Here are a couple of clips from last night’s Paul Simon show at Webster Hall in which the singer is joined by David Byrne. Above, a rendition of Byrne’s “Road to Nowhere.” Below, the two perform Simon’s “You Can Call Me Al,” during which Byrne’s exuberant gyrations result in a minor slip. In any event, no man can say how long these will remain on the Internet, so if they are something you are interested in seeing it is probably best to do so now.

“People become ill from E. coli by eating shit. Simple, right? Little attention is given to the likeliest reason so many people have been affected by the German strain — they probably ingested unusually large amounts of the bacteria. Whatever (bean sprouts or cucumbers or whatever) was contaminated was really contaminated. But try getting Anderson Cooper to explain that your illness is due to the fact that too much bacteria from an animal’s colon have ended up in your stomach.”

Delightful New York Post harridan Andrea Peyser does not disappoint today, after her bravura performance of wife-related questions at Anthony Weiner’s press conference yesterday: “The gorgeous and furious Internet cuckold Huma Abedin refused yesterday to stand by her man. She did not show up to walk the plank of public humiliation, the way doormat Silda did for her whoremonger husband, Eliot Spitzer.”

Meanwhile, elsewhere, if you feel like staying on with this story, because maybe you’re lonely or you want to know how best not to perform your private sexy online chats, it’s nice that the UK press is dealing with it as a “sexting scandal,” and they also have a wildly thorough rundown of all the latest in tabloid speculation. (“There has to be way more girls out there,” says alleged phone sex pal, etc.) This is a country that knows from extramarital sexting, after all.

In other news, Wikileaks has finally released diplomatic cables regarding Haiti today! Among other things (lots to read!) they document how the U.S. has a great interest in the nexus of oil deliveries, Venezuela and retaining a local nation of underpaid workers.

“Bears do not mate for life, but they are fairly social, according to Dr. David Shepherdson, a scientist at the Oregon Zoo in Portland who has studied bear behavior extensively. ‘For any animal that forms a close bond with another one, there would be some sense of loss.’”
 — How will Central Park Zoo polar bear Gus respond to the absence of his good friend Ida, who was euthanized last week?

Wait, what?

Watch carefully when you turn on your computer tomorrow. If everything goes according to plan, you won’t notice a thing, even though large parts of the Internet will be going through a test run for its next stage: Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6), a new system to ensure that the Web doesn’t run out of addresses.

On June 8, search and content giants including Google, Facebook, and Yahoo! will make their websites available over the new system — while your hardware and browser need to be able to set up to view them as well, it’s effectively the largest test yet of the new set of standards.

Scientific American puts it a bit differently, asking, “Will the Internet Stop on June 8?”

The answer is a tad more reassuring than the headline.

Most likely the transition will go smoothly. All but the oldest computers and phones can handle both schemes, although the IPv6 option may not be turned on. Old DSL modems or cable modems may not be compatible, says Geoff Huston, chief scientist for the Asia Pacific Network Information Center. In these cases, if you try to access an IPv6 address, you will either experience a delay or never connect.

I still have no idea what the hell any of this means, so I say PANIC! This is it, people. Start hoarding your kitty videos and whatever particular kind of porn does it for you. Print out your Twitter witticisms and Tumblr confessions, because starting tomorrow THE INTERNET IS OVER. Some day you will tell the generations yet unborn about this magical place where we all came together to share our bad puns about Anthony Weiner’s junk. We passed along clips of finger-biting babies. We Google bombed. (God, remember Google bombing?) And then, just like that, it all ended. We went back to reading newspapers and having actual physical interactions. We went to restaurants to actually eat a meal, not because we wanted a “badge.” Whatever coupons we tendered required the use of scissors to retrieve. We talked on the phone. And even though we occasionally looked back fondly, we mostly went on with our lives, happier and more rested than we were before. Okay, probably not. But isn’t it pretty to think so?

There’s several proven tactics to conducting a press conference with humiliating personal admissions and one of them is exhausting everyone, which was pretty successful with Anthony Weiner’s confession of sharing “personal photos” with women he did not know (six in three years, most before his marriage) online. Everyone was exhausted, except maybe the New York Post’s Andrea Peyser, who really, really wanted to know where his wife Huma was. (At least that’s what she kept screaming.)

But the press conference also ran counter to many of the prevailing ideas about crisis PR: one is to keep it short; another is have your wife with you. (The Spitzer event did both these things, and it may have been smart but it was also unsatisfying.) In any event, the press conference went something like this.

• “At the outset I’d like to make clear I’ve made terrible mistakes.”

• Says: I have not been honest with myself, my family, constituents, friends, media, etc.

• Confirms the underwear photo.

• Says he made a “hugely regrettable mistake” after panicking.

• Apologizes to Huma.

• Cries.

• “I have engaged in several inappropriate conversations… and exchanged photos with six women over the last three years.”

• “Some took place after” his marriage.

• “I haven’t told the truth and I’ve done things I deeply regret. I brought pain to people I cared about the most.”

• “This was a very dumb thing to do.” (He was well-prepared by a professional; he returned to these talking points over and over.)

• Notably, he did not bring up the choice to not resign until the Q&A.;

And then it went on and on.

I’d like to think it doesn’t affect my ability to get bills passed, he said near what seemed like the end, but was nowhere near the end. One should note that Congressman Weiner has still not sponsored a single piece of successful legislation.

