Broadsheet

The Kippenberger story is that when the internet was just a "newborn," in '97, I contacted a German woman online for housing upon my arrival in Cologne/Koln. I rented a room in her flat for the first week I was there that was most recently occupied by Kippenberger as his studio.

She was devoted to him and put up a website (when websites were new) documenting his work and the many places around Cologne/the world that he frequented and/or held court. I helped her with some of the translations for the site.

The other thing is that Kippenberger is a GOD in the German contemporary artworld but is only marginally represented in the US. In the last Carnegie International, they gave the whole sculpture court over to him (posthumously) for his "Kafka/Amerika" installation but he's just now gaining that ground on this side of the pond. Christina, my friend w/ the room, is a pretty accomplished digital/conceptual artist in her own right.

And, quite seriously, the real way to win at blogging is to create a place for yourself that you find energizing and intrinsically rewarding, which is probably going to be at odds with the goal of getting the most traffic and the most links. It's the readers that you get and keep by writing in a way that you find intrinsically valuable that matter the most, sort of like the way your best friends are the people who like you when you're being yourself. So those traffic and link rankings do not show who is really winning. You'll have to look into your own heart to find out if you're winning.

Not since Humphrey Bogart and Claude Rains strolled together into the backlot mist at the close of Casablanca has a more beautiful friendship been forged than that between Jeff Jarvis and NYT editor Bill Keller....

The Boston Red Sox will ring in the home portion of their schedule by getting their World Series rings at their home opener April 11 before a full house of 35,000 fans - and the New York Yankees.

"This is the kind of quality problem I hope we're going to be able to have with some frequency," Red Sox president Larry Lucchino said, "sit around at spring training and decide just when, oh when, do we give out the World Series championship rings."

Pfizer now spends twice as much on sales and administrative expenses -- $16.9 billion last year -- as it does on research and development. And it employs 15,000 scientists and support staff in seven major labs around world. As long as those labs are churning out a steady stream of blockbuster drugs for Pfizer's gargantuan sales force to promote, this mass-market approach is extremely profitable.

There's only one problem: The blockbuster model doesn't really work anymore. Pharmaceutical companies, Pfizer being the leader, have sent so many sales reps into the field that they're tripping over one another.

Each of Pfizer's sales reps costs close to $170,000 per year including car, computer, and benefits, estimates Credit Suisse First Boston (CSR ) analyst Catherine J. Arnold. That figure doesn't change a lot if the company's sales are soaring or falling. So a big-selling drug can generate fantastic margins as sales ramp up. Pfizer generated an astonishing $45 billion in gross profits last year. That works out to $1.2 million per sales rep. Celebrex, with 90% gross margins, according to analysts, contributed some $3 billion of that.

...If Celebrex gets yanked from the market, profits per sales rep immediately drop to $1.1 million -- a 7% decline in productivity. If several drugs fall dramatically, which will inevitably happen as patents run out, and if others fail to take off quickly, that massive sales force quickly becomes a massive millstone.

The game consists of one golfer, one shooter and a field judge. The purpose of the game is to shoot your opponent's high-flying golf ball out of the air with a finely-tuned 12-gauge shotgun, thus preventing him (your opponent) from lofting a 9-iron approach shot onto a distant "green" and making a "hole in one." Points are scored by blasting your opponent's shiny new Titleist out of the air and causing his shot to fail miserably. That earns you two points. But if you miss and your enemy holes out, he (or she) wins two points when his ball hits and stays on the green.

Liberal multilateralists on the left, like me, are often skittish about offering too pungent a critique of Mr. Annan, because it offers aid and comfort to the "enemy" on the conservative unilateralist right. But if anyone's values have been betrayed at the U.N. over the past decade it is those of us who believe most deeply in the organization's ideals. Just ask the men and women of Rwanda and Srebrenica.

