John Coltrane’s Giant Steps

Michael Levy takes a fascinating look at John Coltrane’s Giant Steps. A great compliment to Elizabeth Van Ness’s question: Is a Cinema Studies Degree the New MBA?

Still more, Ms. Daley, the U.S.C. Cinema-Television dean, argues that to generalize such skills has become integral to the film school’s mission. More than 60 academic courses at U.S.C. now require students to create term papers and projects that use video, sound and Internet components – and for Ms. Daley, it’s not enough. “If I had my way, our multimedia literacy honors program would be required of every student in the university,” she said.

What’s Missing from News is News

Frank Rich nails it:

What’s missing from News is the news. On ABC, Peter Jennings devotes two hours of prime time to playing peek-a-boo with U.F.O. fanatics, a whorish stunt crafted to deliver ratings, not information. On NBC, Brian Williams is busy as all get-out, as every promo reminds us, “Reporting America’s Story.” That story just happens to be the relentless branding of Brian Williams as America’s anchorman – a guy just too in love with Folks Like Us to waste his time looking closely at, say, anything happening in Washington.

Even NPR. I woke up the other morning at 6 and Morning Edition’s lead story was Martha Stewart (not Sudan, Lebanon, Iraq, the dollar’s ongoing meltdown, or any of a number of domestic issues).

ChoicePoint Identity Theft Saga Continues

Robert O’Harrow, Jr digs further into the Choicepoint mess:

But the man’s call last fall was different, according to a detective’s description of the encounter and testimony presented in a later court hearing. Unknown to ChoicePoint, the caller was not Garrett, an actor in the Los Angeles area. Police said he was a con artist involved in a vast identity-theft scam that succeeded in making off with records of at least 145,000 people. The real Garrett was just another victim.
The imposter’s attempt to gain access to even more files would not only expose the scam, but spark a national outrage and congressional hearings over whether the nation’s growing commercial data industry is doing enough to guard personal information.

Here’s how the scam worked.