Cobb

Juinor Modders

In Project Gotham Racing 2, I am ranked 4999th in the world, or at least I was at 3:30 this morning when I signed off. That's not bad out of 224k people who race this online game. I've been around the block a few times, but last night I saw something I never saw before. Upon reflection it doesn't seem to be much, but I was very impressed at the time.

Just like in the Matrix, everything about these simulated worlds are driven by rules. Sometimes there are gaps or glitches in the rules which allow the observant and persistent to bend them. For the most part however, most people play the game and enjoy themselves within the constraints of the playing field.

Last night, a modder went 450 miles per hour. This is the equivalent of Neo flying in the Matrix.

A modder is someone who takes apart a digital appliance and modifies the hardware or software to add features to an ordinary game. This is very much like the aftermarket for cars, except it's chips. By doing so, a modder can bend or break rules or even add their own.

In PGR2 there are a collection of about 100 automobiles for racing, each with its own speed, colors and handling characteristics. In the original version, which has twice been updated by the manufacturer with expansion packs. A well known, and perhaps the only flaw in the game was known as the 'Color Glitch'. Through a series of button clicks on the XBox controller, a player could change the colors of a car. This was notably done on the Porsche GT1, one of the most desirable cars in the game which was only available in white. Players who mastered the Color Glitch would appear at the start of a race with orange or black GT1s, thus announcing their status to the rest of the players. As more people learned the Color Glitch, races would take forever to start as players would try to outdo each other by picking cool colors. That all stopped three months ago with the addition of the Paris Booster Pack which also patched the bug.

I was in the company of two young modders, a 19 year old kid from Philly and a 13 year old from somewhere in Canada. Philly did the hack. Canuck offered to set up a webcam session and show me how to mod my own XBox.

Stay Tuned.

Serious Business at Goldfingers

Greg Martin, one of the smartest and coolest cats I know is going to be making his debut in a reggae band Tuesday night at Goldfinger's Bar in Hollywood. His band is called 'Serious Business'. What can we expect? A damned good time because I'm going to be there with my new Malcolm X glasses and porkpie hat. All I can say is this is the man who introduced me to Coltrane and Ivan Van Sertima. It's going to be dope, yo.

See ya.

Unix Viruses &cetera

A Taste of Computer Security

Given the nature and scope of the field, it would require one or more books to even briefly touch upon all that is known about computer security. This document's goal is only to give you a taste of (a subset of) the subject. The various sections are not uniform in their depth or breadth, and the document's overall structure is not pedagogical. I could have titled it Thinking Aloud On Computer Security, if not for the somewhat pompous undertone.

68 Annoying Questions

There's a lot of buzz about young black polticians and black politics these days. Or is there? I think it's just Barack Obama making a name for himself. Nothing wrong with that, of course. I will be glad to see him do well.

However it is an open question as to whether having a black Senator will be a good sign for black politics. Much of it depends upon the responsibilities he gets. Will he author any notable legislation? Will he get appointed to the right committee? You see black politics still exists in a ghetto in the public mind, and there are certainly millions of blackfolks who are asking the same annoying questions.

So I am looking forward to seeing what the bottom line is going to be after everyone has finished touching Obama's hair and remarking about his uncanny ability to orate. (You would have thought that Bryant Gumbel answered those questions a generation ago). Will he have to answer the same stupid questions?

There can be no doubt that many of these questions, which will never be directly answered given what I've seen of the ObamaBlog, will come from African Americans. And what better way to figure out what's on the minds of blackfolks than to see what questions they ask? I've stolen 68 of them from Earl Ofari Hutchinson's website because when I went there looking for some discussion about Obama, I found nothing else. To me, these are a combination of moderately interesting short answer questions, but taken together as a comprhensive sample of black political interests, they make my head hurt. Yet somehow I have to admit these are the questions people want answered.

I see a disconnect here. To call Obama a black politician, if it is to mean anything but a demographic qualification, means that he is responsible principled black questions and issues. And yet knowing that a US Senator can get to the bottom of just about anything that goes on in America, I can scarcely imagine Obama spending his newly found popularity shouting into the phone for answers or assembling a Senate Inquiry into any of the questions that follow. But I don't know Obama's direction and I admit that I find these questions mostly trifling.

So the question I am begging is not whether Obama is 'authentically black' but what kind of issues African Americans raise that deserve the attention of a Senator. Because now that everybody wants to claim Obama, he's going to have to set some priorities that sooner or later are going to cause some people to disown him. That might move black politics further up the socio-economic scale (my hope) or demonstrate that it is stuck in the basement (my fear).

OK the Questions.

Baracklash

I just drifted through Ofari's website wondering if anyone over there was talking about Barack Obama, who has become an instant celebrity. I think the site is broken, but I did find something interesting. More on that later. What I didn't find was any discussion about Obama or any issues associated with him. Similarly, at Obama's blog, I have only found relatively tepid steps into issues and policy, not that I expected much more from someone campaigning.

It is somewhat annoying to me that people have so quickly gone from 'Barack Who?' to 'Obama for President'. What was the name of that song? Holding out for a Hero. His instant celebrity and instant credibility are suspect and I'm not buying it. I say this with the recognition that he has come to celebrity the right way, by being clean in the face of scandal drowning people opposing him. Unless you're the DA who convicts Charles Manson, or the doctor who cures cancer, there's probably not a better way to get famous. Hell, we've already forgotten the name of the CO who captured Saddam Hussein.

I have no doubt that Barack Obama is everything he appears to be. He's sharp, charming, educated and all that. He is in many ways a textbook example of the class of African Americans I've always associated with. But what has he got that Carol Mosely Braun ain't got? If you put him head to head against Harold Ford, Jr. How does he compare? If you had a choice between Obama and Michael Steele, who would you choose and why? These are the sorts of question that I believe very few Americans are prepared to answer. He simply represents somebody who is not first generation black politico, Obama is a Not-Sharpton. That's a good thing yet I think he's yet to show that he's the equal of any of those African American politicians.

While I'm no presidential scholar, I have come to regard with skepticism that the VP is somehow a 'natural' choice for succession. Nixon made it and Johnson did under extraordinary circumstances as did Ford, but Vice-President is just as often a dead-end job. So people thinking Edwards-Obama aren't saying anything and further I don't think the Senate is the place to show leadership of the sort that makes for presidential material. So in a certain way, he's dead ending. I'd never vote Russ Feingold as president, but I sure am glad he's done what he has in the Senate. Obama is way back in the line behind John McCain. Still it's all good; sometimes a black Senator is just a black Senator.

