Key quote:

Time’s regular weekly issue, which goes on stands Friday, will devote its whole feature well, 21 pages, to coverage of the Apple co-founder and software giant. (Time was closing the issue when the news broke, forcing it to stop the presses for what was believed to be the first time in at least 30 years.)

Key quotes:

Ten years ago, Agnar Helgason, a scientist at Iceland’s deCODE Genetics, began investigating the origin of the Icelandic population. Most of the people he tested carried genetic links to either Scandinavians or people from the British Isles. But a small group of Icelanders — roughly 350 in total — carried a lineage known as C1, usually seen only in Asians and Native Americans.

… all the people who carry the C1 lineage are descendants of one of four women alive around the year 1700. In all likelihood, those four descended from a single woman. And because archeological remains in what is Canada today suggest that the Vikings were in the Americas around the year 1000 before retreating into a period of global isolation, the best explanation for that errant lineage lies with an American Indian woman: one who was taken back to Iceland some 500 years before Columbus set sail for the New World in 1492.

I love this kind of stuff.

Apparently 825 of the Burj Khalifa’s 900 ultra-luxury apartments remain unoccupied. (I assume that’s since the January opening).

Key quote:

But it’s the units that will be completed that are looming as a problem. The Dubai economy must still digest a flood of housing units coming on line or soon to be opened, which will further dampen prices. Through September, 27,000 residential units have been put on the market, and another 9,000 are expected to be completed by the end of the year, according to real estate firm Jones Lang LaSalle. For 2011, the firm forecasts that about 30,000 new units will come on line.

This is a whole new economic crisis!

Unfortunately the story gained only minimal national attention, most notably on “The Colbert Report”, and in James Poniewozik’s blog at Time Magazine (see Stephen Colbert Picks Up Apology and Poniewozik on the Press Herald).

We can add the print edition of Time Magazine to that list now.

This week Poniewozik has an article about Jon Stewart’s Rally to Restore Sanity and Colbert’s competing March to Keep Fear Alive, and he uses the Press Herald apology to illustrate the media’s fright of that fringe element, the loud 15 Percenters.

Check out: “The 15% Solution.”

Key quote:

The very idea that in the U.S. today you have to hold a protest to promote rational discourse is absurd. It’s funny because it’s true.

Poniewozik has become one of my favorite writers in the young generation of Time Magazine writers, I’m glad he’s picked up this story.

Anyway, I think we’re nearing the end of the cycle for the apology story. While I would have liked a few more headlines, maybe a march on the Press Herald’s offices in One City Center or Richard L. Connor as Keith Olbermann’s “Worst Person in the World”, the coverage that the story did receive was quality.

And sane.

Key quote:

Here’s where we are in America, 2010: There is now one group of Americans whose peaceful religious observance cannot be noted by decent people, unless it is “balanced” by the mention of a vile crime committed in 2001 by people, with a perverted idea of the same religion, from the other side of the world.

This is a depressing statement about the state of dialogue in America. Nine years after 9/11, there is now a widespread belief that, for one religious group of law-abiding Americans, the boundaries of acceptable behavior are narrower than for everyone else. Yes, you have the right to worship. But it would be decent of you to do it somewhere else. Or on another day. Or in such a way that the rest of us don’t have to know about it. So now we have a newspaper kowtowing to a national freakout, apologizing for the most innocuous kind of soft feature, because acknowledging that there are decent Muslims in America is offensive. (From the comments on the article: “I don’t want to here [sic] how caring the Muslim religion is on 9/11.” But hey: it’s only for a few days a year!)

Please also note, he used “kowtowing” – the same verb I used!

Apparently today sunrise is at 6:12 AM, while sunset is at 7:04 PM – so the day is still 12h 51m long.

But I guess I always notice the change more over a holiday weekend, on Friday the sunrise was at 6:07 AM and sunset at 7:13 PM – a full fifteen minutes more of day! We’re losing almost 3 minutes a day here, people.

