are blown out of proportion. It would be one thing if Wall Street titans by the score were selling their company stock and the media were failing to report it, but when someone puts his money where his mouth is, you have to pay attention. The big shots believed.

Stewart plays a valuable role. He mocks authority, which is good, and he mocks those, such as the media, who take the word of authority as if, well, it's authoritative. But given the outsize reception to his cheap shot at business media, he ought to turn his wit inward: Mocker, mock thyself.

Point taken, but I'm boggled by the number of "in defense of Jim Cramer" blog posts I've read. I don't think Cramer and Stewart are all that different, and I think that's a problem.

Marty Peretz, the longtime editor-in-chief of The New Republic, whose blog is called The Spine, and Cramer have been friends for more than 30 years. (They founded TheStreet.com together.) "He is a trusted and loving friend," Peretz writes of Cramer. (From where? Harvard University, where Peretz went and taught, and where Cramer was a student.) "He is now being battered in the press," Peretz continues. "Mostly by people whose careers are built on ridiculing others."

James Fallows, a correspondent for The Atlantic, notes that he and Cramer "share a journalistic background." Fallows continues: "At different times each of us was editor of the same college paper." That college paper is The Harvard Crimson.

At our morning meeting yesterday, one of my colleagues made an interesting analogy:

Bob Dylan:Politics::John Stewart:The Media

Stewart is eager to criticize journalism, as Cohen points out. Just as easily, he takes up the journalism torch, asking the hard questions, putting people in the hot seat, etc.

That said, Stewart is as happy saying, "I'm not a journalist, I'm an entertainer," as he is relishing praise from people who argue that he is doing what "real" journalists should be doing. It's confusing and contradictory.

Cramer is no different, to my mind. On The Daily Show, he told Stewart that he hosts an entertainment program about business. (A comment with which Stewart took great issue.) As Peretz's defense of Cramer illustrates, albeit indirectly, Cramer wears two coats: Harvard-educated smartypants, respected for the depth of his knowledge of economics and the market, and rabid entertainer, yelling over loud sound effects.

I'd like to ask Jon and Jim, "Who are you, really?" Each is having an identity crisis that, to me, is confusing. And irritating.

The front page of The Washington Post carried scary news today: PCP is making a comeback in D.C.:

D.C. police, prosecutors and drug testing agencies are bracing for more PCP-related violence. Ten percent of adult defendants now test positive for the drug, the highest rate in five years, according to D.C. Pretrial Services. The number of people with PCP in their system arrested on murder and sexual assault charges jumped to 12 last year, up from three in 2007.

PCP's an especially worrisome drug, as "it often increases aggression and perceived strength and numbs physical pain," according to Inspector Brian Bray, head of the D.C. police narcotics unit.

It's a patently local story, but at the same time, it's unlikely D.C. is an anomaly. Have you seen any mentions of PCP in the crime reports where you live?

Artist Christoph Niemann's NYC inspired bathroom.

Source: Spacing Magazine

Ahh, Talk of the Nation, my home. Here I am, about to be crushed by the mail on my desk (I'm debating whether or not to pay young Gura $5 to open it for me), unable to remember how to do my job, and yet -- I am strangely content. Maybe I already got knocked in the head by my trash pile. In any case, fresh off a digital media training*, I've been thinking a lot about how images tell a story. Now, I'm a chatty gal, so this is fairly new for me. (Why would you use anything but your wordhole mouth and hands to tell a story!?) But Christoph Niemann's beautiful images are so marvelous that I have to admit, they beat text, words and even my waving appendages. Ew.) Please, please, please, go look at his cable story, and then go to the Lego post -- if you aren't cheered by the latte image, than you have no heart. I desperately wanted to post one of these images on our blog, but had to settle for a picture of Niemann's bathroom, which I think still conveys how he's mastered cross between literalism and whimsy.

*I hate that term, but that's what they call it around here.

I thought of Sarah's earlier post as I did my daily reading...

Thanks to Michael Tomasky, an editor at The Guardian, I found a new website called Fix CNBC. The motto of the site: "Jon Stewart made the case. Now we're demanding action."

