Hey, docs: Someone stole your data.

The Blue Cross Blue and Blue Shield Association is warning about 800,000 doctors (nearly every practicing physician in the country) that a laptop containing some of their personal information was stolen, the Chicago Tribune reports.

No patient information was stored on the computer. But the database does include the social security numbers of more than 100,000 of the docs. The database also contains addresses and other information.

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On the same day that Microsoft Corp. reported some of its worst financial results ever earlier this summer, a dozen buses left the company’s headquarters campus. During rush hour, they headed toward the highway as a phalanx of police officers on motorcycles shut down the on-ramps ahead, clearing the path to a local museum.

Microsoft had rented the museum for a private party and a screening of the most recent “Harry Potter” movie. After the film, the roughly 600 attendees received a free Xbox 360 video-game console.

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The Netflix (NFLX) warehouse in Carol Stream does not appear on any map. Your odds of finding it are slightly better than your odds of stumbling upon a rare insect in a field of weeds. One could drive to Carol Stream, stop in a random office park, climb from one’s car and scream, “Reveal thyself, Netflix!” This is not advisable. But the temptation remains.

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There have been a series of ridiculous articles lately claiming that, with the collapse of some newspapers recently, somehow investigative reporting and local coverage won’t work, meaning an era of corruption and the collapse of democracy. Fortunately, some are demonstrating the fallacies underlying these proclamations of doom.

Jay Rosen has been running an interesting experiment trying to find out just how many truly local stories an average newspaper includes in its paper, between all the national wire service stories. A look through a recent Seattle Times issue showed a grand total of seven locally produced stories. And a look at an issue of the Chicago Tribune found a total of eight locally produced stories. We’re not talking about huge numbers here.

And, in fact, the finding of eight stories in the Trib comes from Geoff Dougherty, a guy who created quite a stir in newspaper circles when he claimed he could provide the equivalent (or better) local coverage of the Chicago Tribune for just $2 million a year, and provided the spreadsheet to back it up. And he’s not just talking in theory. He’s doing it. Today. For much less than the Tribune (which is bankrupt).

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A question inspired by this week’s news that Research in Motion (RIMM), the company that makes the BlackBerry, has become the chief sponsor for U2’s next bombastic world tour: Who exactly is profiting from this deal? U2, like most big rock acts, has never been shy about taking corporate lucre, but it usually allies with companies that it claims share its change-the-world vision–the prime example being RIM’s rival Apple (AAPL). In 2004, Steve Jobs dedicated the first special-edition iPod in U2’s honor; the 20 GB black-and-red model sold for $349, and U2 agreed to make some of its music available exclusively on iTunes. In 2005, Bono defended the deal with Apple by saying that the company shared the band’s creative spirit. “Selling out is doing something you don’t really want to do for money. That’s what selling out is. We asked to be in the ad,” he told the Chicago Tribune. He added that Apple is “more creative than a lot of people in rock bands. These men have helped design the most beautiful object art in music culture since the electric guitar. That’s the iPod. The job of art is to chase ugliness away.”

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We’ve finally reached the point at which some of the finest minds doing the biggest thinking about the battered news business believe the best eraser for red ink is… charity.

Although they weren’t the first to make the pitch for newspapers on the dole, financial pros David Swensen, the chief investment officer at Yale, and his colleague Michael Schmidt gave the idea a boost last week in a New York Times op-ed. They posit that the best way to maintain the quality journalism of, say, the New York Times, would be to retool it as a nonprofit and run it from the proceeds of a $5 billion endowment.

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In its day-to-day workings, EveryBlock.com, Adrian Holovaty’s Web 2.0 start-up, is about as far from colorful as a business can get. And Holovaty, one of the nation’s hottest computer programmers, isn’t afraid to tell you so. “It’s generally just a bunch of guys typing into their computers,” says Holovaty, with typical diffidence. “Oh, we recently got a small Nerf basketball hoop for our office, so I guess that constitutes action.”

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Granted, most of the recent TV buzz has been about, rightly, “Mad Men”: Who wouldn’t want to spend summer Sunday nights delving into the deeply misogynistic psychosexual underbelly of a Kennedy-era advertising agency?

But in the big picture, the more interesting effort of the season is an Internet-only offering. “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog,” from “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” creator Joss Whedon, is not only hugely entertaining, but it’s another big nudge toward that future where the entertainment screen will be the entertainment screen, and users won’t worry whether it’s called “Internet” or “TV.”

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