Suddenly, an event manager in London is having a very bad night. Fifty sold-out shows to refund.
Just at this moment, the O2 Arena page reads, “Michael Jackson - THIS IS IT!” I bet it won’t for much longer.

US defeats Spain in the Confederations Cup, 2-0.

Quietly clicking my way through Bloomberg last Sunday afternoon, I came across this:
Facebook Members Register Names at 550 a Second
Facebook Inc., the world’s largest social-networking site, said members registered new user names at a rate of more than 550 a second after the company offered people the chance to claim a personalized Web address.
Facebook started [...]

As media furiously refrain from speculating, it’s odd to be hoping that a lightning strike, an electrical malfunction, or some combination of both was responsible for the crash of an Air France flight that disappeared over the Atlantic Ocean last night while en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. Because there aren’t a whole [...]

What’s Chinese for cultural destruction?
Over the next few years, [Kashgar] city officials say, they will demolish at least 85 percent of [the city's Old Town, a] warren of picturesque, if run-down homes and shops. Many of its 13,000 families, Muslims from a Turkic ethnic group called the Uighurs (pronounced WEE-gurs), will be moved.

Why couldn’t Susan Boyle be in the Eurovision Song Contest?

It’s that time of year again, and this time all of Europe — except plucky Georgia! — turns to the Third Rome Moscow, home of Eurovision 2009.
In years past, we’ve amused ourselves to no end with the song contest. Here are posts at least as good as some years’ winning songs:
2008
Can’t Resist
2007
Who’s European?
Eurovision: The Quickening
2006
Zombies [...]

The EU Health Commissioner recommends avoiding non-essential travel to Mexico, and the first case of this variant of swine flu in Europe has been reported in Spain. The WHO has already got its Emergency Committee working; they had their first meeting on Saturday. And the Organization’s web site has an admirably complete set of links [...]

Tomorrow morning, I’ll take a train to Berlin where I’ll attend this year’s Re:Publica 2009 conference. This year’s umbrella theme is “shift happens”, which isn’t too inappropriate, even for the conference itself: What was - in 2006 - started as a small gathering of a couple of Germany’s better known and activist bloggers, has grown [...]

Though it does have some relevance to the financial crisis, a brief item from the gentleman who brought you the immensely useful crazification factor:
There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with [...]