Cobb

Fulani Scores!

Remember this moment well ladies and gentlemen. Lenora Fulani, one of the whackiest of whackjob politicians has scored a political coup. Fulani has joined in an alliance and convinced Michael Bloomberg to abolish party primaries in NYC.

The only thing Fulani ever stood for that made sense was her fierce opposition to the stranglehold Democrats and Republicans had on the election process itself. This necklock worked to keep third party candidates from getting exposure, raising funds and most importantly, debating head with the major party candidates. She should know, everybody in the major parties did everything they could to keep Fulani away with a legalistic 10 foot pole.

Bob Herbert is completely flabbergasted by this development. It just sounds like good news to me.

The Loyalty of Hard Men

Quite some time ago, I used to hang out at the Aquarian Bookstore. Sometime after I read City of Quartz by Mike Davis and became intrigued about the origins of the Crips and Bloods, I ran into Donald Bakeer at the Aquarian.

Bakeer wrote a book called 'Crips', and he was involved in some deep hateration of the white woman, Leon Bing, who first broke the big story on Kody Scott aka Monster Kody, now Sanyika Shakur. Kody was a killer and he grew up near 54th Street and Kenniston, where my best friend used to live. This was a neighborhood that was nicer than any one you saw in the film 'Boyz N The Hood' and Kody was harder than any thug in that film. But it was not that contrast that interested me, it was the politics.

Kody finally wrote his own book. While I never read 'Do or Die', I did read Monster and didn't have to undo some notion not from the horse's mouth. Some years later I had a brief correspondance with Kody (which is always how I think of him, the sharp kid who was impossible to contain, the manchild trying to contain the rage). We are both autodidacts and we come from the same neighborhoods, we have a kind of strange bond. He wrote to me of his theory.

What Kody was trying to explain actually makes the most sense when it's done simply and it has remained with me in that simple form. The essence of it is this. Young men - the way they think - they will do anything to prove something. I beleive he called it his theory of Adherence. A boy needs a man to follow. Loyalty is a young man's most precious value. I know this to be true and I know it of my own son. I know he will do anything including destroying himself to retain respect in my eyes. And he will do so until I respect him as a man. Loyalty and Respect.

The Loyalty of Hard Men

Quite some time ago, I used to hang out at the Aquarian Bookstore. Sometime after I read City of Quartz by Mike Davis and became intrigued about the origins of the Crips and Bloods, I ran into Donald Bakeer at the Aquarian.

Bakeer wrote a book called 'Crips', and he was involved in some deep hateration of the white woman, Leon Bing, who first broke the big story on Kody Scott aka Monster Kody, now Sanyika Shakur. Kody was a killer and he grew up near 54th Street and Kenniston, where my best friend used to live. This was a neighborhood that was nicer than any one you saw in the film 'Boyz N The Hood' and Kody was harder than any thug in that film. But it was not that contrast that interested me, it was the politics.

Kody finally wrote his own book. While I never read 'Do or Die', I did read Monster and didn't have to undo some notion not from the horse's mouth. Some years later I had a brief correspondance with Kody (which is always how I think of him, the sharp kid who was impossible to contain, the manchild trying to contain the rage). We are both autodidacts and we come from the same neighborhoods, we have a kind of strange bond. He wrote to me of his theory.

What Kody was trying to explain actually makes the most sense when it's done simply and it has remained with me in that simple form. The essence of it is this. Young men - the way they think - they will do anything to prove something. I beleive he called it his theory of Adherence. A boy needs a man to follow. Loyalty is a young man's most precious value. I know this to be true and I know it of my own son. I know he will do anything including destroying himself to retain respect in my eyes. And he will do so until I respect him as a man. Loyalty and Respect.

Soldiers Die - So What?

Swerdloff reminds us that this kind of war we're experiencing in Iraq is nothing like the ancient wars. Specifically the war on Iraq bears no resemblance to the Peloponnesian War. Iraq lost, and they unlike Sparta, are never going to take over the attacker's capital. What's killing Americans is obesity.

This gives me yet another comfort in my willful ignorance of current Iraqi events. As I said before, the interesting part is over. It is now reduced to the level of Intifada, hardly military. So it's not surprising that the neocon policy wonks are suggesting a series of operations with cool names in the service of counterinsurgency.

Soldiers Die - So What?

Swerdloff reminds us that this kind of war we're experiencing in Iraq is nothing like the ancient wars. Specifically the war on Iraq bears no resemblance to the Peloponnesian War. Iraq lost, and they unlike Sparta, are never going to take over the attacker's capital. What's killing Americans is obesity.

This gives me yet another comfort in my willful ignorance of current Iraqi events. As I said before, the interesting part is over. It is now reduced to the level of Intifada, hardly military. So it's not surprising that the neocon policy wonks are suggesting a series of operations with cool names in the service of counterinsurgency.

Blaxploitation II

I only want to mention this briefly, because I've got enough grief dealing with a little culture war that I've enjoined over hiphop. But my prediction is that we are on the verge of a second-coming of blaxploitation.

I was cruising imdb this evening riffing off Leon Issac Kennedy and doing something I haven't done in a while which is 2 degrees of separation with Vivica Fox. This is the game in which you can connect every black person in Hollywood. What's also surprising is that you find some of the same whitefolks associated with those blackfolks. It's a very interesting circle of circles.

At any rate, I found something surprising. The first was, when you look at it, Eddie Murphy has only really been in 7 really good flicks. (48 Hours, Trading Places, Beverly Hills Cop) Those came in rapid succession; three movies, three years 82-84. Then nothing really until Coming to America in 88, then Boomerang in 92. Now Boomerang didn't count as a major hit but it was his funniest movie ever, period, no contest. Nutty Professor in 96, Life in 99. That's it.

Now imagine this. It's scary, but imagine it anyway. DMX is going to make a film based on a book by Donald Goins. There's a lot of Goins books out there and they are tailor-made for a new wave of blaxploitation films that are gangsta rapper's paradise.

OK. I just wanted to poison your mind with that thought. If you don't think it's going to happen, then you obviously haven't played 2 degrees of separation with Vivica Fox, or you have no idea how popular Leon Issac Kennedy used to be.

Blaxploitation II

I only want to mention this briefly, because I've got enough grief dealing with a little culture war that I've enjoined over hiphop. But my prediction is that we are on the verge of a second-coming of blaxploitation.

I was cruising imdb this evening riffing off Leon Issac Kennedy and doing something I haven't done in a while which is 2 degrees of separation with Vivica Fox. This is the game in which you can connect every black person in Hollywood. What's also surprising is that you find some of the same whitefolks associated with those blackfolks. It's a very interesting circle of circles.

At any rate, I found something surprising. The first was, when you look at it, Eddie Murphy has only really been in 7 really good flicks. (48 Hours, Trading Places, Beverly Hills Cop) Those came in rapid succession; three movies, three years 82-84. Then nothing really until Coming to America in 88, then Boomerang in 92. Now Boomerang didn't count as a major hit but it was his funniest movie ever, period, no contest. Nutty Professor in 96, Life in 99. That's it.

Now imagine this. It's scary, but imagine it anyway. DMX is going to make a film based on a book by Donald Goins. There's a lot of Goins books out there and they are tailor-made for a new wave of blaxploitation films that are gangsta rapper's paradise.

OK. I just wanted to poison your mind with that thought. If you don't think it's going to happen, then you obviously haven't played 2 degrees of separation with Vivica Fox, or you have no idea how popular Leon Issac Kennedy used to be.

