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Some musicians are peeved about single song sales from the Apple iTunes Music Store. An attorney who works for the firm that represents Will Smith and Alanis Morissette claims it’s an artistic issue. “The fear among artists is that the work of art they put together, the album, will become a thing of the past.” Alas, Yahoo Shopping lists 26 singles from Mr. Smith and another 26 from the divine Ms. Morissette. I’m sure the attorney will be attending to this breach of artistic integrity immediately.

The truth is, it hurts the bottom line since people don’t have to buy a whole album to get the song they want. I can sympathize with that, but I’m not sure I feel like I ought to be forced to buy stuff I don’t want to get the stuff I do want. Makes an interesting litmus test for everyone who claimed they approved of Napster because the artists don’t get much money from the labels anyhow, though.

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WMD explanation of the week: they were looted. Sure, several hundred tons of neurotoxins were looted. So effectively and so secretively that we haven’t found even a single looter. Sounds likely.

But OK, let’s grant ‘em that one. Let’s also admit that US forces have had no luck finding the “looted” WMD. Isn’t the solution obvious? Bring back Blix’s team; they’re professionals. Let them get back to work. After all, the IAEA found looted uranium a whole lot quicker than we could.

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MSNBC scores the first review of Warren Zevon’s upcoming album. Eric Olsen says it’s a masterpiece. And the review made me sniffle.

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Ah, ArsDigita. For a while, Phillip Greenspun was an Internet darling. He did some important work on database driven web sites, which wound up turning into a startup called ArsDigita. ArsDigita was very successful for a little while, and then went boom.

Phillip and his former SO Eve Andersson have one perspective. I mention the personal relationship only because it becomes somewhat relevant in the recently posted alternate perspective from Michael Yoon.

Yoon’s piece probably ought to be required reading for, I dunno, lots of people. Or perhaps for nobody, since the horse is now far from the barn and frolicking around in the pasture. Way too late to close the barn door now. But — speaking from a biased, management perspective — these three stories in conjunction demonstrate exactly why management is important.

There were any number of bad professional managers running around during the dot.com boom. This led to the unfortunate assumption that management (and marketing, and sales, and other non-technical fields) were easy. That, in turn, led to smart charismatic people like Phillip assuming that they could do management stuff. And… well, it’s all in the essays linked above.

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George Axelrod passed away Saturday. As big Hollywood names go, his wasn’t that big. Still, he wrote Breakfast at Tiffany’s and The Manchurian Candidate and the original play Seven Year Itch. So, yeah, let’s recognize.