Author: Glenn Hauman

Paranoid thought for the day

The rapturists have the launch codes.: “A lot of people have commented on the evangelical takeover of the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, but as far as I can tell not one of them is appropriately paranoid about it, and has asked one timfoil question: just who staffs NORAD, and what happens if they decide it’s time for Jesus to come back right now?“

Rockonomics and Geriatrics

Rockonomics and Its Uses – Finally, economic proof of Elton John’s genius! By Daniel Gross

“And what’s causing the higher prices? Clear Channel, the giant radio and concert-promotion business run by the right-wing Mays family of Texas, has often been painted as a malign force in the modern music industry%u2014monopolizing venues and driving up ticket prices. But Krueger doesn’t buy it. The company’s market share of concert revenue has fallen since 2001, even as prices continued to rise. And concert prices have risen sharply in Europe and Canada, where Clear Channel has no presence. Besides, Clear Channel just announced it will spin off its live entertainment unit, which implies the company isn’t reaping extraordinary profits from it. ‘Don’t blame Clear Channel,’ said Krueger in an interview. ‘Blame the downloaders.’

Pop stars are charging higher prices because they’re realizing less income from sales of CDs and other forms of recorded music. ‘Only four of the top 35 income-earners made more money from recordings than from live concerts,’ Krueger and Connolly note. And for the top 35, ‘income from touring exceeded income from record sales by a ratio of 7.5 to 1 in 2002.’

In some ways, the rockonomy resembles the increasingly winner-take-all American economy. The rich are getting richer, and it’s good to be the king or queen of pop. In 1982, the top 1 percent of artists banked 26 percent of ticket revenues; in 2003, they garnered 56 percent.

Baby-boomers are the primary driving force behind a lot of these trends. Nostalgia-seeking, age-resisting boomers have more disposable income than youngsters, and so have more to spend on expensive tickets at the box office. Paul McCartney and the Rolling Stones topped the income-earning chart in 2002. The top 16 earners in 2002 also included 1970s-vintage draws like Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, the Eagles, Elton John, and Bruce Springsteen. On tour, Barry Manilow and Neil Diamond easily out-earn Britney Spears and Kid Rock.”

Daniel, I love your work, but you missed one of the big reason why those particular concerts are getting so much coin.

All the big name, big selling acts listed are old. Elton John’s 58, Cher turns 59 this week, the Stones are in their 60’s, Tina Turner’s 65, half the Beatles and Who are dead– exactly how many more concerts can people expect to see from these people? They’re limited commodities. Get them now, you may never get another chance to see, say, David Crosby perform at all, much less in prime condition. (Did you ever catch any of Sinatra’s last shows? Grisly.) The youngest act around in that weight class is U2, and Bono’s 45 already.

Almost right, but in the wrong direction

Rebuild the Twin Towers – Bloggermann – MSNBC.com: “The best way – the only way – to further soothe the pain is, as the proponents including Donald Trump are suggesting, to rebuild it as it was. Which brings me to my caveat.

I’d use the original blueprints and design the “new” Trade Center exactly as it had been. But I’d insist that one of the towers be exactly 229 feet, four inches shorter than the other. It’s an uncomplicated gimmick to guarantee remembrance. Because, as long as these new towers would stand, someone unaware would ask, “why is one of them shorter than the other?” Whereupon an old-timer could explain, solemnly, that the difference between the heights of the towers is intentional – it’s exactly 2,752 inches.

One inch for each of the victims.

It’s all the memorial we really need.”

But it’s the wrong direction. One of the towers should be 229 feet 4 inches taller than it was, not shorter.

Lucky There’s A Family Guy…

Interview of the Week – Seth MacFarlane:

There’s no question ‘Family Guy’ pushes the decency envelope, especially these days. How difficult is it getting story lines approved by FOX censors?

You know, I don’t know. It’s kind of a tightrope. It’s always sort of an ongoing conversation with Standards and Practices as far as what we can and can’t do. Obviously all the networks are under enormous pressure from the FCC and we deal with that every day. The phrase ‘In this post-Janet Jackson world’ is kind of bandied about like they’re talking about September 11th. I mean, it’s really an everyday thing. It’s a real challenge for us, and, you know, we hope that it will pass and that the good folks in Washington will come to their senses.

