1-50

I compiled a list of the top 100 (non-U2) albums on my Ipod. No artist was allowed more than three albums on the list, and I tried to avoid greatest hits and live albums (but a few snuck in). This list was compiled quickly, so I am sure that I will have some major issues with it tomorrow, but here it is. It is somewhat of a "stuck on a desert island" list. Obviously, since it is music on my Ipod, you will probably feel as though I am missing some albums. Can you think of any albums that I should have included?

1 Radiohead - OK Computer
2 Ben Harper - Fight For Your Mind
3 Miles Davis - Kind of Blue
4 Rolling Stones - Exile On Main Street
5 Bob Dylan - Time Out of Mind
6 Stevie Ray Vaughn - The Sky is Crying
7 PJ Harvey - To Bring You My Love
8 Outkast - Aquemini
9 Bob Marley - Legend
10 Beck - Odelay
11 Nine Inch Nails - Pretty Hate Machine
12 Led Zepplin - Led Zepplin 4
13 Red Hot Chilli Peppers - Blood Sugar Sex Magic
14 Coldplay - Parachutes
15 Tribe Called Quest - Low End Theory
16 Pixies - Doolittle
17 Bob Dylan - Blonde on Blonde
18 Johnny Cash - American Recordings
19 Bruce Springsteen - Nebraska
20 Liz Phair - Exile In Guyville
21 REM - Automatic for the People
22 Radiohead - Kid A
23 Rolling Stones - Let It Bleed
24 Dr. Dre - The Chronic
25 Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon
26 Deathcab For Cutie - Plans
27 Pearl Jam - Ten
28 White Stripes - Elephant
29 Johnny Cash - Live at Folsom Prison
30 The Shins - Oh, Inverted World
31 Beck - Sea Change
32 Broken Social Scene - You Got It In People
33 Van Morrison - Moondance
34 Red Hot Chilli Peppers - Stadium Arcadium
35 Jay Z - Black Album
36 James - Laid
37 Beastie Boys - Check Your Head
38 REM - Out of Time
39 Radiohead - The Bends
40 Ben Harper & The Innocent Criminals - Live From Mars
41 Bob Dylan - Bringing It All Back Home
42 Snoop Dogg - Doggystyle
43 Jeff Buckley - Grace
44 Kings of Leon - Youth and Young Manhood
45 Led Zepplin - Led Zepplin 1
46 Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here
47 Deathcab For Cutie - Photo Album
48 PJ Harvey - Stories of the City, Stories of the Sea
49 Arcade Fire - Funeral
50 Spoon - Gimme Fiction

51-100

Here are 51-100.

51 Red Hot Chilli Peppers - By the Way
52 The Shins - Chutes Too Narrow
53 Outkast - Stankonia
54 Beck - Guerro
55 Massive Attack - Mezannine
56 The Strokes - Is This It
57 The Verve - Urban Hymns
58 Coldplay - A Rush of Blood to the Head
59 Snow Patrol - Final Straw
60 Foo Fighters - Colour and the Shape
61 Eric Clapton - From The Cradle
62 Gorillaz - Gorillaz
63 Moby - Play
64 Jimi Hendrix - Blues
65 Modest Mouse - Good News for People Who Like Bad News
66 Nick Drake - Pink Moon
67 Nirvana - Nevermind
68 Raconteurs - Broken Boy Soldiers
69 Willie Nelson - Teatro
70 Neil Young - Unplugged
71 Paul Simon - Graceland
72 Bright Eyes - I'm Wide Awake Its Morning
73 Big Head Todd and the Monsters - Sister Sweetly
74 Beastie Boys - Paul's Boutique
75 Sufjan Stevens - Illinoise
76 Tenacious D - Tenacious D
77 Damien Rice - O
78 Califone - Roots and Crowns
79 The Decemberists - Picaresque
80 Block Party - Silent Alarm
81 Lucinda Williams - Essence
82 Massive Attack - Blue Lines
83 Portishead - PNYC
84 Ray Charles - Ray Charles
85 Bob Marley - Babylon by Bus
86 Weezer - Weezer
87 Kenna - New Sacred Cow
88 Lauryn Hill - The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill
89 Kanye West - Late Registration
90 Jack Johnson - On and On
91 Garbage - Garbage
92 The Fugees - The Score
93 Led Zepplin - Houses of the Holy
94 Depeche Mode - Violator
95 Audioslave - Audioslave
96 Damian Marley - Welcome to Jamrock
97 Ben Harper & The Blind Boys of Alabama - There Will Be a Light
98 Handsome Boy Modeling School - So How's Your Girl
99 Jane's Addiction - Nothing's Shocking
100 The Chieftains - A Celebration

The Rich Get Richer...