Satisfaction

The Gripe

First it was Novaslim. Now it's Santagati. Way back when it might have been me, but I've been on the other side so long that the memory is fogged. What do we have in common? The Gripe.

De La Soul's version of The Gripe was best exemplified in the rap "Stakes is High"

I'm sick of bitches shakin' asses
I'm sick of talkin' about blunts,
Sick of Versace glasses,
Sick of slang,
Sick of half-ass awards shows,
Sick of name brand clothes.
Sick of R&B bitches over bullshit tracks,
Cocaine and crack
Which brings sickness to blacks,
Sick of swoll' head rappers
With their sicker-than raps
Clappers and gats
Makin' the whole sick world collapse
The facts are gettin' sick
Even sicker perhaps
Stickabush to make a bundle to escape this synapse

Folks in the grip of The Gripe are mostly well-meaning and sensitive, intelligent and hopeful. But there is a difference between hope and optimism. Optimism is the belief, based on evidence, that things will get better. Hope persists in spite of evidence to the contrary. Those who Gripe about hiphop are hopeful, because hiphop ain't going anywhere. This is why Gripers get on my nerves, because in the end they are just pissing and moaning about market share.

Tell me what is more ridiculous than hoping for a new and improved public? It is the public, the masses, the proletariat, the hoi polloi, everyday, joe schmoe, mainstream, faceless, American grade-B peasant that constitutes the bulk of the populus. This is the nation of millions that makes Proctor & Gamble billions just because each of them buys lotion, soap and deodorant. (And now 5 dollar toothbrushes in case you haven't noticed). And this is the nation of millions that holds back the aspirations of the Gripers, who seek refinement, discernment and enlightenment in their entertainment. Say What? As sympathetic as I am to the elevated cultural and political sensibilities of my bretheren of taste, I find myself constantly having to remind them that they are a minority inside an enclave within a fraction of an elite.

Hollywood, Madison Avenue and all other capitalistic enterprises bent on prying the last nickel of disposable income from the great unwashed masses don't give a rat's gnat about the breathless desires of the Gripers. They do a good job of pretending which ironically is just enough to keep the Gripers in thrall. It is this half-assed codependence which generates the kinds of screeds against the Bad in hopes for any Good.

My advice to Gripers is not to get a life, but to get a child. Because when you get married and have a baby, you suddenly find that you don't spend so much time at Tower Records or the cinemaplex. You can't shake your ass down at the club or bullshit at the local head's hangout as much as you used to. All that unfocused vagued disillsionment finds direction and purpose in the integrity of your child's mind - that and wiping baby food off the cieling.

The mavens of the cultural marketplace are not heeding your calls. The best you can do is get invited to their parties, because once they blow up and collect enough ducats, they too get sick of the peddled pabalum that paved their paths to plenty. Does anyone honestly believe that J Lo listens to her own records? That's a scary thought; it might be true.

Ultimately Gripers grow up. We finally decide that there ain't no public worth reforming and grow comfortable in our own little nasty worlds. We take time and read books, and then get our Vladimir Horowitz on. We dig on Terrance Blanchard and Countee Cullen. We decline backstage passes to Black Eyed Peas and everyone else who's trying to make the Crowd say 'Ho!'. And best of all, we don't miss it. Post-Gripers don't say 'Ho!', and there's not a party over here and we don't really care any longer.

The sooner you know it, the better off you'll be.

The Gripe

First it was Novaslim. Now it's Santagati. Way back when it might have been me, but I've been on the other side so long that the memory is fogged. What do we have in common? The Gripe.

De La Soul's version of The Gripe was best exemplified in the rap "Stakes is High"

I'm sick of bitches shakin' asses
I'm sick of talkin' about blunts,
Sick of Versace glasses,
Sick of slang,
Sick of half-ass awards shows,
Sick of name brand clothes.
Sick of R&B bitches over bullshit tracks,
Cocaine and crack
Which brings sickness to blacks,
Sick of swoll' head rappers
With their sicker-than raps
Clappers and gats
Makin' the whole sick world collapse
The facts are gettin' sick
Even sicker perhaps
Stickabush to make a bundle to escape this synapse

Folks in the grip of The Gripe are mostly well-meaning and sensitive, intelligent and hopeful. But there is a difference between hope and optimism. Optimism is the belief, based on evidence, that things will get better. Hope persists in spite of evidence to the contrary. Those who Gripe about hiphop are hopeful, because hiphop ain't going anywhere. This is why Gripers get on my nerves, because in the end they are just pissing and moaning about market share.

Tell me what is more ridiculous than hoping for a new and improved public? It is the public, the masses, the proletariat, the hoi polloi, everyday, joe schmoe, mainstream, faceless, American grade-B peasant that constitutes the bulk of the populus. This is the nation of millions that makes Proctor & Gamble billions just because each of them buys lotion, soap and deodorant. (And now 5 dollar toothbrushes in case you haven't noticed). And this is the nation of millions that holds back the aspirations of the Gripers, who seek refinement, discernment and enlightenment in their entertainment. Say What? As sympathetic as I am to the elevated cultural and political sensibilities of my bretheren of taste, I find myself constantly having to remind them that they are a minority inside an enclave within a fraction of an elite.

Hollywood, Madison Avenue and all other capitalistic enterprises bent on prying the last nickel of disposable income from the great unwashed masses don't give a rat's gnat about the breathless desires of the Gripers. They do a good job of pretending which ironically is just enough to keep the Gripers in thrall. It is this half-assed codependence which generates the kinds of screeds against the Bad in hopes for any Good.

My advice to Gripers is not to get a life, but to get a child. Because when you get married and have a baby, you suddenly find that you don't spend so much time at Tower Records or the cinemaplex. You can't shake your ass down at the club or bullshit at the local head's hangout as much as you used to. All that unfocused vagued disillsionment finds direction and purpose in the integrity of your child's mind - that and wiping baby food off the cieling.

The mavens of the cultural marketplace are not heeding your calls. The best you can do is get invited to their parties, because once they blow up and collect enough ducats, they too get sick of the peddled pabalum that paved their paths to plenty. Does anyone honestly believe that J Lo listens to her own records? That's a scary thought; it might be true.

Ultimately Gripers grow up. We finally decide that there ain't no public worth reforming and grow comfortable in our own little nasty worlds. We take time and read books, and then get our Vladimir Horowitz on. We dig on Terrance Blanchard and Countee Cullen. We decline backstage passes to Black Eyed Peas and everyone else who's trying to make the Crowd say 'Ho!'. And best of all, we don't miss it. Post-Gripers don't say 'Ho!', and there's not a party over here and we don't really care any longer.

The sooner you know it, the better off you'll be.

Mass Markets & The N Word

Down in Playa Del Rey, pops, Doc and Dutz and I had a great lunch over Vodka Sauce Penne with baby shrimp. We talked about the fire, of course, and caught up. The subjects turned to the Disney Hall and Diane Reeves' rendition of the Star Spangled Banner, the procedures that the Torrance PD used on me when they thought I was a bank robber, the skating that Usher is doing right now, a gangland shootout at the Inglewood Cemetary, Wynton Marsalis hateration, Uma Thurman, Tarantino and Woody Allen. It wasn't until Woody that I got to get my rant on.

Pops leaned in to talk about what respect Jews get in their movies, whereas Tarantino takes it for granted that everybody is one of his niggaz and feels no reticence in sprinkling the word in his dialog. I spoke on my theory why this is so. And it goes a little something like this.

The stop dead in your tracks argument in my hip pocket about 'Why can't white people use the n-word when blacks like xxx use it all the time?' has changed. The answer I now give, when asked, turns the tables. Of all the African Americans there are, why is it that you wish to emulate blacks like xxx? This answer helps the clueless to understand that blacks recognize class distinctions between themselves, which is part of my reason for bloviating on behalf of the Old School into the blogosphere. But let's take this distinction one step further and talk about the commercialization of black culture.

'Black' culture which doesn't recognize class is a misnomer and a holdover from the early days of black nationalism. Negroes of all backgrounds subsumed themselves into black identity for the common cause of a post-Negro identity, and of course the purposes of the Civil Rights Movement. But friction between all these African Americans was only temporarily suspended and never went away. For the sake of anti-racist activism and politics, blacks will always put class & religious distinctions on hold, but they never abandon them. So despite the fact that most everything falls under the aegis of 'black culture', there are a lot of strains. It's difficult to say how much the mainstream appreciates this fact; mistakes are often made. You can point to a Nelly rap and say that's black culture. You can point to a Wynton Marsalis song and say that's black culture. But unless and until you can point to Colin Powell's funeral, I don't know how you will get the both of them in the same room.

Jews and Asians are small. It takes a much greater rising tide to lift all black boats. The net weight of African America is more than double theirs. The black lower middle class is bigger than the both of them. So Nelly is, commercially speaking, much more likely to make enough money to survive a million dollar jewelry loss than Wynton. This is key. You won't see a movie with Jews calling each other 'kikes' because the class of Jews who do so in real life is not large enough to sustain a commercial market for that kind of lowbrow entertainment. 15 million blacks who live in the ghettoes of this nation is more than enough to make Nelly a millionaire, plus of course there's low rent crossover for that segment of the hiphop generation. The Jews or the Asians cannot fund a UPN and a BET, but all those low rent blackfolks can, do and will. They can afford it. That does not and will not ever change the direction and consistency of the Old School, brothers and sisters on my side of the fence. If anyone cared to compare us head to head, matters would sound more like Dinesh and Abigail's rosily false scenarios for all African Americans.

Knuckleheads will continue to abuse the broad nature of African America to suit their rhetorical purposes. When they want to paint black America in foul colors, they'll find a shade of charlatan like Sharpton, mouth off about a murderer like Malvo or natter nastily about Nelly's niggaz. When they want to prove that all is well and perhaps too good for Reparations, they'll pontificate about a prince like Powell, or enjoin a geremiad about some giant like Jordan. They'll use class when it's convenient or suggest something stupidly broad about 'black culture' which cannot be denied, literally. It works because few folks bother to recognize the strains of cultures within the aegis of the race.

Blackfolks know, although we sometimes slip, like pops. He has every right to be pissed at Tarantino, but no need to be defensive about what all blackfolks do. But he was one of the original nationalists and I understand his love for the whole of our people.

I suggested that if there were only 8 million African Americans, we'd be more like the Jewish Americans. There'd be no UPN and whatever cultural artifacts of ours got commercialized would be more consistently highbrow, just as they were in the first days of crossover when only bands like Ellington's got on the radio. But since we have many millions of other African Americans who haven't heard or heeded the sound of the drum, we get to hear niggaz call niggaz niggaz. Pops got it immediately, laughed and suggested snidely that perhaps the Crips and Bloods aren't doing their jobs quite well enough.

Mass Markets & The N Word

Down in Playa Del Rey, pops, Doc and Dutz and I had a great lunch over Vodka Sauce Penne with baby shrimp. We talked about the fire, of course, and caught up. The subjects turned to the Disney Hall and Diane Reeves' rendition of the Star Spangled Banner, the procedures that the Torrance PD used on me when they thought I was a bank robber, the skating that Usher is doing right now, a gangland shootout at the Inglewood Cemetary, Wynton Marsalis hateration, Uma Thurman, Tarantino and Woody Allen. It wasn't until Woody that I got to get my rant on.

Pops leaned in to talk about what respect Jews get in their movies, whereas Tarantino takes it for granted that everybody is one of his niggaz and feels no reticence in sprinkling the word in his dialog. I spoke on my theory why this is so. And it goes a little something like this.

The stop dead in your tracks argument in my hip pocket about 'Why can't white people use the n-word when blacks like xxx use it all the time?' has changed. The answer I now give, when asked, turns the tables. Of all the African Americans there are, why is it that you wish to emulate blacks like xxx? This answer helps the clueless to understand that blacks recognize class distinctions between themselves, which is part of my reason for bloviating on behalf of the Old School into the blogosphere. But let's take this distinction one step further and talk about the commercialization of black culture.

'Black' culture which doesn't recognize class is a misnomer and a holdover from the early days of black nationalism. Negroes of all backgrounds subsumed themselves into black identity for the common cause of a post-Negro identity, and of course the purposes of the Civil Rights Movement. But friction between all these African Americans was only temporarily suspended and never went away. For the sake of anti-racist activism and politics, blacks will always put class & religious distinctions on hold, but they never abandon them. So despite the fact that most everything falls under the aegis of 'black culture', there are a lot of strains. It's difficult to say how much the mainstream appreciates this fact; mistakes are often made. You can point to a Nelly rap and say that's black culture. You can point to a Wynton Marsalis song and say that's black culture. But unless and until you can point to Colin Powell's funeral, I don't know how you will get the both of them in the same room.

Jews and Asians are small. It takes a much greater rising tide to lift all black boats. The net weight of African America is more than double theirs. The black lower middle class is bigger than the both of them. So Nelly is, commercially speaking, much more likely to make enough money to survive a million dollar jewelry loss than Wynton. This is key. You won't see a movie with Jews calling each other 'kikes' because the class of Jews who do so in real life is not large enough to sustain a commercial market for that kind of lowbrow entertainment. 15 million blacks who live in the ghettoes of this nation is more than enough to make Nelly a millionaire, plus of course there's low rent crossover for that segment of the hiphop generation. The Jews or the Asians cannot fund a UPN and a BET, but all those low rent blackfolks can, do and will. They can afford it. That does not and will not ever change the direction and consistency of the Old School, brothers and sisters on my side of the fence. If anyone cared to compare us head to head, matters would sound more like Dinesh and Abigail's rosily false scenarios for all African Americans.

Knuckleheads will continue to abuse the broad nature of African America to suit their rhetorical purposes. When they want to paint black America in foul colors, they'll find a shade of charlatan like Sharpton, mouth off about a murderer like Malvo or natter nastily about Nelly's niggaz. When they want to prove that all is well and perhaps too good for Reparations, they'll pontificate about a prince like Powell, or enjoin a geremiad about some giant like Jordan. They'll use class when it's convenient or suggest something stupidly broad about 'black culture' which cannot be denied, literally. It works because few folks bother to recognize the strains of cultures within the aegis of the race.

Blackfolks know, although we sometimes slip, like pops. He has every right to be pissed at Tarantino, but no need to be defensive about what all blackfolks do. But he was one of the original nationalists and I understand his love for the whole of our people.

I suggested that if there were only 8 million African Americans, we'd be more like the Jewish Americans. There'd be no UPN and whatever cultural artifacts of ours got commercialized would be more consistently highbrow, just as they were in the first days of crossover when only bands like Ellington's got on the radio. But since we have many millions of other African Americans who haven't heard or heeded the sound of the drum, we get to hear niggaz call niggaz niggaz. Pops got it immediately, laughed and suggested snidely that perhaps the Crips and Bloods aren't doing their jobs quite well enough.

