iTunes Attacked

SpiralFrog will be entering the fray of the digital music download war. Piggy backing off of the "Google" business model, Universal Music's challenge to iTunes will be relying on ad revenue versus consumer cash. Though one drawback--it will be compatible with what seems to be everything but the ever popular iPod. And...the return fire. (news.com.au)

Mac Attacks, Poor Pluto, Lindsay Smells, and Swag Taxed

1. It's Macs' turn to burst into flames, as Apple today recalled 1.8 million battery packs from their iBook and PowerBook G4s. Again the fires were blamed on--the batteries were made by Sony, though there has been no serious damage to person or property, just "minor burns and some minor property damage." The lithium-ion batteries were in computers sold from October 2003 to August 2006 aka, uh, today. (NYT)

2. It's decided. "Puny" Pluto sucks and has been demoted to "dwarf planet, which is basically any round object that is not a planetary satellite and has failed to clean up its orbital path." This definition conjures up so many celebrities... (Scientific American)

3. Lindsay Lohan has been meeting with several fragrance manufacturers, as she attempts to make her first and very own scent for the skank in everyone of us. (TMZ)

4. Because the IRS is good on its word, presenters at August 27th's Emmy Awards had to sign a letter from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences saying they are well aware that their goodies are taxable, even if they're on CW. (Time)

Frisky funerals, Pluto in Plight, and Those Bloody Moo's

1. Pluto remains the galactic loser, with its planetary status still up in the air at the International Astronomical Union meetings in Prague. Nail-biting can end Thursday during the final votes. (USA Today)

2. Strip-tease funerals might be coming to an end in east China after several police crackdowns this week, but after this fabulous Reuters article, perhaps it might find a new beginning elsewhere...

3. Cows' moos founded to be regionally accented in parts of Southwest England. Ooh, beefcakes they really must be. (Reuters)

Seeing Darkness, Crazy Cruise, Accutane Pain, and Drugged Keane

If a tree falls...

1. Dark matter, the invisible substance that is thought to make up a quarter of the universe, exists, scientists say after observing the result of a massive collision between two galaxy clusters. Now for that pesky elusive dark energy... (National Geographic)

2. Paramount dumps Tom Cruise, or, really, ends its 14-year relationship with his production company, Cruise/Wagner Productions, on the grounds that he's been acting crazy. Sumner Redstone, head of Viacom (which heads Paramount and Comedy Central), said, "His recent conduct has not been acceptable to Paramount." Ooh, has Stone-Parker won the war? (TMZ)

3. Aside from just about killing you and your offspring in every possible way, Accutane might also be increasing your cholesterol and "other fat levels more than previously thought," UC San Francisco found. Well, if heart attacks didn't stop the high schooler...well, yeah, yeah, getting fat might. (Scientific American)

4. Keane lead singer Tom Chaplin enters rehab for drug and alcohol addiction. Really...Keane?! (ABC)

Pork art, Inedible Fish Eaten, and The Truth More Inconvenient Than Thought

It's not what you think. Really.

1. Hundreds of scientists from over a hundred institutions contributed to a study that found that 1/3 of the world's population is living in water-scarce areas, a situation that was predicted to occur in 2025 by an earlier study conducted by the same group. (Nature)

2. Inthewrongplaceness is Kira O'Reilly's performance art piece that seeks to bring London art to Penzance/southwest England. That is, if art means watching a naked woman cradle a dead pig for four hours, or as the artist describes it, "a slow crushing dance with a pig for one person at a time," or further describes:

The work left me with an undercurrent of pigginess, unexpected fantasies of mergence and interspecies metamorphoses began to flicker into my consciousness; making fiercely tender and ferocious identifications with the pig as stand in, double, twin, doll, imaginary self.

Right. (Reuters)

3. The NYT reports that those who eat fishes from the Hudson River have about two times as much mercury in their system than...you know...sane people.

