FIRST THE TSUNAMI, now this.

DER SPIEGEL: Bloggers at Front Line of Relief Efforts.

A CANDLE GOES OUT: Jerry Orbach, dead at 69. Prostate cancer is generally treatble if caught early; if only this technology had been around sooner...

THE ECONOMIST has a survey of nanotechnology that helps explain what Jon Pratt does for a living without a lot of jargon.

OSCAR HANDICAPPING: You can get the odds for some catagories at Intrade, which was a pretty good indicator for the 2004 election.

A USED BRITNEY SPEARS on eBay. Still cheap, just like the "real" one.

PARIS HILTON vows to be more annoying in 2005, in hopes of topping the aforementioned Britney.

TWIN CITIES, TWO SITES: Given the contingent of Blockheads clustered in Minnesota, I thought it worth linking to Slanderous Minneapolis, a local gossip blog, and Crap From the Past, the site for a St. Paul radio show featuring...

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY'S Best of 2004, fwiw.

TERRY HEATON sees "A Year of Trouble for Broadcasters," especially local broadcasters.

QATAR bans child jockeys in camel races, a big step forward for human rights in the oil-rich Gulf state. The children are to be replaced by robots. No, really.

NIKKI FINKE has her favorite showbiz quotes of 2004, including one from director Cameron Crowe.

ONE MAN LORD OF THE RINGS: 40 characters. 3 masterworks. 3600 seconds.

BUSINESS WEEK looks at video blogs.

SIZE MATTERS IN REPRODUCTION, according to this excerpt from Carl Zimmer's article for The New York Times.

FORMER ATTORNEY GENERAL RAMSEY CLARK will help defend Saddam Hussein. I guess the bang-up job he did for Slobodan Milosevic sealed the deal.

PORN is no longer the top spam category, though the way a particular type of junk e-mail was classified may be debatable.