Career Advice with Erykah Badu

Ladies - want to be an artist? Don't forget to "ho up".

2 Democrats, One Jump

And as long as we're talking about the pending election, here's a video of Senator Clinton having a drink and some pizza with the voters of Indiana.



And after the jump, FoxNews blog calls out Obama for criticizing Clinton's drinking night out, after he had a night out with voters in Latrobe, PA. Draw your own conclusions.

More on McCain

In other McCain news, he called the New York Times out for nearly compromising U.S. Security through its coverage of undocumented wiretaps on U.S. citizens with non-U.S. residents "suspected" of terrorism. Get the scoop after the jump.

So No More Wall Street Donations, Eh?

McCain blames the recession on "greedy people" on Wall Street, amongst others, including President Bush.

Wired News, You Sexy Minx!

Wired News is reporting that our robot slaves are on the way. Machine Industry Memorial Foundation predicts that by 2025, Japan will be equipped with enough robots to work the jobs of 3.5 million people. 2025, eh? Cool - that gives me at least twenty more years of freedom until our robot overlords enslave us all.

Music News

In keeping with our relaxed approach to posting here at the Quail, here's a summary of what's going on with the crazies in the music business:

California, always at the forefront of progressive and nutty legislation, is considering "Assembly Bill 1956," which would all the state to apply sales tax to digital goods, including music downloads. That's right, no more $.99 on iTunes, kids. Assemblyman Charles Calderon (D), mastermind behind AB1956, has also somehow managed to get around Cali's long-standing legislative requirement that 2/3 of the legislature must approve the new tax. More details after the jump.

Despite my mad love and respect for Universal Music Group (UMG), it's officially gone off the deep. (Don't tell Greg that I said that though.) UMG is now alleging that when one throws away a promo copy of a CD or single, that constitutes "unauthorized distribution." I wish I was joking. UMG made these allegations in the pleadings of a lawsuit against Troy Augusto, who collects and resells promo copies. Personally, reselling promo copies makes you a sketchy mofo, but UMG's attempts to extend the Copyright Act forever and ever and ever is a bit boo.

In one of the stranger strategic pairings in Senate history, Senators Orrin Hatch and Patrick Leahy have united to support a bill authorizing the Department of Justice to pursue civil copyright infringement cases. The Protecting Intellectual Rights Against Theft and Expropriation Act (PIRATE Act) would extend DOJ’s reach to both sue those pesky college students downloading music under a lower standard of proof than required in a criminal copyright infringement case and require you, the taxpayer, to pay for it. Thanks, guys. Keep up the good work. Hey...are we still at war? Get back to me on that.

When you're waiting for the band to take the stage at a show, ever wondered what the sound guy or the promoter makes? Spin Magazine calls people out.

And I'm sure you've seen this everywhere, but I really hope this is Lil' Wayne's album cover. That is one adorable tiny brown guy, and I'm all for infant tattoos. You should really get them when they're young, you know.

My First LOLPenguin

"Mad As Hell" from the movie Network

The Internet Declares War on Scientology

A group calling itself Anonymous has declared war on the Church of Scientology following the forced removal of a Youtube video showing Tom Cruise acting crazy again.

The group has launched a number of denial of service attacks against Scientology websites and has carried on other pranks in the last few days; last night they leaked supposedly secret documents from the church that show just how insidious Scientology really is, as if anyone had any doubts about that (I have not looked at the docs myself, for fear of retaliation, but a list of the contents shows a section entitled "Child Dianetics").

Anonymous promises a new attack on Scientology will occur today at 6 pm, so keep your eyes pealed.

Gawker has a rundown on the developments here.

Update: The UK's Sky News has a report:

My Friend Meredith

It has now been several weeks since the brutal slaying of Meredith Emerson, the University of Georgia graduate who was killed while hiking on Blood Mountain New Year's Day.

I have known Meredith for many years. She lived with my sister for a year, we had classes together in the French Department, and we both enjoyed a pint or two at Copper Creek on Tuesday nights. There really isn't much that I can add to what has already been said: Meredith really was a great person, usually (if not always) chipper, always friendly, possessed of a wicked sense of sarcasm and irony which never failed to amuse, willing and able to carry on an intelligent conversation on nearly any subject, and as sweet as the days are long. Truly, I am better off for having known her, and truly we are all worse off now that she's gone.

My sister has already done a better job memorializing her than I could hope to do. Her tragic and untimely death will always stick with me, and Tuesday nights over a cool pint at Copper Creek will, for me, be forever linked with her memory.

Bonehead Comment of the Week: St. Louis basketball coach Rick Majerus

Apparently, working for a Catholic University precludes you from expounding on your pro-choice take on abortion: who knew?

