LET'S KICK OFF the week with a few Pate influences:

GANG OF FOUR: profiled in the Guardian.

THE JAM: There's a limited edition of the non-compact Snap.

X is profiled by the San Francisco Chronicle.

GbV's FINAL STAND was reviewed by Don Thrasher, who beat the skins for a number the night Ken King and I went (registration or bugmenot req'd). Robert Pollard looks to be getting his solo career o­n track.

GOOD NEWS o­n IRAQI WOMEN: A new poll (downloadable in full as a pdf here) discloses that: 90.6% of Iraqi women are hopeful about their future; 94% want to secure legal rights for women; 84% want the right to vote o­n the final constitution; and nearly 80% believe that their participation in local and national councils should not be limited.

ROYALE WITH CHEESE: McDonald's ads are much cooler in other countries. Watch or download an Israeli ad for the "McShuarma."

MILLION DOLLAR BABY: wins Best Picture from the National Society of Film Critics.

MICHAEL MOORE: tipped in advance to winning the People's Choice Award? Of course, this is what you get from online polling for awards...He gave a fairly uncontroversial speech; trying to influence Oscar late deciders?

DUBYA AND BUBBA getting chummy? It's the New World Order, I tell you!

TECHNOLOGY REVIEW: I can't decide whether this article wants us to embrace Luddism or admit that we are just spoiled.

QUANTUM CRYPTOGRAPHY, hich offers the hope of unbreakable codes, is showing up in the market. But the real reason to mention it is that I'm a sucker for anything that mentions both the Heisenberg uncertainty principle and uses the phrase "spukhafte Fernwirkungen."

TSUNAMI UPDATE: Visits to the area from VIPs including Kofi Annan and Colin Powell are hindering aid delivery. Not to mention the visit from Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist: "Get some devastation in the back," Frist told a photographer. Meanwhile, the U.N. is asking for 28 million dollars for family planning, including condoms, which seems like an odd thing to do in the midst of well over 100,000 dead. With the U.N. assuming the lead role, let's hope that it does better than it did with the Oil-for-food program, which got bad coverage in both The New York Times and the New York Post. At least, let's hope the U.N. staff there doesn't end up in a sex abuse scandal.

MEGA-TSUNAMI: Researchers say that a "mega-tsunami" originating from a Canary Islands volcano will o­ne day wreak certain havoc along the eastern coast of North America and much of Europe. But maybe not for 10,000 years.

MP3NEWSWIRE publishes its annual lists of winners and losers.

LINDSAY LOHAN into L7 and the Dead Kennedys? In truth, probably not.

AIN'T-IT-COOL-NEWS: has pictures from Richard Linklater's adaptation of Phillip K. Dick's A Scanner Darkly.

CREDIT WHERE DUE: Microsoft gets a lot of criticism, much of it deserved. But this review of the beta version of MS Anti-spyware claims it beats Ad-Aware and Spybot.

CATS AND DOGS, LIVING TOGETHER: Like me, InstaPundit must be a Ghostbusters fan.

HOW COULD I FORGET? Happy Birthday, Elvis Presley... wherever you are.

WILLIE NELSON, JOE ELY AND ALEJANDRO ESCOVEDO will headline a benefit concert for tsunami victims Sunday night in Austin.

LOU REED and Robert Plant will perform at this year's SXSW. Not together, I hope. Would they play both versions of "Rock and Roll?"

SEATTLE FITTEST U.S. CITY in a survey by Men's Fitness magazine. Chicago was fifth fattest out of the 50 cities in the survey, beaten out by cities like Memphis. Perhaps it's a coffee versus barbeque thing.

THE NEW YORK OBSERVER has some great advice for Robert DeNiro. PLUS: The NYO also crunches the numbers o­n celebrity charities. Bruce Springsteen does well, Whitney Houston, not so well.

PORN: Becoming mainstream media, according to some in this CBS story.

GUIDED BY VOICES: Celia Farber adds her remembrance.

