Good reading for a strong pot of coffee, a latop, and my old leather chair:
- Fred Wilson smacks one of my favorite companies, Apple, for its ill-advised anti-blog lawsuits. Fred doesn't go in for any phony blog triumphalism and citizen's media claptrap - he just says it's bad for business and the Apple brand, and I agree.
- Jack Shannon says watching the baseball steroid hearings "was like watching addicts circle each other trying to appear to be serious without actually doing each other any serious harm." Jack's interested in what comes next.
- Jason and I have talked about the great Charlie Rich a bunch of times over the years; this week he blogged it, and it's worth a read.
- Steve Gilliard takes on the right-wing bloggers and their success in defining fairness in the media on the various talking heads shows and blog panels - as usual, an entertaining read from the wild man.
- Conservatives and pollyanna types tend to hate Professor Juan Cole for his anti-Bush take on Iraq, but this guy knows his region. Here's a particularly fascinating take on neo-cons and their ill-fated plan to break up OPEC and privatize Iraq's oil industry.
- The prolific Joe Gandelman - almost always good for an awesome collection of balanced links and comments on any issue - has moved The Moderate Voice to its domain. Here's a particularly hilarious story I discovered (as happens every week) only through the great Joe.