According to ComScore.com, while new social network users in North America seem to be leveling off, the global trend shows that sites such as Facebook and…well, mostly Facebook, are gaining new members in the parts of the world where I’m pretty thankful I wasn’t born.

From Information Week:

The number of new users in the Middle East and Africa has risen by 66%, while the number of new users in Europe rose 35%. In Latin America, the number of new users on social networking sites rose by 33%.

Facebook.com has held the top spot among social networking sites worldwide since April 2008. The site experienced 153% growth in the past year, due in part to its use of natural language interfaces, ComScore reported. Most of Facebook’s visitors (49 million) still come from North America, although Europe appears to be catching up, with 35 million users. Growth in North America stood at 38%, while European users grew by 303% and worldwide users quadrupled, according to ComScore.

Finally the rest of the world is catching up on wasting their time. YAY INTERNET!

Thursday, July 31st, marks the birthday of much beloved, occasionally demonized, fictional character Harry Potter. This auspicious occasion will be celebrated by throngs of booknerds, who, tearing themselves away from MMORPGs and LARPGs (if you don’t know what these acronyms stand for count yourself among the lucky) will assemble in various theatres across North America and Europe, to witness full screenings of Wizard People, Dear Readers, a version of the first Harry Potter movie, The Sorcerer’s Stone with the original sound turned off and replaced with a recording of a narration by Brad Neely. We’re hosting a screening here in Chico at the Blue Room Theatre on Friday night (8 PM doors, 9 PM show), and if you are in the area you should probably attend. Here’s a sample of what is to come:

I can’t believe he hasn’t played on American Television before. UK heartthrob Ed Harcourt will be on Jay Leno’s Tonight Show this evening to promote his new album (well, that is to say his 2006 album that never got released in the States) The Beautiful Lie, which came out on Dovecote Records last Tuesday. Listening to The Beautiful Lie (and his back catalogue as well) it baffles me why he isn’t as huge in North America as he is in Europe. Last March during SXSW I ended up tagging along and filming Ed and his wife Gita as he got a sweet tattoo of one of his first songs, “Sing For My Supper” on his arm in Austin, TX. Enjoy our lil’ mini doc:

ED HARCOURT TO MAKE U.S. TELEVISION DEBUT ON THE TONIGHT SHOW JUNE 6, WEEK OF ‘THE BEAUTIFUL LIE’ RELEASE

LOS ANGELES, May 6, 2008 - Not long since wreaking havoc on Austin, Texas during SXSW, the illustrious Ed Harcourt will return to the States from his native England to perform on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno,” Friday, June 6. Timed perfectly with the release of his fourth full-length album, THE BEAUTIFUL LIE, due June 3 on Dovecote Records, Harcourt will celebrate the arrival of this much-awaited LP with a national television debut.

The Mercury Prize-nominated Harcourt has been keeping extraordinarily busy on tour with the Gutter Twins overseas, where he has been joining Greg Dulli, Mark Lanegan and co. on stage following his own opening set. “Ed Harcourt’s songs are as close to cabaret tunes and 1960s pop as they are to current rock,” recently noted the NEW YORK TIMES while UNDER THE RADAR hailed ‘The Beautiful Lie’ as “his best work to date.” The WALL STREET JOURNAL was on hand for one of his acclaimed Austin performances, calling Harcourt, “a gifted songwriter in the mold of Karl Wallinger and XTC’s Andy Partridge and Colin Moulding” adding, “and thus a descendant of John Lennon and Paul McCartney.”

Lead radio single, “Revolution in the Heart,” mimics Harcourt’s larger-than-life personality, brimming with his exquisite piano playing, booming delivery, thunderous rhythms and bursting backup vocals, compliments of The Magic Numbers. The track is currently going for adds at radio, already receiving early support across the country from stations like Starbucks XM Café, KBAC and others.

This visit is a precursor to additional U.S. tour dates this summer, to be announced soon.

A new NASA study, using advances in satellite technology, has finally been able to measure the long-rumored drift of pollution from China and other East Asian countries, into North America:

“We used the latest satellite capabilities to distinguish industrial pollution and smoke from dust transported to the western regions of North America from East Asia. Looking at four years of data from 2002 to 2005 we estimated the amount of pollution arriving in North America to be equivalent to about 15 percent of local emissions of the U.S. and Canada,” said Hongbin Yu, an associate research scientist of the University of Maryland Baltimore County working at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. “This is a significant percentage at a time when the U.S. is trying to decrease pollution emissions to boost overall air quality. This means that any reduction in our emissions may be offset by the pollution aerosols coming from East Asia and other regions.”

So basically, we could all live clean as Oregon hippies and we’d still breathing in the toxic exhaust of Chinese factories. But hey, at least we can buy CHEAP ELECTRONICS AT WAL-MART!!!!!111 We can enjoy our last days dying of cancer, watching Planet Earth on FUCKING BLU-RAY! OMG HIGH RESOLUTION!!1:

With so many of Earth’s natural wonders on display, it’s only fitting that the final DVD in this five-disc set is devoted to Planet Earth: The Future, a separate three-part series in which a global array of experts is assembled to discuss issues of conservation, protection of delicate ecosystems, and the socio-economic benefits of understanding nature as a commodity that returns trillions of dollars in value at no cost to Earth’s human population. At a time when the multiple threats of global warming should be obvious to all, let’s give Sir David the last word, from the closing of Planet Earth’s final episode: “We can now destroy or we can cherish–the choice is ours.”

One wonders, if fucking Sir David took the time to figure out that by the time you’ve got your Blu-Ray player hooked up to your Wal-Mart television and you’re playing your FIVE-disc Planet Earth set, you’ve already made the choice? After all, there’s an even higher resolution available when you’re trying to check out nature: its called OUTSIDE. Maybe if we tried marketing that shit on TV it’d become a little more popular.