Fire Quickies

Doc, having pulled some special duty on the LAPD mentions a couple interesting factiods.

Many cops are on 'firewatch'. For many this means trolling Mulholland Drive for illegally parked vehicles which would hinder or block the progress of emergency vehicles.

Some idiot tried to start a fire in Eaton Canyon in Altadena. They busted him right away. He was heard to mutter 'Don't put it out, it's beautiful'.

Civilians are transfixed by the fire and are literally drawn like moths. Several officers had drawn weapons on a looting suspect and a little old lady with her walker shuffled right through the circle of cops, just staring at the flames across the street.

KROQ has been cracking on the reporters whose van caught on fire as they tried desparately to get closer than anyone else. The reporter actually cried on the air about the loss. They put some other reporter in a wind tunnel to show viewers what 45 mph winds looked like.

Fire Quickies

Doc, having pulled some special duty on the LAPD mentions a couple interesting factiods.

Many cops are on 'firewatch'. For many this means trolling Mulholland Drive for illegally parked vehicles which would hinder or block the progress of emergency vehicles.

Some idiot tried to start a fire in Eaton Canyon in Altadena. They busted him right away. He was heard to mutter 'Don't put it out, it's beautiful'.

Civilians are transfixed by the fire and are literally drawn like moths. Several officers had drawn weapons on a looting suspect and a little old lady with her walker shuffled right through the circle of cops, just staring at the flames across the street.

KROQ has been cracking on the reporters whose van caught on fire as they tried desparately to get closer than anyone else. The reporter actually cried on the air about the loss. They put some other reporter in a wind tunnel to show viewers what 45 mph winds looked like.

Game Design

1000 Suspects

Rap star Nelly has been ripped off to the tune of 1 million dollars worth of jewelry. Las Vegas police are searching for suspects. They might start here. On the other hand, maybe it's one of those crazy muslims:

"What's next, 'Whore Kool-Aid'?" asked Najee Ali, founder and
director of Project Islamic Hope, the National Alliance for Positive
Action. "We intend to chase Nelly's Pimp Juice out of our
communities all around the country.

It's gettin' hot in here.

1000 Suspects

Rap star Nelly has been ripped off to the tune of 1 million dollars worth of jewelry. Las Vegas police are searching for suspects. They might start here. On the other hand, maybe it's one of those crazy muslims:

"What's next, 'Whore Kool-Aid'?" asked Najee Ali, founder and
director of Project Islamic Hope, the National Alliance for Positive
Action. "We intend to chase Nelly's Pimp Juice out of our
communities all around the country.

It's gettin' hot in here.

No Clowning

DRM Eats Its Young

Like Rafe Colburn, I like iTunes but I'm not likely to buy any DRM protected music from the Apple Music Store. Why? Because as an old head in the software industry, I know how often formats change and how easy it is to lose passwords.

I've gone through about 4 different PGP ids and at least that many versions of the software. I don't use it any longer because I don't have anything worth encrypting that I can't do with ssh to my trusted friends' machines, and two because I forgot how.

Let's think about what we know about human error. In my iTunes Advanced pulldown menu there's an option that says 'Deauthorize Computer'. If there was ever a red cape to bull hackers that's it. But it's also an idiot magnet too. If it does what I think it does (and how would I know, I'm not going to try it), it would disable your computer from using the DRM protected music you've already downloaded and paid for.

Imagine what customer service is going to be like when somebody loses their music. Hello, Apple Music Store? My song doesn't play any more. It gives me this error, "Illegal Attempt Made To Play Music", but I just installed it.

DRM Eats Its Young

Like Rafe Colburn, I like iTunes but I'm not likely to buy any DRM protected music from the Apple Music Store. Why? Because as an old head in the software industry, I know how often formats change and how easy it is to lose passwords.

I've gone through about 4 different PGP ids and at least that many versions of the software. I don't use it any longer because I don't have anything worth encrypting that I can't do with ssh to my trusted friends' machines, and two because I forgot how.

Let's think about what we know about human error. In my iTunes Advanced pulldown menu there's an option that says 'Deauthorize Computer'. If there was ever a red cape to bull hackers that's it. But it's also an idiot magnet too. If it does what I think it does (and how would I know, I'm not going to try it), it would disable your computer from using the DRM protected music you've already downloaded and paid for.

Imagine what customer service is going to be like when somebody loses their music. Hello, Apple Music Store? My song doesn't play any more. It gives me this error, "Illegal Attempt Made To Play Music", but I just installed it.

Tanking Down Big Media One Peg At A Time

Kieran Healy takes a swing at Gregg Easterbrook over at Crooked Timber.

As some folks have noted the blogosphere is a catalyst in changing the balance of power in the wider 'memepool'. As the most broad, deep and visible avatar of the chatting class, the blogosphere with its interesting divisions of labor, has the capacity to take down stars of traditional media, politics and just about every other intellectual activity. Note that this is a function of the entire sphere and not necessarily the work of one or two individuals. I claim that the emergent behavior of the network of political and cultural bloggers are making their impact felt as a whole.

The most notable tool of the blogosphere is the 'fisk', named after outspoken journalist Robert Fisk who was often the target of 'anti-idiotarian' rants and other verbal puncturing. A fisking represents the evolution of the flamewar. It is smarter, it is more detailed and it is more effective.

Since the blogosphere is open and news travels fast through it, people are likely to criticize certain controversial or popular positions from many angles. The blogosphere supports the highly focused interest of partisans of all stripes and once a higher order blogger in its ecosystem latches onto a topic, it quickly brings out almost all angles of opinion.

The fisk represents the level of interactivity and detail orientation I have been hoping to find within computer mediated communications for some time. That the blogosphere demonstrates this proves several things. The first and most important is that collaboration is a necessary part of the effect and impact of blog writing.

Provocation is a necessary component of this activity. Someone of a particularly partisan bent can speak out on a particular issue in such a way that it provokes a reaction. Thus a critical mass of bloggers and their commenters.

Indemnity
One of the features of this emergent behavior involves a kind of indemnification accorded to certain bloggers once they reach a certain status. It can either be an indemnification of link mass or of credibility. Often they are both. Once an issue to be debated reaches one of the indemnified bloggers

Sometimes the issue needs only a brief glossing over or a reference to other bloggers at an indmnified site. This doesn't detract from the value of the indemnified blogger because even these small inputs sustain interest and add fractal detail to the overall debate.

Book Review: Confessions of a Street Addict

by Jim Cramer

there are a lot of folks who have discovered plenty of reasons to hate jim cramer, but if you are a more pedestrian or heaven forbid, emotive person who happens to be interested in high finance, jim cramer could be your hero, and this book shows you why.

i should say that i have been a part-time hack investor for about 17 years. i am not employed in the financial industry, i'm a software guy. as a software guy, i appreciate a rowdy sense of irreverence and an ability to get to the nitty-gritty of a problem with a minimum of foo-foo. and after years of putting up with rukeyser's waspy effete mannerisms and cornball puns, guys like cramer are a godsend. when i think of all the years that i listened to lou dobbs and paul kangas before we got to the likes of david faber and joe kernen, i shudder. finally, here's a book about wall street for people not born in the hamptons.

