ArsTechnica:

Around midnight Pacific time last night, 30GB Zunes began restarting and locking up at their boot screens. Reports have swamped official forums and fan sites, and Microsoft has yet to officially comment on the reason for this pre-New-Year's Zune apocalypse.

As reported by hundreds of owners in forum threads at Zune.net and other sites, one of which already has over 1,000 replies, the 30GB model of Microsoft's Zune digital media player—and apparently only the 30GB model—entered a coma last night. Whether a Zune was sitting idle or was in the middle of playing a song, users report that the device either shut itself off or restarted and then locked up at its boot screen.

A programmer somewhere just lost his job.

Yellowstone Super-Volcano

NAPLES, Italy, Dec. 12 (UPI) -- A group of more than 40 women in Naples, Italy, said they will withhold sex if their husbands or boyfriends set off fireworks during the holiday season.

Dr. Vincenzo Sorrentino said the idea for the committee of women pledging to withhold sex came after years of injuries and deaths resulting from Christmastime fireworks, ANSA reported Friday.

"We've tried everything to stop the mayhem caused by fireworks but we've never reached the results we hoped for," Sorrentino said. "We decided to get women involved because they are more convincing and they always achieve their goals."

Carolina Staiano, 42, the head of the women's committee, said her own father was seriously injured years ago by exploding fireworks.

"So far we've had more than 30 women join up and we're hoping for more," she said Friday. "We're fed up with these stupid annual massacres. This time they're just going to have to choose: sex or fireworks."

Mrs Cleek buys fireworks for me.

John Pizzarelli clears-up any illusions you may have had about your own guitar abilities.

Thela Hun Ginjeet

...and by extension, iTunes' record reviews.

Exhibit A, Peter Gabriel: Security:

...
That's not to say that the rest of the album is bland easy listening — it's designed this way, to have certain songs deliver greater impact than the rest. As such, it demands close attention to appreciate tone poems like "The Family and the Fishing Net," "Lay Your Hands on Me," and "Wallflower" — and not all of them reward such intensive listening. Even with its faults, Security remains a powerful listen, one of the better records in Gabriel's catalog, proving that he is becoming a master of tone, style, and substance, and how each part of the record enhances the other.
...

AllMusic's rating: 3 stars of of five. This makes it tied with 1992's Us and 2002's Up for the lowest-rated studio album in Gabriel's AllMusic discography. How can it also be "one of the better records in Gabriel's catalog" ?

Exhibit B, Cowboy Junkies : The Caution Horses:

With the ethereal voice of Margo Timmins gleaning the lyrics "The phone rings, but I don't answer it/Good news always sleeps till noon" on the opener ("Sun Comes Up, It's Tuesday Morning), listeners rest assured -- the Junkies haven't compromised their comfortable, country-twanged, folk-rock style to cater more to the trends of the masses. Mellow, honest, and provocatively reticent at points, their melancholic tone might seem bland to those with more aggressive tastes, or to simply more mainstream palettes, but for those whose tastes float serenely upstream, and for Junkies fans in general, this album is a treat.
...

Rest assured, this honest, and provocatively reticent record is a treat! Two out of five stars.

iTunes is smart enough to not use AllMusic's ratings, but they use AllMusic's write-ups.

We've lived in the south for 12 years now, but still, every year, I'm surprised when the temperatures get up into the mid-60s (or even mid-70s) at the end of December. Old dogs, new tricks.

Surfer