The group has written this open letter to CNBC:

Americans need CNBC to do strong, watchdog journalism -- asking tough questions to Wall Street, debunking lies, and reporting the truth. Instead, CNBC has done PR for Wall Street. You've been so obsessed with getting "access" to failed CEOs that you willfully passed on misinformation to the public for years, helping to get us into the economic crisis we face today.

You screwed up badly. Don't apologize -- fix it!

CNBC should publicly declare that its new overriding mission will be responsible journalism that holds Wall Street accountable. As a down payment, we ask you to hire some new economic voices -- people who have a track record of being right about the economic crisis and holding Wall Street executives' feet to the fire.

Please show us that you hear our voices loud and clear.

There are, as Tomasky says, "a number of distinguished signatories" so far. 1,241 in total! Are you on the list?

Only slackers don't set goals, right? Not so fast. There may be a downside to setting goals for everything. Spotted this in the Boston Globe "Ideas" section over the weekend:

Narrow corporate goals can keep employees from asking important questions that they otherwise might. Take the notoriously combustible Ford Pinto. In the late 1960s, Ford CEO Lee Iacocca, determined to take back the market share the company was losing to smaller imports, announced a crash program to create a new car that would be under 2,000 pounds, under $2,000, and would go on sale in 1970. Desperate to meet the conditions and the deadline, company executives ignored and then played down questions about the safety of the car's design. As a result, the Pinto, with a fuel tank just behind the rear axle, was uniquely prone to igniting upon impact, and 53 people died in such fires.

Setting goals ever backfire on you?

Today, the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism released its annual report on the state of American journalism, and to borrow a word from the report, the state of American journalism is "bleak". David McCumber is the managing editor of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, a newspaper that was put up for sale last January. In our first hour today, McCumber, along with Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, will discuss the state of the media in the current global economic crisis and the future of journalism for local television, radio, newspapers and the web. Then on our opinion page this week, writer Kelly Marages will talk about her op-ed that appeared in Sunday's Washington Post where she argues that for some people living through the current economic recession, frugal living is the new "chic." She doesn't buy it.

The recession in this country has clearly affected Americans in all layers of the economy, and many have found themselves collecting unemployment benefits and reaching out for help for the first time in their lives. In our second hour, we'll hear about the mixed feelings that have come up for people who are seeking governmental and charitable assistance, and the stigma that is attached to asking for help. And we want to hear your story. If you've been collecting food stamps or unemployment benefits, how do you feel about it? At the end of the hour, we will search for the perfect Irish pub. When American writer Bill Barich took up residence in Dublin, the first thing he set out to do was to find the local pub in his new neighborhood that he hoped would fit his image of the perfect pub. Barich will talk to us about what he discovered and his new book, A Pint of Plain: How the Irish Pub Losts Its Magic but Conquered the World. And we want you to describe the perfect pub. What elements must be in place for a pub to be great?

Honestly, we're way behind this story, the feud between The Daily Show's Jon Stewart and Mr. Mad Money, Jim Cramer. Stewart has called out Cramer for doing his viewers a journalistic disservice by misrepresenting the market and offering enthusiastic advice. Last Thursday, Cramer visited Stewart's studio, to defend himself.

We've discussed it in a couple of morning meetings -- just like the funny intro says, people are talking about it. But what do you think? Is it a bunch of hot air to promote a couple of cable personalities, or is there a more serious critique here? Did the media fall asleep on the biggest news story since Iraq?

Do you want to know more about zombies in popular media? Have you wished you could weave baskets underwater? Ever ruminate on how the comic strip "The Far Side" depicts the relationship between insects and humans? According to the Online Colleges blog, some Americans are actually answering "yes" to those questions, and so we have "The 15 Strangest College Courses in America." Personally, I think the blog has chosen some that are downright weird (see: Underwater Basket Weaving), others that are more predictable (Learning from YouTube), and a few that offer truly illuminating entry points into important subjects. Here are my two favorites:

9. Joy of Garbage

The Joy of Garbage is a Santa Clara University course that actually deals with real science through the lens of garbage. Students study decomposition, what makes soil rot, the chemicals that give garbage an unpleasant odor, and they also learn about sustainability when it comes to the things we throw away. Classes don't just study household garbage either, there's also a section on nuclear waste. And topping things off there are even field trips, with students visiting local sanitation plants and landfills.

