Worth reading for the 4 May

Some interesting reads out there...

It is sometimes interesting to see how other publications cover the government world. This story from Rolling Stone is a case in point...

Bush's Most Radical Plan Yet [Rolling Stone]

With a vote of hand-picked lobbyists, the president could terminate any federal agency he dislikes

FCW wrote about wiki's earlier this year as part of a special report on open source. Here is an interesting LAT story about Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia that anybody can edit.

Wikipedia: See 'Information,' 'Amazing,' 'Anarchy' [LAT, 5.4.2005, registration required]

Encyclopedias â€" whether paper (Britannica, for example) or software (Encarta) â€" are intended to be representations of the scope of human knowledge at the moment of their publication. This idea, of course, has a long history. But the most interesting thing about it may be its future, as represented by the magnificent, nonprofit Wikipedia.

Selling T-Shirts Is Big Business on Web [WSJ, 5.4.2005, subscription required]

All over the Web, bloggers, artists and entrepreneurs are unexpectedly finding that T-shirts are more reliable moneymakers than the original ideas that brought them to the Internet.

Unrelated...

Strange New World: No 'Star Trek' [LAT, 5.3.2005]

So they've gone and killed "Star Trek." And it's about time.

Wars to end all Wars [Time, 5.2.2005]

The May 19 release of Star Wars: Episode III occasions a Time assessment of the series and a hagiographic reckoning with the legacy of director George Lucas. In Revenge of the Sith, the "narrative arcs of the grand epic, gracefully bending in a double helix, will be complete," says the magazine of the new installment, which "shows Lucas storming back as a prime confector of popular art." In an interview, Lucas embraces the artificiality of his confections. With digital technology, he says, "I can paint reality. In essence, it means that cinema has gone from being a photographic medium to a painterly one." … An item in the front of Newsweek looks at religious disciples of various faiths who see spiritual metaphors and roadmaps in the Star Wars series. "I think there's a much more interesting conversation about spirituality happening in pop culture than there is in the typical church," says one devotee.