Surprisingly, President Bush recently spoke on the issue of escalating corporate pay in the United States. As a member of the good ol' boys club, I never thought that I would hear him say a thing about it, except to probably encourage higher pay for executives. Rather, the President stated that pay should be tied to how much executives help their companies' shareholders.

"The fact is that income inequality is real. It has been rising for more than 25 years," the President said.

Now, the President could be paying lip service to the issue, but at least he mentioned it. This issue hit the news recently, when Home Depot CEO Bob Nardelli was forced out of his position. I will allow Gregg Easterbrook, contributing editor for The New Republic, The Atlantic Monthly and The Washington Monthly, and a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution, to further explain the details regarding Nardelli.

Combining regular income, stock options, pension and a golden parachute, Nardelli received $274 million for six years of work. That's $34,250 an hour. That's about 3,000 times the hourly wage of a Home Depot worker. That's $275,000 per day – five times as much per day as the typical American family earns in a year. Good management is of value to a company's shareholders: skilled corporate officers should be well paid. But there's a difference between "well paid" and something akin to looting. Why isn't Nardelli's $274 million, taken from the shareholders, simply viewed as embezzlement? Home Depot stock fell from $43 to $41 under Nardelli's tenure, a 21 percent drop when calculated for inflation. The CEO cannot control a company's stock price, and excessive emphasis on stock price creates a temptation to cook the books. But it's absurd to think that shareholders can get hosed under a CEO's watch, and for that the CEO deserves $274 million. The Home Depot board offered Nardelli the terms that led to the $274 million. Boards of directors have a self-interest in overpaying CEOs, because many board members are themselves CEOs who know their own pay will rise if other CEOs' pay rises. With Nardelli's $274 million, CEO overpay has reached runaway levels. What the Home Depot board did was perfectly legal, and that in itself is a scandal. The word for what many public-company CEOs and their boards are up to should be: embezzlement.

Easterbrook has also noted, "And please don't tell me the prevailing prices for executives justified Nardelli's huge number, because this requires you to argue that there was not one single qualified manager willing to run Home Depot for less than $245 million. 'You're only offering $244 million? Forget it!'"

Last year, Paul Krugman wrote an article for Rolling Stone magazine on the the increasing divide between executive and worker pay, titled, The Great Wealth Transfer. Krugman noted;

In 1969, General Motors was the country's largest corporation aside from AT&T, which enjoyed a government-guaranteed monopoly on phone service. GM paid its chief executive, James M. Roche, a salary of $795,000 -- the equivalent of $4.2 million today, adjusting for inflation. At the time, that was considered very high. But nobody denied that ordinary GM workers were paid pretty well. The average paycheck for production workers in the auto industry was almost $8,000 -- more than $45,000 today. GM workers, who also received excellent health and retirement benefits, were considered solidly in the middle class.

Today, Wal-Mart is America's largest corporation, with 1.3 million employees. H. Lee Scott, its chairman, is paid almost $23 million -- more than five times Roche's inflation-adjusted salary. Yet Scott's compensation excites relatively little comment, since it's not exceptional for the CEO of a large corporation these days. The wages paid to Wal-Mart's workers, on the other hand, do attract attention, because they are low even by current standards. On average, Wal-Mart's non-supervisory employees are paid $18,000 a year, far less than half what GM workers were paid thirty-five years ago, adjusted for inflation. And Wal-Mart is notorious both for how few of its workers receive health benefits and for the stinginess of those scarce benefits.

Corruption and instability will increase as the gap between the "haves" and "have nots" widens. Since 2001, earnings of workers in the US have not kept up with inflation and fewer people have benefits such as health insurance. For the future stability and success of this country, things need to change. I don't expect Presidnet Bush to do much about it, but at least the topic has been broached.

