Beginning today, iTunes is implementing a new variable pricing scheme for music. After years of pricing every song at 99 cents, Apple will now charge $1.29, 99 cents, or 69 cents per track depending on its popularity. My musical tastes tend to favor the midlisters over the new hotness, so this change probably won’t affect me much. And I doubt many Lady GaGa fans will be dissuaded from buying her songs because of a thirty-cent price bump. The record labels are hoping this move will give a boost to their balance sheets, but I’m dubious. Pop music is such a fragmented industry these days; even big acts like Coldplay will never sell the ridiculous amount of records that a Michael Jackson or Pink Floyd sold in their heyday.

This kind of price variability might actually signal that the digital music market is maturing. After all, we don’t expect to go into a bookstore and expect to buy any book for $5.

If I had been born to prehistoric parents, would I have been abandoned in some remote corner of the forest as soon as my disability became evident? Maybe not. Researchers recently unearthed the 500,000-year-old skull of a child who likely had craniosynotosis, a congenital disability that causes pieces of the skull to prematurely fuse and leads to significant cognitive disabilities. The size of the skull indicates that child lived to at least age five and possibly longer, which means that his parents and other tribe members devoted themselves to his care despite his disability.

I like to think that, under similar circumstances, I would have lived long enough to become the tribe’s resident storyteller and dispenser of sage advice. I might have even had a shot at the chief’s daughter after composing an epic poem of grunts and whistles for her while sitting around the campfire.

It’s Friday night and some of you might be reading this while you’re smoking a joint. I have no idea of what percentage of my readership partakes of the bud, but I’m betting there are at least a few of you. A recent Economist cover story and a question asked during an on-line Obama press conference have brought new attention to the issue of legalizing marijuana. But all that talk will probably remain just that…talk. For reasons both historical and cultural, Americans have no problem admitting they got wasted on Jell-O shots, but we keep our pot smoking on the down-low lest our colleagues and families think we’re hedonistic deviants.

I’m all for legalization. Marijuana holds real benefits for lots of people and our cops have better things to do. Sin taxes are the only kind of tax that gets broad support, so why not legalize and tax it? And to answer your next question, no, I’ve never tried it. I know what you’re thinking: “Mark, you urbane hipster you, how is it that you’ve never gotten high?” Well, I was too much of a chickenshit in high school and college to seek it out. And when I finally did get my hands on the stuff, I couldn’t figure out a way to get in my system without coughing up a lung. That, and I have a compulsive need to always feel in control. You’d probably have to get me drunk to get me stoned, which seems both excessive and redundant.

Last night’s episode of Frontline entitled “Sick Around America” did a good job of personalizing the plight of the country’s uninsured and underinsured. It also highlights one of the most intractable problems facing policymakers: how do you cover everyone while keeping costs under control? As the program points out, Massachusetts requires insurers to cover everyone in the state, but the premiums are still too expensive for many individuals and families.

Many of us wonks think that any health care reform must include the choice of a comprehensive public plan in order to keep private plans honest. But moderate Democrats seem to view a public plan as little more than a bargaining chip to be traded away in final negotiations, which seems to concede the point a little too readily for my tastes. I’m not expecting us to get everything right the first time around, but universal coverage is going to be a hollow victory if it bankrupts us in a few years.

I spent the weekend attending a conference and, at least for a couple hours, playing tourist. Here I am at one landmark:

The dashing figure next to me is Franklin Roosevelt at the FDR Memorial near the Mall in Washington D.C. It’s a serene little area with a waterfall and several FDR quotes carved into the store walls. I found this one particularly resonant:

In these days of difficulty, we Americans everywhere must and shall choose the path of social justice, the path of faith, the path of hope and the path of love toward our fellow men.

Since the weather on my previous trips to Washington never allowed for much lingering on the Mall, I also paid a visit to the Lincoln Memorial, which offers a spectacular view of the Reflecting Pool and Washington Monument.

Here I am at the top of the Lincoln Memorial, with the Reflecting Pool behind me. DC is always an attractive city, but I was fortunate enough to be there when the cherry blossoms were in full bloom. Canopies of delicate pinks and whites line the area around the Washington Monument, where locals and tourists alike lounge in the grass and fly kites.

I’m home now and getting my information fix after a couple days of being off-line. So, back to your regularly scheduled blogging.