Overnight Open Thread (8-18-2014)

Songs That Time Forgot

Most hit songs only get played a few years after they come out and then quickly fade away except for the occasional retro airplay but a few manage to hang on and become classics.

And here someone has gone back and tracked which top 10 songs since 1900 have survived the test of time and which ones have become obscure.

Some pop songs are timeless classics. Some play endlessly at weddings and on oldies stations. Others find renewed vigor in movie trailers or because their lyrics can be applied to Golden Grahams. Still others just, well - disappear.

We started with the top 10 songs of each year from 1900 to present (as calculated by the Whitburn Project), recording each song's Google hits, Wikipedia presence and last.fm scrobbles to calculate an obscurity score.

And here are the winners and losers against obscurity:

Least Obscure Hit Songs, Adjusted for Time
1 Bing Crosby: White Christmas, 1942
2 Elvis Presley: Jailhouse Rock, 1957
3 Glenn Miller Orch: In the Mood, 1940
4 The Animals: The House Of The Rising Sun, 1964
5 The Rolling Stones: (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction, 1965
6 The Beatles: Help!, 1965
7 The Beatles: Yesterday, 1965
8 Elvis Presley: Love Me Tender, 1956
9 Elvis Presley: Heartbreak Hotel, 1956
10 Elvis Presley: Hound Dog, 1956

Most Obscure Hit Songs, Adjusted for Time
1 Roy Ingraham Orch: Chant of the Jungle, 1930
2 Hilo Hawaiian Orch: When It's Springtime in the Rockies, 1930
3 Horace Wright: My Own Iona, 1917
4 Marguerite Farrell: If I Knock the 'L' Out of Kelly (It Would Still be Kelly to Me), 1916
5 Olive Kline: Hello, Frisco!, 1915
6 Orpheus Quartet: Turn Back the Universe and Give Me Yester Day, 1916
7 Horace Heidt Orch: Ti-Pi-Tin, 1938
8 Clay Aiken: This Is The Night, 2003
9 Mina Hickman: Come Down, Ma Evening Star, 1903
10 Don Bestor Orch: Forty-Second Street, 1933

And in case you were curious you can listen to the #1 obscure song here. Well at least until it gets overtaken by Clay Aiken's 'This Is The Night'. And because I hate you, you can listen to that right here.

Thoughts on the Ritual Now Taking Place in Ferguson, Missouri

For Israelis This Time is Different

Why? Answer: Tunnels

Kevin D. Williamson: Who Lost the Cities?

Ferguson was hardly a happy suburban garden spot until the shooting of Michael Brown. Ferguson is about two-thirds black, and 28 percent of those black residents live below the poverty line. The median income is well below the Missouri average, and Missouri is hardly the nation's runaway leader in economic matters. More than 60 percent of the births in the city of St. Louis (and about 40 percent in St. Louis County) are out of wedlock.

My reporting over the past few years has taken me to Chicago, Los Angeles, Detroit, St. Louis and the nearby community of East St. Louis, Ill., Philadelphia, Detroit, Stockton, San Francisco, and a great many other cities, and the Reverend Jackson is undoubtedly correct in identifying "a national crisis of urban abandonment and repression." He neglects to point out that he is an important enabler of it.

...The more progressive the city, the worse a place it is to be poor and/or black. The most pronounced economic inequality in the United States is not in some Republican redoubt in Texas but in San Francisco, an extraordinarily expensive city in which half of all black households make do with less than $25,000 a year. Blacks in San Francisco are arrested on drug felonies at ten times their share of the general population. At 6 percent of the population, they represent 40 percent of those arrested for homicides. Whether you believe that that is the result of a racially biased criminal-justice system or the result of higher crime incidence related to socioeconomic conditions within black communities (or some combination of those factors) what is undeniable is that results for black Americans are far worse in our most progressive, Democrat-dominated cities than they are elsewhere. The progressives have had the run of things for a generation in these cities, and the results are precisely what you see.

For All Your Riot Needs: Roof Koreans

Much more effective than attack crows roof Koreans require little management, can provide own weapons and ammo (you will be charged for any used), and are hardy in most environments. Do not remove the hood or make eye contact without proper training.  (thanks to Quin B)

Schaden-Oops: Turns Out the Germans Were Spying on Kerry, Hillary Clinton

'Accidently' they claim.

Also, just how bad is our data protection that SecState calls are being routinely intercepted and "destroyed" by our friends?

In any event, this will likely require some backtracking from Angela Merkel. You may recall her speech when she demanded "action" from the United States to "rebuild the shattered trust" between our nations. And these intercepted phone calls took place well before the revelations of our spying on them, so this wasn't some sort of tit for tat maneuver.

The Map of Military Surplus Distribution

Makes you wonder what's up with the counties that didn't take advantage of the program.

Iowa Students Required to Wear Heart Monitors in PE Class

Students going back to school in Dubuque, Iowa, are going to find it a little harder to slack off in gym.

Public middle and high school students will have to wear heart rate monitors in gym class to make sure they are actually being physically active.

"It will be a large portion of their grade, because we want to grade them on what they're actually doing in our class," Dubuque Schools Athletic and Wellness Director Amy Hawkins told ABC News.

Teachers will use the information collected from the heart rate monitors to write report cards.

Coming soon: Heart rate quotas and heart rate cheats.

There's a Beer Shortage in Cuba

Just wondering - has this ever happened in a capitalist country?

Oops

I guess a translation isn't really needed here.

Men Move Family Ashes, Are Charged With Abusing Corpse

What It's Like to Play Online Games as an Adult

10 Creepy Things Superheroes Have Done, No. 9: Superman Does Porn

Well it was the 80s and there was a villainous producer involved...

The Yahoo AoSHQ group - it's got electrolytes.

And my twitter thang.

Tonight's post brought to you by those damn raycists:

Notice: Posted by WHAMMMMMMMMOOOOOOOO!

posted by Maetenloch at 10:15 PM

| Access Comments