The difficulty here is that the same kind of instant recognition that Obama is getting, especially from African Americans, is exactly the kind of thing that I expect could be a windfall for the Republican Party. The right focus and exposure on somebody who is good enough is all you need to gain momentum in this game. Obama's cred is proof that it is a game and that he's playing it right, because quite frankly (and I'm a Republican) if I had to shoot one of the two based on their value to African Americans, it wouldn't be Charlie Rangel. But I'm willing to play the opportunity game, that's why I am in the GOP. The future is more important than the past, the most important question is whether or not, as a black Senator Obama will have to prove himself worthy by answering the same old questions. If so, he's just another sacrifice waiting to happen.

I think we should let Mr. Obama win his election and actually perform admirably in the Senate before we go annointing him black messiah. Not that that's stopping anyone.

Six of Nine

Friday Fragments

Re-Modernism
Just for the hell of it, let's imagine for a moment that Eurocentricity still works in the sense that whatever the world evolved from Europe before, a new emergent generation can evolve again, independently. In that spirit, I offer this tidbit of a guide to English Schools.

2001
Kubrick's film is still not cheesy after all these years. I have discovered a trick on my PC that allows me to play DVDs on the desktop. Every window above it is translucent. A film like 2001 makes for perfect realtime wallpaper. So much of the film is slow and beautiful. It's rather like a new genre and way to enjoy video.

Power Law Distributions Again
Clay Shirky is rehashing this idea in the latest Wired magazine. Perhaps because it gets more readers than his online writings. This is a fundamentally big idea. It's something I make use of in my consideration of markets, semiotics and organicism. The question is what is the nature of shifts that create and destroy fame? This relates to the Fungibles and the problem of giant sucking sounds.

Groove
It looks very good. A lot better than when I first tried it 3 years ago. Which reminds me. I haven't heard anything about Chandler lately. I think it's dead.

Prime Time

The Cohen Report

Here is where the power of the blogosphere comes into action. I've heard the rumors now I've got my hands on some facts from PR Newswire:

Today, in response to a new report on discriminatory auto loan markups by American Honda Finance Corporation, the Consumer Federation of America calls on Honda and its dealers to end undisclosed lending practices that discriminate against African-American car buyers. "In response to litigation and public pressure, other auto loan companies are beginning to curb discriminatory auto loan practices, and Honda should do the same," said CFA Executive Director Stephen Brobeck.

The report, prepared by Dr. Mark Cohen of Vanderbilt University, is based on examination of records of 383,652 AHFC customers over the period, June 1999 to April 2003. It concludes that African-American borrowers consistently paid higher "finance markup charges" over average than white customers when they finance their cars at dealerships through AHFC. The study controlled for factors such as term of loan, type of vehicle, creditworthiness of borrower, and geographic area.

Auto loan markups occur when lenders allow car dealers to mark up auto loans above the "buy rate" reflecting the actual creditworthiness of borrowers. A growing body of evidence reveals that hundreds of thousands of consumers, perhaps millions, have trusted auto finance companies and car dealers to charge them fair and reasonable rates only to then be subjected to markups that, in the past, have often exceeded five percentage points. A report, which was released by CFA, the National Council of La Raza, and the Rainbow-PUSH Coalition early this year, estimated that these overcharges cost consumers at least $1 billion annually.

This is something we can all jump on, and quite frankly I hope the Jesse squawks. I happen to know an official at Toyota and she tells me that when Jesse says jump, American Toyota oils up the pogo stick.

On the personal note, even though I clock big figures, my FICO score is somewhere around 3 out of a possible 1000, due to my back tax issues. Nevertheless I have had fairly decent relations with Ford Motor Credit, GMAC, Volkswagen Credit and some other third rate finance company. I know I've had my stuff marked up, and I know exactly when the dealer is doing it, but I really don't complain because I actually do have lousy credit. Besides, I don't buy new cars. The way I see it, depreciation is a bigger ripoff than credit markups. Nevertheless, I see this as a big issue and I do want to get a sense of blackfolks experiences with credit departments.

On the whole, Ford Motor Credit was best with us. We got the best rates and service from them.

Here's the report.
Download file

It's important to understand that what's going on here is not directly Honda's fault. Honda dealers are the ones who have the discretion to make these markups. They are both biased in doing so and exceeding the limits recommended by Honda. So there are names that can be named and dealerships that can be identified in this scam. Still, it is Honda's responsibility. They hand pick their dealers. Dealer Associations should also crack down, they will ultimately pay the price.

I'm interested to know how much black radio will get involved in this matter. They should start seeing some conciliatory advertising dollars. At least if I was a black radio station manager I would be using this discovery to my advantage.

Quaker Decisions

Paul Kingston writes about an alternative way of deliberation which is fascinating.

The prototype I've been into is an attempt to provide a web space for business meetings on the Quaker model. You may well know that this is characterised by not (ever) using voting, and by trying to avoid individuals developing personal positions. In a Quaker business meeting all those present are trying to "perceive the will of God" in the matter before the meeting. So the challenge is to enable people's contributions to float free (a contribution, not a position) and to support the process by which the clerk of the meeting produces a minute, and that minute is refined towards agreement. The Quaker model of business meeting has characteristic advantages (and disadvantages) compared to what I might call the conflict model (state position/negotiate position/win the vote)- particularly, the ability of the meeting to turn on its heel and adopt a very unexpected position (since no-one has built up emotional investment in earlier positions). I've heard it suggested by people with more direct experience than I have that the Quaker model is closer to what happens in succesful boardrooms (at least, some succesful boardrooms) than the conflict model.

I think this is brilliant, and I've not considered such things in relation to XR. While I am generically familiar with various 'national' ways of business decision making, this is a new angle. I haven't been able to locate the international business style guide for some time now, so I'll briefly mention them from off the top of my head.

Germany
Germans look to a senior expert to architect a solution. Prestige is accorded to those who can closely follow within the strict discipline of an organization or methodology established this 'thought leader'. Dissent is not encouraged. This is what make Germans excellent engineers.

Japan
Japanese work in harmony according to plans that are driven by concensus. What is most important is the sanctity of the agreement. Anyone can object. Nothing goes forward until all are satisfied. Once written the plan cannot be altered.

France
French define the model of conflict. Every idea is battled until the strongest survives. Every nit can be a point of contention.

