Brute News

• Amazon recently went into their customers' Kindles and deleted books. Don't worry, the online-marketing giant meant well (the books were questionably copyrighted). But as Farhaad Manjoo points out, the display of power is astonishing and it may point to the future of book banning. Also at at Slate: a racous debate between the tree-killers and the time-killers. [Slate]

•  Walter Cronkite is being remembered at many news outlets. I'm going with this friend-focused tribute from Brian Stelter. Truthfully, the impact of this really hasn't hit me. It has less to do with a delayed reaction and more to do with him not being part of "my time." I understand his place in the news pantheon, but I almost resent the recurring notion that he's a symbol of a "simpler, more honest time." News is different now, no doubt. Cable is an Orwellian nightmare, ink and paper is dying, and there's too much stuff to dig through. At the same time, readers have never had more choices, updates come every minute, and cyberspace has given a mouth to those who must scream. *cues Brute theme music* I promise to do for Manjoo, Huffington, and Stewart what has been done for the Cronkster when the time comes. [New York Times]

• The band Campanas de America will not be allowed to play Mariachi classic "El Son de la Negras" on the "Today" Show. The NBC morning news show says they want a song more fitting of their widespread audience. The band thinks it's an ignorant act of political correctness. I'm a little on the fence myself. Any derivative of "negro" can be loaded when delivered on a wide scale and the "Today" show may have a legit concern. But if they demand "La Bamba" instead, El Brute might have some words for them. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a video of Campanas doing the song. Here's Mariachi Vargas instead. [My SA and Youtube]  

• Not even Microsoft can escape the economy. But they've also created some of their own problems. Companies are avoiding Vista and people are buying cheap "netbooks" (loaded with XP). As a result, Micro$oft PR is not making Windows 7 seem like the magic OS they wanted us to think Vista was. News like this continues to baffle me. I think I'm the only person out there who thinks Vista is just fine. [New York Times]

• President Obama turns a press conference into a health care reform primer. Seems the guy can do nearly anything (except return my phone calls, the jerk). This article isn't anything new, just the same old run down of the health plan being passed around in Congress. I continue beating the drum on it to remind people that it won't be a Stalin-esque takeover. [Mother Jones]

Twitter: Don't praise it too hard

Jack Schafer, of Slate, is taking Twitter to task:

I've found it more noise than signal in understanding the Iranian upheaval. I'm not saying that there is no signal to be found; I'm just saying that my cognitive colander isn't big enough to strain out Iran information I can rely on. Slate contributor Joshua Kucera made this point two days ago in True/Slant, compiling an early list of erroneous data points about the Iranian uprising that Twitterers were circulating: 3 million people demonstrating against the regime, the house arrest of Mir Hossein Mousavi, and the annulment of the election by authorities, for instance.

Far be it from me to be a media apologist (as I view myself as quite the watchdog), but I think he's right. Twitter is definitely in something of a finest hour (Andrew Sullivan's words) because of its sheer speed, portability and candidness. Not since the Internet has information been so easy to generate. But remember, the people on the streets--politically embattled or otherwise--don't have a gang of fact-checkers. If anything, Twitter does allow us to document history at an even rawer level than news. If journalism is the first draft of history, Twitter is the free-write that precedes it.

Why we need computer science in Kinder.

Classic.

Forward-thinking or Goatish?

Consider the following:

A scholar is giving a presentation on, I don't know, the mating habits of bullfrogs in New Zealand. In the middle of his lecture, the unthinkable happens: his cell phone rings (maybe it plays the William Tell Overture). The entire audience shifts in their seats as that familiar mixture of disdain and embarrassment fills the place.

THEN HE TAKES THE CALL, informing the crowd, "I'm sorry, one second...It's my wife; my child is disabled..." The crowd murmurs. Everyone is thinking, "Oh, okay..."

Then my intern--very interested in the mating habits of anything--says to her friend, "You know, a cell phone does not possess the utility to excuse him interrupting this lecture. In the pre-cellphone age, anything that child may have needed would have just worked itself out. Or it would have been too serious for that cellphone to solve anything."

Everyone seated around her leans away, fiddles with their note-taking materials or, ironically, checks their cellphones to distract themselves.

What say you, readers? Is my intern on to something or is she just an insufferable (though lovable) goat?

Facebook and Google: Clash of Titans

This is Michael Aggers' companion article to Manjoo's, where the former waxes wishful of having all social networking centralized. In passing, he also explains another benefit of online social networking:

"We are sorting out the entourage, or, to put it in a more utilitarian way, we are deciding which people are worthy sources of information."

A decision we wouldn't be forced to make in the pre-SN world and a vast contribution to a citizenry that begs for more participation regarding information.

The problem is that the internet, for all of its "final frontier"-ness is a hard place to make money, and Google and Facebook are ready to duke it out for your advertising eye. A great read, if for no other reason, to read a Google employee refer to the internet as barbaric.

The Case to Facebook Holdouts

Farhad Manjoo, of Slate, tells us why Facebook is the new cell phone:

"For a long while—from about the late '80s to the late-middle '90s, Wall Street to Jerry Maguire—carrying a mobile phone seemed like a haughty affectation. But as more people got phones, they became more useful for everyone—and then one day enough people had cell phones that everyone began to assume that you did, too. "

Thus, the utility of the device began to outweigh its costs and complications. Also:

"In general, Facebook is a lubricant of social connections. With so many people on it, it's now the best, fastest place online to find and connect with a specific person—think of it as a worldwide directory, or a Wikipedia of people. As a result, people now expect to find you on Facebook—whether they're contacting you for a job or scouting you out for a genius grant."

His entire argument is nothing short of bulletproof. But if everyone should get on Facebook, the question of what happens to other social networking sites gets raised. For Facebook to reach its full potential, all other networks must go away, or at least become the "other" social network of users. A Microsoft-like control of the industry may be on the horizon, with MySpace playing the Apple. Too bad MySpace just sucks.