Finally, on a more serious note, thanks to a hangover, you narrowly missed a flight on 9/11 that tragically turned out to be one the doomed World Trade Center planes. What are your thoughts on the way that homeland security and the war on terror have been conducted since that day?

I think it’s been, to be honest, a huge overreaction. Just speaking completely honestly, I’m not a fatalist. I think of myself as a man of science. And you know, to me, it seems like it was horrifying and it was terrible. But at the same time, you can’t let it completely disrupt everything. It seems we’re living in a world now that is a much less pleasant place than it was 10 years ago, and I don’t think that’s essential. I think that September 11th has been used as a tool of fear by those in power, certainly. I mean, that’s my personal take. I think that there’s a balance. I think that absolutely, there needs to be intelligence. There needs to be an awareness of what’s going on. That definitely needs to be dealt with. But I think it needs to be kind of an organic thing that’s constantly moving. And I think that at the moment we’ve kind of swung a little too far in one direction. I mean, as far as my near miss, the way I look at it is, that’s the kind of thing that probably happens to you a hundred times in a year, and you don’t even know it. You know, you cross the street just five minutes later, and something could happen. This was obviously a much bigger deal than most things, but that’s my personal take on it, I guess.

Read the whole thing before it disappears.

More window closing

My Way News

WASHINGTON (AP) – If getting stuck in traffic makes you want to roll down your car window and scream, look no further than another of those studies to find the bad news: Gridlock is getting worse. Congestion delayed travelers 79 million more hours and wasted 69 million more gallons of fuel in 2003 than in 2002, the Texas Transportation Institute’s 2005 Urban Mobility Report found.

Overall in 2003, there were 3.7 billion hours of travel delay and 2.3 billion gallons of wasted fuel for a total cost of more than $63 billion.

“Urban areas are not adding enough capacity, improving operations or managing demand well enough to keep congestion from growing,” the report concluded.

Honolulu became the 51st city in which rush-hour traffic delayed the average motorist at least 20 hours a year. The Hawaiian capital joins such congested areas as Washington, Atlanta, Boston, Chicago – and Virginia Beach, Va., Omaha, Neb., and Colorado Springs, Colo.

BBC NEWS | Americas | Loophole may allow US crime spree

A loophole in US law may allow people to get away with any major crime within a 50-square mile “zone of death” in western Idaho, according to a Michigan law professor.

Backpacker in Idaho
A small swathe of Idaho could be the venue for the perfect crime

This lawless oasis is said to exist on the edge of Yellowstone National Park because of a poorly drafted statute in the Sixth Amendment to the US Constitution.

Criminals are entitled to be tried by a jury drawn from the state and legal district they committed their crime in, the constitution says.

But, argues Prof Brian C Kalt, while Yellowstone comes entirely under the district of Wyoming, small parts of it spill into the states of Montana and Idaho.

“Say that you are in the Idaho portion of Yellowstone and you decide to spice up your vacation by going on a crime spree,” Kalt writes in a forthcoming paper for the Georgetown Law Journal.

“You make some moonshine, you poach some wildlife, you strangle some people and steal their picnic baskets.

Fideism

Fideism – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In Christian theology, fideism is any of a number of positions.

It is occasionally used to refer to a belief that Christians are saved by faith alone: for which see sola fide. This position is sometimes called solifidianism. Note that sola fide is a doctrine mostly accepted by Protestants.

A more widely used meaning for the term is that fideism essentially teaches that reason is more-or-less irrelevant to religious belief. Specifically, fideism teaches that arguments for the existence of God are fallacious and irrelevant, and have nothing to do with the truth of Christian theology. Its argument in essence goes:

* Christian theology teaches that people are saved by faith.
* But, if God’s existence can be proven, either empirically or logically, faith becomes irrelevant.
* Therefore, if Christian theology is true, no proof of God’s existence is possible.