Lightning Showers, Inbred Flowers, and Big Bad Fish

1. Turns out that the old wives' tale of not showering during a thunderstorm is true. You shouldn't because if (um, and when) lightning hits your house, the electrical currents can go into the pipes and then to you. As rare as such happenings are, they've happened. (NYT)

2. Inbreeding amongst plants is bad--adding to the list of reasons why you probably shoudn't touch your cousin Chester. ever. again. (Nature)

3. Australian politicians have passed new laws declaring that crocodiles too are fish. The reorganization of "reality" can be found in the new Agriculture, Fisheries, and Forestry Legislation Amendment Bill 2006. (Reuters)

Depp-Burton Reunion, Smoking Pays, and Pedro Won't Move

1. Johnny Depp is set to star in the big budget remake of Sweeney Todd--to be directed by Tim Burton. To be expected, Edward Scissorhands gone wrong? (Guardian Unlimited)

2. US District Judge Gladys Kessler sides with the US government today and finds the cigarette industry guilty with civil racketeering charges, which translates to cigarette companies' forking over $10b for smoking cessation programs. The Justice Department likes to note that $130b was needed. Tomatoes to-mah-toes. (CBS)

3. Pedro Almodovar dismisses rumors he is moving to Hollywood and in fact disses Hollywood's working process and screenwriting abilities with "They forget the most important thing is the script, and the scripts get weaker and weaker. Technical effects advance, but the literary quality is worse." To which I reply, Snakes on a Plane--fuck yeah! (IMDB)

Coffee Confusion, Hollywood Affairs, Samuel L, and Wilmer Parties

1. Infidelity rumors are following in the heels of the splits between Kate Hudson and Chris Robinson, and lesser-known couple Travis Barker and Shannon Moakler. The former can be attributed to notorious butt-licking Owen Wilson and the latter, a "myspace affair wit some guy (dork)," Barker accuses of his wife. (Daily News)

2. Coming out of Brown University School of Medicine is a study showing that coffee drinkers are susceptible to heart attacks, with light coffee drinkers' (up to 1 cup a day) being most at risk. Moderate coffee drinkers (2-3/day) ran a 60% risk of heart attack after drinking one cup, light drinkers' risk increased fourfold with just one cup, while heavy drinkers (3-4/day) weren't really at risk at all. So when it comes to joe, go to one extreme or the other. (Newstarget)

3. However, published yesterday in the NYT is a glowing article on the benefits of drinking coffee: preventing cell damage, diabetes, "cardiovascular risk," and lowering women's "risk of death from all causes." What to believe, what to believe.

4. With 83 movies under his belt, Samuel L. Jackson can be caught in his latest this Friday: Snakes on a Plane. Don't overhype the film though. Jackson says, "We did the best film we could, and it's just snakes on a plane. It's not Snakes on Brokeback Mountain." (Independent)

5. Page Six sighted "Wilmer Valderrama pouring shots of Patron into the mouths of a line of boozed-up bimbos at the bar at Libation." Hm, there was absolutely nothing pleasant to be found in that sentence.

PC Boom, YouTube Surprise Star, Swans Virus, Dancing "Stars," and the Controversial Iranian Exhibit

1. Beware the combustible computer. Yesterday, the world's largest PC maker, Dell, announced its recall of 4.1 laptop batteries because of their affinity for exploding into flames. Perhaps to avoid the PR hell it's already in, Dell blamed the too-hot-to-handle batteries on its manufacturer, Sony. (NYT)

2. Peter or Geriatric1927, a 78 or 79 year old user, posted his first video on YouTube a week ago and now finds himself on top of the most-subscribed list, with 79,000 viewings and already 6,500 subscribers. Geriatric1927 charmed his way into YouTube-users' hearts with comments such as, "What I hope I will be able to do is to just to bitch and grumble about life in general from the perspective of an old person who has been there and done that and hopefully you will respond in some way by your comments." And, oh, how they have. (Reuters)

3. The bird flu virus was found in a pair of Michigan swans, but officials have said that the virus was a downgraded/undeadly version of the H5N1 strain. Nature will have one sick sense of humor if the pathogenic strain was found in a lonely ugly duckling instead. *Cross fingers!* (Fox)

