Sunday paper tidbits

I couldn't find anything in the front section of my paper because I don't want to post depressing stories on the economy. Luckily there were some other interesting items as I got further in to the paper.

- Tonight is the season finale for "Flight of the Conchords" on HBO, and could possibly be the series finale. As I read the beginning of the article with dismay, it made more sense as I went on. It's a fairly difficult show to create - two songs with music videos per episode, plus the comedy in between. And Bret and Jemaine used up most of their pre-existing songs in the first season and probably used up all their new songs created on the long hiatus in season 2. But the article points out that the British model of television doesn't require its TV shows to run as long as they are making money. They tend to exist as long as their creators feel it is necessary - "Fawlty Towers" only had 12 episodes ever produced (John Cleese took four years off between creating the first 6 and the last 6 shows). Sounds like there is not as many "jumping the shark" situations with that scenario - and can explain why many cult-favorite US shows had short runs (two of my favorites, "Freaks and Geeks" and "Sports Night" ran for only 1 and 2 seasons, respectively). But hopefully there will be a season 3, and it will be good.

- At least two libraries last month pulled books due to the new federal law banning more than minute levels of lead in products for children. Apparently lead was present in printer's ink until it was banned in 1986, so any books printed before that year probably used the leaded ink. The CDC has come out saying lead-based ink poses little danger in children's books ("...on a scale of one to 10, this is like a 0.5 level of concern"), but a CPSC spokesman said in a recent interview that schools and libraries should take steps to ensure children are kept away from these books until more testing is done (this statement was then modified later that week to say the spokesman "misspoke" and they are not telling libraries to take them off shelves). Once again this misguided law has reared its head - while we need to protect children against defective, lead-tainted products, the concern over the books and the restriction of home-crafted, Etsy-type toys is taking things a little too far.

- Experts say that half of the world's 7000 languages may disappear by 2100. Last month UNESCO launched an online atlas of endangered languages, featuring more than 2,400 at risk of extinction. Language extinction has been around for 10,000 years - the norm in the pre-agricultural society was to have lots and lots of little languages, but as humans developed agriculture larger population groups could live together, developing larger languages. A language is considered extinct when the last person who learned it as his or her primary tongue dies. While many of these languages can be preserved, and many that have been lost because of the communities being forcibly made to drop them through discrimination, etc., should be, much of this appears to be just natural cultural evolution occuring.