6. The Science of Harry Potter

Not only does Frostburg State offer a course on the science of Harry Potter - it's an honors course. The class discusses topics such as whether or not Fluffy the three headed dog could be explained by genetic engineering or if antigravity research could actually produce a flying broomstick. The course is modeled after (and uses as a textbook) the book "The Science of Harry Potter: How Magic Really Works," by Roger Highfield. The class is geared towards non-science majors and, probably not surprisingly, there is no lab work.

What do you think of the courses on the list? Do you think students -- or their parents -- should pay money to learn about cyberporn or The Simpsons? Are these courses really strange, or are they just contemporary ways to frame traditional subject matter?

-- Kareem Estefan, TOTN producer

The Sears Tower, at least for now. Scott Olson/Getty Images

Being from Chicago, this brings tears to my eyes...

The 110-story Chicago giant, the nation's tallest building, will be renamed Willis Tower under a leasing deal. The New York-based owners signed a lease with Willis Group Holdings, a London-based insurance broker, for 140,000 square feet.

Like Comiskey Park before, it will always be the Sears Tower to me.

Who knew?

Pardon my consternation, but I can't imagine there are many real poets, working today, who ink seven-figure book deals... Ugh.

We're still working on the exact details of NPR's next Talk of the World. The focus will be a subject that affects all of us: the economy. Tell us what's changed in the country where you live. How has the recession affected your community?

And we need you to be our reporters around the globe. File your dispatches now by email (link) (click on Talk of the Nation). Tell us which country you live in, and what's changed.

Then tune in for a global conversation about the economy and your life. It's LIVE on Thursday March 26, 2009, 2:00pm ET, 19:00 GMT.

A few months back, after William Kristol penned his final column for The New York Times, ending a one-year experiment, New Yorker staff writer George Packer, who was critical of Kristol's intellectual competence and work ethic equally, prepared a list of conservatives from whom he hoped the editorial page editor of The Times, Andrew Rosenthal, would choose Kristol's successor.

Yesterday, Richard Perez-Pena, a media reporter for The Times, confirmed rumors that had spread on blogs all afternoon: Ross Douthat, a senior editor at The Atlantic magazine, would join a small-but-influential club, populated by Charles Blow, David Brooks, Roger Cohen, Gail Collins, Maureen Dowd, Thomas Friedman, Bob Herbert, Nicholas Kristof, Paul Krugman, and Frank Rich.

Douthat, like several editors at The Atlantic, is a wonderful, incisive blogger. I was happy to read that he plans to continue to blog from the Washington bureau of The Times.

I scanned the Web for reaction to Douthat's appointment. Most of what I read was positive. (To be fair, it wasn't news enough for the home pages of The Weekly Standard or the National Review this morning, seemingly.) Is Packer satisfied?

He calls it an "excellent choice," which "shows that the Times has begun to see its conservative columnist as something more than a quota hire," but he hopes that Douthat will improve as a writer, that he will excise Washington policy-speak from his columns. "My one piece of unsolicited advice," he writes, is to "talk regularly to people who don't read blogs (like this one)."

What do you think of the newest Times columnist? Have you read him in The Atlantic? How important a perch is The New York Times editorial page these days? Do you agree with Packer, who says that the newspaper's columnists "seem unable to contend with the earthquake rolling under our feet"?

Yesterday, the FBI said that young Somali Americans are being recruited into terrorist organizations overseas. A nationwide investigation revealed details of how they operate, who they recruit, and the danger they pose to the United States. In our first hour, we'll be joned by NPR's Dina Temple-Raston who uncovered the story. Temple-Raston will explain how this news is affecting Somali communities across the country. And we'll hear from the head of a Somali youth center in Minneapolis. Then, we'll talk with author Christopher Moore about his new book, Fool, an amusing and wildly profane rewrite of Shakespeare's King Lear in which the king's jester is recast as the raunchy protagonist.