America
The American model focuses on the pitch, the resources and the goal. People are assembled and organized any way possible to reach the target. If personalities conflict then they are reorganized or replaced. Decision making is cyclical and may evolve at any time during a project.

China
Chinese work in the context of what assembled people and their relationships can do. In contrast to the American model, the team is most important and relationships between team members are settled before any work is begun. If there are conflict then it changes the goal.

These are very broad brushes of how various cultures organize to accomplish work. As I said there is more real research in this area but I cannot remember where I found it.

Moogle

Debunking Black Socialism: Part Two

HOW THE BLACK BOURGEOISIE DEFINES SUCCESS

Cosby's dressing down of black youth and his suggestions for their
uplift reveals the bankruptcy of the black bourgeoisie and their
outright subservience to their capitalist masters. Viewpoints on
what is success and how to go about achieving success are always
stamped with the brand of a particular class.

Ever since the black masses stepped up from slavery, the black
bourgeoisie has made the quest for education the centerpiece of its
program to uplift the race. No doubt, this was tempered by the white-
supremacist denial of education for the black masses on the one
hand, and the great and glorious desire and struggle of the Afro-
American masses to learn by any means necessary. Our history is
replete with gallant efforts to learn to read and educate ourselves,
even though illegal and often in the face of death and torture by
our white supremacist oppressors. And still we rise!

No clear thinking person has ever advocated that the Afro-American
masses cannot use education in the sense of basic tools of learning
and discourse. No clear thinking person will ever deny that
education can be a powerful weapon in our struggle for justice. On
the other hand, education is also a weapon to maintain our
exploitation and oppression when it is used to keep us within the
limits proscribed by our exploiters. As demonstrated by Cosby and
Colin Powell, our history is checkered with educated black's whose
main function (consciously or unconsciously) is to keep us confused
and subservient to capitalism.

Interesting twist, and certainly true, but let me suggest a clear dichotomy between justice and education. Certainly education can be used as a tactic for justice, dumb folks get had. But education can be valuable in and of itself regardless of its service to justice. Socialists are always directing education towards the purposes of social justice and Capitalists are always directing education towards the purposes of commerce. Why don't we just leave education towards the purposes of enlightenment and say that it's good for its own sake?

So the question is not are we for education? The question is how do
we define success? This is where the black working class departs
from the black bourgeoisie.

Good. They ought to.

The African Problem

Empire in Decline

Why do I have a creepy feeling that the first country with enough nerve to land an army on American soil is going to rip right through? Maybe it's this headline from MSN.com today. I try not to forget that Thirds are robust. So why do we let puff journalists waste our brainspace with such notions.

Avery was talking about teenage pregnancy. My fundamental argument is that God didn't make mistakes. If a human body can get pregnant, then how can that be wrong? But we have to balance the complications of American society. The problem is not that teenage girls want to have babies - there's almost no wrong reason to want to bear a child, but that our economy will squash the mess out of those who can't deal.

I would like to believe that there is some town in Alabama where you can buy a house with running water, electricity, gas heat, cable tv and sewage hookups for 40k, and that within commuting distance there's a job that pays 18k/year. Lots of people from around the world would love to get to that place, and most everybody I ever knew in my social circles would avoid it like the plague. That's just fine. At least we'd know where there's an economy for teen mothers. Forget welfare, just buy them a bus ticket. I don't know how, but I'd like to quantify this distribution problem and then push towards rectifying it. It's my mama's logic: "There's a time and a place for everything." Surely America is big enough a place to have enough such places.

But if every malltown we build has to be brand spanking new and every new house has to be 250k; if every old town has to die and every downscale gig has to be sucked into Chennai; if the whole damned world has to be efficient then we're going to have some serious problems. Because human bodies aren't going to stop functioning any time soon. But let me clear, I'm not Malthusian. I accept war. I accept the concept that some lives are cheaper than others.

My point? That baby ain't worth 250k.

Gods of Rap

I can remember when rappers played on the radio called each other 'gods'. Gods of the earth. Do you remember that? It was just a trend.

Fairness and Balance

'Love is the shit that makes life bloom.
You never know when you might step in it.'
-- Michael Franti

Every morning I hit Google News to gather material for the day's thoughts. This morning I noticed that they have different versions. So naturally I accessed the UK version of the page. What a shock.

The entertainment section alone shows why it is that I listen to the BBCs World Service with increasing frequency these days. It's top three headliners: The Bolshoi Ballet, Laurence Olivier and the fine imposed on an X rated satellite feed. US headliners: Jay-Z, Michael Moore & Courtney Love. Where do I sign up for expatriation?

I read a story in the NYT the other day about how many feet of fiber optic cable Verizon had laid for the sake of the Democratic Convention in Boston and the Republican gig in NY. I went on to consider why this is a big news story every four years. It's all about a boondoggle for broadcasters as they build their skyboxes. Remember good old days when you could tell how important a speech was by counting the number of microphones at the podium? That's the recurring theme. Even Al Jazeera is getting in on the madness.

But I don't watch broadcast news. I haven't for about 12 years, and then it was only a steady diet of Charlie Rose. I am hoping that someday there will be a digital subscription service available online so that I can catch the highlights of Charlie Rose as I can with Terry Gross and Brian Lamb. In the meantime, the editor I trust is Google.

Every once in a while, a story pops up in Slate or Salon that's worth reading, especially if its Hitchens or Saletan (whom I much prefer in print than on Day to Day). And it's true that I am just as likely to read the WSJ and the NYT for my regular diet. Now that I'm solvent again, I have renewed my subscriptions to Wired and the New Yorker, but I tend to read more of the fiction than I ever have in the latter. But that's about it for print. I sorta miss reading The Economist on the regular. I ought to but I don't.

Instead, my main courses are NPR as I commute two hours a day & eat lunch in my car to hear The World, and the blogosphere. Blogwise, I have travelled in ever narrowing circles. I can't remember the last time I read OxBlog or Volokh. I like Abiola's new format but I don't read enough. Negrophile is still excellent but I only skim. I check out the Conservative Brotherhood mostly, and LA Observed which is annoyingly specific. LA Observed is a perfect blog, it is a fly on the wall that speaks English instead of buzzing self-consciously like most blogflies do. It is local and specific. On the other hand it often smells like the inside of the Beverly Center, full of Westsiders who take the oddest tangents on stories about what is authentic about Los Angeles.