4. Talk about bizarre "celebrity" news: once bow-tied Tucker Carlson, "Saved by the Bell"'s Mario Lopez, and talk-show host Jerry Springer will be part of the lineup in the third season of "Dancing with the Stars." (TwinCities)

5. In a case for equal-opportunity prejudice, the Iran Cartoon Organization and Hamshahri newspaper are putting on a Holocaust cartoon exhibit in a museum in Tehran in response to the Prophet Muhammad caricatures published in European newspapers. Organizer Masoud Shojai said, "You see they allow the Prophet to be insulted. But when we talk about the Holocaust, they consider it so holy that they punish people for questioning it." (BBC)

Boy George's Stalkers' Letdown, THE Iranian Blog, Disney's Shocking Deal, and Today's Screw-Up

Blogging-happy.

1. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has decided to join the blogging world (finally!) and wrote about his childhood, Iran's Islamic revolution and the war with Iraq for his first entry, which ends with a promise to keep postings shorter (than its current standing at 2,000 words, at least, in English). Blog delights include references to the U.S. as "Great Satan USA" and a poll's asking if the US and Isreal are "trying to trigger a new world war." (BBC)

2. Boy George's community service began today, but sorry Gawker stalkers, his trash-duties were quickly pulled indoors with the media frenzy that ensued. In all his safety-vested glory, George yelled, "You think you're better than me? Go home. Let me do my community service... This is supposed to make me humble. Let me do this." (AP)

3. Apocalypto, new movie from now notoriously-anti-Semitic drunkie Mel Gibson, has been picked up for distribution by Walt Disney. Omg, it's like the odd-couple... (IMDB)

4, Jennifer Aniston's publicist, Stephen Huvane, will apparently be pulling all his A-list clients like Gwenyth Paltrow, Demi Moore, and Kirsten Dunst from showing up on the "Today" show and planting them on Good Morning America thanks to Ann Curry's enthusiastic interview of US Weekly's Janice Min about Aniston's supposed engagement to Vince Vaughn. The thorn in this threat of course is...Demi Moore has movies to promote? (Page 6)

Catty Nasties, Lohan Stalked, and Your Studies Wrap-Up

1. The Condé Nast cafeteria staff, perhaps frustrated with "serving food" to the employees there, decided to step up on the snarkiness in their comment cards. Favorites are:

"Nicole" wrote: "Why are we always out of crackers??" The cafeteria's answer: "You're right, we being too generous with giving them out for free!! What are we thinking?"
Another employee requested: "Make more frittata in the morning please!!!" The cafeteria retorted: "We have frittata everyday until 10:30. On another note I know a great eye doctor."

(Daily News)

2. Lindsay Lohan has a stalker, who has been sending her letters and flowers on the set of Georgia Rule. ...Um, sounds horrid. (TMZ)

3. Studies galore! Married people live longer (and richer--those bastardly happiness hoarders!) than their widowed/divorced/single counterparts, more than 3 percent of American teens have whored themselves for money or drugs, and stats show that it's not just the trend to have obese children--they're just being born that way nowadays! (ABC)

Lohan Shooting, Drunk Celebrities, Jet-Lag Cure, and Soda--Yeah, Not So Healthy

1. Consider Lindsay Lohan a quadruple threat now that she is picking up shooting lessons to prepare herself for visiting US troops in Iraq: "My security guard is going to take me to a gun range... and I'm going to start taking shooting lessons. He says if I'm going to go there, I should really know how to shoot." Paparazzi, squirm uneasily starting... now. (Irish Examiner)

2. Because you're not a celebrity unless you're in rehab, Robin Williams' publicist admitted on the star's behalf that he has "found himself drinking again." (BBC)

3. If you're jet-lagged, a combination of power naps and caffeine can cure your corporeally-confused woes so "by the time the caffeine is working, your nap is over." (NYT)

4. According to Harvard study, a soda a day doesn't keep the doctor away but the activity done annually will pack on 15 extra pounds on you. So if you're feeling nostalgic for your freshman year of college, you know what to do. (Daily News)

Naturally Sexed Up Octogenarian, Apple, Google, Lindsay, and the Indescribable Nast

Lindsay doesn't party hearty. She in fact limits herself plenty.
"I have to be home before the sun comes up or I start panicking.
Unless it's, like, your birthday or whatever."

