OBL: Still Out There...Or Not?

The networks were popping yesterday with news that an audtiotape purportedly from Osama bin Laden was played on Al Jazeera TV (today's second-most-cited link)...offering another attack or a truce, depending. (Sorry, dude). But not everyone's convinced the very bad man that President George Bush promised to capture a loooooong time ago is even still alive. "Dead man offers phony truce," is how Little Green Footballs interpreted the news (today's No. 29 top blog post). Maybe he's running on the Democratic ticket, wonders American Digest? "The end of the world is nearer to this," says Drink This blogger of the truce offer.

Files, please, asks DOJ? Google says "no"
BoingBoing has an update (No. 17 top blog post) on the Department of Justice's request for a million random Google search records (today's No. 2 top news story) so that the government can defend the legality of its Child Online Protection Act (AOL, Yahoo! and MSN apparently complied). "Big Brother Wants Your Clickstream" is the analysis from the Business 2.0 blog. John Battelle's Search Blog look at the big-picture phenomenon as more and more personal data goes online. (Here's a blog-initiated tool: Try Outer Court's Patriot Search instead!)

And you thought driving while dialing was risky?
Imagine driving while zapping killer aliens or maneuvering treacherous battlefields? A new Nissan concept car, (the subject of today's No. 13 top blog post) has an Xbox 360 built in, reports 999 Today. It'll project Gotham Racing 3 and allow players to use the car's steering wheel and pedals (while parked, of course) to manipulate the game.

Passings...
Singer Wilson Pickett, today's sixth-burstiest person, is being remembered as a soulful crooner on news that he died this week at age 64 of a heart attack. The singer was famous for "Mustang Sally" and "In the Midnight Hour," (an hour that's now dark, eulogizes The Moderate Voice).

A Brief History...
The blogger at Defective Yetti is No. 2 among all posts today for a brief history of the Iraq War if it were written in text-message format from the perspective at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Attention, sports fans
The Super Bowl takes place on Feb. 5, the winter Olympics begin Feb. 10 in Italy. How much excitement is building? A BlogPulse trend graph shows the way: