artists and performers outperforming sound recordings

The U.S. recorded music business has been in steep decline over the past decade.  Compared to ten years ago, U.S. recorded music sales (in 2009 dollars per capita)  in 1999 ($71) was nearly three times greater than the corresponding figure ($26) in 2009.  In gross nominal terms, music sales declined 46% from 2000 to 2009.  These statistics are calculated from Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) shipment estimates. They concern reported net shipments valued at estimated list prices.

U.S. Census Bureau statistics on the sound recording industry differ considerable from the RIAA’s, but also show a large decline.  According to the Census Bureau’s annual and quarterly services reports, employer firms classified as engaged in “integrated record production and distribution” had a 27% decline in nominal revenue from 2000 to 2009. The underlying statistics have different coverage and different potential biases than the RIAA data. The Census data corroborate the big-picture view from the RIAA estimates.

Census Bureau figures for performing arts revenue indicates that artist and performers have done well relative to firms producing sound recordings. Among independent artists, writers, and performers organized as a firm with at least one employee, aggregate firm revenue rose 67% from 2000 to 2009. Apparently the added value of media production has declined.  Put differently, value has shifted from media artifacts to the creative symbolic producers.  That’s consistent with the growth of low-cost, highly effective new media channels.

Data: U.S. sound recording and performing arts revenue, 1998 to 2009 (Excel version)

the goal of universal service

In 1913 in its magazine Western Electric News, AT&T associated “universal service” with national political identity.  Universal service meant one policy, one system.  That system was AT&T, the Bell System.

By 1913, the U.S. had become a world leader in the prevalence of telephones. Small, non-AT&T telephone companies developed rural telephone service relatively rapidly. Universal service as a federal government communications policy priority developed long after AT&T’s push for universal (AT&T) service.

AT&T advocates universal telephone service

sexually reproducing on earth for at least 1.2 billion years

blank human

Some scholars with urgent seriousness have recently put forward the claim that men are not from Mars and women are not from Venus.  Fossil remains of anatomically modern humans have been found on earth from 200,000 years ago. A recent fossilized foot bone indicates that a human-like animal was a terrestrial biped about three million years ago.  With extraordinary cultural insight, scientists have recognize that another fossil from this time and biological class (Australopithecus afarensis) was a female.  They called her Lucy.  No reputable scholars claim that similar males did not also exist.  Hence plausible ancestors of women and men have lived on this planet for more than three million years.

The evolution of sexual reproduction on earth has much deeper roots.  Life forms on earth have been reproducing sexually for at least 1.2 billion years. Sex differentiation is a very well-established feature of life on earth.  Only creationists of widely varying sects deny the significance of sex differences, including well-documented sex differences in communication.

Extra-terrestrial sources may have contributed to life on earth.  NASA researchers recently found glycine in a comet:

“Glycine is an amino acid used by living organisms to make proteins, and this is the first time an amino acid has been found in a comet,” said Dr. Jamie Elsila of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. “Our discovery supports the theory that some of life’s ingredients formed in space and were delivered to Earth long ago by meteorite and comet impacts.”

While some of the ingredients of life on earth may have come from different extraterrestrial places, men and women have the same ingredients.  For millions of years women and men have lived in intimate association. Human females and males are made of the same stuff and grow up together. That’s not inconsistent with significant sex differences.

Many scholarly claims about the social construction of gender — the social construction of male and female human beings — are laughable.  Similarly, if some scholar argues seriously against the popular assertion that men are from Mars and women are from Venus, laugh and say, of course they are. Women and men have been socially constructed to be from Venus and Mars.

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Read more:

William James & Alice Howe Gibbens: an old-fashioned love story

In 1876, William James, an eminent philosopher and psychologist, declared his love to his future wife, Alice Howe Gibbens.  Study how he did it:

My dear Miss Gibbens

It seems almost a crime to startle your unconsciousness in the manner in which I am about to do; but seven weeks of insomnia outweigh many scruples, and reflecting on the matter as conscientiously as I can, it seems as if this premature declaration were fraught with less evil than any of the other courses possible to me now.

To state abruptly the whole matter: I am in love, und zwar [it’s true] (– forgive me — ) with Yourself.

My duty in my own mind is clear. It is to win your hand, if I can. What I beg of you now is that you should let me know categorically whether any absolute irrevocable obstacle already exists to that consummation. I mean literally absolute, and shall strictly so interpret your reply….[1]

James, like many young persons today, preferred to initiate love affairs by text.  Unlike many young persons today, James also had keen appreciation for bureaucratic manners, for economics, and for learned expression.

James’ love letter starts out with a vague reference (“It seems”) and proceeds with long, convoluted sentences. “I love you” is for the uneducated.  The learned put the beloved in the ultimate preposition:  “I am in love [obscure foreign phrase and interrupting self-reflection] with Yourself.”

Immediately after this declaration of his love, James writes passionately of his duty. In common speech, “if I can” usually indicates determination to try to the extent of one’s abilities.  James’ active mind moves beyond that convention and prompts him to ask whether “any absolute irrevocable obstacle” exists.  Such an obstacle would mean that exertions could not produce results.  In short, they would be a waste.

No fool, James made his declaration of love only after careful cost-benefit analysis.  He explained to his beloved, “it seems as if this premature declaration were fraught with less evil than any of the other courses possible to me now.” What woman wouldn’t be impressed with such a mind?

William James and Alice Howe Gibbens had long, fruitful, and intimate marriage. They had four children and endured the loss of a fifth. Alice encouraged William in his work and served as an amanuensis for him, just as Mary Shelley did for Percy Bysshe Shelley.  In 1906, William wrote to Alice:

Never have you seemed as near and dear to me as in the past six months. It is a good thing, little as you think of “friendship,” to have friendship grow deeper and deeper — after 27 years of matrimony! Isn’t it?[2]

William’s love letter was a great success.

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Notes:

[1] William James, letter to Alice Howe Gibbens. Keene Valley [September 1876 ]. b MS Am 1092.9 (1165).

[2] Susan E. Gunter, Alice in Jamesland: The Story of Alice Howe Gibbens (University of Nebraska Press, 2009), p. 221, quoted in Colm Toibin, “The Admirable Mrs. James,” a review of Gunter, Alice in Jamesland in New York Review of Books, June 8, 2009.