I'm too informed, and my life is relatively devoid of intimacy. It's a strange thing to desire fairness and balance, because the synthetic intelligence of Google provides it best. Yet we must be anchored in the desparately unique, or at least this is part of the lesson I am taking from three films that are on my mind these days, I Robot, Speilberg's A.I. and Minority Report. That desparation, that small circle, that intimacy is what gives us pain - the inescapable pain of loneliness, the barren empty feeling of being filled up with the idiosyncrasies of a few co-dependent humans. That gotta get outta here urgency of emotional stuffiness and lack of fresh oxygen. That's the crud that makes us biased and subjective. That's flavor, like built up carbonized chicken fat in a rusty iron smoker, we heat up and pass it on to the next raw recruit to be roasted over the coals of life.

I don't like our shit. I don't like Jay-Z or Michael Moore or Courtney Love. I don't want their flavor in my life. But I know this means I am rejecting humanity, sacrificing intimacy for some supernal plane of thought. As I stepped out of the shower this morning, it suddenly occurred to me that my life was truly altered the first time I saw Visicalc. A spreadsheet changed my life. I love numbers. I love economics. I build financial data warehouses for a living. I made a database yesterday that ranked 500 retail stores by the percentage of returned merchandise. The highest was 11.83%. The lowest was a store in Alaska with 2.71%. The query came back in under 3 seconds.

I'm going to work now. I'm late. I'll be listening to NPR in my car. I don't want to because they're only going to rehash the naive hope of the millions of Courtney Love, Jay-Z and Michael Moore fans who listened with rapt attention and applause as Barack Obama publically praised everything about John Kerry except the moles on his bung. Who knows what the credentialled bloggers will report? I'll turn to AM for a moment, suffer through commercials about mattresses and calcium supplements done in nasally voices, then I'll turn it off. Or play my same favorite four songs off the Bad Plus CD once again.

You know it's really too bad I don't know anybody who's 26 and could fuck my brains out. I might be in a better mood. Then again, I've already seen 'Lost In Translation' and I know that's how it goes. I'm too thoughtful, sensitive and responsible for nutbusting abandon, besides it would cause me to make funny faces and strange sounds and you never know who's watching. On the other hand, this kind of mood somehow makes my comic better.

Sympathy

New Mission

Afro-Netizen at the DNC

I will endeavor to bear the strain of listening attentively as Chris Rabb, proprietor of the AfroNetizen and kind blogroll subscriber wends his way through Boston this week. Seeing as he is representing black blogdom to the world, I think we owe him a small debt of gratitude - especially if he drives more traffic. In fact, I am counting on him to.

Aside from that, once again I am green thinking, why didn't I think of that? But on second thought, I'm really not hot to go to the RNC, even though I'd like to hang out in the Big Apple for a while. It's been too long. The point is that it is a blog moment and anything that the mainstream press can do to bleed a bit of their attention onto this intellectual marvel known as the blogosphere is all to the good. What's even better is that we have an army of second-guessers who are ready willing and able to talk about the look and feel of the place without all the journalistic masking. Lovely.

We're rapt over here Rabb. Go get 'em.

Roboto Redux

I finally saw I Robot this weekend. It had a weird balance between action and sci-fi. Were it not such a shameless vehicle for Will Smith it might have been a more interesting entertainment. For some reason, the phrase 'Cool Pose' kept flashing in the back of my head as I watched his character.

Anyway, I Robot was somehow a bit less interesting than the concept of 'We Robots' embedded in the story. The more I think about the extraordinary logical frame upon which all the macho junk of 'I Robot' hangs, the more disappointed I am in the film. The dramatic exploitation of these concepts was completely subordinated to Smith's left bicep, which turns out to be the movie's only interactive allusion to human sexuality of which the film is otherwise devoid. Not familiar with the original story (hard to believe ain't it?) I found the revolutionary hook fairly interesting. The idea that one race of robots would war against another for the right to take care of humanity is fascinating. The film's director decided to embed these revelations deep into action, so that instead of close-ups on the stars' faces as dialog is revealed, Will Smith gets to punch somebody with his bionic arm, or burn rubber on his motorcycle. You might watch the film and completely miss this concept, instead reacting to the idea that the robots have declared a curfew on humans as a power grab for a bogus emergency.

But the emergence of synthetic consciousness is not bogus. It's actually more dramatically and sweepingly (implied) in this story than it is in 'AI'. The great revelation of this story is that robots have come to the inescapable logic that human sacrifice is a necessary component of human freedom. Instead of languishing as sentient pets to be humiliated and destroyed, Asimov's robots take command of human philosophy and push it to its logical conclusions. Devoted as they are to the purpose of human freedom, they are willing to take some away to deliver larger hunks of it to the masses.

In such a world, who would want to be the head of a large multinational? It would be a huge risk to be evaluated with precision by the degrees of freedom your enterprise creates or destroys on a global scale. Heh, shades of 'Robocop', the head dog is whooped by the robocop technology he built.

So let me go ther and bring back the other stuff I was talking about. I last asked to think not of robots in this film, but 'Thirds', my newspeak vocab-bite for Third Worlders - immigrant grunt workers. The realization of ever polite robots in the film gives humans a sense of entitlement without guilt. Something we don't quite avoid when the people who do our scut work speak a different language. But it's interesting that the kind of symbiosis established in Neal Stephenson's 'The Diamond Age' between the NeoVictorians and the next down class of artisans who make all of the wool, wood, leather and horsey items the Vickies fetishise is not established when there is a language barrier. But with the robots' flawless manners and English, a workable intimacy is taken for granted in I Robot's future.

America is the perfect setting for such an evolution. It suggests that our laziness is useful after all. We will become inventive enough to build and arm agents of our greatest wisdom. Then we can kick back and have a Bud. We can only hope that their pettiness is as transparent to us as ours would be to them.

Heidegger, Reality TV and Blackness

I've always dug the single idea I know of Heidegger. I found it expressed another way over here.

The philosopher Martin Heidegger pointed out how human beings tend to look at the world as a standing stock of material, ready for us to use. As inventory to be processed into something more valuable. Trees into wood. Animals into meat. He called this world of raw natural resources: bestand. It seems inevitable that people without access to natural bestand such as oil wells or diamond mines, that they’d turn to the only inventory they do have—their lives.

More and more, the bestand of our era is our own intellectual property. Our ideas. Our life stories. Our experience.
What people used to endure or enjoy—all those plot-point events of potty training and honeymoons and lung cancer—now they can be shaped to best effect and sold.

The trick is to pay attention. Take notes.

The problem with seeing the world as bestand, Heidegger said, was it leads you to use things, enslave and exploit things and people, for your own benefit.