Book Review: Confessions of a Street Addict

by Jim Cramer

there are a lot of folks who have discovered plenty of reasons to hate jim cramer, but if you are a more pedestrian or heaven forbid, emotive person who happens to be interested in high finance, jim cramer could be your hero, and this book shows you why.

i should say that i have been a part-time hack investor for about 17 years. i am not employed in the financial industry, i'm a software guy. as a software guy, i appreciate a rowdy sense of irreverence and an ability to get to the nitty-gritty of a problem with a minimum of foo-foo. and after years of putting up with rukeyser's waspy effete mannerisms and cornball puns, guys like cramer are a godsend. when i think of all the years that i listened to lou dobbs and paul kangas before we got to the likes of david faber and joe kernen, i shudder. finally, here's a book about wall street for people not born in the hamptons.

Theoretical Anger

Book Review: The Emperor of Ocean Park

The Emperor of Ocean Park by Stephen L. Carter. is a quite compelling if not evenly flowing or artistic read. It's an ambitious book that works on many different levels. As a first time novelist, Carter should have stuck to one or two, but in the end you are glad that he didn't.

As a thriller, it bites you slo-o-o-wly. I get the feeling that if Carter weren't so interested in putting us in his protagonist's stubborn and provincial shoes, we might figure out exactly what is going to happen next. Of course you cannot guess because the twists and surprises go for almost 650 pages. The thriller could have been shortened by half. But if we were to do that, we would have had to make the protagonist less harried and more intrigued.

Talcott Garland is not intrigued, he is haunted by being the scion of a legendary judge and patriarch who has set in motion wrecking ball from the grave aimed directly at his upper middle-class life. Carter is not content to trace the trajectory of this wrecking ball as it crashes through the many windows and wall of Garland's complicated life - no that would be a thriller. Rather he draws out the contemplations of a man who may by his actions and reactions to the threats of this wrecking ball, may be going insane, or who may be becoming a hero. And since Talcott Garland is a member of the darker nation, Carter has reinscribed a new class of Negroes into the duBoisian dilemma of dual consciousness. What's so thrilling about that?

What's thrilling about it is that this is certainly what Carter must know he is doing. And as we like to say in the black upper middle class, 'this sets us back 100 years'. But that's just one angle on this story and I'll leave it at that.

Carter also injects a healthy dose of his most potent moralizing into the conscience of Talcott Garland who is forever trying to keep his wits and perspective about him. While he is surrounded by a whirlwind of manipulators and players, he tries desperately to play it straight. Talcott Garland has no guile to rely upon which gives him the courage to fight. Yet his abiding faith in his ability to recover the love of his cheating wife alone and finally serve honorably as head of his family pushes him to seek answers to the questions he'd rather not know. Garland comes armed with a host of virtues sown deeply in the ways and means of the talented tenth, but they are supplied not inherently but through his extended family. Each of a dozen family members and friends has a slice of those virtues and each imparts a bit of strength or knowledge upon poor Talcott as he valiantly struggles to unlock the mystery.

Furthermore as a story of the times, of the moral mishmash of career ambitions in academia and in Washington, it's a marvelous book that continues his non-fiction scolding by other means.

What absolutely floored me was the patience evidenced in the setting of traps by certain characters - there's not much you hear about anything so subtle in any fictional intrigue which has such a long horizon. Instead you hear the reverse, that mistakes made are long hid and only newly discovered by the hounding media or political opposition but that once discovered they are immediately brought to bear.

Further, I think Carter does an admirable job of bringing race in and out of focus naturally as the story progresses, which is how it happens in life.

It's a very ambitious book and quite a tall order for any writer. As an artist he's not quite up to the task. Although there are a number of gems in the form of page-long paragraphs you can just tell couldn't be dickered with, most of the writing is just writing. His habit of dropping annoying little bomblets of discovery at the very end of his chapters serves the purpose of helping keep parts of Talcott's recognition obscured to the reader, but gets tiresome. But the ending 200 pages makes up for it, given Talcott's final machinations and collaborations.

I think the book is a bit chaptery, and it comes as no surprise that he created 64 to coincide with the number of squares on a chessboard, but I would have liked Talcott to be a lot more chess-wise in his thinking. Even having him think "protect the queen" would have been better. Also I think Talcott needed to be frayed a lot more. It would have drawn me in deeper. One never gets the feeling that Talcott's ruination would evoke in him the ugly side of losing one's status, I didn't sense his contempt for his potential lower-class neighbors, or his sense of how he would adapt. Talcott's mushy self-esteem is not a compelling place for a reader, but it does serve the purposes of Carter's moral lecture...

Carter's imagery of Martha's Vineyard is not so descriptive so much as evocative for those who already have some emotional resonance with the place. But I found myself riding along on the ferry, gazing of the cliffs at Gay Head and lazily walking the Circuit along with him.

The book is fascinating and bears up under different layers of scrutiny. That is what makes it good, and a must read for those of us who have shared, at various points in our life, the muddled consciousness of Talcott Garland.

Book Review: The Emperor of Ocean Park

The Emperor of Ocean Park by Stephen L. Carter. is a quite compelling if not evenly flowing or artistic read. It's an ambitious book that works on many different levels. As a first time novelist, Carter should have stuck to one or two, but in the end you are glad that he didn't.

As a thriller, it bites you slo-o-o-wly. I get the feeling that if Carter weren't so interested in putting us in his protagonist's stubborn and provincial shoes, we might figure out exactly what is going to happen next. Of course you cannot guess because the twists and surprises go for almost 650 pages. The thriller could have been shortened by half. But if we were to do that, we would have had to make the protagonist less harried and more intrigued.

Talcott Garland is not intrigued, he is haunted by being the scion of a legendary judge and patriarch who has set in motion wrecking ball from the grave aimed directly at his upper middle-class life. Carter is not content to trace the trajectory of this wrecking ball as it crashes through the many windows and wall of Garland's complicated life - no that would be a thriller. Rather he draws out the contemplations of a man who may by his actions and reactions to the threats of this wrecking ball, may be going insane, or who may be becoming a hero. And since Talcott Garland is a member of the darker nation, Carter has reinscribed a new class of Negroes into the duBoisian dilemma of dual consciousness. What's so thrilling about that?

What's thrilling about it is that this is certainly what Carter must know he is doing. And as we like to say in the black upper middle class, 'this sets us back 100 years'. But that's just one angle on this story and I'll leave it at that.

Carter also injects a healthy dose of his most potent moralizing into the conscience of Talcott Garland who is forever trying to keep his wits and perspective about him. While he is surrounded by a whirlwind of manipulators and players, he tries desperately to play it straight. Talcott Garland has no guile to rely upon which gives him the courage to fight. Yet his abiding faith in his ability to recover the love of his cheating wife alone and finally serve honorably as head of his family pushes him to seek answers to the questions he'd rather not know. Garland comes armed with a host of virtues sown deeply in the ways and means of the talented tenth, but they are supplied not inherently but through his extended family. Each of a dozen family members and friends has a slice of those virtues and each imparts a bit of strength or knowledge upon poor Talcott as he valiantly struggles to unlock the mystery.

Furthermore as a story of the times, of the moral mishmash of career ambitions in academia and in Washington, it's a marvelous book that continues his non-fiction scolding by other means.

What absolutely floored me was the patience evidenced in the setting of traps by certain characters - there's not much you hear about anything so subtle in any fictional intrigue which has such a long horizon. Instead you hear the reverse, that mistakes made are long hid and only newly discovered by the hounding media or political opposition but that once discovered they are immediately brought to bear.

Further, I think Carter does an admirable job of bringing race in and out of focus naturally as the story progresses, which is how it happens in life.