In the middle of President Obama's first one hundred days, many people are content to sit back and observe whether or not the president fulfills all of his campaign promises. But Tavis Smiley says rather than passively watch, we need to remain engaged in politics and critically evaluate the leadership in this country. Smiley will join us in our second hour and talk about his new book, Accountable: Making America as Good as its Promise. Then, we'll talk about the end of an era... or E.R. (era. E.R. cute.) Early next month, NBC will air the two-hour finale of the medical drama, and in today's The Daily Beast blog, Dr. Mehmet Oz wrote "the show captured the ups and downs of of touching another person's life when we filter out the b.s." If you are an emergency room nurse, doctor or resident, do you agree? Dr. Oz will tell us what he has learned from the show E.R. We want to hear from you, too.

One part of the job for many sheriffs is evicting people from homes and apartments. Last October, Cook County Sheriff Thomas Dart get fed up with throwing people out of homes. Many of them, he says, were renters who didn't even know their landlords were behind on payments. So, he stopped doing evictions.

In the majority of the homes I was going into, there were always little kids around-I mean, really young kids, and we're taking them and putting them out on the street. A lot of them were seniors, and a lot of them had issues with dementia. Once again-we're taking them out to the street ... Most of these neighborhoods are not good neighborhoods. Once [their belongings are] out on the street, we leave. While they're off looking for transportation, the few things they own are being stolen.

That's a quote from a recent Newsweek interview with Dart. The rest is on their website, including accusations that he's a "vigilante."

It's a noble thing to do in this economy, and many people support his decision. Here's a question many critics are asking, though: how can a sheriff decide which laws he's going to enforce and which he won't?

Charles "Chas" Freeman, a former ambassador and President Obama's nominee to head the National Intelligence Council, withdrew his name from consideration yesterday, as a group of critics questioned his links to Saudi Arabia and the Chinese business community. One of them, Marty Peretz, the editor-in-chief of The New Republic, called Freeman "bigoted and out of touch":

But Freeman's real offense (and the president's if he were to appoint him) is that he has questioned the loyalty and patriotism of not only Zionists and other friends of Israel, the great swath of American Jews and their Christian countrymen, who believed that the protection of Zion is at the core of our religious and secular history, from the Pilgrim fathers through Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy. And how has he offended this tradition? By publishing and peddling the unabridged John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, with panegyric and hysteria. If Freeman believes that this book is the truth he can't be trusted by anyone, least of all Barack Obama. I can't believe that Obama wants to appoint someone who is quintessentially an insult to the patriotism of some many of his supporters, me included.

Freeman said that remarks like those prompted his withdrawal. The Cable, a Foreign Policy blog, excerpted a memo from Freeman. In it, he concludes "that the barrage of libelous distortions of my record would not cease upon my entry into office. The effort to smear me and to destroy my credibility would instead continue. I do not believe the National Intelligence Council could function effectively while its chair was under constant attack by unscrupulous people with a passionate attachment to the views of a political faction in a foreign country."

He goes on to criticize the Israel Lobby, which he believes is behind the campaign against him:

The tactics of the Israel Lobby plumb the depths of dishonor and indecency and include character assassination, selective misquotation, the willful distortion of the record, the fabrication of falsehoods, and an utter disregard for the truth. The aim of this Lobby is control of the policy process through the exercise of a veto over the appointment of people who dispute the wisdom of its views, the substitution of political correctness for analysis, and the exclusion of any and all options for decision by Americans and our government other than those that it favors.

On his blog, James Fallows, a correspondent for The Atlantic says that "the Chas Freeman matter," as he calls it, "has ended in an ugly way." "Freeman's departure statement is intemperate, but even calmer people might sound testy if they had been accused of "hostility toward Jews generally" without, to my knowledge, any evidence for that claim."

As Fallows says, the fallout from this nomination -- and subsequent withdrawal -- will continue for a long time. What do you make of it?

'nuf said.

Needless to say, the police are looking for said "dancing lorry driver."