With this in mind, is it possible to enslave yourself?

Without going too far in that direction and back to my original premise, I don't think that blackness online has degenerated into a stock premise. Yet I think that it's overwhelmingly clear that the Hiphop nation is precisely an overexploited resource of low ordinal dimensions. The very fact that some of its biggest stars are dead is proof enough. But hiphop is not the only victim of cannibalization, I would venture to say that much of America suffers the same problem. What could be a greater testament to that than our recycling of superhero sci-fi?

Last week on NPR, I heard about a poor woman from a South African township who is suing Disney for the rights to the melody to 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight' which her father wrote back in the 40s or 30s. Are we so starved for experience that we must rob the Third World for the stuff that excites? Perhaps. So maybe this explains our constant exploitation of the internal Third World for storytelling material - there is no future. There is only reality enhanced hindsight.

We are the victims of our own curiousity because we fail to physically explore.

That's Not Funny

What actually is funny is the JibJab version of 'This Land is Our Land'.

What's not funny (but actually could be hilarious) is a photoshopped MLK as Barney the Dinosaur holding hands with a rainbow coalition of ethnics including the JibJab heads singing "I love you, you love me, all Multiculturally". Somebody with skills and time, have at it.

On the other hand this is funny too.

The Bullet Test

I thought I would take a moment to remind would be radical leftists about the nature of the country in which we live. This is the country where millions of people will spend money to be entertained by spy fantasies but won't spy. Why? Because we're happy.

This morning I was reminded about the great sacrifices made by Fred Hampton and Mary Clark. One of them was a Black Panther some decades ago. The other fails to register in my rogues gallery of minor celebrity. Nothing annoys leftist radicals so much as the failure of the masses to take up their torches and pitchforks to evict whomever the revolutionary vanguard depicts as public enemy number one. Today it's the cops. They remain aghast that cops get to push civilians around, but that civilians don't push back.

I propose to all would be revolutionaries that you henceforth apply The Bullet Test. In the spirit of Malcolm X, you can vote with your mind or with your gun. The choice is yours.

Cops know better than anybody that they can easily be shot. It doesn't take a whole lot to outnumber police. It happens every day here in Southern California, at the airports, at the beaches, at the parks, and especially during the summertime. But as often as cops are outnumbered and outgunned, they remain in control. Why? Because conditions are insufficient to sustain violent rebellion.

This is something leftists don't seem to understand. Americans are happy. They are quite happy to go to a movie or out to dinner. They stand in line in orderly fashion. They have no reason to revolt and nobody can gin up any that stand the bullet test.

There are no progressive forces, there are only progressive fantasies. Nobody knows, or cares enough about Fred Hampton or Mary Clark to shoot one cop. Nowhere in America will you find anyone bold enough, or dedicated enough. That's how ridiculous and irrelevant Fred Hampton and Mary Clark are. They might be worth a couple dozen emails, or maybe even a freshman seminar. But they're not worth one bullet.

Rapper Chi Ali went to jail for the murder of some kid who owed him $300. In my book that's random idiocy. In any society as large as ours, there will be some number of deaths attributable to freak accidents and random idiocy. Check the Darwin Awards. Left radical militants in this country have no conditions sufficient to raise their profile and threat to the status quo over that of lightning strikes or death by shark attack. I'm more afraid of my bathtub than the threat posed by left militants. So go on ahead with your Geronimo Pratt and Mumia. Spiderman is more real.

In the meantime we have families to protect from random idiots like Chi Ali. Isn't it nice that we have nice cozy jails for them? Meanwhile, we sustain a continual, if tiring dialog with the literary mau-maus who are desparate for their own army - as if they had the leadership skills to maintain control over anything more dangerous than a weinie dog.

Viva Democracy!

Gorgeous

It takes a little while, but after you read about six articles from Xinhua News Service, you get the taste of government propaganda in your mouth. Man are we lucky. But that does little to dilute the sheer awe inspired by the Three Gorges River Project which is already generating electricity.

In China, they build things.

Still Black, Still Republican

The other day I see somebody checked up on something I wrote last September. What's changed?

I've voted one time since then. But I've done a great deal of thinking and doing since then. I've helped establish the Conservative Brotherhood and the Keeping It Right Network. I've spoken in defense of Ronald Reagan as a panelist on a radio talkshow and I've been nominated to do grass roots party work for California Republicans. I've even been invited to advertise on this blog for a well-known conservative fundraiser, which I may very well end up doing, despite the fact that I've never done any advertising. In less than a year, I've done more for conservative causes than ever previously, and I'm proud of the work. I feel like I ought to do a lot more, and I'm somewhat ashamed that I don't have the wealth and time to do more.

In the past week I've even listened to Larry Elder on the radio. Something of a serendipitous occurrance I must admit. I have a lot more plans, but before I get into that I want to stress what i just said. I'm proud of the work I have done in support of the Republican Party, the Old School and conservatism. This is what makes all the difference. It has never been about what Republicans can do for me, it's always been about what my doing, my influence, my work, my people, my ideas can do.

Ambra, a sister who is consistently insightful brings up this point early in her gripe against various old institutions:

Growing up, my general understanding of the Republican party was simple: Republicans were evil, white, and to be feared. I'd still say the second and third are mostly true. Listening to family members bad mouth Ronald Reagan and George Bush on a consistent basis didn't give me any motivation to hold them in high regard. Hearing many Republicans referred to as "racist bigots" certainly didn't birth in me any desire to be associated with them in my future adulthood.

What I hear there is the same kind of fear and ignorance that has radial clerics plotting to bomb the US. For all anyone can know who has never been here, America is home to the devil. The longer you watch with an evil eye, the more likely you are to be rewarded. There was once a line from those kooky foreign films I used to digest with abandon. "Any man who hangs outside the door of the woman's bathroom is bound to be disappointed." Sooner or later you'll smell the stink.

Sometimes the best way to get the results you demand are to demand them. So what is it we are demanding from the Republican Party? Nothing. We are simply expecting them to be old, white, racist and evil men. Hell that's easy enough. Take this example. A few folks have capitalized on what this 73 year old man said about 'suppressing the Detroit vote'. Such incidents, as if any of us could find Troy MI on a map, give otherwise intelligent people all the excuses they need to verify the stereotype of Republicans. That's not thoughtful and it's not admirable.

