New Theory Of Recessions

Whatever your opinion is of the music of Judas Priest, it was of course completely ridiculous to blame them with the suicide of 2 teenagers, based on the alleged subliminal message of "do it" if you played the record backwards (!?). I mean, if you really start playing records backwards to find messages and find a message of suicide convincing you got to be pretty messed up to begin with. Not to mention the fact that it would be pretty stupid for Judas Priest to try to have their fans killed (As Judas Priest pointed out, if they had the will and ability to put some kind of subliminal message on it, would have rather been "buy more records" so they could make more money) or the fact that "do it" can mean just about everything, from painting your house, to taking out the garbage, to having sex with your spouse, to buy Judas Priest records, to visit this blog or literally whatever (I could add hundreds or thousands of additional examples, But I think the ones I've already mentioned are more than enough to illustrate the point). In short, this law suit against Judas Priest qualified for the title of one of the most ridiculous law suits ever.

This ridiculous trial comes to mind when I see this (presumably not seriously meant) article blaming AC/DC for the economic crisis in the U.S. (thanks Chris for the link). Every time AC/DC has been successful, the British economy has gone on a highway to hell , so to speak. I haven't calculated the econometric correlation value, but the theory that "AC/DC cause U.K. recessions" will probably pass the test of statistical significance....

But seriously speaking, what it really illustrates is of course that correlation is not causation.