One of the things that's cool about an RSS reader, it's that you can play a fun little game called, "Read the posts and guess who wrote it?"

Chuck's post, below, is easy. Just look for "Georgie and The Monster." Telltale Chuck. :-) But it's actually quite difficult to tell some of you from your writing.

Anyway, this is me procrastinating on a Saturday afternoon. Now, I've got reading to do.

As a frequent TV watcher, actually, this strike is not going to mean all that much. OK, The Daily Show not being on? Yes, that's devastating. A void in our lives.

But this season's television is one of the worst ever. Did you realize there's a show about the Geico caveman? And it's STILL on the air? I'm all for the writers, and I hope their strike is successful. But, I'd also appreciate it if they would actually write better scripts.

Now, I know there are not a lot of TV fans here in the Cafe, but I still maintain that, if you don't watch TV, you're missing out. With a Tivo, or other digital recording device, you can now watch at your leisure, instead of arranging your life around the networks' arbitrary time schedule. And you can be much more selective. I find I watch more, good TV, since I've switched over to a PVR.

In fact, television, if you haven't noticed, has gotten much smarter these days. Geico caveman aside, of course. But storylines are much more complex, and require a close reading if you're to get it all. Shows like Heroes, Lost, 24, Sopranos (RIP)...they all have multiple plotlines, with intersecting character timelines and narratives. Heroes and Lost, the latter to an even greater extent, both achieve this narrative complexity exceptionally well.

But, these days, those shows aren't at all the rule. Aside from Heroes, they got nothin'. So, as far as the strike goes, I can hold out as long as they can.

Anyway, I've got a lot of reading to catch up on.

Yesterday, Atrios pointed to the All Songs Considered podcast page, which, if you pop into their listings on iTunes, hosts a large number of full-length live shows from some really great, current artists.

It makes me think about how much music and technology have changed. Back in the day -- listen up, kids -- we had these things called "records," and they were pretty amazing. Clumsy, fragile...but still, amazing. They were things you could hold: music-as-artifact.

Ever since I can remember, I collected them. It wasn't simply buying old 45s (kids, that's sort of like paying $.99 for a single song on iTunes) and albums of music I liked. I collected them, sought out rare tracks, imports. It was a bit of an obsession.

And one of the coolest things you could find was a bootleg -- a live recording of a band in concert. One of my most prized possessions was a Led Zeppelin concert I had, from around 1975. It was remarkable at the time to hear a band play live. I was too young to go to concerts, and to hear these songs played differently from my records, which I had worn down the grooves from overplay, was an almost religious experience.

I had memorized, riff by riff, Jimmy Page's guitar playing (in my head, of course...couldn't really approach it on the guitar!), so to hear him stray from that, to improvise, to expand those songs musically, was enlightening. Maybe it's just me, and I guess it's a bit hard to explain. But I think, if you obsess over music like I do, it's probably understandable.

Later, I discovered the Grateful Dead's taping community, and while the music was good, the fact that the band allowed people to record their music was, looking back now, ground-breaking and future-thinking. (But, of course, fit in perfectly with the band's philosophy.) And while tapes of concerts weren't at all unique -- the taping community thrived on copies of copies of these concerts -- there was still a bit of a scarcity to them. And, again, there was this sense of music-as-artifact, things to be collected.

Today, as I click on these free podcasts, it's both refreshing, and a bit nostalgic. I'm glad we have more opportunities than ever to listen to live concerts, such as those at All Songs Considered. They're great quality. So much better than a fifth generation Dead tape you got from a friend of a friend.

At the same time, I miss collecting these things. Music stored up in my iTunes simply isn't the same.

And yet, maybe all is not lost.

Wired recently reported that vinyl was making a huge comeback. It's not something the major labels are paying attention to right now -- not surprising, of course. But it's big, big enough for Wired to proclaim it the beginning of the end of the CD.

Now, though, I run into another problem. A turntable? In my NYC-sized apartment? We barely have enough room for one season's worth of clothes, let alone a turntable!

As much as I might yearn for the nostalgia of placing that record on the turntable, and that needle on the record, it will have to wait.

One final note, a recommendation, really. If anyone does venture over to ASC, I highly suggest giving Jose Gonzales a listen. His voice can only be described as haunting, and it's just him and a nylon-string guitar. He's my new favorite artist.

At least for today.

Via Wired, AT&T has apparently written a programming language, called Hancock, that is used to "crunch through tens of millions of long distance phone records a night to draw up what AT&T calls 'communities of interest' -- i.e., calling circles that show who is talking to whom."

The terms used are a red flag of sorts, because "communities of interest" is the same language the FBI has been using to request records under the PATRIOT Act (without a warrant).

The details of this computer program's abilities are notable for the sheer scope of it all:

Programs written in Hancock work by analyzing data as it flows into a data warehouse. That differentiates the language from traditional data-mining applications which tend to look for patterns in static databases...Hancock code can sift calling card records, long distance calls, IP addresses and internet traffic dumps, and even track the physical movements of mobile phone customers as their signal moves from cell site to cell site.

A final point, culturally speaking, is way in which the social networking paradigm has now completely encapsulated our existence.

Even our government spying is based on Facebook.

One thing I noticed on my "Obama" post, and it's happened several times before in the Cafe, is that somehow, if you're speaking out in terms of equal rights for gays, people assume you're gay, too.

Is it really that unusual for someone who's not gay to advocate for equal rights? Is it that hard to wrap your head around that possibility?

I just find it the strangest thing. Somewhat revealing, too, no?