Robert X. Cringely breaks down the reason for the iPhone’s price drops:

This week’s iPhone pricing story, in which Apple punished its most loyal users by dropping the price of an 8-gig iPhone from $599 to $399 less than three months after the product’s introduction, is classic Steve Jobs. It wasn’t an accident. It wasn’t a thoughtless mistake. It was a calculated and tightly scripted exercise in marketing and ego gratification. In the mind of Steve Jobs the entire incident had no downside, none at all, which is yet another reason why he is not like you or me.

Freaky News‘ “Partial Face Transplants Pictures Gallery“

From Raymond Crowe.

Julia Kiss’ Meathead and Rosebutt.

Home of type designers Hoefler & Frere-Jones gets a beautiful, refreshing look.

Phil Ford applies Biggie’s “The Ten Crack Commandments” to “The Professor’s Ten Commandments.”

Khoi Vinh and Liz Danzico present A Brief Message:

A Brief Message features design opinions expressed in short form. Somewhere between critiques and manifestos, between wordy and skimpy, Brief Messages are viewpoints on design in the real world. They’re pithy, provocative and short — 200 words or less.

Sort of like my short music reviews I’ve been playing with lately.

NPR‘s follow up of Charlie Parker’s profile:

The legendary alto saxophonist Charlie Parker was one of those rare artists who seemed to come out of nowhere, captivating peers and fans so quickly and completely that the world was changed forever. Parker’s innovative phrasing, and his discovery of previously unexplored melodic and harmonic possibilities, put him at the head of a group of bebop innovators that included Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk and Bud Powell.

Make sure you listen to the entire program.

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New York Times profiles music guru Rick Rubin:

Columbia didn’t want Rubin to punch a clock. It wanted him to save the company. And just maybe the record business.