1. Eighty-eight year old but pharm-free Indian farmer Virmaram Jat just became the proud parent to a baby boy with his new wife 45 years his junior. His secrets? Jat likes to have sex daily, doesn't smoke, doesn't drink, doesn't eat meat, takes long walks daily, and drinks fresh camel milk and has since he himself was a youngin. Unless men are from Mars and women Venus, mother did not pass her milk to me. (Reuters)

2. Apple is awesome, and it held a conference this week to tell the world, or, the opposite of that, San Francisco, just that, announcing a new line of desktop G5 hard drives embedded with Intel chips (Power Mac G5 succeeded by the Mac Pro) and Leopard, the new operating system will allow users to run Windows on the Mac, retrieve old or deleted files, and search for files on machines in a shared network. Chief exec. Steve Jobs noted Microsoft's spending $5b in research and development to copy Google and Apple and commented, "It's a good example of how money isn't everything." Suddenly all the cat names seem awfully appropriate. (SF Chronicle)

3. Partnering with StopBadware.org, Google will be alerting their search users when they are about to click on websites that might harbor "malware," or software that might infect the user's computer with adware or spyware. Though don't pin monogamy onto Google just yet--it'll also team up with Viacom to offer video clips through its AdSense network, and you can already find MTV videos and ads there now. (TechNewsWorld, BusinessWeek)

4. With a "truly integrated marketing program" like Fashion Rocks, Condé Nast "does not like being called a mere magazine company, even though it publishes 27." Instead, take Richard Beckman's (President of CN's media group) lead and call them "content providers." Um, but that sounds like it sucks more. (NYT)

5. From the looks of Elle's September cover, it's not just Google and Apple making snide comments and, um, playing the field. On her dating life, Lindsay Lohan comments that she's not looking for monogamy and bad sex stops any of her relationships. As for Paris and the Brandon Davis firecrotch video? "Obviously, she's very comfortable making videos." Ooh, the claws. They are so chipped and black. (TMZ)

6. Your websites to check out today: pandora.com (awesome--you type in a song or artist you like and it gives you a playlist--part of the music genome project. Ain't science grand?) and summerscreen.org (free movie screenings at McCarren Park Pool in the exotic borough of Brooklyn).

The Smart Drug, the Continually Worrisome Plant, the Brawl Bar, and Awesomeness in a Video

1. In Germany, there has been "encouraging results" from a new pill that's been dubbed the "anti-stupidity pill," which improves your short-term memory and your attention span. Finally, a pharm targeted to the neglected audience of anxious nerds. (Reuters)

2. Scientists have found some stressed out plants not only pass down their mutations to their children but their increased tendency to mutate. X-men, here we come--at least, flora-style. (Nature)

3. Fight club wrapped in a bar is what China brings us in the form of the Rising Sun Anger Release Bar in Nanjing, where you can break bottles, rant, and hit specially-trained workers. It's spurring some controversy though uh...sounds like any dive bar sans the "specially-trained," no? (BBC)

4. OK Go is awesome. You shouldn't watch any other music video but this. (YouTube, I love you.)

Breast-Fed Better, Ali Drives, Virgin Hair, and Wintour DeStreeps

The bus where art imitates life stops here.