It's a very ambitious book and quite a tall order for any writer. As an artist he's not quite up to the task. Although there are a number of gems in the form of page-long paragraphs you can just tell couldn't be dickered with, most of the writing is just writing. His habit of dropping annoying little bomblets of discovery at the very end of his chapters serves the purpose of helping keep parts of Talcott's recognition obscured to the reader, but gets tiresome. But the ending 200 pages makes up for it, given Talcott's final machinations and collaborations.

I think the book is a bit chaptery, and it comes as no surprise that he created 64 to coincide with the number of squares on a chessboard, but I would have liked Talcott to be a lot more chess-wise in his thinking. Even having him think "protect the queen" would have been better. Also I think Talcott needed to be frayed a lot more. It would have drawn me in deeper. One never gets the feeling that Talcott's ruination would evoke in him the ugly side of losing one's status, I didn't sense his contempt for his potential lower-class neighbors, or his sense of how he would adapt. Talcott's mushy self-esteem is not a compelling place for a reader, but it does serve the purposes of Carter's moral lecture...

Carter's imagery of Martha's Vineyard is not so descriptive so much as evocative for those who already have some emotional resonance with the place. But I found myself riding along on the ferry, gazing of the cliffs at Gay Head and lazily walking the Circuit along with him.

The book is fascinating and bears up under different layers of scrutiny. That is what makes it good, and a must read for those of us who have shared, at various points in our life, the muddled consciousness of Talcott Garland.

Book Review: Great Apes

I have never been inparted with 'Grnn' any of Will Self's previous books. So I can't sign much about the 'euch-euch' cuffing he has received from critics in the past. But through my introduction to Self in this novel, I am thoroughly impressed with the efulgence of his ischeal pleat and submit to his literary suzerainity. Why do humans bash Self, 'huuu'? His effectiveness in taking up such a difficult task is ample evidence of his skill. Yet with all the potential he has for a devastating critique of modern society, he is modest. Amis' "Times Arrow" comes immediately to my mind in parallel, as well as T. Boyle's satire. Both those artists reserve a much more serious tone in their critique of western civilization. Yet Self maintains a delicate balance hovering around the personal which lends itself to extension without ever losing the pure joy of his parallel universe's perversions of what humans consider natural. Self's chimps are not locked inside their own minds as are humans. They quickly resolve their existential dilemnas with a quick mating or a brutal yet brief brawl. And for this, the world of chimpunity has no use for weapons. What chimps lack is sexual attention from their parents. Such a world! Self could do worse than to extend and expand in such fertile 'euch-euch' terrian. I for one would like to see more. For now, a hearty HoooGraah! Self is my kind of chimp.

Book Review: Great Apes

I have never been inparted with 'Grnn' any of Will Self's previous books. So I can't sign much about the 'euch-euch' cuffing he has received from critics in the past. But through my introduction to Self in this novel, I am thoroughly impressed with the efulgence of his ischeal pleat and submit to his literary suzerainity. Why do humans bash Self, 'huuu'? His effectiveness in taking up such a difficult task is ample evidence of his skill. Yet with all the potential he has for a devastating critique of modern society, he is modest. Amis' "Times Arrow" comes immediately to my mind in parallel, as well as T. Boyle's satire. Both those artists reserve a much more serious tone in their critique of western civilization. Yet Self maintains a delicate balance hovering around the personal which lends itself to extension without ever losing the pure joy of his parallel universe's perversions of what humans consider natural. Self's chimps are not locked inside their own minds as are humans. They quickly resolve their existential dilemnas with a quick mating or a brutal yet brief brawl. And for this, the world of chimpunity has no use for weapons. What chimps lack is sexual attention from their parents. Such a world! Self could do worse than to extend and expand in such fertile 'euch-euch' terrian. I for one would like to see more. For now, a hearty HoooGraah! Self is my kind of chimp.

Book Review: Good to Great

Jim Collins, in the tradition of the case study, names names and finds unique properties in the management of a number of Fortune 500 companies over a 30 year period. From a unique set of criteria he pursues, with no preconceived notions, what it takes to sustain profitability in a large public corporation which had previously been only mediocre. His findings are clear, well thought out and often surprising. In the realm of business books, this one is especially refreshing for a number of reasons.

This is a hardheaded skeptic's book. What makes it so special is that it does not assign magic to anyone, neither to himself as a writer or to any of the officers interviewed. Collins exposes his own learning process and allows the reader to understand the nuance in the emphasis of each of his concepts as he spells out the skeptical questions that his research team posed and the deliberation they went through. Collins doesn't come off as a 'guru' who has found some magic that only he and a handful of CEOs can see so much as a disciplined and curious leader of a research team struggling with difficult questions. So not only do you understand what he means as he moves from 'chaos to concept', you also see arguments against his initial reasoning. And since he is dedicated only those conclusions supported by facts rather than fitting random companies into some grand theory we see exactly what he sees and why. There is none of breathless exuberance that characterizes so much of business writing.

What is most refreshing and reassuring about this book's studies is that it puts us back in a sensible framework for understanding long term success without making a fetish of 'leadership' or 'innovation' or 'excellence' or other buzzwords. This is the kind of book that demonstrates the sort of objectivity possible in business - it doesn't obfuscate or take the position that there is something mysterious out there. Rather he makes the complex comprehensible and when the answers are simple, they are presented simply. He constantly checks and compares the difference between unsustainable and sustainable profitability. All of Collins' concepts lend themselves to the sorts of metrics upon which rugged methodologies can be built. This is more than a book of management theory; it is a learning tool, which explains itself. I cannot remember the last book where the appendices were as interesting (and sometimes more interesting) than the main text.

It might be corny to say so, but I think his findings are self-rewarding. Working from the premises put forth, it makes sense for smaller companies and organizations some of which might not even be businesses at all. 'Good to Great' offers solid lessons among which are that it doesn't take more energy to behave smartly but it does take nerve. Collins dared to work smartly and has created a great book.

Book Review: Good to Great

Jim Collins, in the tradition of the case study, names names and finds unique properties in the management of a number of Fortune 500 companies over a 30 year period. From a unique set of criteria he pursues, with no preconceived notions, what it takes to sustain profitability in a large public corporation which had previously been only mediocre. His findings are clear, well thought out and often surprising. In the realm of business books, this one is especially refreshing for a number of reasons.

This is a hardheaded skeptic's book. What makes it so special is that it does not assign magic to anyone, neither to himself as a writer or to any of the officers interviewed. Collins exposes his own learning process and allows the reader to understand the nuance in the emphasis of each of his concepts as he spells out the skeptical questions that his research team posed and the deliberation they went through. Collins doesn't come off as a 'guru' who has found some magic that only he and a handful of CEOs can see so much as a disciplined and curious leader of a research team struggling with difficult questions. So not only do you understand what he means as he moves from 'chaos to concept', you also see arguments against his initial reasoning. And since he is dedicated only those conclusions supported by facts rather than fitting random companies into some grand theory we see exactly what he sees and why. There is none of breathless exuberance that characterizes so much of business writing.

What is most refreshing and reassuring about this book's studies is that it puts us back in a sensible framework for understanding long term success without making a fetish of 'leadership' or 'innovation' or 'excellence' or other buzzwords. This is the kind of book that demonstrates the sort of objectivity possible in business - it doesn't obfuscate or take the position that there is something mysterious out there. Rather he makes the complex comprehensible and when the answers are simple, they are presented simply. He constantly checks and compares the difference between unsustainable and sustainable profitability. All of Collins' concepts lend themselves to the sorts of metrics upon which rugged methodologies can be built. This is more than a book of management theory; it is a learning tool, which explains itself. I cannot remember the last book where the appendices were as interesting (and sometimes more interesting) than the main text.