However, Rick Majerus (not to be confused with Mark Mangino, who is pictured to the right — both men challenge for the most overweight coach in his respective NCAA Division I sport) has done just that.


While speaking to a local St. Louis television station at a pro-choice rally, Majerus publicly supported stem cell research and the pro-choice position on abortion.

"It's not possible to be a Catholic and hold those positions," [St. Louis Archbiship Raymond] Burke said. "When you take a position in a Catholic university, you don't have to embrace everything the Catholic church teaches. But you can't make statements which call into question the identity and mission of the Catholic church."

Ok. A couple things — first, I disagree with the first statement Burke makes, but that's neither here nor there; the Church can call whomever it wants "Catholic" or "not Catholic," and individuals can call themselves whatever they want; I'm pretty sure Catholics can be pro-choice and support stem cell research. Maybe God would disagree — I wouldn't know, but I doubt Burke does either.

Secondly, although I'd like to get off on some sort of "who cares what he says, he's a basketball coach, not a 'beacon for the Lord'" rant, what exactly did Majerus think was going to happen??

However, in an interesting development mentioned further in the article:

"Last year, St. Louis U. celebrated a legal victory that affirmed it is not controlled by the Catholic church or by its Catholic beliefs. . . In a 6-1 decision, the court said SLU 'is not controlled by a religious creed.'"

In addition, University spokesman Jeff Fowler supported Majerus, saying that "Rick's comments were his own personal view. They were made at an event he did not attend as a university representative."

So, in the end, it appears that Archbishop Burke was just shooting off his mouth, as the University doesn't seem to be terribly concerned. Looks like Majerus will be able to coach incredibly potent team another day. But it's still not great publicity, for the University or the Catholics.

Religion & Election Update!

From Suburban Messiah:

Since I haven't posted much on the Quail lately, I feel some duty to keep everyone up on my latest Religion & Politics post, a topic I heavily covered here last semester.

With Obama and Huckabee winning the Iowa caucus a couple weeks ago, there was wide speculation — before they both lost on Tuesday in New Hampshire — about their effects on the evangelical vote if they were to be nominated for the general election. However, then they both lost in New Hampshire.

In addition, I reiterated the importance of the Catholic vote. I also found an interesting article the amount of money being donated to candidates by clergy members; surprisingly, the Democrats, specifically Obama, lead the pack.

Enjoy the article, and let me know what you think here or on the site!

Files "mysteriously disappear" from Rich Rodriguez' office

The already messy divorce between Rich Rodriguez and the University of West Virginia football program seems to have hit another snag: nearly all of the files from Rodriguez' tenure as head football coach are missing.

The way this headline on ESPN's Bottom Line read seemed like Rodriguez destroyed the files himself, and it certainly looks like he has (or at least someone who worked for him). However, the article leaves things up in the air; I'm sure they'll keep us posted on further developments.

Regardless of what comes out, there are a couple possible reasons it happened. A justifiable reason would be that Rodriguez has a very specific system, and it's plausible that he wanted no one to be able to steal any of his secrets. Yet, I wonder if there's that much information available in all of the player information missing — like "contact information, scholarship money awarded, class attendance records and personal conduct records. At first glance, it seems like a cover-up for NCAA violations.

However, ESPN does report that Rodriguez' camp suggests not everything is missing, and as the details unfold we'll be able to speculate better.

At best, though, I think Rodriguez looks crazy, guilty of violating NCAA regulations or not, if it turns out he was responsible for destroying the files. By doing so implies guilt, justified reason or not. If he wasn't guilty, then why do it?

Only 23 More Months Until Graduation...

Is it wrong that during my marathon 9.5 hours of straight school today that I got some solace out of watching this video twice?



Just askin'.

Movie Review: "I'm Not There"

Todd Hayne's rambling biopic about the life of Bob Dylan, "I'm Not There", starts with an interesting premise: six different actors, each of them expressing a different aspect of Dylan's psyche. As the film goes on, unfortunately, it begins to ramble, and lasts much, much longer than the audience wished it had. The movie is also hard to follow, since all six of the characters are playing the same historical character, but each character has a different name (none of them are named Bob Dylan). Not to mention, all six of them are made up to look more or less like Dylan.

