12/14 Morning Communiqué

CITY PAGES BLOGS AND NEWS

Britt Robson discusses the Spurs' victory over the Timberwolves at Balls.

Gogol Bordello, DJ Lady Miss Kier, and Lura are just a few of the acts playing around town tonight. Check out Chuck Terhark's City Planner at Culture To Go for a complete itinerary.

THESE DAYS

Following the discovery of a unique fossil in Inner Mongolia, China, it appears that mammals might have taken to the air before birds.

Along with billions of dollars in funding for the Justice Department and the State Department in Congress' year-end spending bill is a little-noticed provision that would require Web sites that feature "sexually explicit" content to contain special labels to make it easier to keep kids away from them.

MINNESOTA BLOG OF THE DAY

Matthew David Tolic blogs on lobster trivia, Jay-Z's enormous hands, and tag-team lasik surgery at his new blog Humdrummy.

[Minnesota-based blog directory]

TIME WASTERS

A frustrated songwriter puts his skills up for auction on eBay [via b3ta]

A museum in New Haven, Connecticut, is displaying a 23-piece exhibit of the late Pope John Paul II's larger-than-life-size St. Peter's Square nativity scenes in miniature form

FREEDOM OF SPEECH

"It does not take a very brave man to go out and corner a girl in the middle of spring break who had four drinks."

— U.S. District Judge Richard Smoak, sentencing the founder of the "Girls Gone Wild" video empire, Joe Francis, to community service for his company's guilty plea to federal charges of failing to monitor the ages of the women in its videos