Just this morning I had another graphic example of how hard it is to get metadata right. This time I don’t mean that the semantics are difficult to nail down, I mean that in the real world, people will do a poor job creating data that is useful.

Penn Jillette has a daily radio program, and is podcasting five-minute excerpts. Yesterday I downloaded a dozen of them (very handy for my unexpectedly hour-long drive to work in the snow this morning!), and they all appear in iTunes the same way:

Name	Artist	Album
Penn Jillette		Penn Jillette
Penn Jillette		Penn Jillette
Penn Jillette		Penn Jillette
Penn Jillette		Penn Jillette
Penn Jillette		Penn Jillette
Penn Jillette		Penn Jillette
Penn Jillette		Penn Jillette
Penn Jillette		Penn Jillette

Very helpful.

In any case, Penn is very entertaining, and politically believes the things I do, but is more outrageous in espousing them. By the way, if you like Penn and Teller audio, you should listen to Teller. It’s hard to do, since he’s the silent one of the two, but he did an NPR commentary back in November: Alien Encounters: Dolphins and a Magician. It’s very good, in a quieter more contemplative way.