Razor Test

Somehow I ended up receiving free samples of the Schick Quattro and The Gillette Fusion. Now I am more of an old school two blader, but I figured this would be a good chance to see if I should make the switch to the supposed latest and greatest in shaving technology. I tried to keep my study as controlled as possible, so I used the same shaving conditions for each razor. I also shaved with each when I had both light and heavy stubble.

So here are the three competitors. The Schick Quattro states that it has a conditioning strip with aloe and vitamin E, four blades with a titanium coating, a prep strip for stretching the skin, and a lubrication strip for additional comfort. The Gillette Fusion states that it has 5 blades with power glide coating, a flexible comfort gaurd to follow the contours of your face, a precision trimmer blade on the back of the cartridge, and a lubrication strip. And lastly the Gillette Sensor Excel with two blades, a lubrication strip, and MicroFins on the cartridge head. Also, I would recommend checking out the websites for the Fusion and Quattro. You would think that they had developed the cure for AIDS or the replacement for oil with these sites.

So the Schick Quattro pretty much sucked. I don't think it matters how many blades they put on that thing, it was only slightly better than diving face first onto some asphalt. One of the most uncomfortable shaves I have ever experienced.

The Gillette Fusion was a vast improvement. It delivered a close, comfortable shave, and the blade in the back was a nice addition (unless you like to put a finger on the back of the cartridge when you shave).

Lastly, I tried the old standby two blade Gillette Sensor. It was the most comfortable and caused the least nicks. I decided to do a head to head test with the Fusion to be certain, shaving one half of my face with each razor. I will say that the Fusion was a slightly closer shave, but it didn't do as well on the chin.

My conclusion, the Sensor Excel was more comfortable and shaved nearly as close as the Fusion, thus I am sticking with it (it is also much cheaper). Also, I realized that I need to get a life. Razor testing? Blogging about it? What is next, battle of the toothbrushes?

Also, I recommend reading this.

This Guy Really Doesn't Like Albuquerque

ALBUQUERQUE -- An Illinois trucker has left a path of destruction in New Mexico in what authorities say was a ''meth-induced rage.''

Eric Dubach, 28, of Mount Vernon, Ill., caused $500,000 in damage when he drove his truck through fences, rammed parked vehicles, homes and businesses, and ran over signs around 4:30 a.m. Sunday in Albuquerque, Bernalillo County Sheriff Darren White said.

Dubach told authorities he stopped his tractor-trailer at a truck stop off Interstate 40, unhitched his trailer and snorted a ''couple of grams'' of methamphetamine before going on the joy ride, White said.

Dubach told officers he didn't like Albuquerque and wanted to mess it up, White said.

At one point, Dubach forced another truck parked in the driveway of a home through the garage door, White said. Dubach then backed up and eventually was stopped when he drove through a retaining wall, the sheriff said.

At least four homes, five businesses and 24 cars -- some of them totaled -- were damaged, White said.

''If you could see it, it was like a tornado that went through this small community,'' he said.

Dubach was charged with criminal damage to property. His criminal history dates to at least 1996. AP

Peyton Spanks the Monkey

Peyton Manning finally got the monkey off his back and won the big one. The Super Bowl wasn't a total snooze fest, but it was one of the sloppier games I have seen. The Bears play calling and execution was terrible. Even the commercials pretty were forgettable. But the worst part of the entire broadcast was Phil Simms. He is by far my least favorite commentator. He worked a handful of the Broncos games this year, and I thought CBS was sticking the Broncos with their third or fourth string broadcast team. Then I turn on the Super Bowl and hear Simms voice. This is CBS's top broadcasting team!?! Couldn't they have hired Chris Collinsworth to come over the NFL Network (where he is stuck with Bryant Gumbel). If not him, then one of the more under rated announcers, such as Sterling Sharpe, Jesse Palmer, or Troy Aikman (although I believe they all have contracts with other networks). So in honor of Simms and his terrible performance, here are some "interesting" Phil Simms quotes.

"Boomer's throwing that love out to me, being nice. I don't like it. I like a little friction."

“Tom Brady, he’s a handsome dude. He’s also fearless and likes the action.”

“Look at Drew Brees. I’m talking about his pants. Don’t get nervous.”

"Lamar Smith [Miami running back] doesn't look like much in his underwear."