Welcome autumn …

But damn, do they still write good stuff.

I love Joe Klein’s political insights, but this week it was television critic and entertainment reporter James Poniewozik who wrote a blistering political critique. Although, to be fair, it did involve a former-politician / political commentator’s outrage over a television cartoon.

Check out: “An Outrage Smackdown: Family Guy Defeats Palin.”

Likening Palin to Woody Allen’s Annie Hall bit about Marshall McLuhan is brilliant. I want to quote the entire thing, honestly, but this is a key:

She’ll still get that attention, though, because the Family Guys and the David Lettermans can’t resist giving it to her. (On March 2, she’s scheduled to stick it to antagonist Letterman by guesting on Jay Leno’s Tonight Show. And despite Palin’s objections to “Hollywood” intruding on her family, daughter Bristol will play herself as a teen mom on ABC Family’s The Secret Life of the American Teenager.) Just as she has made her personal life the basis for her politics, so are the attacks on her consistently personal. That in turn feeds the victimization that only strengthens her connection with her fans: Hollywood is mocking me, personally, so it is mocking you, personally.

You know, even when Time devolves into a tri-fold brochure as long as they still has Klein and Poniewozik I’ll renew my subscription …

Ken Tucker at Entertainment Weekly (“Jay Leno reclaims ‘The Tonight Show,’ Letterman acknowledges the return“) starts off with, well, some of that cynicism that Conan warned us about:

Jay Leno took back The Tonight Show from Conan O’Brien on Monday night, saying, “It’s good to be home.” Ha-ha-ha, oh, oh, I get it: Conan was a bully who kicked poor Jay out of his own house and stayed on as a squatter until the police (i.e., NBC) gave Jay back his property! Justice prevails!

Mmm snark!

The Washington Post (“Leno’s return to ‘Tonight’ gives off victorious air“), however, can’t seem to pick a side of the fence to be on:

In the end, Leno is talented in the most mediocre of ways, and this gives viewers great comfort. His big win here is a win for the middle of the road.

So, is that bad? Or good? Or … what?

The Los Angeles Times (“Jay Leno returns to ‘The Tonight Show’“) does what it does best, plays the middle of the road while dropping clever pop references:

It was quintessential Leno, man of the people, and after the new desk was unveiled, it did seem as if the last seven months were, if not a dream, then a sort of parallel universe, similar to this season’s “Lost.”

James Poniewozik at Time (“Jay Leno’s Long Nightmare Is Over“), who I felt eviscerated Leno in his cover story back in the autumn (“Jay Leno Is the Future of TV. Seriously“) veers into cynicism as well:

To be fair, Leno and NBC have a delicate task with the relaunch of the Tonight Show: making a premiere event of something that viewers were watching less than a year ago, without too many awkward reminders of what came between. At one point, Leno referred to his guest tomorrow, Sarah Palin, saying that she’s “never been on a late night show.” Palin appeared last year on Conan O’Brien’s Tonight (as a walk-on, not a scheduled guest, which she was on SNL). But, as we know, Conan O’Brien never existed.

(Incidentally, and maybe I’ve beaten this point to death, but would any of the Leno fans who complained about “that immature Conan O’Brien” care to explain to me the maturity and sophistication of Jay’s “World’s Tightest Pants” segment? Update: For those of you who missed it—extreme tight shot of someone’s wedgified butt crack. I realize I’m losing a lot of the nuance by summarizing.)

But the end-all, be-all of snark came from Mary Elizabeth Williams at Salon (“Leno’s late-night comeback“):

And then, seemingly hours later, it was over. All that was missing was a celebratory drink out of Conan O’Brien’s skull. In your face, America.

Wow.

I kind of wish it was a busier news day. That there were more stories about “The Bachelor” and “Dancing wth the Stars” and “The Marriage Ref”. Something about the Academy Awards. Celebrity drama of the Britney or Paris Hilton kind. C’mon. Anything but more snarky Jay Leno stories …