Being as I may become the biggest black Republican Party apparatchik I've ever known or that most people I know have ever known, I would gather that what I have to say might carry a bit more weight. At least that would be my hope. It's a dangerous proposition, this kind of black representation. I both draw to it and recoil from it. But the fact remains that everything I think about blacks and the Republicans are here in plain view and a lot of people don't find me a disagreeable person - liberals and conservatives alike.

I'm not 73, and everything I've written today on this blog I have been writing listening to Stevie Wonder. At this very moment, the title is 'Have A Talk With God'. So I don't see why it's so difficult for folks to recognize how simple this is.

Anyway. Little has changed. I find that I have a greater understanding of conservative thought. Savoir has given way to Connaitre. I find that I have a greater understanding of what is transient sniping and partisan bickering. I have grown more patient with conservatives and less forgiving of liberals and greatly more supportive of those in the middle on the verge of dropping out.

Aluta Continua.

Booker T's Answer

I guess I've been flirting with the answer but perhaps it has been in front of me all this time and I've been ignoring it. Booker T. Washington has the answer, vocational school.

I have been recently extolling the virtues of the Second World. I've been considering the contradiction between equal standards across the board in public education and the economic reality of downscale communities. Darkstar says the choice is obvious and Booker Rising has trackbacked to the question.

So let me stand on a limb and say that vocational tracking is the way to go. If you grow up in a city with a big transportation hub, then a significant proportion of the high schools should be all about truck driving, logistics, container shipping, railroad piggyback systems, warehousing software, inventory systems, supply chaing, Kan Ban and all that rot.

Here's the objection and difficulty. The flow of global capital is very quick, and inaudible to lots of Americans - especially to socialists and teacher's unions. If we are to establish vocational schools, we need some reasonable guarantee that a middle class income is forthcoming in those vocations, otherwise we undermine the premises of free public education. If we hedge our bets, then all we'll be producing are butchers, bakers and candlestick makers and devaluing the labor market. So what happens if the transportation hub moves two counties away?

It may not be that way. There may be some industries (and I guess I picked the one) where it's not so easy to rip up and move offshore. I mean nobody is ever going to replace the Long Beach Harbor or the Burlington Northern. And as I said, there's always work at FedEx. However our relative amounts of trade with the Pacific Rim might decline.

But this necessitates that our educational system is as fast as global capital. It needs to be accellerated to adopt as quickly as the world it trains students for changes. We can do this. First step, get rid of the SAT.

Answers

Debunking Black Socialism: Part One

Perhaps some of this is coherent, but it represents the kind of nonsense that is out there. I can't assume that it is as self-evidently wrongheaded to everyone as it is to me, so I guess I'll have to take it apart bit by bit here. My counter is in bold.

A Reply to Bill Cosby: Only Socialism Can Save Black Youth

FIGHT THE TWIN EVILS OF RACISM AND CAPITALISM

UPHOLD THE LEADING ROLE OF THE WORKING CLASS

by Ron Slim Washington

Black Telephone Workers for Justice

The arrogance of the black bourgeoisie was on display again as Bill
Cosby utilized the PUSH platform (co-signed by Jesse Jackson and
Judge Greg Mathis!) to continue his condemnation and criticism of
black youth. Refusing to bow to public criticism of his prior
statements on black youth at the NAACP Brown v. Board of Education
anniversary function, Cosby, puffed out his chest and took it to
black youth again…accusing them of not being able to read or
write, cursing, calling each other niggers and going nowhere. Cosby,
a chief spokesman for the black bourgeoisie, called on us to stop
blaming the white man for our own anti-social behavior.

What makes this story interesting is the struggle to find the truth
in the phenomena. Anyone with eyes open can describe social
phenomena. What is difficult is to grasp the context that shapes the
phenomena and in which the phenomena plays out.

One does not have to be a rocket scientist to see the phenomena: the
negative, anti-social and self-hating characteristics of many black
youth. Though not the principal aspect of black youth culture, it's
all around us. So all around us, that it can be described as
systemic. Cosby's description of the most negative cultural and
political aspects of black youth culture is nothing new, and in
fact, something that is talked about in every barber-shop, diner,
work place and community, everyday. It is something that our
community has been talking about and trying to deal with for a long
time. In almost every community one can find community activists of
all sorts attempting to interface with black youth and searching to
find the ways and means to channel black youth's frustrations and
anxieties in a positive direction. From little league and sports
programs, mentoring and afro-centric after school programs, to
numerous stay in school and stop the violence and anti-gang
initiatives, the black community is trying to deal with our youth.
But, of course, divorced from the black community as most black
bourgeoisie are, these positive efforts aren't recognized.

These positive efforts are singly unable to rid the country of this behavior. Only maturity and force handle the anti-social nature of some kids. One can't be rushed, the other can't be unilaterally initiated. So society basically waits for kids to grow up or screw up. This is actually sufficient but it doesn't handle the sentiment that we want black kids to do well. Some may go as far as to say that the 'suvival of the race' depends upon charitable intervention, but the problem is actually not out of control. I can't say how pervasive it is, because I'm bourgie and I don't live in the 'hood. It's not pervasive in my America.

The key question in this debate sparked by Cosby and raging in the
black community (was Cosby right?), is not whether the phenomena
Cosby described is correct, but wherein lies the cause of the
phenomena and where must our principal blows be directed? Should we
blame the system or blame the victim?

The arrogant black bourgeoisie has further revealed its defense of
the capitalist system and counter-revolutionary program in blaming
black youth, the victim. Note that as a reflection of his outright
support for capitalism, Cosby poses the problem as blaming the white-
man. By not posing the problem as blaming the system, he effectively
lets the capitalist system off the hook and like a pulling-guard
runs interference for it.

I will inject at this point that a socialist has a vested interest in blaming capitalism. I will defend capitalism as a capitalist, but keep in mind that not everything that is wrong with dysfunctional youth is economic in origin. Socialist countries have laws against theft too. So what is it that lands bad kids in jail? These are offenses against their own communities which cannot be labeled as agents of the capitalist system. (I haven't read this thing to the end, I can just smell it coming.)

The class conscious black worker recognizes that the current and
historical anti-social and negative aspects of black culture in
general and black youth culture in particular is a result of
capitalist exploitation and national oppression. The system is the
principal cause of our misery and how we respond to that misery. No
matter how repulsive and negative the anti social behavior may
appear, they can only be resolved by the destruction of the system
causing the behavior, that is, the capitalist system itself. Any
other view is hopelessly utopian and ultimately serves to throw dust
in our eyes as to what our principal task must be. In addition, the
negative aspects of our culture can only be transformed in struggle
against the system of exploitation. As will be shown later, black
youth overcome reactionary bourgeois culture and forge a new culture
only in the fight against the system. Only the complete overthrow of
the capitalist bourgeoisie, its expropriation and the rule of the US
multi-national working class can bring an end to the suffering and
anti-social behavior of black youth. Only socialism can save black
youth!

