Tiny bubbles: Home prices surged 13.6% in the second quarter.
Observation: For the past year, predictions of a housing market bust have been a staple of the business press. Home buyers must not be reading the same stuff I do. Is there a bubble in the housing market? Or, is there a bubble in stories predicting how the housing market bubble is about to bust? I wonder which will collapse first?
A key to understanding blogging’s popularity: (From Tuesday’s NY Times) “Gossip appears to be a very sophisticated, multifunctional interaction which is important in policing behaviors in a group and defining group membership.”
(Gossip is a big topic in Tuesday’s Times, as there’s another article about one of my favorite topics, celebrity magazines.)
Nashville Krystals add free wi-fi: Actually, Krystals all over the south have added free wi-fi, but I seem to be doing Nashville news tonight, so I thought I’d keep it hyperlocal. By the way, I discovered this news via an RSS feed of notifications when new free wi-fi locations in Nashville are added to this directory maintained by a business that says it can help a free wi-fi provider profit from giving away free wi-fi. I guess that means ways in addition to getting me to drop by.
Speaking of Nashville music that’s good: I just noticed that Nickel Creek‘s new CD, Why Should the Fire Die? is the #1 iTunes album download today. There’s hope for the world, afterall.
That photo on the left of the 14-year-old (who turns 15 in a couple of weeks) and Nickle Creek’s Chris Thile was taken in April.
That reminds me. Thanks to Terry Heaton who was nice enough to send me an e-mail recently when he learned that Nickel Creek is performing at the War Memorial Auditorium on October 15 (the Nickel Creek site says the 16th, also, so I guess they’ll add that date if necessary). (Ticket info – they officially go on sale 8/20, but I believe they are available now through a WRLT “presale” & because you read the rexblog. Use password “Rome”).
Tim O’Brien on “TNNK” podcast: If you haven’t listened to Candice Corrigan’s “The Nashville Nobody Knows” podcast recently (RSS, iTunes Link), a great place to start catching up is this interview with a genuine Nashville treasure, Tim O’Brien.
In addition to sampling some of his great mandolin playing and singing, he zings some great quotes, as well — like this one:
“One of the great things about Nashville is you have this opportunity to work with all these brilliant people who are here to get something together with music and they’re pretty open-minded. It’s only when you get to that little funnel that goes into playing country radio and trying to fit into that little teenie niche that it gets restricted.”