(Just to explain the dam burst.) Dan Kois put together a good article for Slate this week on the halfway-promoted iTunes playlists of celebrities. Kois unfortunately exposed himself at the end of piece as a Pitchfork-style music snob, but up until that point he zung me a few times.

One point with bonus melancholy content: "Just as Us Weekly's feature 'Stars–They're Just Like Us!' presents schadenfreude-laced shots of a makeup-free J. Lo chowing down on a Filet-O-Fish, iTunes celebrity playlists call forth visions of Matchbox 20's Rob Thomas nervously offering you a mix tape. A mix tape that sucks."

Came across Intelliseek's BlogPulse the other day, possibly on Poynter's E-Media Tidbits but I can't remember for sure, and was glad I didn't think like everybody else. They all want to write and talk about things that they've seen the whole world write and talk about. Politics and the pop of pop culture and such. Don't people have better things to do than argue somebody else's battle?

If you're gonna repurpose, make it easy on yourself. Get in. Get out. Then do something else.

Take the guy on the loudspeaker versus the silent guy driving the car in Better Off Dead. Lane Myer phrases the difference well: "Two brothers. One speaks no English, the other learned English from watching The Wide World of Sports. So you tell me — which is better, speaking no English at all, or speaking Howard Cosell?"

Slate finds some critics (including his New Yorker replacement) ripping his NYT Marah piece to shreds. The critics' main contention? They think he judges the present too much on the past. I think they're all way off the mark. If they want to take the humanity out of music, that's their problem, not Hornby's.

A Northwestern professor is living my dream and becoming an astronaut. Prof. Robert Satcher begins training in Houston this summer. But you too can still become an astronaut and have as many bowls of that famous astronaut ice cream as you want. Visit NASA's FAQ to learn more.

I've never heard of or visited CableNewser until this week, but now today I'm reading in the New York Times about the guy behind the site. Brian Stelter is 18 and a rising sophomore at my cousin Greg's alma mater, Towson University. Rumble, young Internet man, rumble. Thanks to Megg for the link.

In an opinion piece on News.com, usability guru Jakob Nielsen writes about his expectations of computing in 2034. I think Nielsen strays some from his area of expertise, but it's always interesting to read what he thinks. The guy does the kind of nuts and bolts research and thinking that no else does — or applies very well. Take his recent article on link colors and "navigational confusion."

Back to the topic of computing's future, I still think they'll pump the stuff into our heads.

we defeated shakespeare

we defeated your trees

we defeated your picnics

we are cicadese.

Soda streaming on the Yep Roc site. I like.

They call me Soda cuz when I was a baby,

Like I'm scared of something, but Hannah, I ain't

Slate assembles a photo gallery of the MoMa's current "Humble Masterpieces" exhibit, dedicated to everyday objects of notable design.

Tom Vanderbilt writes about the Dixie cup: "We may now know them as a quaint means of dispensing water in doctor's offices or in homes with kids. But in the early 1900s, their creation was part of a vigorous public health campaign to prevent mass viral outbreaks."

(Wilco lyric is here.)

Was at a diner the other day and heard the great Smiling Faces Sometimes on the jukebox. I got to wondering who'd sung the song, and apparently its roots are more complicated than most. The Undisputed Truth did one version (not their only hit, AMG begs to add); the Temptations followed with another. On top of those two songs, the "smiling faces" concept appeared throughout 1970s rock and soul productions; the O'Jays even said "smiling faces sometimes" on their great Back Stabbers — but with slightly different emphasis.

One James Wheatley attempted to map out the connecitons in 1994 post to rec.music.misc, and his depth got my admiration today. "James Taylor, however, did have a hit entitled Your Smiling Face back in 1978," Wheatley wrote. "(James Taylor, to the best of my knowledge, was never in The Undisputed Truth or the O'Jays.)"

With all that said, the song playing in the diner was probably the Temptations' version. Listening to the Undisputed Truth's clips tonight just made me feel sorry for them. Norman Whitfield gave them Smiling Faces Sometimes and Papa Was a Rollin' Stone, and then he went and took both to the Tempts … who then made better versions.

How ridiculous was Whitfield's best work? The list includes those two songs, I Heard It Through the Grapevine, Ain't Too Proud to Beg, Just My Imagination, (I Know) I'm Losing You, I Wish It Would Rain, Too Busy Thinking About My Baby, War, and more.