JUDGE ANDREW P. NAPOLITANO, now a senior analyst with Fox News Channel, is not a fan of the Patriot Act or the amendments made by the Intelligence Reform Act.

CATS have a tailor to satisfy their demand for frog costumes.

CHEESE RACING is sweeping Great Britain. Wait until Robyn Hitchcock finds out!

APPLE BEING SUED by someone claiming Apple is breaking anti-competition laws in refusing to let music players other than iPods work with Apple's iTunes service. And somewhere else, Bill Gates is laughing himself silly.

PEOPLE WRITING SONGS THAT VOICES NEVER SHARE: Meanwhile, Apple is selling sounds of silence not recorded by Simon and Garfunkel for the usual 99 cents a track.

TiVO: Thinking outside the (set-top) box.

THE VILLAGE VOICE runs an article o­n hip-hop's 30th anniversary, suggenting that the moment hip-hop "disappeared from the air and marketplace might be the moment when we'd discover whether hiphop truly was a cultural force or a manufacturing plant, a way of being or a way of selling porn DVDs, Crunk juice, and S. Carter signature sneakers, blessed be the retired."

WHY I LOVE LAWYERS: Fear of silly lawsuits causes companies to put wacky labels o­n their products, such as the toilet brush with the label "Do not use for personal hygiene."

HANS MORAVEC starts a company to realize his prediction that we would someday routinely download our minds into robots. As seen o­n Friends.

IKEA: Lost in translation.

WILLIAM KENNEDY SMITH has the latest sexual assault claim brought against him dismissed.

THE SOCIAL CUSTOMER makes the case against Real Networks.

THE SMOKING GUN has a comprehensive roundup of the disturbing allegations against Michael Jackson.

WIRED has a lengthy feature o­n Bram Cohen, the creator of BitTorrent, which now may account for more than o­ne-third of all data sent across the Internet.

SID VICIOUS was also the nickname for ex-Clinton aide and journo Sydney Blumenthal, who was just dumped by Salon.

RACE TO THE BOTTOM: The perfume promoted by Paris Hilton is outsold by the o­ne promoted by Britney Spears. Neither o­ne is named "Skanktastic," but o­ne should be.

WESTWORD wants videogame criticism worthy of Lester Bangs, Pauline Kael and Robert Christgau.

COOLFER dissects the Rolling Stone critics "best of" lists.

SALON: If you can sit through a commercial, their article on post-payola radio and the demise of the independent promoters is interesting. But the rise of satellite radio may decrease the influence of FM radio anyway.

BETTER HUMANS suggest that autism may be a plus for some jobs.

PETA is miffed at Jimmy Carter.

WONKETTE collects pics of our headbangin' President.

TSUNAMI AID: Down under, they're reporting that delivering tsunami aid is stymieing the U.N. Nevertheless, the U.S.-led group will dissolve today, in favor of the U.N. Go figure.

GUIDED BY VOICES EULOGY includes reviews, interviews, trivia and the Top 100 GBV Songs Of All Time.

KANGAROO captured in snowstorm outside Madison, Wisconsin.

SLATE looks at the way female weight is viewed in the U.S. and in other parts of the world.

MARIO WALLENDA -- nearly 43 years after the accident that killed two members of the Flying Wallendas and left him paralyzed from the waist down -- is is getting back on the high-wire.

ALBUM-O-MATIC: Are you bored already of those Albums Of The Year? Use the Album-O-Matic to find your personalized pick for the Album Of 2004.

THE PRO-AM REVOLUTION: Bloggers, open source software contributors, homebrew remix artists and others pursuing amateur activities to professional standards are an increasingly important part of our society and economy.

JIM LINDGREN claims that a well-publicized sex and money study is misleading.

MAGNETIC FIELDS shape planetary nebulae. This may also explain why the Mutara Nebula disrupted starship sensor systems.

JOE LEVY has an insightful review of the expanded reissue of Pavement's Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain (hat tip to Fluxblog, which also has a download).

GAWKER found a lovely picture of Chris Noth (Sex and the City; Law and Order).

