iTunes sales shrinking?

AppleInsider has a story about how iTunes music purchases may be shrinking instead of growing.

I know from personal experience, I've owned an iPod for a couple years and I still buy CDs instead of albums from iTunes. iTunes is great for purchasing individual tracks, but $10 (or more!) is still too expensive for a full album when I can get a CD from Amazon for the same (or a couple bucks more). With the CD I get better sound quality, a backup and a printed insert.

iTunes needs to make purchases more tempting with albums costing $5 or $7. But, of course, that's not fully up to Apple. And the record companies seem intent on continuing to shrink their market by charging too much.

Update: Another analyst says iTunes music purchases continue to be strong.

Good Advent to you

Christianity Today's Ted Olsen summarizes this year's Christmas wars. It appears America's retailers have learned their lessons and have put Chri$tmas back into their commercialization.

And then there's this:

Those who engage in combat to remind others of "the reason for the season" would do well to remember that the Christmas season as such has only existed for about a century and a half. The 1,500-year-old Christian season that precedes December 25 is Advent, a time of fasting, penitence, and somber waiting. Protestants who eschew Advent because of an association with Rome have precedent for doing so. But the Reformers, Puritans, colonial Baptists, and others who gave rise to modern evangelicalism either passed Christmas Day with a simple worship service, or strongly opposed such a "popish" observance.

How's that for irony?

Wishing you a good Advent.

Pre-paid cell phone discussion

There was a discussion on Slashdot yesterday about pre-paid phone plans in the US. Virgin and T-Mobile came up as the ones to look at. I think Virgin is a little cheaper for the absolute minimal user ($60/year vs. $100/year) but I think T-Mobile has the better phones, especially if you want an unlocked GSM phone that you can also use internationally.

Democrats in moderation

Lo and behold, it looks like the Democrats in Washington do know how to moderate themselves. They realize that in order to win elections (including the upcoming 2008 presidential contest), you have to aim for the middle. This was something I think Republicans, including the president, forgot. They have two years to re-educate themselves.

Now maybe all the Republicans who worked themselves up into a lather over the idea of ultra-liberals in control (or out of control?) will be proved right eventually, but it's not looking promising at this point. Today the bipartisan Iraq study group did not advocate "cut & run". And the NY Times ran a piece about how liberal black lawmakers realize that even if their seats wouldn't be jeopardized with too liberal lawmaking, there are moderate Democrats that just got elected who could be shown the door in 2008.

like other leaders of the larger Democratic caucus, the black lawmakers are being cautioned to be mindful of a broader audience that includes voters in Republican-leaning swing districts, where those initiatives can be politically perilous.

[...]

“It’s going to be a delicate balance for the chairmen,” said Representative Melvin Watt, the North Carolina Democrat who is chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus. “They want to be progressive in their agenda, but they don’t want the public to react negatively to what they are doing, because they know you are leading up to a 2008 presidential election.”

[...]

[Representative Charles B.] Rangel [said] he was conscious that as Ways and Means chairman he would be accountable to a different constituency, including what he called “wannabe Democrats” — moderate freshman elected in Republican-leaning districts.

Christian Coalition base

Just when I was afraid the Christian Coalition might become relevent ...

The Rev. Joel Hunter, pastor of a nondenominational megachurch in Longwood, Fla., said he resigned as the coalition's incoming president because its board of directors disagreed with his plan to broaden the organization's agenda. In addition to opposing abortion and same-sex marriage, Hunter, 58, wanted to take on such issues as poverty, global warming and HIV/AIDS.

"My position is, unless we are caring as much for the vulnerable outside the womb as inside the womb, we're not carrying out the full message of Jesus," he said in a telephone interview yesterday. "They began to think this might threaten their base or evaporate some of their support, and they said they just couldn't go there." (Washington Post)

Hey CC, listen to the man. You have the chance to put "the full message of Jesus" into your agenda (which is, funny, what I thought Christians would want). If all your "base" is concerned with is abortion and gay marriage (oh, and capital gains tax cuts), you will become even more irrelevant than you already are. Young evangelicals are waking up to the idea that there's more to the Christian life than protecting your stock gains and harping on other's sex lives (much as the latter may need harping on).

Subsidizing billionaires

Kudos to the city of Seattle, which recently voted to discontinue subsidizing billionaire sports team owners and their millionaire players. Because it decided that schools, transportation projects and healthcare are better uses for its money, Seattle will probably lose its basketball team, the Sonics, in 2010. Big deal. It's not like the team has a lot of love for the city, demanding $200 million "or else". Good riddance.

Aryan race

The NY Times has an article about a Nazi breeding program to "propagate Aryan traits". One of the products of the program, Gisela Heidenreich

argues that the program, sinister as it was, has echoes in today’s world. With advances in genetics, she notes, discriminating parents will soon be able to select traits in their unborn children.

Given that possibility, she said, the evils of the Nazi era must not be allowed to recede into the history books. “If we start engineering blond-haired, blue-eyed babies, can we blame just Hitler?” she said.

Cleaner diesel is here

Just wanted to make a man-on-the-street report that I had my first encounter with ultra-low sulfur diesel this week, filling up my TDI's tank on a road trip to Santa Fe. As I noted before, this only means about 10% cleaner emissions for us current diesels, but newer diesels will be able to reduce emissions 90-some percent.

I did hear that current diesels could be retrofitted to have the same reduction. If anyone knows the specifics of retrofitting a VW, let me know!

Healthier foods in schools

The William J. Clinton Foundation has struck again.

In an effort to fight the rise in childhood obesity, five of the country’s largest snack food producers said yesterday they would start providing more nutritious foods to schools, replacing sugary, fat-laden products in vending machines and cafeterias.

French fries, ice cream, candy, cupcakes and potato chips from the machines, lunch lines, school stores and even school fund-raising events could disappear under a voluntary agreement between the companies and the Alliance for a Healthier Generation.

This follows an agreement in May to halt most soda sales in schools. Kudos to Clinton.

Month of 300 million

It looks like this is the month that the US's population will hit 300 million. Another chance for some overpopulation scaremongering.

"The U.S. is the only industrialized nation in the world experiencing significant population growth," says Vicky Markham of the Center for Environment and Population. "That, combined with America's high rates of resource consumption, results in the largest ... environmental impact [of any nation] in the world."

No kidding! I'm just inclined to think that when weighing the utility and value of people versus SUVs, it's obvious what's got to go.

The US is not having too many children. If you want to see what cutting down on our birthrate will do, look at the problems Europe and Japan are having and the incredible difficulties they'll be having in the near future as their population ages and social services have to be cut.

And if you're really intent at keeping the US population static, cut immigration.