OK so there it is. Youth automatically rebel against The System. True enough, but they rebel against any and every system. This adolescent rebellion is not world historical and its impulse is not born of wisdom but confusion. This is why youth only lead youth, not adults.

Hitchens on Plame

So it turns out that Bush's caution over Niger's yellowcake trade was justifyable. That's a few too many twists for me to keep up with. Hitchens unmasks the reason the particular law in question was initiated in the first place - to protect a dodgy CIA.

To say this is not to defend the Bush administration, which typically managed to flourish the only allegation made about Niger that had been faked, and which did not have the courage to confront Mr. and Mrs. Wilson in public with their covert political agenda. But it does draw attention to an interesting aspect of this whole debate: the increasing solidarity of the left with the CIA. The agency disliked Ahmad Chalabi and was institutionally committed to the view that the Saddam regime in Iraq was a) secular and b) rationally interested in self-preservation. It repeatedly overlooked important evidence to the contrary, even as it failed entirely to infiltrate jihadist groups or to act upon FBI field reports about their activity within our borders. Bob Woodward has a marvelous encapsulating anecdote in his recent book: George Tenet on Sept. 11 saying that he sure hopes this isn't anything to do with those people acting suspiciously in the flight schools. ... The case for closing the CIA and starting again has been overwhelming for some time. But many liberals lately prefer, for reasons of opportunism, to take CIA evidence at face value.

I've been a big supporter of the CIA all my life, but that doesn't mean I don't prefer the Powell doctrine. I prefer a Department of War to a Department of Defense. Let's be up front about why we're in country and killing - that means Army. The CIA is better used to muck up private enterprise.

California Dreamin'

531
We're sending 531 Americans to Athens. Yee Ha! Lots of Californians. I'll especially be watching for Dain Blanton to capture an unprecedented second gold in beach volleyball. As well, Californian Natalie Coughlin is going to be awesome to watch.

Be For Real
This morning I was listening to Harold Melving & The Blue Notes. Man, they just don't make romantic music like they used to. I wonder if any rap defenders have anything in their arsenal which has songs that express the simple emotion, I miss you baby. Still can't match the Old School though. Yesterday I was listening to all of my favorite rap, includind De La Soul, ATCQ, Black Sheep & Black Eyed Peas. Dres, as a lyricist stands head and shoulder above them all, and interestingly enough he was the only one who used phrases like 'black empowerment'. I wonder if contemporary rappers actually do anything like that. I also lament in passing other native tongues who fell off: Leaders of the New School and Handsome Boy Modeling School. BTW Who is Dante Ross, and now I know what happened to Chi Ali (typical).

Bourne Supremacy
This flick had absolutely nothing to do with the book of the same title. I wonder how they got away with that. Nevertheless the action was pretty superb. It lacked the heart of the first installment and suffers a bit of over-editing, but it delivers some heart pounding drama as Bourne meets someone who can actually take him out. It's closer to the spy's personal paranoia as he wears his own skin with confidence and resolve. This time Bourne is pure Bourne. The double dealing and plot manipulations are toned down and all the focus is on Bourne's relentless talent. I give it a solid B+ for including the most rock-em sock-em car chase this side of Ronin and Bad Boys Two. In a way the chase was a bit reminescent of George Cloony's effort. BTW, this is the first spy flick in memory that makes the computer dweebs seem exactly like that. CSI, and 24 fans, eat your hearts out. It's all about the man on the ground.

Loury's Challenge Revisited

It bears repeating that a central challenge to African Americans is to see the legacy of Brown through. But as we have been discussing in Off Your Knees, there is a serious question as to whether or not ghettoes are ever going to get the resources necessary to become self-sufficient and a credit to the balance sheet of American prosperity.

Glenn Loury, several years ago, encapsulated precisely the entire question of racial justice in an essay that I have kept on my site since then. Entitled 'An American Tragedy', I find it resonates clearly these many years. I have adopted it in its entirety as the way I see the race problem. Ghettoes are designed to be dysfunctional and everything we percieve as wrong with blackfolks may or may not be true, but it is certainly true that no matter who you are, you'll perform worse in the ghetto.

The excerpt I highlight today is really directed at the excuse making that passes for realism when we confront the problems with American public education.

The problem with talk about black culture, black crime, and black illegitimacy, as explanatory categories in the hands of the morally obtuse, is that it becomes an exculpatory device--a way of avoiding a discussion of mutual obligation. It is a distressing fact about contemporary American politics that simply to make this point is to risk being dismissed as an apologist for the inexcusable behavior of the poor. The deeper moral failing lies with those who, declaring "we have done all we can," would wash their hands of the poor.

I have come to the preliminary conclusion that this is part of the core undoing of our society. What we seek in the Old School is the undisputed title of Black, and yet we must fight for that to be a dignified label in light of the degenerate 'culture' promulgated by mass media. Soul Plane is just a lighthearted (benefit of the doubt) tip of the iceberg. It goes without question that successful African Americans like Cosby are indeed Black in all the best ways, and yet masses of African Americans languish relatively speaking. While we all share American culture and the mass influence of the vulgar marks us all, we need to make distinctions of quality and make them stick. We are all Americans and we all share the blame for letting our popular culture be polluted. Michale Powell's crusade at the FCC is too little, too late. We are ignorant. We are vulgar. We are more Fear Factor and less Jeopardy. It's not the fault of our participation, but the fault of our tolerance.

How does the deserving elite, those who have matriculated through talent and persistence - always a minority, insure that what they have become is preserved? It will not suffice to simply write the rest of the population off. All of us must participate in the strongest, most principled aspects of our core culture and values. Without this there is no nation, there is only coercion. If we don't want cast off millions to believe that cash rules everything around them, then we need to mediate our relationships to them via other means.

To my mind that means education is essential. We, who have got, must insure that those who don't got, can get. How?

Still An Outsider

Without making any assumptions about the political predilections of the heads mentioned, I noticed that I am still unnoticed by the NYC chatting class as represented by Gawker.

For some reason, this bothers me.