It might be corny to say so, but I think his findings are self-rewarding. Working from the premises put forth, it makes sense for smaller companies and organizations some of which might not even be businesses at all. 'Good to Great' offers solid lessons among which are that it doesn't take more energy to behave smartly but it does take nerve. Collins dared to work smartly and has created a great book.

The Worst Films In Memory

On the backside there are pretty awful movies I've seen. Movies where I said, not only is this bad and boring, but what is wrong with the people who made this? In no particular order.

Legend of the Overfiend
This film deserves special mention as by far the most gruesome, hideous excretion ever. I left the theatre wanting to track down the filmmakers and line them up before a firing squad so that they could never make another movie. People had dared me to go watch it and I should have just stayed home. I am angry that the images are still in my head.

Bulworth
Argh! So horrible it defies description. OK how's this, every racial stereotype in the book. A litany of horrors dressed up as sophistication.

Chinatown The Two Jakes
I was asleep within 12 minutes of watching this movie. (My bad - Ed.)

Mulholland Drive
As lousy movies go, this was fairly watchable, but it is narrative hell.

How the Grinch Stole Christmas
Everything that is wrong with Jim Carrey is amplified in this obnoxiously saccharine technicolor vomit.

Any Superman Movie

Super Mario Brothers
Don't even ask me why I watched it.

Clash of the Titans
Mega Cheese.

Battlefield Earth
I think I held out for about 20 minutes before I had to take a shower.

Antitrust
Idiot 20something programmers save the world...

I've got to quit. I'm making myself ill just thinking of all this junk.

The Worst Films In Memory

On the backside there are pretty awful movies I've seen. Movies where I said, not only is this bad and boring, but what is wrong with the people who made this? In no particular order.

Legend of the Overfiend
This film deserves special mention as by far the most gruesome, hideous excretion ever. I left the theatre wanting to track down the filmmakers and line them up before a firing squad so that they could never make another movie. People had dared me to go watch it and I should have just stayed home. I am angry that the images are still in my head.

Bulworth
Argh! So horrible it defies description. OK how's this, every racial stereotype in the book. A litany of horrors dressed up as sophistication.

Chinatown The Two Jakes
I was asleep within 12 minutes of watching this movie. (My bad - Ed.)

Mulholland Drive
As lousy movies go, this was fairly watchable, but it is narrative hell.

How the Grinch Stole Christmas
Everything that is wrong with Jim Carrey is amplified in this obnoxiously saccharine technicolor vomit.

Any Superman Movie

Super Mario Brothers
Don't even ask me why I watched it.

Clash of the Titans
Mega Cheese.

Battlefield Earth
I think I held out for about 20 minutes before I had to take a shower.

Antitrust
Idiot 20something programmers save the world...

I've got to quit. I'm making myself ill just thinking of all this junk.

Question

Persistence of Hulk

The merchandising geniuses have shown a bit of stick-to-itivness on the Hulk meme. From the dad-side view, the boys have forgotten about Hulk. But Halloween seems to be an opportunity that they won't let go. I've already seen Hulk Macaroni & Cheese, and Hulk Freezer Pops deeply discounted at Big Lots. So clearly somebody has taken a cold bath. But Hulk resurrection persists. Beware!

Persistence of Hulk

The merchandising geniuses have shown a bit of stick-to-itivness on the Hulk meme. From the dad-side view, the boys have forgotten about Hulk. But Halloween seems to be an opportunity that they won't let go. I've already seen Hulk Macaroni & Cheese, and Hulk Freezer Pops deeply discounted at Big Lots. So clearly somebody has taken a cold bath. But Hulk resurrection persists. Beware!

Switch

Righty Blogger's Reading List

I submitted, last week, a list of 20 influential books. Each of these has substantially changed the way I think about things. Oddly enough, the two that have had the most recent effect on my 'conservative' thinking, I neglected to mention. But I suppose it's only fair because I didn't finish either book. They are Hayek's 'Road to Serfdom' which I only read the Reader's Digest version, and Martin Amis' 'Koba the Dread', which I found completely overwhelming. It brought me to tears upon each reading, and I found that I simply couldn't handle it.

The Righty List, compiled by John Hawkins, is rather an LCD affair, with an embarassment of Ayn Rand and C.S. Lewis. I would much prefer to browse the full list and some background. I'll periodically update this post to fill in some details FWIW.

Here's mine, in no order.

• The Examined Life - Robert Nozick
  
• Ethnic America - Thomas Sowell
  
• Edge City - Joel Garreau
  
• American Mythologies - Marshall Blonsky
  
• The Mind's I - D.R. Hofstadter
  
• The Black Power Imperative - Theodore Cross
  
• Modern Manners - PJ ORourke
  
• Integrity - Stephen L Carter
  
• Japanese By Spring - Ishmael Reed
  
• Money - Andrew Hacker
  
• Cultural Literacy - ED Hirsch
  
• We Are All Multiculturalists Now - Nathan Glazer
  
• The American Evasion of Philosophy - Cornel West
  
• The Fate of the Earth - Jonathan Schell
  
• Art of War - Sun Tzu
  
• Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand
  
• Faces At The Bottom of the Well - Derrick Bell
  
• Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman - Dick Feynman
  
• Beloved - Toni Morrison
  
• Foucault's Pendulum - Umberto Eco
  

Righty Blogger's Reading List

I submitted, last week, a list of 20 influential books. Each of these has substantially changed the way I think about things. Oddly enough, the two that have had the most recent effect on my 'conservative' thinking, I neglected to mention. But I suppose it's only fair because I didn't finish either book. They are Hayek's 'Road to Serfdom' which I only read the Reader's Digest version, and Martin Amis' 'Koba the Dread', which I found completely overwhelming. It brought me to tears upon each reading, and I found that I simply couldn't handle it.

The Righty List, compiled by John Hawkins, is rather an LCD affair, with an embarassment of Ayn Rand and C.S. Lewis. I would much prefer to browse the full list and some background. I'll periodically update this post to fill in some details FWIW.

Here's mine, in no order.

• The Examined Life - Robert Nozick
  
• Ethnic America - Thomas Sowell
  
• Edge City - Joel Garreau
  
• American Mythologies - Marshall Blonsky
  
• The Mind's I - D.R. Hofstadter
  
• The Black Power Imperative - Theodore Cross
  
• Modern Manners - PJ ORourke
  
• Integrity - Stephen L Carter
  
• Japanese By Spring - Ishmael Reed
  
• Money - Andrew Hacker
  
• Cultural Literacy - ED Hirsch
  
• We Are All Multiculturalists Now - Nathan Glazer
  
• The American Evasion of Philosophy - Cornel West
  
• The Fate of the Earth - Jonathan Schell
  
• Art of War - Sun Tzu
  
• Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand
  
• Faces At The Bottom of the Well - Derrick Bell
  
• Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman - Dick Feynman
  
• Beloved - Toni Morrison
  
• Foucault's Pendulum - Umberto Eco
  

Better Random

I've decided that I'm going to stick with iTunes for the time being. I've been trying it for a few days and it has one major advantage over Winamp2, and that is its random music playing. According to iTunes, I've got about 21 days worth of MP3s on my machine - that's about 6500 songs, some of which are duplicates. But there are a whole lot of them I just haven't heard - playing as I do with Winamp I felt as though I were hearing the same tunes over and over but I couldn't prove it. The difference is night and day, plus now I can prove it.

iTunes is a pig to be sure and when I installed it on my C: drive somehow it sucked up over 4GB of disk. I still don't know how that happened or what was going on, but it was headed for the dustbin. I installed it on a remote drive with no ill effects. Still, it hogs a lot more memory than Winamp and when the tasking gets tough, iTunes flubs up big time. Fzample, ripping and playing are a bit much for iTunes in 356MB of Win2kPro. That's piggy.

