PART OF THE APPEAL OF TIVO and perhaps other personal video recorders (PVRs in industry jargon, though the Times calls them digital video recorders) is that they can hypothetically use a model similar to the Amazon model to fill up a hard drive with forty hours of programming that consists partly of stuff you know you want to watch, but also stuff you might want to watch if you had preferences similar to others who watch the shows you like to watch. Given the option of this or of 200 channels that happen to be broadcasting this second, you're more likely to find preferable programming on the PVR -- some of the 200 channels might be in the middle of a movie or program, and there will be dozens of specialized channels that a particular viewer is almost never going to want to watch. The eventual culmination of this, if bandwidth and IP and pricing issues can be resolved, will be video-on-demand ("VOD") -- an advanced (and hopefully cheaper) version of what's in hotel rooms across the country now, except with thousands of choices instead of the few dozen in hotels or the twenty to sixty hours of choices on a PVR.

Maybe this is old news to other people, but: when it comes to music videos, VOD is already here. Launch.com, now an arm of Yahoo, will call up just about any music video (including some fairly obscure ones) on demand if you can find it in its search engine. Both Lileks and Treacher mentioned they liked the new Eminem video; I don't have MTV, but I discovered the launch.com site, called it up, and now I know what they're talking about. I can see the very cool White Stripes Lego video without having to sit through eight hours of MTV commercials.

But there's another nifty feature: you can program your own radio station. You can either base it off of a single band (in which case you'll get a mix of that band and similar bands), or you can go through a quiz and rank a bunch of bands, songs, albums, music genres and sub-genres. The music you say you like will be there; the computer will select other songs for you. If there's a song you hate, you can pretend to be Clear Channel and ban it from future radio-play on your station -- or just hit a fast-forward key and skip to whatever the computer dj selects. With very little effort, I got a radio station that was playing personalized music, and even introducing me to a couple of artists I wasn't previously aware of -- as well as selecting albums that I already knew I liked but had forgotten to list. And only a couple of minutes of commercials an hour. If there was a way to port it to my car stereo, it would be perfect, but I now have background music when I work at home. This is what the Internet is supposed to be about, and it's exciting times we live in.

MICHELLE BOARDMAN suggests that Amazon doesn't go far enough:

A friend once made the seemingly obvious but brilliant suggestion that Amazon merge its database of reader's preferences with an online dating service.

Now, perhaps I dreamt this, but a couple of months ago, I swear that I could click on a link in Amazon and come up with the wish-lists of people with similar purchases and interests to mine. It didn't work especially well (I'm far too promiscuous with my book- and CD- and DVD- purchases; Amazon doesn't distinguish between what I buy because it's cheap over the Internet (or as gifts for friends and family) and what I buy because I'm really interested unless I spend far more time than I do programming in my preferences), but it was a nifty option. I discovered Jonathan Lethem off of a friend's Amazon wish-list, for example; I could surely find other purchasing ideas from strangers. Either they're working the bugs out of it, or privacy advocates freaked out, because I can't seem to find the feature now.

DOWNER: IT'S NO longer possible to order pizzas for Israeli Defense Forces. Some 4000 pizzas had been purchased through the clever scheme (the vast majority from the US), but there was worry that terrorists would take advantage of soldiers used to receiving unsolicited deliveries.

I WAS ALWAYS AMUSED by the Taliban Singles page that was being e-mailed around last year. The real thing, on the other hand, is kind of disturbing.

SKULL FOUND in Rock Creek Park. Immediate speculation that it could be Chandra Levy.

HOW screenplays go bad. (The story waits until the third paragraph to go to the lede.) John Gregory Dunne has also written on the subject; his "life of Jessica Savitch" screenplay got pabulum-ized into "Up Close and Personal."

FOR EUGENE VOLOKH AND ADAM BONIN: Try this with a long gun.

GREAT FALLS (AP) - A 22-year-old Great Falls man shot off his right testicle Friday while stuffing a .40-caliber semiautomatic handgun in his waistband, police said.

Officer Keith Perkins said the man, whom he declined to identify, was upset because a buddy had been cut in a bar fight and several friends, including the 22-year-old, were in a parking lot looking for the culprits in the predawn hours.

"When the group decided not to do what they were going to do, he decided he was going to take the gun back home," Perkins said.

The man, who had been drinking, shot off his testicle, injured his penis and put a hole in his right thigh, the officer said. A friend took him to the hospital.

The officer said police initially thought of ticketing the man for disorderly conduct but likely won't, under the circumstances.

(via Obscure Store)

TODAY'S QUIXOTICISM: a web site is leading an anti-contraction demonstration by encouraging baseball fans to vote for the Expos and Twins players in the All-Star game.

JONATHAN LAST makes a compelling case that we're rooting for the wrong side in the Star Wars movies. (via Dr. Manhattan)

The destruction of Alderaan is often cited as ipso facto proof of the Empire's "evilness" because it seems like mass murder--planeticide, even. As Tarkin prepares to fire the Death Star, Princess Leia implores him to spare the planet, saying, "Alderaan is peaceful. We have no weapons." Her plea is important, if true.

But the audience has no reason to believe that Leia is telling the truth. In Episode IV, every bit of information she gives the Empire is willfully untrue. In the opening, she tells Darth Vader that she is on a diplomatic mission of mercy, when in fact she is on a spy mission, trying to deliver schematics of the Death Star to the Rebel Alliance. When asked where the Alliance is headquartered, she lies again.

Leia's lies are perfectly defensible--she thinks she's serving the greater good--but they make her wholly unreliable on the question of whether or not Alderaan really is peaceful and defenseless. If anything, since Leia is a high-ranking member of the rebellion and the princess of Alderaan, it would be reasonable to suspect that Alderaan is a front for Rebel activity or at least home to many more spies and insurgents like Leia.

Whatever the case, the important thing to recognize is that the Empire is not committing random acts of terror. It is engaged in a fight for the survival of its regime against a violent group of rebels who are committed to its destruction.

However, I think he's too charitable towards Darth Vader's actions in Episode V: it's at least as plausible that Vader is hoping to use Luke to supplant the Emperor as it is that he's hoping to end the rebellion.

WHAT THE NETWORKS DON'T WANT YOU TO SEE. Not just Mulholland Falls (originally an ABC pilot), but also Heat Vision and Jack. (via Frank)