There are positive sides to the film. Ben Whishaw is great as Arthur Rimbaud, the poetic Dylan. He's young, sarcastic, nihilistic, and surly; a talented, fatalistic brat. Marcus Carl Franklin carries the toughest role in the film, as Woody Guthrie, an eleven-year-old blues prodigy; Franklin's character goes to visit the real Woody Guthrie on the folk hero's deathbed, just as a young Bob Dylan did. Christian Bale is good as Jack Rollins (aka "Pastor Jack"), who covers Dylan's spiritual uncertainty. Kris Kristofferson's narration is put together well with some solid camerawork from Edward Lachman. There's also a dynamite soundtrack consisting of Dylan covers, redone by names like the Millionaire Bashers (a supergroup featuring Sonic Youth stars Lee Ranaldo and Steve Shelley, Wilco guitarist Nels Cline, Television guitarist Tom Verlaine, Dylan bassist Tony Garnier, guitarist Smokey Hormel and keyboardist John Medeski), Sam Bush, Jeff Tweedy, Willie Nelson, Jim James, and Sufjan Stevens; Dylan's own version of the title track is officially released after years of being one of the most highly regarded outtakes of his entire career.

Cate Blanchett (as Jude Quinn/Strung-Out Dylan) and Heath Ledger (as Robbie Clark/Hollywood Dylan) are uneven and ultimately disappointing. Richard Gere's story suffered from the added weight of being nearly completely incomprehensible; as Billy the Kid (Aging Outlaw Dylan), Gere struggles in a freak-show/circus/wild-west town that is being destroyed by Commissioner Pat Garrett. With heavy doses of this crew, the second half of the movie falls apart, and limps toward the end of the film. At 2 hours and 20 minutes, it lasts a solid half-hour too long, and seems to end five or six times in the last half-hour; each time the full theater seemed to prepare to leave, only to settle back into their seats for another few minutes. I found myself doing likewise.

It takes a serious knowledge of Dylan's life to comprehend almost anything in this movie; I have (occasional) Pasty Quail contributor Nate to thank for being able to understand anything at all. A watchable movie for the hardcore Dylan fans; others would do better to stick with Scorsese's "No Direction Home".

Can Math Prove God Doesn't Exist?

From Suburban Messiah:

There is pretty convincing mathematical evidence that God isn't all-knowing. Does this affect God's existence or shake the faith of believers?

Religious Freedom and the Atheist Contingency in American Politics

From Suburban Messiah:

I've been putting this article together for about 10 days now (taking significant breaks for holiday revelry), outlining how atheists are neglected in American politics, how that correlates to the concept of religious freedom, and also how the atheists of political belief — i.e. those who don't carry cards for either major political party — find themselves in a similar position.

What's Going on With the Quail?

You might have noticed that there has been a dramatic reduction in posting around here lately. We haven't given up on the Quail, but we have decided to make a few changes in our approach.

We have found that posting 10 times daily is exhausting and mostly unneccesary. Our traffic data showed us that only a very small number of people were checking the site more than a couple of times a week; it seems unlikely that more than 4 or 5 people were actually reading all 50+ posts a week (my apologies to those 4-5 people).

Also, our traffic levels hit a major wall around 100 views a day. In my mind, this means that we have maxed out our local growth potential (derived from real life interactions and localized social networks like facebook and myspace) and we need to focus on building global traffic. Unfortunately, this takes time; more time than posting 10+ times per day allows.

Our new focus will be on generating a smaller amount of original quality content and then working to more effectively distribute that content around the web. We hope that this will help create a better forum for discussion at the Quail, and will help us to better monetize our output (ie get people to click on ads).

In the meantime, Dan will be moving some of his original religion commentary to his new blog Suburban Messiah. Also, we are working on creating a Digg group that can quickly and effectively push content to some of the top bloggers around the web; we are also exploring alternatives such as Reddit and Mixx. Additionally, we have created a group del.icio.us feed that will allow us to easily share interesting articles from the web. Finally, we are trying to improve our presence on the top social networking sites, including Facebook, Myspace, and LinkedIn.

If any of you are interested in helping out with this, PLEASE get in touch with us. Many of these things work better with groups, and it would be great to get more people involved with what we are doing.

Thanks for your support this semester, and we look forward to an improved Quail in 2008.

Liberty University takes on new recruiting measure

From Suburban Messiah:

Recently, Liberty University made plans to build a new extreme sports park in order to up recruitment to its Lynchburg, Virginia, campus.

Judging from the dispassionate response of new university chancellor Jerry Falwell, Jr., there doesn't seem to be much more going on here than a strained advertising campaign to raise funding, which certainly makes sense from a business standpoint. But he himself seems unconvinced of the underlying message and seems even skeptical that kids would come to Liberty if things like this sports park weren't in place.

Jesus Battles Mickey Mouse For Theme Park Supremacy

From Suburban Messiah:

Thanks to a reader comment here on the Quail, I've tossed together a few quick thoughts on The Holy Land Experience, a Christian-based theme park in Orlando.

Recently acquired by Trinity Broadcasting Network, the Experience has raised its attendance by 25%, despite nearly doubling its ticket prices. Trinity seems to have nabbed a pretty decent business model, eh?