It's Wednesday, and time for the Political Junkie. This week, NPR's Ken Rudin will take us through the political news of the week, including President Obama's education plan and the overturned executive order that will ban federally funded research on embryonic stem cells. Ken will also be joined by Jon Delano, political analyst for KDKA-TV, who will talk about the reaction in Pennsylvania to Republican Senator Arlen Specter's support of President Obama's economic stimulus. Specter's support has divided Republicans in his home state. AND -- drum roll, please -- we finally have a reward for you smarties out there who answer the trivia question correctly. We're giving away the official "NO PRIZE" t-shirt for you to flaunt in front of your family and friends!! I think they oughtta call it the official "KNOW PRIZE" because you knew the answer. Get it? Know. No? Okay, I'll move on...

In our second hour, author Myron Uhlberg will talk about his new book, Hands of My Father, and recall his experience growing up with the ability to hear, but the child of deaf parents. We'll ask him what he learned about the world through interpreting for his parents and the inner language involved with touch and silence. And we want to hear your stories. Were you a child that interpreted for your parents for language or a disability? What was that experience like for you? Then, at the end of the hour, we'll talk to the founders of Twitter about how "tweets"* have become the next big thing in technology.

*Short texts posted by users giving updates on what's happening and what they are doing.

Shirt reads: OFFICIAL WINNER! This shirt is a genuine Talk of the Nation Political Junkie NO-PRIZE which you have just won! Certified by: Ken Rudin, Political Junkie, Neal Conan, Host. Sarah Handel, NPR

 

You hear something like this every week, when someone gets the correct answer to Political Junkie Ken Rudin's trivia question:

CONAN: (Laughing) Mark, thanks very much. You're the winner of this week's No Prize.

MARK: OK.

CONAN: All right. Thanks very much.

RUDIN: Neal, one of these days there has to be a prize for the No Prize.

CONAN: There has got to be a prize for this - there's got to be a prize for the No Prize.

And now that moment has arrived! So be sure to tune in to our Political Junkie segment every Wednesday, and get your dialing finger ready for a new trivia question. YOU JUST MIGHT BE A WINNER!

I'm fascinated by this story of the L.A. fertility clinic that offered parents the option to choose their babies' hair, eye, and skin color... and then quickly backed off, at least for now. On one hand, there's the argument that freedom is freedom. If I can decide how many kids to have, when, etc., why not also be able to decide what color eyes she has? On the other hand, most freedoms have their limits, for moral or legal reasons (or both). WIRED has a nice back and forth on the issue today. Here's what James Hughes, the transhumanist author, had to say:

If you think that people have a right to choose how many children they have, or the partners they have them with -- "I love you, but you're just too short, or too ugly" -- that's a procreative choice. If I've got a dozen embryos I could implant, and the ones I want to implant are the green-eyed ones, or the blond-haired ones, that's an extension of choices we think are perfectly acceptable -- and restricting them a violation of our procreative autonomy. I want to see a society in which parents can say, I want my kids to have the best possible options in life. That might include getting rid of obesity genes. Every child should be a loved child, but there is no virtue in accident.

Mary Darnovsky with the Center for Genetics and Society sounds a warning...

It's the question of equality. We'd endorse a set of societal and commercial dynamics that would lead us into a new world of inequality and discrimination. Just as privilege accrues to those with privilege, the same would be true of genetically modified children of existing elites.

Any thoughts from you parents and soon-to-be parents? Where's the line when it comes to choosing options for your baby?

While many companies are laying off their employees in the current economic downturn, other companies are, instead, reducing the number of hours employees can work and cutting back on salaries to decrease labor costs while hanging on to the labor force. Guests in our first hour talk about different alternatives to layoffs in cutting down company costs. Then, we'll talk to Dawn Turner Trice who writes the "Exploring Race" column for The Chicago Tribune about how President Obama and other politicians use "coded" language and mannerisms to connect with different ethnic groups.

