Ever since the advent of online music piracy, I have found the Billboard charts to be slightly dubious. Seriously, how accurate can these things be if the entire 18-34 year old market is listening to music in ways that aren't tracked by Billboard? That pretty much just leaves teenage girls and their mothers (ie, people who can't figure out how file sharing works) as the only people who are actually buying music, and this is made obvious by the persistent status of 'High School Musical' as the #1 album on the charts.
Oh, apparently fundamentalist Christians are still buying music, too:
"Casting Crowns, the McDonough-based Christian rock band, made history this week. The septet's third album, "The Altar and the Door," is easily the week's highest debut, selling 129,000 copies and landing at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 album chart. That puts it just behind sales powerhouse "High School Musical 2," which sits at No. 1 for a third week, according to Billboard magazine. Since "HSM2" is a soundtrack, Casting Crowns is the week's top-selling artist. That chart placement makes the album the highest-ever debut for an artist marketed solely through Christian channels and with no general market radio support."
Find the whole article here.
Friday, September 7, 2007
Atlanta Christian Rock Band Hits #2 On Billboard Charts
Why Didn't We Think of That?
Probably because we don't understand this phenomenon: 
Basically, the story is that a 17-year-old girl is making $70,000 a month off her website.
Checking out the site, linked here, it's clear that she understands her market. I guess that's all it takes. . .
Wait, He's Not A Cyclist...
NEWS FLASH: MLB Players are still using illegal performance-enhancing drugs.
At what point does doping in professional sports stop being news? Are we enforcing a double standard by expecting inhuman performance from these athletes while requiring them to be human? Is it really all our fault?
Perhaps most importantly, can we still love Rick Ankiel as a great comeback story? Deadspin says yes.
But, She's Hot...
More kids become high school legends, this time right nearby in South Carolina.
Let me be the first to say:
The Race to the Bottom
Immigration is fast becoming the hot-button issue around the world. Here in the US, we are building a huge fence along the border with our neighbors to the South. France and England have had to deal with huge numbers of immigrants over the last 10 years.
And now come the Swiss, with their reputation for tasty chocolate and obnoxious time-pieces, and do this:
There have been some concerns about the Swiss in the past; all of those numbered bank accounts that swelled up in the early 1940's come to mind immediately. And to go along with the poster, lawmakers such as Dr Ulrich Schlüer are working on instituting draconian laws targetting immigrants; one proposed law would deport the entire family of any immigrant convicted of a crime. Another proposed law would ban the building of minarets in Switzerland.
These laws seem to be ideologically closer to 1930's Germany than to the modern West; in fact, the family responsibility for criminal acts is very similar to the Nazi practice of Sippenhaft - kin liability. When the EU's special rapporteur on racism, Doudou Diène, voiced his concerns about the new laws, Dr. Schlüer replied that perhaps Diène should focus on problems in his native Senegal and leave the Swiss the fuck alone (slight paraphrasing).
The Discussion Point(s): Given the current realities of international migration and immigration, how can a government be responsible to its citizens, and protect the interests of the people currently living there, without crossing the line into this sort of xenophobia and racism? Where is that line?
Delicious 2.0 preview
Techchrunch has an exclusive preview of Delicious 2.0.
For those of you that don't use it, Delicious is a great service; it allows you to take your bookmarks anywhere, and easily share bookmarks with friends. Here's a little how-to. You can even put a button in your browser to save the current page to your own bookmarks.
A Public Service Announcement
Ladies and Gentlemen:
As implausible as it sounds, eating popcorn heated with microwave radiation after soaking them in genotoxic chemicals is bad for you. Dr. Cecile Rose says so. WebMD has picked up the trail.
Thursday, September 6, 2007
College “too easy” for 9-year-old
I wanted this story to be from the U.S. so that I could give a critique on how undergraduate work (at least in some areas) is the new high school, but it’s not, and I’m not going to go spouting off about foreign education systems.