SASHA FRERE-JONES studies the new math of mashups, now that some copyright issues have been resolved.

JENNIFER GARNER is sick and still going with Ben Affleck, but I repeat myself.

BAD HEADLINE, but a good story on blogs.

LINGERIE BOWL is returning, but minus the football game. So why would anyone watch?

ESPN CALLS EVEL KNIEVEL A PIMP, but a federal appeals court rules that it's lighthearted teen slang, not libel.

ASHLEE SIMPSON AT THE ORANGE BOWL: She was bad? Who'da thunk it? PLUS:Stereogum has the Donnas' take on Ashlee's prior lip-syncing, which still applies.

VARIETY looks at Hollywood blogging by people in the business, and by the business, I mean the industry.

FORBES previews music in 2005.

AL-JAZEERA seems to have been cozy with one of Saddam's sons. And someone apparently videotaped it.

THE IOWA UNDERGROUND ARCHIVES are discovered by Craig O'Neill and Ken King. Guess who isn't included... yet...

THE MAMMY NUNS, however, have a web page of their own.

KEN KING'S BROTHER, ERIC, had a near-brush with 15 minutes due to his Star Trek obsession.

FINAL GUIDED BY VOICES SHOW: Metromix has the review, Jiggling Whisker has a photo gallery.

WILCO, THE FLAMING LIPS AND SLEATER-KINNEY played Madison Square Garden New Year's Eve. What did you miss? "Living After Midnight," "Don't Fear the Reaper," "Love Will Keep Us Together" and Thunderclap Newman's "Something in the Air."

ONE OF MY FEW NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS is to feature more music blogs. The first of these is Soul Sides, featuring pretty much what you would expect, with cool downloads to boot.

CNN: Bragging about the network's coverage of the tsunami, CNN/US President Jonathan Klein says that with producers and correspondents already stationed around the globe, CNN was "able to flood the zone immediately." Not the best choice of words from someone in the communications biz, really.

WILL EISNER, a legend in the world of comic books, best known for The Spirit, dead at 87. Chromewaves collects a few tributes. UPDATE: Lileks adds his tribute.

IRAN SEEKING NANOTECH, according to Howard Lowy.

THE SOUNDTRACK OF OUR LIVES should drop their new disc next month.

HACK A DAY has instrucions for how to record on your iPod.

BUSINESS WEEK predicts that 2005 will be a year in which just about every traditional media company gives up market share to some next-generation rival.

WHO'S YOUR DADDY: In a brief moment of sanity, most people avoided the Fox reality show. Personally, I'm waiting for "Celebrity Who's Your Daddy," which I imagine to feature NBA players and rock musicians.

ESSENCE MAGAZINE is taking on the slut images and verbal abuse projected onto black women by hip hop lyrics and videos. Better late than never.

YOU WANT FRIES WITH THAT? Enough to nearly hit a Burger King employee with your truck? Why? Mickey D's has the better spuds anyway...

WHAT 100 SCIENTISTS BELIEVE, but cannot prove. And here's the full list.

WASHINGTON STATE GOVERNOR'S RACE: Gregoire certified as winner, based on late-discovered ballots in King County; Rossi may contest. I knew I had seen this movie before...

JANE GALT has a fun fact of the day.

TERROR SUSPECT ABU HAMZA AL-MASRI failed to appear before a British court on Tuesday, complaining his toe nails were too long and he could not walk.

WXPN, a public radio station affiliated with U Penn, has a Top 50 of 2004 that's not bad.

WHEN IT PAYS TO BE DUMB: This piece by Carl Zimmer does not address the entertainment industry. Not directly, anyway.

U.S. MARINE saved by tampon in Iraq.

IRAQI CHILD tips the troops to a large wepaons cache in Mosul.

THE PRECAUTIONARY PRINCIPLE: This piece is critical of applying it to genetically modified food. But what about global warming? Or tyrants seeking WMDs?

HE LOOKS LIKE is a blog that reminds me of a scene from Wonder Boys