By my count, "Jeff Gannon" is now at least the sixth "journalist" (four of whom have been unmasked so far this year) to have been a propagandist on the payroll of either the Bush administration or a barely arms-length ally like Talon News while simultaneously appearing in print or broadcast forums that purport to be real news. Of these six, two have been syndicated newspaper columnists paid by the Department of Health and Human Services to promote the administration's "marriage" initiatives. The other four have played real newsmen on TV. Before Mr. Guckert and Armstrong Williams, the talking head paid $240,000 by the Department of Education, there were Karen Ryan and Alberto Garcia. Let us not forget these pioneers - the Woodward and Bernstein of fake news. They starred in bogus reports ("In Washington, I'm Karen Ryan reporting," went the script) pretending to "sort through the details" of the administration's Medicare prescription-drug plan in 2004. Such "reports," some of which found their way into news packages distributed to local stations by CNN, appeared in more than 50 news broadcasts around the country and have now been deemed illegal "covert propaganda" by the Government Accountability Office.

Five days after telling E&P that he was no longer speaking to the press because it was not helping him, former White House reporter James Guckert, a.k.a Jeff Gannon, said today that he had changed his mind and was seeking the right media outlet to tell his side of the story.

Asked this afternoon about reports that he was scheduled to appear on the Anderson Cooper's CNN show tonight, he denied it strongly. One hour later, a CNN spokesman told E&P, "He's taping it right now."

"There are a lot of people out there left hanging and bewildered by this," he told E&P. "I need to speak to a couple of issues. I need to talk about my relationship with the White House and whether I was a plant or not -- that needs to be brought out."

When asked to address those issues to E&P, Guckert declined. He also would not confirm or deny reports he had worked as a male prostitute, but said he would address those questions as well soon.

And why are we having all this intra-media warfare, anyway? Because we can, and because it's good for us. Anyone who isn't exhilarated by the bloggers and the havoc they're wreaking has lost touch with what American journalism at its best has always been about: making trouble to get at the truth.

Still, is this really a revolution? Bloggers are a fantastic addition to the media club, but I don't see them taking it over. So far they've proven adept at several tasks: 1) bird-dogging factual errors and other crimes that the mainstreamers are ignoring; 2) speaking in a chatty, irreverent voice that's refreshing after decades of stilted establishment formality; and 3) having fun -- a skill the mainstreamers lost long ago

Next time he's in Washington, I'm going to invite Powers over for dinner. The first course will be a tulip salad drenched in lemon castor oil.

The three most important factors of an Olympic bid are the financial package, the planning and the site acquisition," Lord Coe said outside 10 Downing Street.

The Palace will be floodlit with a Royal Standard flying on the roof, while guardsmen in bearskins will be on sentry duty.

The Grand Entrance will be illuminated by Olympic torch-style lighting, with the 46 guests - including the Princess Royal, the prime minister and Zara Phillips - to be greeted by the music of the Coldstream Guards String Quartet.

A pre-dinner drinks reception will take place in the Blue Drawing Room, with a harpist playing before the guests move to the State Dining Room for the meal.

The Bremerhaven Zoo had earlier flown in four female Humboldt penguins in an attempt to encourage three couples discovered to be all male to reproduce.

The zoo originally defended the experiment, claiming that the birds were an endangered species, but following protests from gay rights groups, director Heike Kueck has said that the zoo is abandoning the plan.

She said: "Everyone can live here as they please."

Gay groups had earlier protested against "the organised and forced harassment through female seductresses" in an open letter to Bremerhaven's Mayor Joerg Schulz.

The female penguins were flown in especially from Sweden in an effort to encourage the Humboldt penguins at the Bremerhaven Zoo to reproduce.

But the six homosexual penguins showed no interest in their new female companions and remained faithful to each other.

A plan by a German zoo to test the sexual appetites of a group of suspected homosexual penguins has sparked outrage among gay and lesbian groups, who fear zookeepers might force them to turn straight.

So, should I make your blog my homepage instead of the NYT? :-) Yours is actually the first one I've ever looked at.

Curt Schilling's bloody white sock is now an official part of baseball history. The Sox ace's in-laws, Don and Patsy Brewer, delivered the blood-soaked sock that he wore while winning Game 2 of the World Series to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., on Tuesday

Keepers at the zoo ordered DNA tests to be carried out on the penguins after they had been mating for years without producing any chicks.

