Educate and excite, inform and infuriate.

CBS’s 60 Minutes is more than just the longest-running prime-time TV series in any genre, having aired continuously for forty years, since 1968. It’s one of the most renowned and esteemed investigative news programs in the business. They work to get the facts, and to get them accurate, as the flop sweat from those unfortunate enough to get interrogated by these vets has repeatedly proven.

So, last night, when Morley Safer, one of the show’s foundational journalists, opined sanguinely, calling Florence, Italy-based vintner Marchesi Antinori Srl “perhaps the oldest family business on earth,” I didn’t even blink.

It’s 60 Minutes! Heck, Antinori has been under the same management since 1385. Literally since the Renaissance was brand new. Half a century-plus before Leonardo da Vinci was born.

Then, I did some research. According to my sources, Marchesi Antinori Srl has been up-and-running 623 years, true.

But it’s not “the oldest family business on earth,” or even in Italy. It’s not even the oldest family vintner in Italy. Nor is it the third-, or even the fourth-oldest such business in the world. Not even close.

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Today’s edition of NONFICTION, my WBAI-NY / 99.5 FM radio show, is a rebroadcast of my conversation with author Trey Ellis, discussing his latest book, Bedtime Stories. It takes place this afternoon, Friday, October 10, at 2 pm ET.

If you’re outside of the New York tri-state, you can check out our stream on the web. If you miss the live show, check out our archive for up to two weeks after broadcast.

At the recent DragonCon ’08, a rare photo of an authentic Cookie Monster-slaying warrior with the remains of her prey.

Note the distinguishing touches: Her blue, Cookie fur boots, providing necessary stealth and warmth, and her matching lipstick, providing additional camouflage.

[via Boing Boing]

Mother Jones is running a photo essay by Great Neck, NY photojournalist / former Marine Anthony Karen, 42. The piece, utilizing text, audio, and pictures, documents the work of Ku Klux Klan seamstress, above.

Coming from five generations of Ku Klux Klan members, 58-year-old “Ms. Ruth” sews hoods and robes for Klan members seven days a week, blessing each one when it’s done. A red satin outfit for an Exalted Cyclops, the head of a local chapter, costs about $140. She uses the earnings to help care for her 40-year-old quadriplegic daughter, “Lilbit,” who was injured in a car accident 10 years ago.

Amazing. You gotta admire their dedication to arts & kkkrafts.

On Monday, the NASA spacecraft MESSENGER (MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging) flew as close as 124 miles over the surface of the planet Mercury, delivering over 1,200 photographs, such as the one above, to the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHU/APL), which is managing the project.

The main purpose of the flyby, said the agency,

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To me, Isaac Hayes’ “Theme from Shaft” may be the most transcendent piece of film music ever made. So, this guy, above, is either leading the greatest travesty of all time, or the second coolest thing ever: The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain’s rendition of the famed work. Don’t tell me I never gave you anything.

[via Current Virals]

If L.L. Cool J, above, is not The G.O.A.T.—”Greatest of All Time”—he’s without doubt O.O.T.G.O.A.T.—”One of the Greatest of All Time.”

So, with his 24-year Def Jam contract ending, and only 300 words in The Village Voice to review his 12th studio album, Exit 13, it was a struggle for me to give the work its due, but I’m happy with what I got. Please check it out!

Also, Spike Lee’s World War II drama, Miracle at St. Anna, starring Derek Luke, right, is not doing all that well critically (it’s been roundly panned as flat and bloated), or financially: To-date, it’s only taken in $6.6 million of its $45 million production budget.

I enjoyed it, mostly. (The ending…eh.) Even more, though, I enjoyed speaking briefly with Spike for ESSENCE magazine. The piece is not on the web, to my knowledge, but if you can find the October issue—the one with Mo’Nique on the cover, still on the stands, I think, despite the encroaching Beyoncé issue—our Q&A is on p. 80.

All hail the Queen: Photo by Robert Maxwell for The New York Times

Is Queen Latifah gay?

Her flattering and attentive profile in this past weekend’s Sunday New York Times Magazine detailed many aspects of her professional life and career: Over thirty films, two years as host of her own talk show, Grammy-nominated albums, an Oscar nod, her landmark endorsement with Cover Girl, a thriving management business.

But it also raised the question that has attended the Queen, aka Dana Owens, and her reign, almost as long as she’s been in the public eye: Is she a lesbian?

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Did I speak too soon when, two weeks ago, I wistfully blogged that that I wanted to live a year in Iceland, below?

It sure appears so, with the announcement yesterday that—gulp—the whole country is on the verge of “wholesale economic collapse.”

Wrote The London Times,

Queues formed at petrol stations as Icelanders rushed to fill up before reported fuel shortages, while savers who tried to withdraw money from banks or sell bank shares on the internet found websites were not working. …

Sources said that Landsbanki and the country’s third-biggest bank, Glitner, will soon be fully nationalised, while Kaupthing had been forced to take state loans.

Can you imagine?

But the man I want to talk to this morning is James Surowiecki, from The New Yorker‘s financial page. In an April 21 piece—April! Six months ago!—he wrote these words:

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The New York Times zooms in on a little-discussed mode by which people, often unconsciously, abuse senior citizens, namely elderspeak. It’s

the sweetly belittling form of address that has always rankled older people: the doctor who talks to their child rather than to them about their health; the store clerk who assumes that an older person does not know how to work a computer, or needs to be addressed slowly or in a loud voice. Then there are those who address any elderly person as “dear.”

My least favorite form of this practice is when a person refers to an obviously aged woman as “young lady.” However, overall,

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