Escaping the heavy news

Since we’re knee-deep in the vitamin D-less, dark of December, let’s look at the lighter side of the news, a composite of headlines:

“New tests raise Nevada brothel’s hopes for legal male prostitutes.” We’ll just say the second paragraph contains the phrase “could boost business in tough economic times.” (Prostitution has been legal in rural Nevada counties since 1971 but is against the law in Las Vegas and Reno.) There must be some advertising restrictions as well, since “What happens in rural Nevada, stays in rural Nevada” now makes much more sense.

“Comcast puts cable TV on the Internet for its subscribers.” The cable giant is creating a system to allow its broadband customers the ability to watch movies and shows anywhere they have computer access. So that’s what the annual fee increases to basic cable customers has been funding all these years. Something else they can’t use.

And somehow, companies still can’t find a way to allow people to pick and choose cable channels, and pay for only those. As they said about the “Bionic Man”: “We have the technology…”

“Sultry world is found circling a distant star.” All media were reporting that astronomers discovered a just-missed- being-habitable planet composed mostly of water. Super hot water. But it was the New York Times that put that great headline on its story, which had this description from reporter Dennis Overbye: “You would not want to live there. In addition to the heat — 400 degrees Fahrenheit on the ocean surface — the planet is probably cloaked in a crushingly dank and dark fog of superheated steam and other gases. But its discovery has encouraged a growing feeling among astronomers that they are on the verge of a breakthrough and getting closer to finding a planet something could live on.”

Does the blogosphere shine like that? Maybe someday. We’ll refrain from any “black hole” remarks if everyone who reads newspapers for free online will stop declaring newspapers dead, as if the content magically appears on the Web.

“Keen on green, dream takes flight.” Writing about the Dreamliner’s inaugural flight, Seattle Times’ columnist Denny Westneat says, “It also marked something much bigger than any one industry or city.” OK. But he abandons this concept at the end:

“So here’s to Boeing. Yes, they’re jilting us for South Carolina. But Tuesday was all Seattle. It was a day we got the world’s first green airplane — and in no small way a green way of thinking — off the ground.”

Oh, really? Tuesday was all Seattle? All Everett might have something to say about that.