However, in reading the short blurb, I came to think that the retractors — worried about the kid’s social development — possibly are right. Now, college certainly is a social endeavor in many respects, and I’d contend that you can learn if you want to, but it’s not required to get a degree (i.e. you don't have to learn anything to get answers right on a test). So, to want this kid to have a "normal" childhood is plausible.
On the other hand, my argument against the social development thing says to me if this kid is saying college classes are too easy, I think he’s going to have even more problems with social development in secondary school; the kids that are so incredibly bored are often the ones that have to find something else to do with their time, which is not always positive for them. Why not let the boy be challenged?
Televangelism continues to erode
As we've already introduced you to one of our our favorite TV preachers, here's another classic story of turmoil in the televangelism trenches, and no, (unfortunately) it does not involve MC Hammer.
Top Gun UK
News out of Russia keeps getting worse.
I doubt any of those limey flyboys could do an inverted 4g negative dive.
Support Your Local Law Rock Band
A friend of the Quail, Michael Melonakos, finds himself embroiled in a battle of the law rock bands and needs your help. His band's claim to be the 'Nation's Premiere Law Rock Band' has been challenged in the hallowed pages of the Wall Street Journal (Well, to be fair, its actually on the law blog on the Journal's web site, but nonetheless he needs your support).
So click here, check out the debate, and then use your superior arguing skills to crush those West Coast pansies. Thanks!
Welcome to The Big Show
While announcing on Leno last night, Fred Thompson was getting ripped at the debate.
Why is everyone so concerned about having a lazy president? How bad could it be?
Get Your Space Nerdiness Here
Wired has a photo essay commemorating the 30th anniversary of the launch of the Voyager 1 Probe. From Wikipedia:
"The Voyager 1 spacecraft is a 733-kilogram robotic space probe of the outer solar system and beyond, launched September 5, 1977, and currently operational. It visited Jupiter and Saturn and was the first probe to provide detailed images of the moons of these planets."
In other space news, the designs for the first US space port in New Mexico have been released. A write up on the announcement can be found here.
Credit Market Woes Continue
The percentage of mortgage holders starting foreclosure proceedings hit a record high at .65 percent in the second quarter of 2007. There are signs that this won't let up anytime soon:
"an estimated 2 million adjustable rate mortgages are scheduled to reset this year at sharply higher interest rates, which will cause monthly payments in some cases to double or even triple."
Clearly this is bad news for all the people that bought houses using the cheap credit that has been readily available for the past 10 years, but it remains to be seen how it will affect the credit market as a whole. Some people seem to think that the sky is falling here, while others are claiming that the whole problem is mostly illusory.
EDIT: Someone at the Fed thinks this is a big deal.
Here We Go Again
The BBC reports that Israeli jets entered Syrian airspace early thursday morning and received fire from their air defense system.
There was a lot of talk in the Spring and early part of the Summer that Israeli was preparing for an offensive on terrorist groups in Lebanon. I am wondering if this is part of that rumored plan.
The Information Age Strikes Again
Being a future teacher, I'm sort of ambivalent on this one, but the state of Florida has released the permanent records of its teachers to the public.
This can go a couple ways: my libertarian side says that's a major violation of privacy, and that if the teacher is good enough to keep his or her job, then shouldn't that be the business of the school? If, say, a young teacher has a small misdemeanor on his or her record, that's probably not a big deal to most people, but at the same time, if it's a "morally reprehensible" act, it could change the perception of them for some parents.
On the other hand, the school systems can't always be trusted because there is such a dearth of teachers, and in the present age we really have to expect any and all information about ourselves to be public knowledge. As a future parent as well (probably), I'd imagine I would be fine knowing that my kid's teacher had been convicted for pedophila (ideally, they wouldn't be hired, but see the problem already stated in this paragraph).
I encourage everyone to weigh in on this: is it a violation of privacy for every single parent in Florida (and soon in other states as well) to have access to teachers' legal records? Is it their right to have that information?
Moreover, is it everyone's right to have information on everyone else just because the technology is available? Let us know.