1. A study of 8,900 brit-born babies found that breast-fed babies were better equipped to deal with stress than their bottle-fed counterparts. The researchers didn't particularly know how to explain the results but noted that "breastfeeding might be a marker for other maternal or family traits that help kids handle stress." Where's Freud when you need him? (FOX)

2. For those who can't wait for Borat, the movie, to come out, run, or drive recklessly, to Talledega Nights where Sascha Cohen will be playing "a gay French driver who tortures Ricky (Will Ferrell) with talks of existentialism, free-from jazz and Formula Un." Check it: the lukewarm review here. (Detroit Free Press)

3. The hottest new trend amongst Hollywood A-listers that have trickled down to the peons visiting NYC salons is wearing hair extensions from Indian virgins in their teens and twenties who shave their heads for traditional Hindu ceremonies. Also known as "temple hair," these extensions cost $3000. I can't wait for 'drinking the blood of virgins to stay young' to make its resurgence. (Daily News)

4. WWD reports that because of the insane similarity between Miranda Priestly's office in The Devil Wears Prada and Anna Wintour's actual, real-life office, the latter has redecorated her office to, uh, erase the trail. Hm...odd that Condé Nast's WWD reports this though. What's with the sibling's slight rivalry-provoking ways?

Wet Scabby Wounds, Cher's Kiss Notes, Britain's Muslin Fun Day, and the Google Blog

1. British theme park Alton Towers called off its planned "National Muslim Fun Day" due to "lack of interest" today. The park released in a statement that it is "disappointed that the planned Family Fun Day Sunday 17th September has had to be cancelled." Really? They didn't see it coming? (Reuters)

2. Cher apparently sends ex Gene Simmons a love note every year, which leaves Simmons' wife, Shannon Tweed, none too pleased, particularly when her husband signs the notes "Love, Puppy." Hardcore. (Daily News)

3. Turns out that what most of us thought was right is completely wrong, and thank god the NYT is around to tell us. While most nurses and folks think that giving a wound fresh air so it can breathe will accelerate healing, it actually dries out the cell and "promotes cell death." So, smother the injured baby in some vaseline and band-aids, and also pick at your scab after some time. Turns out that not touching your scab at all has been bad advice too. And suddenly the day got brighter.

4. Who knew. Google has a blog. And it's boring. And it won't let you comment about how boring it is. Written by what seems like every person that works there, it shows that when everyone pitches in, they can make something that's pure crap.

Ledger Pulls a Jack, Castro for Castro, USB Your Laziness, Unendangered Elephants, and No, You Do the Math

"Together, we can create a reality that we can all agree on,
the reality we just agreed on."
-Stephen Colbert

1. Look for the Batman franchise to be aussified, or uh, awesomefied, now that Heath Ledger has been cast to play the Joker in the Batman Begins sequel, The Dark Night, to which director Christopher Nolan and star Christian Bale will return. Ledger was picked because he is "extraordinarily talented but fearless," which hopefully won't warrant any further Brokeback jokes, hilarious as they are. (AP)

2. Raul Castro will be stepping in temporarily for his older, intestinal-bleeding, brother Fidel. The two siblings, while ideologically similar, have very different personalities, with Raul being much more of a down to earth and joking partier. Don't let his cool youngest sibling ways fool you though--he's also supposed to be "ruthless with his enemies" and many Cubans fear how he will rule. (CNN)

3. A bar waitress in Ohio was handed her own stolen ID by the slickest thief of them all last week, which baffled police Captain Guy Turner: "The odds of this waitress recovering her own license defy calculation." I suppose everyone's given up on doing the math. (AP)

4. For those attached to the hip to their computers, there's no reason now to sever the tie. New USB devices are allowing tech geeks to plug their way into warmer hands, fake aquariums, paper shredders, beverage chillers and warmers, and oil burners. Hold your breath for the toilet. (Newsday)

5. Despite Stephen Colbert's pleas on his Word segment last night, there in fact is no new addition to or affected change of the wikiality of Wikipedia's "elephant" entry. Not to say though that his fans didn't try--they appropriately stampeded and crashed the server, leading Wikipedia to "lock down 20 elephant-related Wikipedia pages." Wikipedia claims that the technical issues they experienced are unrelated to The Colbert Report. Wikiality indeed. (Techdirt)