Consie

Not a fan of the City album but this and the other new clips from their web site sound great! I may have to buy Heartland

Everything I've read about the most recent season of Idol is that it is reaching an even LARGER audience than any previous season. This is the first I've heard of a slump and I definitely question that. In any case, it will give her a huge boost as it gets between 25-35 million viewers each week... if even a fraction of them enjoy her performance and buy something, it is significant.

The Independent is a British paper...

There is not one shred of scientific evidence any single person lived 2000 years ago. How would we go about using science to prove that? We have to go by history and despite what the bible says about miracles and mythical floods and all of that, it is widely considered by historians to be a credible source on which to make the claim a historical figure Jesus Christ did exist. Remember he is spoken about in many different gospels written by different people at different time periods, many of them not in the Bible. Nebulous characters, perhaps, but there is power in the shear number of sources. There are other non-Christian sources that affirm he existed, though I don't quite remember specifically what they were- Greek or Roman sources, I imagine. Obviously none of them are in total agreement. I do not believe that Christ was the son of god or any of that but it's rather silly to call his entire existence a myth. And it goes against the general historical consensus.

Jesus Christ DID live (scientific fact) and while I don't believe he was the son of god or whatever, if the bible is true about him, he did have some very powerful things to say. He taught people to be tolerant, accepting, loving and embracing of EVERYONE living on this earth. He denounced war and poverty. He was humble and forgiving. If people lived like that today, the world would be a much better place. Sad that so many awful things can be said (all of them true) about the religion based upon his life.

Expect the Timbaland song to skyrocket next week - it's currently #1 on iTunes (finally ending Beautiful Liar's reign at the top). Also the new Linkin Park should debut top 20 next week on downloads.

What a fascinating cover. I think this might be going over some peoples heads here... I think it's more of a commentary on the image of women in these videos. She doesn't go crazy and begin assulting those guys to be funny. I think the video was sad and a bit disturbing. Though I'm glad she, as others have said, doesn't appear to take the satire too seriously. ORRRRRRR maybe I'm reading way too much into it and she just needed a career boost I doubt it will be released as a single but hey, it could chart on downloads...

There are a LOT of Polish people where I live (Chicago) and a whole lot of them went to my university here. I have to say that many of them were highly educated in Poland, engineers, doctors and lawyers and such. I don't know much about the current situation there but so many of them seemed to give up years of education to come and start with little or nothing here. I was friends with a girl who was a skilled and trained engineer in Warsaw, who then moved here, discovered her credits wouldn't transfer and began her education and career all over again. Are there just no jobs in Poland or what??

Carbon monoxide is NOT comparable to second-hand smoke. To associate them is aburd; it's like saying "well cyanide kills and so do cheeseburgers." Breathing car exhaust can kill you within 3 minutes.

5,000 square feet "megastore"?... some Virgin Megastores are literally 10 times that size, the music section occupying at least 1/3 to half of the space, I'd guess.

The bars and pubs around here do a sizable business selling cigarettes too, so when that is taken away, the prices of drinks will surely go up. I read an article recently about how pubs all over London are dissapearing, unable to pay rent. The ban surely can't help that...

I think it's AWFUL and I have never smoked. Public places, restaurants... that I can maybe understand but BARS? I have no sympathy for someone who is sensitive to smoke in a BAR. What about alcohol? Loud music? Dancing? Why not go sit in an empty parking lot and have a chat? I am exaggerating I realize but unless you have asthma or something, quit complaining and find somewhere else to go. The worst part is, the ban where I live also demands smokers walk like 15 feet from the nearest building. WTF? You're not just kicking them out of the building but they have to stand in the street dodging taxis so they can have a smoke? Absurd.

There was no good reason why Pink's singles bombed from this album... maybe just bad timing or something, plus I think Stupid Girls kind of turned some people off. But I'm glad the much better tracks from the album are getting a second chance!!

Here's something interesting - it's #2 on iTunes JAPAN which very, very rarely has a Western act in the top 30, much less the top 5. Congrats Avril!!

Great for Modest Mouse and Joss! Amy Winehouse...second week sales nearly as high as last week - amazing. Also surprisingly high debut for Elliott... I think most American Idol viewers forgot he existed, and he doesn't yet have a hit single... odd

The worst part is, it could easily serve the same purpose in Iran. The Iranian people are largely unsupportive of a war and extremely unsupportive of Ahmadinejad... what better a way to work them up than to catch a bunch of British soldiers illegally enroaching on Iranian territory...

OBVIOUSLY Chic - "Good Times"

I've been fascinated by Dubai for years... it's a sort of forced development at the hands of migrants. They are able to build gigantic skyscrapers for 10% of what the same building might cost in London or New York, mainly because of cheap and illegal labor. The projects there are simply astounding, from 150 story skyscrapers to remarkable man-made island resorts to the world's first underwater hotel to a 100 billion dollar amusement park which promises to be ten times the size of Disney World... and yet it's all forced development from a centralist, oil-rich government. And the migrants there live in APPALLING poverty - not to mention their passports are confiscated and their labor is totally illegal and sickening. Still, it makes you wonder for just a moment... projects like Wembly or Millennium Dome in London cost BILLIONS of pounds, take 30 years to develop, experience massive delays and cost overruns.... it makes you almost admire Dubai for the way it can accomplish its breathtaking projects.

I've been for immediate pullout since before the invasion even BEGAN but Matt Aloud brings up an interesting, rarely considered point. Do we have a moral obligation to try to repair Iraq or at least to bring it to the same point of civility in which it existed pre 2003 before we abandon it?

myfunkodyssey is right, Beautiful Liar became #1 on iTunes in a matter of hours - it could shoot to top 3 next week easily...

You're right, I shouldnt have made that analogy... but still, it's not like most people have qualms about eating beef, pork, venison, lamb, etc.

Fair enough for a philosophical justification I suppose, but it's still killing animals, isn't it? And anyway it doesn't work for rabbit, duck, turkey, most fish...

Well that is a good point about the dogs then, but I do not understand the "bred to be eaten" justification. What is the difference whether or not an animal was born in the wild or in a field next to a slughterhouse? Can chickens raised in a hot house not feel? Do they deserve to die? The dogs in China were stolen, okay, but these dolphins weren't. Keep in mind I love animals and obviously the dolphin video was disturbing, but I just can't stand people that lament about such things in between bites of a humburger.

Oh give me a break. Obviously it's dolphins that induce this response. Imagine if they had been sharks - an extremely similar species and yet few people would be offended. And the reponse... "they kill dogs and cats in China" just proves that people only feel empathy for "cute" animals. Look, I eat meat and I believe that forces me to adopt a standpoint that killing animals for food is ethical. I believe EVERYONE who eats meat thus adopts this same attitude. Similarly, I can't say that killing a cute dolphin for food is worse than killing a cow for food just because ol' Flipper saved the drowning boy in a 1963 film. The nerve of you people lambasting fishermen who kill the dolphins. Want me to find a video of cows being slaughtered? How about baby cows? Or chickens raised in deplorable filth and with unspeakable genetic mutations so you can enjoy that KFC? If you're a vegetarian, I respectfully omit you from my criticism and admire you. But for anyone else, it's ridiculous.

If you've got an hour to spare, take a look at this program: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3...35653&hl=en It's a pretty well-done documentary on the factors that could/will eventually render humans extinct. From asteroids to mega-volcanos, global warming to nuclear winter... It's sensationalistic but entertaining and informative.