After six seasons on Showtime, The L Word aired its final episode last Sunday. The L Word was the first series to feature an all-lesbian cast of characters. Guests in our second hour talk about the impact the show has had in the gay community and whether or not the representation of gays, lesbians and transexuals on television has changed people's attitudes toward them. Then at the end of the hour, Ralph Keyes, author of "I Love it When You Talk Retro", talks about where long-forgotten catch-phrases in popular culture originated from, and why we may be nearing the end of "retro talk" in our conversations.

If the iPod didn't tell you, would you know what album this is? MadeMistakes

I've recently been going through my entire CD collection, moving liner notes and discs into little sleeves and chucking the jewel cases. I've also been struggling to repair my busted record player, so between these two activities, I've spent a lot of time looking at, and appreciating, cover art. Of course, LPs reign supreme, with their relative acres of illustrated space. CDs, while more limited, do alright too sometimes, whether it's the cut-outs of the Shins' Chutes Too Narrow or the elaborate repackaging of Pavement's Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain. Digitally, the first iPods ignored cover art altogether, but the newer models have the Cover Flow feature, intended to replicate flipping through your CD bin. Those little album cover thumbnails are changing the design game again, as pointed out by Steven Heller at Wired.

The tiny JPEGs displayed on iPod screens demand simplicity, bold color, stark imagery, and unadorned type. The sneering smiley face on Bon Jovi's Have a Nice Day is an aptly minimalist rendering. No Age's Nouns, on the other hand, is at once simple and complex, readable and abstract; the sculptural letterforms jump off the screen.

So which covers, old or new, work when you scroll through them on your iPod? A glance at mine reveals Outkast's Aquemini succeeds, but if I wasn't so fond of Mirah's Advisory Committee, I'd have no idea what it was!

Given name: Marijuana Pepsi Jackson. Don't believe me? Read this. Wonder what junior high is like for someone named Marijuana?

"Every single class, the teacher is taking attendance out loud, and as they slowly get down through the J's, I'm just like here it comes. 'Marianna? Marijuana?' And all the students turn to see who it is," she said. Later in life, it wouldn't get any easier when she tried to order tickets over the telephone or fill out paperwork. People thought she was joking, or they wanted to hit her with 20 questions about why she was called that.

Police officers don't take kindly to what they think are fake names, either.
And yes she answers the questions we all want to know... Like, does she consume either of her namesakes?

In our first hour today, we'll talk with Tom Ricks, special military correspondent for The Washington Post, and go inside Baghdad with NPR foreign correspondent Lourdes Garcia-Navarro and an Iraqi NPR producer and translator. They will each explain the extensive research and reporting that goes into providing an accurate big-picture of the war in Iraq, and we'll ask them what they think Americans need to know about what's going on there. We're still working on our opinion page segment for the end of the hour. We're hoping to talk about Watchmen. It hit number one at the box office over the weekend. Were you one of the millions who saw it? We may want to talk to you at the end of our first hour. Stay tuned.

Last Thursday, the state of Washington legalized assisted suicide, with several guidelines. However, last month, members of a group called "Final Exit" were arrested in Georgia and Maryland for providing assistance to as many as three-hundred people who wanted to take their own lives. In our second hour, we'll hear more about the "Final Exit" group, and talk with Arthur Caplan, the director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania about where the line should be drawn when it comes to assisted suicides. And we want to hear from you. Have you had direct experience with assisted suicide, as a spouse or a child, as a doctor or a caretaker? Who, do you think, should be able to seek out assisted suicide? At the end of the hour, we'll talk with writer Kathleen Rooney. For six years, she has been practicing the art of nude modeling. Rooney will talk about her new book, "Live Nude Girl: My Life as an Object", the philosophical and personal concerns of posing for artwork, and the distinction between nudity and nakedness.

Oh, Esquire. We have such a love-hate relationship, and right now, things are rocky with us. Today I clicked on your list, "The 75 Albums Every Man Should Own." As I scrolled through the covers and description, I nodded, made a few notes, and somewhere around #20, I started to wonder.

Where are the women?