A big advantage it has is the ability to correct multiple tags at once. I can finally get rid of all the bogus genres. It also adjusts to play songs recorded at different volumes at a consistent volume. This is incredibly useful for me because I put some soft classical on at night before bed and then I'm suddenly jarred awake by a loud cut, or I can't hear anything after the first song.

I'll keep Winamp for my DJ duties because iTunes doesn't fade nicely when I'm manually cueing up tunes, plus the CDDB doesn't work at all with iTunes even though the ripper is decent.

Better Random

I've decided that I'm going to stick with iTunes for the time being. I've been trying it for a few days and it has one major advantage over Winamp2, and that is its random music playing. According to iTunes, I've got about 21 days worth of MP3s on my machine - that's about 6500 songs, some of which are duplicates. But there are a whole lot of them I just haven't heard - playing as I do with Winamp I felt as though I were hearing the same tunes over and over but I couldn't prove it. The difference is night and day, plus now I can prove it.

iTunes is a pig to be sure and when I installed it on my C: drive somehow it sucked up over 4GB of disk. I still don't know how that happened or what was going on, but it was headed for the dustbin. I installed it on a remote drive with no ill effects. Still, it hogs a lot more memory than Winamp and when the tasking gets tough, iTunes flubs up big time. Fzample, ripping and playing are a bit much for iTunes in 356MB of Win2kPro. That's piggy.

A big advantage it has is the ability to correct multiple tags at once. I can finally get rid of all the bogus genres. It also adjusts to play songs recorded at different volumes at a consistent volume. This is incredibly useful for me because I put some soft classical on at night before bed and then I'm suddenly jarred awake by a loud cut, or I can't hear anything after the first song.

I'll keep Winamp for my DJ duties because iTunes doesn't fade nicely when I'm manually cueing up tunes, plus the CDDB doesn't work at all with iTunes even though the ripper is decent.

My Dungeon Shook

For reference, I need to keep a little James Baldwin on hand:

Now, my dear namesake, these innocent and well-meaning people, your countrymen, have caused you to be born under conditions not very far removed from those described for us by Charles Dickens in the London of more than a hundred years ago. (I hear the chorus of the innocents screaming, "No! This is not true! How bitter you are!" but I am writing this letter to you, to try to tell you something about how to handle them, for most of them do not yet really know that you exist. I know the conditions under which you were born, for I was there. Your countrymen were not there, and haven't made it yet. Your grandmother was also there, and no one has ever accused her of being bitter. I suggest that the innocents check with her. She isn't hard to find. Your countrymen don't know that she exists, either, though she has been working for them all their lives.)

My Dungeon Shook

For reference, I need to keep a little James Baldwin on hand:

Now, my dear namesake, these innocent and well-meaning people, your countrymen, have caused you to be born under conditions not very far removed from those described for us by Charles Dickens in the London of more than a hundred years ago. (I hear the chorus of the innocents screaming, "No! This is not true! How bitter you are!" but I am writing this letter to you, to try to tell you something about how to handle them, for most of them do not yet really know that you exist. I know the conditions under which you were born, for I was there. Your countrymen were not there, and haven't made it yet. Your grandmother was also there, and no one has ever accused her of being bitter. I suggest that the innocents check with her. She isn't hard to find. Your countrymen don't know that she exists, either, though she has been working for them all their lives.)

Right To Choose

Assimilation, Multiculturalism & False White Neutrality

Much is being made in certain circles about the matter of SB 60, which is a provision which allows 'illegal aliens' to be legally licensed as drivers in California. The bill which was signed into law by ex-governor Grey Davis was supported by both the mayor and chief of police of Los Angeles. It restores a privilege that was denied several years ago. Arnold Schwartzenegger has promised to repeal it and activist groups are passing around a petition.

This is just the kind of situation that brings up a dozen questions but the one that has got me thinking is that of citizenship. What is it, who can tell, and what difference does it make?

My first talking point is Assimilation, Multiculturalism & False White Neutrality

Science vs Business

Cringely understands what a number of capitalists don't about this new technology. It will win. If you are trying to make money, don't bet against Microsoft, but if you are trying to make software, don't bet against Linux.

Science vs Business

Cringely understands what a number of capitalists don't about this new technology. It will win. If you are trying to make money, don't bet against Microsoft, but if you are trying to make software, don't bet against Linux.

The Outrage

Jim Marcinkowski lays down the hardline, Larry Johnson provides the outrage and Vince Cannistraro adds flavor to Daschle's hearings.

I'm looking for a transcript. C-SPAN has the full video, but there is a lot of quotable stuff.

In Poor Taste

Bling Eye for the White Guy

Ted at Crooked Timber has

been fascinated for a long time by this: quite a few black and Latino rappers fill their albums and videos with images of ostentatious, even cartoonish wealth. With the possible exception of Vanilla Ice rolling in his 5.0*, I’ve never seen a white rapper portray his success in a remotely similar way.

First of all, white rappers don’t get rich, relatively speaking. Secondly, flossing bling is just a genre of rap. It’s here today, it will be gone tomorrow. Thirdly and distinct from the flossing bling, there is a ghetto fabulous fashion statement that a lot of artists indulge. But most important is that black artists and producers are crowing about something they’ve only recently been able to, their own money.

It may surprise folks, but rappers like Coolio and several others have donated tens of thousands to the Republican party in order to crash their affairs. These are the exceptions proving the rule that there are separate royalties in American celebrityhood for blacks and whites, and it’s the rare black star who gets play on both sides of the line.

This gets back to what’s ghetto fabulous. Black stars find out quick fast and in a hurry what it feels like to hit the glass cieling of celebrity in America which are not devoid of racist stereotypes. You are a black NBA star, therefore you are not expected to date Hollywood starlets and show up at the Emmys, etc.

What Dr. Dre had to do to break into Hollywood films was to essentially disown all of gangsta. He masterfully played the politics of the game directly in the wake of NWA’s Fuck the Police. Suddenly it was OK to have rap songs in Hollywood films. You can split up the film industry’s treatment of hiphop into pre- and post-Dre. The movement is still not complete.

My point is that the entertainment industry is still wrestling with the fact that black artists and producers are making big money after its entire history of exclusion and ripoff.

Every black hiphop artist on the planet hates Elvis Presley and spends massive amounts of energy to avoid being one person: Little Richard. Every self-referential message in rap records about which producer and crew is on wax in ‘03 (going back to ‘89) is a spit in the eye of White Mr. Money-Minder and the old-boy network of the music industry.

The Hollywood Hills are littered with hundreds of white has-beens and also-rans who bathe in past glory or languish in relative obscurity. But chances are that when they head down from their mansions in their old Jags and Benzos they don't have to hassle with the Beverly Hills PD. But old black entertainment money is elsewhere. This is the first generation to have multi-ethnic success of this sort, but it's still very different.

When black money in entertainment is big enough and works like everybody's else, when the word 'crossover' disappears... hmph.. why am I even predicting?

Less Choice