10.38 a.m.

AP
Valerie Plame Wilson arrives to to testify before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. In her opening statement she emphasizes her covert status, and that her employment was not "common knowledge on the Georgetown cocktail circuit."

Transcript to come...

In her own voice: Valerie Plame, whose CIA career was ended abruptly when she was named in a column by Robert Novak as an operative, speaks today before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. C-Span1 expects to broadcast the hearing beginning at 10 a.m.

Washington Post (Valerie Plame, the Spy Who's Ready to Speak for Herself) :

"They ruined her whole career," her mother said, echoing a refrain of several of Plame's former CIA colleagues. "She has no job."

Okay, that was the PSA. I have some longer posts in the hopper, some still in pieces, but for Friday of a very long week, here's emptying the "notebook":

· Dark ages redux: NPR Takes First Step To Reverse Internet Royalty Rate Decision

After the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) decided to drastically increase the royalties paid to musicians and record labels for streaming songs online, National Public Radio (NPR) will begin fighting the decision on Friday, March 16 by filing a petition for reconsideration with the CRB panel. The suggested new rates would increase to $.0008 per-play for 2006 (retroactively), $.0011 for 2007, $.0014 in 2008, $.0018 in 2009 and $.0019 for 2010, which could put some Internet broadcasters out of business and force public radio stations to quit streaming online.

"This is a stunning, damaging decision for public radio and its commitment to music discovery and education, which has been part of our tradition for more than half a century," said NPR's VP of Communications Andi Sporkin. "Public radio’s agreements on royalties with all such organizations, including the RIAA, have always taken into account our public service mission and non-profit status. These new rates, at least 20 times more than what stations have paid in the past, treat us as if we were commercial radio – although by its nature, public radio cannot increase revenue from more listeners or more content, the factors that set this new rate. Also, we are being required to pay an internet royalty fee that is vastly more expensive than what we pay for over-the-air use of music, although for a fraction of the over-the-air audience."

Good. Copyright has been turned on its head by RIAA -- its original purpose was to encourage the creation of a public culture, not to make everyone pay a middleman for a chance to experience it. When your book might be published under anyone's name, with a fight to follow, there was no incentive at all to show your work outside of a small circle of friends.

It will take a clean heavy like NPR to lead this fight for the rest of us.

· Now they tell us: Why your home isn't the investment you think it is. - Wall Street Journal.

·
Vaporized: Smoking 2.0 Give Lungs a Break

MILAN, Italy -- The NicStic is a cigarette-size plastic tube with a rechargeable heating coil that vaporizes tobacco instead of burning it.

Pop a filter on the end of the tube, and in seconds it is warmed up enough for a nicotine fix without the smoke. Because it has no smoke, it also has none of the tar, arsenic, cadmium and formaldehyde of regular cigarettes; it also passes muster with local anti-smoking laws here.

...The NicStic kit, which retails online for 80 euros (about $100), comes with a small plastic heating case, three voltage adapters and a carton of filters in boxes that resemble standard cigarette packs. The heating case is powered by a 3.7-volt lithium battery like those found in cell phones or digital cameras; once charged, it can fire up about 20 fume-free smokes.

· Flying mind: Hawking is out of this world Thousands gather to hear universe's biggest star discuss cosmos. Chron. Amazing. Nice story. Photo is by Mark Costantini of the Chron.

World-renowned physicist Stephen Hawking didn't so much visit Berkeley on Tuesday night, as he took over the collective brain of the community and took it for a fascinating, baffling, thrilling ride into the cosmos.

The response was remarkable.

A crowd filled Cal's 2,000-seat Zellerbach Hall to see the man who cannot stand. An additional overflow crowd of 800 jammed nearby Wheeler Hall to listen to a man who cannot speak.

And they were mesmerized.

Technically, Hawking is a thinker and theorist. But that only begins to touch the surface of his appeal. As more than one attendee said last night, Hawking is less a scholar and more a rock star.

Couch potatoes unscathed: From the London Times, The exercise craze that crippled a generation:

They were promised the body beautiful and their mantra was “No pain no gain”. Two decades later they are feeling it again — in their knees, hips and lower backs. They are the casualties of the aerobics boom....

Then, without warning,

As the craze took off in Britain, Geri Livingston bought a cat-suit and joined an energetic group in a church hall in Cheshire.

Oh, I hope there are photos.

· Flower poisons: Mad Honey Disease: My husband ate something really bad. Going over what he had had, he mentioned buying honey and putting it in tea. Some quick googling and I had a name for what ails him. This is real, documented in the Mead Digest, a homebrewers' newsletter. Honey produced from the nectar of rhododendrons is the culprit. Its effects are swift.

At least it made him laugh. No, we don't really think bad flowers did him in.

Note to Joyce: Wayne Miller would like to talk to you, if you're willing to contact him.