Soundfix:
Ethiopiques 21: Ethiopian Song
Label: Buda Musique

Here it is. This is it. The most achingly beautiful record of 2006. And what a story! Born in 1923 into a learned Ethiopian family, Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou was educated in Switzerland (where she first learned piano) and Cairo as well as in her native country. At the age of 24, having been denied the opportunity to study piano in England, she became a nun. Even after leaving the monastery and taking up teaching, she devoted her life to religion and helping the poor. Four solo piano albums, from which are drawn the contents of this disc, date from 1963 (two), 1970, and 1996. Her compositions are sometimes modal or pentatonic, sometimes redolent of the romantic harmonies of salon music, but always gently meditative, exuding an undulating calm that sometimes suggests Impressionism with its feverish purple patches replaced by a quietly mournful resignation or a patiently peaceful religious acceptance.

The album is also available at Amazon on disc or as an mp3 download.

Deal with it: This lovely lead by NYU New Media prof Clay Shirky doesn't end in an ending, but it's a good ride: Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable:

Back in 1993, the Knight-Ridder newspaper chain began investigating piracy of Dave Barry's popular column, which was published by the Miami Herald and syndicated widely. In the course of tracking down the sources of unlicensed distribution, they found many things, including the copying of his column to alt.fan.dave_barry on usenet; a 2000-person strong mailing list also reading pirated versions; and a teenager in the Midwest who was doing some of the copying himself, because he loved Barry's work so much he wanted everybody to be able to read it.

One of the people I was hanging around with online back then was Gordy Thompson, who managed internet services at the New York Times. I remember Thompson saying something to the effect of "When a 14 year old kid can blow up your business in his spare time, not because he hates you but because he loves you, then you got a problem."

Yes:

Inside the papers, the pragmatists were the ones simply looking out the window and noticing that the real world was increasingly resembling the unthinkable scenario. These people were treated as if they were barking mad. Meanwhile the people spinning visions of popular walled gardens and enthusiastic micropayment adoption, visions unsupported by reality, were regarded not as charlatans but saviors.