In 75 albums, you feature only one by a woman: Liz Phair's Exile in Guyville. Of course, I wholeheartedly support its inclusion -- if CDs wore out like tapes, I'd be on my second or third copy of Guyville by now. But seriously? Other than that, you've got Ike & Tina Turner, and a Luna record with a bonus track that features Stereolab's Laetitia Sadier. Not good enough, Esquire. So what are you really saying with this list? Either, that women aren't making much of anything you deem essential, or that men can't handle music written and/or performed by women. Maybe there's another reading and I'm just too riled up to see it, but rather than continue to excoriate Esquire, let's move forward: What albums by women would you put on a list of 75 essential albums? I'll get the ball rolling with Patsy Cline's Showcase, Nina Simone Sings the Blues, and Feist's The Reminder. Which women would make your list?

If I had a band, it would be called "Lionel Blue." If we had an album, it would be called "Reward Of Its Operation." David Gura/NPR, with help from Diego Cupulo

 

In college, I played in -- and with -- a few bands. In those four years, we probably had fifteen different names, none of which were really great.

As every musician knows, coming up with the name for a band is hard work. It usually involves hours and hours of time, a lot of beer, and a long list of bad ideas. Although I never gained enough notoriety -- or enough funding -- to make an album, I can imagine that it would be as difficult, if not harder, to title a CD.

The Guardian reports on a new game, making the rounds across the Facebook universe, called the "Make Your Own Album Cover" game. (They've reserved all of their creativity for the game, clearly; not for naming it.)

Here's how it works:

1. You use this tool to take you to a randomly-generated Wikipedia article. (Mine was "Lionel Blue," "a British Reform rabbi, journalist and broadcaster." Good enough.)

2. Now, for the album title... This site takes you to a page of random quotations. Take "the last four or five words from the last quote" on the page. (My album title: Reward Of Its Operation. I can see it on the Billboard charts now.)

3. You've got a band name and an album title. What's next? Cover art. So, to Flickr, of course! And to this random image generator -- of pictures without copyright restrictions.

And there you have it. All that's left? Finding band mates and money for a recording... Sigh. I'm taking it one step at a time.

The experience of starting over can feel anywhere from devastating to cathartic. It could be the result of moving to another country, salvaging the remains of a burned down home or ending a marriage. In our first hour, Amy Dickinson, who writes the syndicated "Ask Amy" column for the Chicago Tribune, will talk about pressing the "reset" button and starting over in our lives. Then, we'll talk about the case of Jordan Brown, an eleven year old in Pennsylvania who is believed to have murdered his father's girlfriend last month. Officials in Pennsylvania are trying to figure out how to prosecute him, and where to hold him. Should the boy be tried as an adult or a juvenile? Should he sit in a cell next to rapists and murderers? At the end of the hour, law professor Anita Allen will discuss how we should deal with kids who have committed murder.

Slumdog Millionaire won big at the Oscars this year, but the film has been criticized for being filled with cliches and stereotypes about India, and for its graphic images of the horrors of life in the slums. In our second hour, we'll hear opposing views about whether or not depictions of poverty in movies, books and the recent emergence of "slum tours" educate audiences about life in the slums, or exploit those who are experiencing it. Then, in our second installment in our series "How bad can it get", William Easterly, economist and co-director of The Development Research Institute at New York University, will talk about what needs to change in the economy in order for it to get better.

Here at Talk, a couple of us are totally into Twitter, and quite a few more of us are either skeptics or uninterested. As a member of the first group, the question I find myself having to answer all the time is this: Why should I care about Twitter? Well, let's let Michael Arrington speak for me:

Enough people are hooked on it that Twitter has reached critical mass. If something big is going on in the world, you can get information about it from Twitter... More and more people are starting to use Twitter to talk about brands in real time as they interact with them. And those brands want to know all about it, whether to respond individually... or simply gather the information to see what they're doing right and what they're doing wrong. And all of it is discoverable at search.twitter.com, the search engine that Twitter acquired last summer.

People searching for news. Brands searching for feedback. That's valuable stuff.

As a show, we reach out (well, Iinput on questions we're debating here in the newsroom. At Talk, we value the personal story so highly, that it may also be time for us to use Twitter as a search engine, a sort of Google of personal experiences. Something to think about. So are you on the bandwagon? And if not, does Michael Arrington pique your interest?