ANOTHER NAME TO CROSS OFF THE MacARTHUR GRANT SHORT-LIST. The Ole Perfesser starts out reasonably enough:

WHY CD SALES ARE PLUMMETING: The music industry blames piracy, but other factors -- from the ability to just buy the songs you like, and not a CD full of filler, to competition from other things like games and the Internet, to the fact that releases tend to suck more than they used to -- seem more significant.

Then -- who knows? -- maybe a nanobot got stuck in his brain:

It occurs to me that the media sectors that are doing badly -- movies, music, newspapers, TV women's shows -- seem to be the most highly politicized, while the sectors that are doing well, like games, aren't. I'd be interested to see more analysis on that subject.

The Perfesser, of course, is constantly predicting that the wave of the future is homemade websites that gas about politics.

There's an old notion that genius is the ability to hold two contradictory ideas at the same time. Of course, like other signs associated with genius -- inflated self-esteem, for example -- it is often misattributed.

Still, I must agree that it would be interesting to see "more analysis" of the concept that people are buying fewer Christina Aguilera CDs because of their political content.