Monday Links: August 18th, 2008

Well hi there, folks.  Massive apologies to you, the readers, for my prolonged absense from the blog, and massive thanks to Taylor for diligently plugging on.  I thought I’d be able to devote some time to blogging after finally getting settled in my apartment, but those free hours very quickly turned into hours in front of the TV watching people in much better shape than myself achieving incredible feats of athleticism.  I’m also still searching for the right theme upon which to reassert myself here.  Now that my job is taken up with thinking about Google and its industry, the last thing I want to do in my free time is think about them some more.  Send any tips my way.

Enough with the blabber, let’s get you linked up for the week:

• The good folks on the Google Reader team have invited some political power players to use their product to share the news stories they’re reading, including Senators McCain and Obama.
• France’s reliance on nuclear for almost 80% of its energy is not a vestige of the last century, as demonstrated by the new reactor being built in Normandy.
• The Washington Post reports (and Mike Arrington of TechCrunch laments) that everyone’s favorite Internet radio station, Pandora, might be shutting down soon:

Last year, an obscure federal panel ordered a doubling of the per-song performance royalty that Web radio stations pay to performers and record companies.  Traditional radio, by contrast, pays no such fee. Satellite radio pays a fee but at a less onerous rate, at least by some measures.  As for Pandora, its royalty fees this year will amount to 70 percent of its projected revenue of $25 million, Westergren said, a level that could doom it and other Web radio outfits.

• We’re slipping from frenemy to full-on enemy status with Russia.  So this is what the Cold War felt like…
• When asked about his explosive and ever-rising popularity in an interview with Bob Costas, Michael Phelps referred to Facebook and how he’d received so many friend requests from tag-a-longs, some of whom had even bullied him in his youth.  You could feel the awkward, silent incomprehension from Bob Costas and Phelps’ mom.  Friend requests?  Facebook?  Whaaaaa?

Short and sweet.  I’ll try to pry myself away from Beijing to put fingertips to keyboard this week.  Adieu.