“Were you fully erect” is what someone at the press conference was screaming (likely suspect: Benjy Bronk, of the Howard Stern show) as Weiner left the podium, which sort of seems like both the most and the least important question of the day.

But how did local women take it?

And that your husband is going to lust after other women no matter how skinny you are! RT @johnjcook: Lesson of the day: Punctuality.Mon Jun 06 20:44:19 via TweetDeck

Allison Benedikt
abenedikt

I see. And?

Good to know that if you marry someone less smart and less attractive than you it’s still no guarantee of fidelity.less than a minute ago via web

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Alicia Menendez
AliciaMenendez

Perhaps not so well.

“Imagine that a virus suddenly appears in our society that makes people sleep twelve, fourteen hours a day. Those infected with it move about somewhat slowly and seem emotionally disengaged. Many gain huge amounts of weight — twenty, forty, sixty, and even one hundred pounds. Often their blood sugar levels soar, and so do their cholesterol levels. A number of those struck by the mysterious illness — including young children and teenagers — become diabetic in fairly short order…. The federal government gives hundreds of millions of dollars to scientists at the best universities to decipher the inner workings of this virus, and they report that the reason it causes such global dysfunction is that it blocks a multitude of neurotransmitter receptors in the brain — dopaminergic, serotonergic, muscarinic, adrenergic, and histaminergic. All of those neuronal pathways in the brain are compromised. Meanwhile, MRI studies find that over a period of several years, the virus shrinks the cerebral cortex, and this shrinkage is tied to cognitive decline. A terrified public clamors for a cure. Now such an illness has in fact hit millions of American children and adults. We have just described the effects of Eli Lilly’s best-selling antipsychotic, Zyprexa.”
 — Here’s the first part of a very readable New York Review of Books piece on our epidemic of mental illness diagnoses and the treatment thereof.

This is very, very weird! Andrew Breitbart, who is a blogger, is taking questions from the press at a press conference, instead of Congressman Anthony Weiner, who is now late. He took the time to trash the bloggers who named the woman who came forward with the Weiner alleged crotch photos. “Salon dot com and Joan Walsh played the role that Weiner wanted….” Then he went on to trash Gawker. And “The Daily Kos.” And: “I’m here also to get some answers as well!” Also he is guaranteeing that the Weiner pictures are of an “x-rated nature.” (Which he will not release.) And someone asked — it sounded like Azi Paybarah, of the Observer? — why he posted the photos in the first place. He responded: “It’s clearly a news story. Why are you trying to challenge a news story? … This is a legitimate story and this is a continual attempt to blame the messenger.” Now he is talking about ACORN and its “nefarious”-ness. And how he had to go around “the president’s protectors in the media” to release the TRUTH about the evils of ACORN. Closing statements? “I’ve seen a lot of this Congressman’s body. He’s in very good shape.” Then he challenged anyone to reveal a lie he’s ever told.

But the point of the event is that he went before the cameras, said that he had an x-rated photo of a Congressman, one which he will not reveal, and then waited for Weiner to respond… who will be on shortly. (I mean, allegedly? Is anyone sure this press conference… isn’t actually Breitbart’s? Politico’s Maggie Haberman says she’s sure it’s for real!)

“I’ll never forget my conversation with the President. He pulled me aside, he said… and I can’t do Reagan. I wish I could do that breathy, wonderful voice of his… And Nancy Reagan was standing right next to him and the President said to me, ‘I only have one criticism about your movie,’ and I said ‘What’s that?’ He said, ‘How long were the end credits?’ I said, ‘Oh, I don’t know. Maybe three, three and a half minutes?’ He said, ‘In my day, when I was an actor, our end credits were maybe 15 seconds long.’ He said, ‘Why don’t you let everybody get a credit… three and a half, four minutes, that’s fine, but only show that inside the industry, but throughout the rest of the country reduce your credits to 15 seconds at the end?’ Nancy Reagan turned to him and said, ‘Oh, Ronny, they can’t do that. You know that.’ And he went, ‘Oh, yes, yes. I suppose.’ (laughs) That was the extent of my conversation about that . That was his only criticism, he felt the end credits were too long!”
 — Here’s an interview with Steven Spielberg in which the director recalls the reception at the White House at a screening of E.T. There is also a kind of endearing moment at the end of the interview when Spielberg asks when the whole thing is going live and the interviewer is all, “Oh whenever I can get it up” and Spielberg goes, “I can’t wait! I can’t wait!” [Via]

“Mary Maioriello, an employee at O. D. Heck until she resigned this year, said a culture of abuse continued. Ms. Maioriello was hired as a trainee last year, and witnessed several disturbing episodes. In one case, two employees played a game they called ‘Fetch,’ throwing French fries on the floor and laughing as one resident dived to get them, while another jumped out of his recliner and a third ate them off the floor.”
 — In the event that you’re having too nice a day today, what with the sun shining and all, you may want to read the story in the Times about the abuse of developmentally disabled residents at upstate New York’s Oswald D. Heck Developmental Center. Be warned: it is horrible. A 13-year-old boy dies and his father relates the experience of hearing the news. But if you think that it’s good to learn about the worst things in the world, for purposes of perspective, or exposure in hopes of correction, it is an excellent story.