Duck and cover, kiddies, because there's a fierce debate raging among the Apple community that shows every sign of escalating into a full-blown nuclear riot before the dust finally settles. Despite what you might guess, it has nothing to do with alleged PowerPC 970 benchmarks, whether all the buzz about "Panther piles" is really just one big poop joke, or aluminum vs. titanium and whose dad would win in a fight. No, by far the most heated controversy bubbling right now is this: Just what the heck color is the new iPod's backlight supposed to be, anyway?

For what it's worth, we know we're a smidgen late to this particular party, but from our perspective, it's really only just now starting to get good. It seems that several recent iPod customers got it into their heads that the backlights in the new third-generation units are supposed to be blue-- so when they discovered that they had white backlights just like the rest of us shmoes, they expressed disappointment ranging from "mild" to "volcano heat." We're not entirely sure where the "blue backlight" idea came from, but to be perfectly honest, we thought we had seen that listed as a feature, too, but that must just be the sleep deprivation talking; Apple's posted tech specs clearly state that the new iPods have a "white LED backlight," so we figure we just got confused by the occasional blue-tinted iPod photo floating around. The new iPods have white backlights; case closed.

Or is it? The iPodlounge just kicked the controversy back into high gear, with several eyewitness reports that new new iPods have startlingly different screens and backlights than old new iPods. Meaning, if you were one of the early adopters who snapped up a third-gen 'Pod when they first hit the shelves, you may in fact have screwed yourself out of a higher contrast screen and a backlight that is decidedly-- you guessed it-- bluer than what you've got. If you're obsessive enough that this issue is weighing heavily on your mind, take your old new iPod into an Apple retail store and compare it side-by-side to a new new iPod; even the low-res photo at the iPodlounge reveals a pretty noticeable contrast.

Now, some might argue that with all the unrest in the world today, few things rank as more trivial than whether one's backlight is slightly more or less blue than someone else's-- but those people are usually pretty easy to beat up. Start hoarding firearms and canned goods, because we strongly suspect that the Great Blue-White False Advertising Well Not Really Advertising But Whatever Scandal of 2003 will soon lead to rampaging mobs of irate iPod owners running amok and reducing Western civilization to a smoking pile of rubble. Gee, just imagine what would happen if the backlights were supposed to be purple.

And this just in, still more from the "Stuff Everyone But Us May Well Have Already Heard About Ages Ago" Department: faithful viewer Kassandra notes that a recent New York Times article contains a quick mention about Steve Jobs having sold his San Remo duplex in New York City last month, which listed for $14.5 million. What? Only $14.5 million? For that kind of price, we can only assume it must have had some really lousy closet space. Like, say, a mere 8000 cubic feet. And only three bidets.

Then again, this is New York we're talking about, here, so for all we know, $14.5 mil might be the going rate for a half-bath with a pillow on the floor and a hotplate sitting on top of the toilet tank. Regardless, just what are we to infer by Steve pulling up stakes and selling his digs in the Big Apple? For our part, we're choosing to interpret it as the final incontrovertible evidence that Macworld Expo New York is dead, gone, buried, forgotten, and above all, kaput.

Oh, sure, we know-- Macworld Expo isn't gone, it was just "renamed." "Macworld CreativePro" or some such hoo-haa. The promotional yammer states that CreativePro is a "unique event developed for design, publishing, video and audio professionals and prosumers"... as opposed to just being targeted at Mac-addicted freaks of all ages. Sigh. There's a new "educational focus" (which, frankly, scares the bejeezus out of us), and IDG warns us that "Serious business will be conducted. Serious fun will be had. Creative juices will be flowing." So if you go, make sure you bring a mop.

Yes, we know that Apple is exhibiting and even hosting a Feature Presentation, and there's no real reason why the show won't be every bit as enjoyable as when it used to be "Macworld Expo." But as far we're concerned, if there's no Stevenote, it's just not the same. And seeing as the man can't even be bothered to maintain a chintzy little $14.5 million hole-in-the-wall in New York so he has a place to crash out after his annual three-ring circus, we suppose that hopes of a surprise guest appearance are fading fast. So much for pipe dreams, eh?

Meanwhile, the fate of next year's Macworld Expo Boston remains sketchy at best; IDG has kept the event listed, but as far as we know, Apple still refuses even to show up. Perhaps another renaming is in order. May we humbly suggest "Macworld BigEmptyShowFloor Conference & Expo"?

Too easy. Way too easy. "Shooting fish in a barrel with a fish-seeking barrel gun" easy. Man, sometimes the challenge in producing this show isn't adapting reality into something a little more dramatic; sometimes it's trying to come up with something to say beyond the obvious cheap shots which Microsoft is so famously adept at setting itself up for. (Yes, we're so excited that we just ended a sentence with not one, but two prepositions. We believe we just heard the collective pop of every single one of our junior high and high school English teachers' heads exploding.)

So here's the set-up: faithful viewer Paul McGill notes an article in The Salt Lake Tribune which reports that a whopping 937 boxes of internal Microsoft memos and email messages-- that's 3 million pages, or 37,480 pounds-- subpoenaed in various antitrust lawsuits are now headed for the shredder. And just what will become of the recorded thoughts and ideas of Redmond's Best and Brightest after they've been "vertically reordered"? Well, according to Cathy Keetch of the Recall Secure Destruction Service, "ninety-nine percent of our shreddings are made into toilet paper."

See what we mean? How perfect is that?

Gee, maybe Microsoft can buy it all back to stock the iLoo. (Oh, wait, that was a hoax. Oh, wait, no it wasn't.) In any case, the next you're in the can, you might derive great satisfaction from the knowledge that you may well be doing unspeakable things to a repurposed Bill Gates memo on the importance of Trustworthy Computing. As for us, though, we can't help but wonder whether our toilet paper might contain documents formerly handled by Steve Ballmer-- which means we can never, ever go to the bathroom again.