It was only then they realised that six of the birds were living in homosexual partnerships.

After trending downward from a record 353 in 1993, homicides in Baltimore have ticked back up since 2002. They hit 278 last year, putting Baltimore in line for the title of deadliest big city in the nation, with a homicide rate three times greater than Los Angeles and five times greater than New York

"Because the—all which is on the table begins to address the big cost drivers. For example, how benefits are calculate, for example, is on the table; whether or not benefits rise based upon wage increases or price increases. There's a series of parts of the formula that are being considered. And when you couple that, those different cost drivers, affecting those—changing those with personal accounts, the idea is to get what has been promised more likely to be—or closer delivered to what has been promised. Does that make any sense to you? It's kind of muddled*. Look, there's a series of things that cause the—like, for example, benefits are calculated based upon the increase of wages, as opposed to the increase of prices. Some have suggested that we calculate—the benefits will rise based upon inflation, as opposed to wage increases. There is a reform that would help solve the red if that were put into effect. In other words, how fast benefits grow, how fast the promised benefits grow, if those—if that growth is affected, it will help on the red."—Explaining his plan to save Social Security, Tampa, Fla., Feb. 4, 2005

"Mike Pechar of the Interested-Participant notes that the current problem with leishmaniasis among military units in combat areas is that doctors are foregoing routine treatment of the disease on the basis that travel to a medical facility could be life-threatening to the troops.

And John steps in for Matthew at The Health Care Blog, wringing the necks of pharma for their greed, likening their atrocities to tragedies ordered by Ceausescu in Romania. I think that's a bit mean spirited, but I appreciate the sentiment."

She crossed the finish line at 2229 GMT on Monday, completing her 27,348-mile voyage in 71 days 14 hours 18 minutes and 33 seconds.

That time meant she smashed the previous mark, set in 2004 by Frenchman Francis Joyon, by nearly 33 hours.

THIRTEEN people have been killed and more than 500 injured during an annual kite-flying festival in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore.

Seven people with severe head injuries died in the city's General Hospital alone, and about 220 people were admitted with a variety of injuries including broken bones, hospital officials said.

Mr. Bush would cut spending for several programs that deal with epidemics, chronic diseases and obesity. His plan would also cut the budget of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by 9 percent, to $6.9 billion.

Mr. Bush requests money to expand a national stockpile of vaccines and antibiotics. But the public health emergency fund of the centers, which helps state and local agencies prepare for bioterror attacks, would be cut 12.6 percent, to $1 billion.

A Public Health Service program for "chronic disease prevention and health promotion" would be cut by 6.5 percent, to $841 million in 2006. The program finances efforts to prevent and control obesity, which federal health officials say has reached epidemic proportions.

The president's budget would also eliminate a block grant that provides $131 million for preventive health services. Under federal law, the money is used to "address urgent health problems," which vary from state to state.

The budget for training nurses, dentists and other health professionals would be cut 64 percent, to $160.5 million in 2006. The president would cut $100 million, or 33 percent, from a $301 million program that trains doctors at children's hospitals.

Mr. Bush seeks a $38 million increase in programs promoting sexual abstinence, which would bring the total to $192.5 million in 2006, an increase of more than 50 percent since 2004.

If the season is cancelled, the NHL would be the first North American sports league to lose an entire season to a labor dispute. The Stanley Cup has been awarded every year since 1919, when the great flu epidemic wiped out the final series between Montreal and Seattle.

IT'S OFFICIAL: MSNBC confirmed Wednesday that bow-tied conservative Tucker Carlson will headline his own prime-time show this spring. Carlson's hiring comes just weeks after CNN fired him for, as Jon Stewart so eloquently put it, "fail[ing] miserably."

*Full disclosure: Family Trivia - My Mom dated Ted Koppel in college.

Previewing the speech to reporters, a senior administration official said it is a "unique" speech in that it so closely follows the president's second inaugural address, and offers Bush an opportunity to build on the "ideals" outlined in that speech and make clear his specific goals and legislative blueprint for the second term.