"According to an internal study done by one of the majors, between two-thirds and three-quarters of the drop in sales in America had nothing to do with internet piracy. No-one knows how much weight to assign to each of the other explanations: rising physical CD piracy, shrinking retail space, competition from other media, and the quality of the music itself. But creativity doubtless plays an important part."
Apparently the Iranians worked out a deal with France, Germany, and the UK. Strange, I don't see the helpful hand of El Shrub in there.
Per county, weighted for population, purple
Now I want to see a 3-D distortion of this map for 2 things:
1) Taxes paid vs federal spending.
2) % over GDP on a per-capita basis.
This would show who is getting the pork and who is making the pork.
This page was the source of those maps. There are 2 new ones at the bottom that scale non-linearly (a 70% vote is considered enough to be pure red or blue).
This conversation is continued over at Adam's Emergent Chaos where he brings up the US 16th amendment and a reasonable point. Good God man, can't you let me whine in peace? ;p
P.S. Joke, joke. I read rational stuff too.
It seems that QNE's (I think it is safe to call Hezb'allah a terrorist organization whenever they operate outside of Lebanon but this time they were playing in their own house) are getting their hands on some interesting tech.
Bill always finds the best quotes.
Thought for today: show me where it uses the words "National Security" in the U.S. Constitution.
This is important. Please read this and if you are Canadian, contact whoever you can (your MP, Liza Frulla, the Heritage Committee, all of the above). Canada does _not_ need a take-down notice law that panders to copyright holders and allows no recourse or dialogue.
To more than 70% of America’s eligible votes--that is, the approximately thirty percent that voted for Bush and the forty percent that didn’t feel this situation was compelling enough to warrant their taking the time to vote--none of it really matters. America is great and strong and can do what it wants, and to hell with anyone who gets in our way, especially if they fight back.
Well, Mark Frauenfelder at Boing Boing is posting a modest proposal to relieve the conservative majority in the U.S. of the horrible drag that is presented by the libruhls. All sorts of interesting things are being posted today. Take a look at the ratio of fedral funding to federal taxes broken down by state:
Current deadbeat states who went for Bush: (those getting >110%+ of their tax money back)
Alabama,Alaska,Arizona,Arkansas,Idaho,Kansas,Kentucky,Louisiana
Mississippi,Missouri,Montana,North Dakota,Oklahoma,South Carolina
South Dakota,Tennessee,Utah,Virginia,West Virginia,Wyoming
Colorado,Florida,Georgia,Indiana,Nebraska,Nevada,North Carolina
Ohio,Texas
Hawaii,Maine,Maryland,Vermont
California,Connecticut,Delaware,Illinois,Mass.,Michigan,Minnesota
New Hampshire,New Jersey,New York,Oregon,Pennsylvania
Rhode Island,Washington,Wisconsin
Now, if only they could talk like this all the time. Especially on television. Over and over again.
