"American Idol" -- results. Nicely done!

With 6 left and 2 going down, 100 million votes are cast, and 2 white males go down. Time to be proud of America as the 3 black women survive and 2 white guys have to leave. One of them, Phil, did a great job last night. I thought he'd make it, and he deserved to make it. Chris, I knew he'd reached the end. But I thought Phil would survive and Jordin, LaKisha, or Melinda would go, but all 3 of them made it. I feel a little bad about Phil, but more than that, I feel good that with 3 black women in the final 6 and 2 going down tonight that all 3 black women made it. Nice showing, America! And who's that other person? It's Blake. A white guy. My personal favorite, but nevertheless, I want the record to show that America voted and kept 3 black women in the final 4. That means something.

ADDED: To understand my point, remember in the third season, when it was down to the final 7, the 3 black women -- who, I think, were the 3 best singers on the show -- got voted into the bottom 3. This was the episode when "America" voted off Jennifer Hudson, the young woman who went on to win the Oscar for her performance in "Dreamgirls." There was a lot of talk at the time that Americans were not voting fairly. Now, the voting system is complex, and people cast more votes when they think their favorite is in danger, so even then, some of the charges of racism went too far. But, traditionally, over all the seasons, we've seen white male singers stay on the show when superior black female singers have been voted off. That did not happen last night.

"Sha la la la la la la live for today."

Just a song that figures into the new Bloggingheads... which you'll have to wait for.

ADDED: And here's another clue for you all:

Chris Bowers, of MyDD...

... is on Bloggingheads.tv, talking about the netroots. Haven't had time to listen to it yet.

Sidenote: I'm about to record a new Bloggingheads episode, finally the one where I've chosen as a partner someone who was not already a Bloggingheads participant.

Grape...

... hyacinth.

"Digg buried by users in piracy face-down."

Interesting. Both the power of a website's community over its owners and the issue that moved them to wield their power.

Pleading for the Digg hive mind to practice self-moderation, CEO Jay Adelson responded on the company blog at 1PM Pacific Time: "We all need to work together to protect Digg from exposure to lawsuits that could very quickly shut us down."

Diggers continued their revolt, however, overloading the site with the thousands of places where the [HD-DVD] encryption code can easily be found online, until servers started spouting 404 errors and moderators finally gave up trying to control the rabble about eight hours after Adelson's plea.

TechCrunch writes: "Digg surrenders to mob."

What's the difference between a "hive mind" and a "mob"? Is it all a matter of whether it thinks what is good? But those who would like to preserve intellectual property rights have to worry that that mind -- hive or mob -- is generating the new idea of the good.

Jonathan Chait has a big article on netroots blogging in The New Republic.

I was going to blog about it yesterday, but it bored me too much. It's long. I read it. You might think I hate to waste the effort and not produce a post, but it's something I do a lot. Unless I find something interesting, I don't post.

You know, the first time I heard about blogs, I imagined there was some sort of requirement to note each article you happened to read, that "web log" was to be taken literally, and the idea was to keep a log on the web of everything you read on the web. I don't know what it is about me that I tend to perceive requirements, rules, and restrictions in activities where there is no governing body and no mechanism of enforcement.

So why am I posting? I'm seeing that a lot of people are talking about it and thought you might want to talk about it too.

Here's Chait's conclusion to get you started:

Conservatives have crowed for years that they have "won the war of ideas." More often than not, such boasts include a citation of Richard Weaver's famous dictum, "Ideas have consequences." A war of ideas, though, is not an intellectual process; it is a political process. As my colleague Leon Wieseltier has written, "[I]f you are chiefly interested in the consequences, then you are not chiefly interested in the ideas." The netroots, like most of the conservative movement, is interested in the consequences, not the ideas. The battle is being joined at last.

"It makes no sense to tell the enemy when you plan to start withdrawing."

"All the terrorists would have to do is mark their calendars and gather their strength and begin plotting how to overthrow the government and take control of the country of Iraq."