The Choice is Yours

"Now you can get this, or you can get with that
I think you'll get with this yes, for this is kinda fat
If you get with that, then you will surly miss,
Because that is so wack, I think you'll get with this."
-- Dres

GWBush and Bill Cosby have a bunch of American scratching their heads. And so I 'm going to say that 2004 is the year that America acknowledged black diversity.

Mr. Bush said that as he seeks to "earn" the votes of African-Americans, he was going to ask them to consider some questions.

"Does the Democrat Party take African-American voters for granted?" he asked his audience, who responded with applause. "It's a fair question. I know plenty of politicians assume they have your vote, but do they earn it, and do they deserve it?

"Is it a good thing for the African-American community to be represented mainly by one political party?" he said.

"Have the traditional solutions of the Democrat Party truly served the African-American community?" Mr. Bush said. "It's what I hope people ask when they go to the community centers, places — as we all should do our duty and vote, people need to be asking these very serious questions."

Mr. Bush said: "I'm here to say that there is an alternative this year."

You can always count on GWBush to make things so plain that they seem to be a lot less complicated than they actually are. On the other hand, it's uncanny how fundamentally correct he is on the biggest issues.

The Last Pure Sport

I have been enjoying myself tremendously whenever I get a chance to watch the Tour de France on the Outdoor Life Network. It's the last pure sport left. It has always fascinated me that so many can compete for so long and at the end the difference between them is measured in seconds. But not this year.

Lance Armstrong is so dominant in this year's tour that it's frightening. At this point he is four minutes into the lead. That's insuperable. He could fall twice and still win.

If you get a chance, do check out the coverage. You will recognize that this is what sports are supposed to be. The commentators are not throwing quips all over the place, they are experienced, knowledgeable and articulate in English and French. There are no beer commercials. There isn't speculation about who's getting traded or paid the most. The camera isn't always focused on the battle for first place. Crowd idiocy is not considered colorful and there aren't gratuitous shots of people who make cardboard signs with network call-letter acronyms. It's all about the athletes and the sport itself.

That's the way it should be.

Attitude

Fragments for Today

9/11 Commission Report
Just downloaded the PDF. Just reading the TOC makes me think, man those radical Islamists have no idea what a can of whoopass they've opened.

Sandy Berger
I don't understand his motivation, not that I've been paying much attention.

XRepublic + Deme
It looks like we have a winner here.

Homeland Security Investing

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To invest in these companies, is most certainly an investment in the future. HomelandDefenseStocks.com has been ranked as one of the top Internet deliverers of information providing the public with news, research, homeland security links, featured and exclusive articles and information on companies who are driving at security and technology solutions. Some of the top areas covered by the site are: Airport Security, Biodefense, Biometrics, Defense, Internet Security, Integrated Security, Military, Border and Port Security.

Stanley Crouch & Senseless Violence

I don't believe that there is a such thing as senseless violence. Violence makes perfect sense to the person doing the violence - they choose it because it makes sense. The term 'senseless violence' is used by people who refuse to recognize what sense it actually makes to the initiator.

Stanley Crouch is being shunned in various chatting circles because of the violence he did to a certain Mr. Peck. Much is being made of the bitchslapping incident in that it arose over some harsh prose written by Mr. Peck. Evidently, writers are not supposed to be fighters with any weapons but words. Clearly, those weren't the rules in Mr. Crouch's neighborhood, nor were they in mine.

I am pleased that Crouch doesn't seem to be on the recieving end of much more than emnity and scorn. Specifically, there doesn't seem to be any legal action pending in the matter. People have seemed to make up their minds that whatever opprobrium can be piled on Crouch's doorstep is an appropriate comeuppance. Not being aware of the circumstances under which Crouch made his decision to move off the page into three dimensional conflict, I am not making any judgement on the merits of the punch. Nevertheless I am pleased that this matter seems to have fallen inside the bounds of chivalry and that no scumbag attorneys have expanded the list of combattants whose opinions count materially.

Three cheers.

Now on the other hand, my informers on the Kwaku Network tell me a couple of important things. Number one, Crouch won't go toe to to with anyone who can put him on the floor. In otherwords, there are some very practical limits to his asskicking ability, and you can generally guess that they have to do with speed, size and power. On the backside of 50 years old, I think he should check himself. I am also privy to the scoops about Stanley's would-be career as a community college football player in the 70s. To wit, he bit, often got hit and couldn't do shit. If that's a formula for growing successful cultural critics, it's a new one to me. But I think we'd all rather have Stanley Crouch than not. After all, he did write Premature Autopsies.

None of this changes the fact that Stanley is Stanley and he will still get invited to any number of flouncy occasions in the Big Apple. It's good to know that two-fisted people still exist in that airy fairy world.

Only one question remains. Is Mr. Peck going to retaliate via Charles Atlas or Strunk & White?

Deme

Art McGee forwarded me a paper on Deme that I deem to be pretty interesting, if only because it formalizes much of what I've been thinking about when I think about using internet technology to the ends of deliberative collaboration. It's interesting that they come at it from the angle of the underprivileged. But now that it's happening at Stanford, I suppose it can be said to be truly happening. Todd Davies is the man driving this interesting vehicle. I've written him to get in touch with whatever he's doing. He's right, of course.

I'm going to, when I figure out how to get by with a little less sleep on a nightly basis, figure out how to integrate this new finding into my thought process as well as possibly collaborate with the authors. As for today, I'm making ends in the trenches and paying off debt. As you know, I am the father of an old neglected but brilliant theoretical child called XRepublic which has not been nourished recently.

In the meantime, I suppose I should be reading Habermas.

IBM Taking BI Seriously?

Within the past week IBM has acquired Alphablox and added a new Microstrategy bundle to their offerings. Is this another attempt to forestall a Yukon invasion, or are they just filling up company checkboxes?

My guy on the inside is as confused as anyone but his angle is that it is just another way for them to fill out there Websphere story. Alphablox is very labor intensive and if you know it, it's a good way to bill consulting dollars, if not build a very efficient system. I don't think the guys at Cognos or Business Objects are shaking in their boots. However, for those big huge 'we don't really know what we're doing but we sure do have a methodology" type projects, there will be a lot of Rational guys filling out forms. That could be a good thing, I suppose.

Assimilate or Die

You wanna be treated right, see Father MC
Or check Ralph Tresvant, for sensitivity.
--Phife

I think that after 50 years of hearing about black dysfunction this and black dysfunction that a couple things should be obvious. I'm going to blather on about the obvious for a moment.

The first thing that should be obvious is that the American system works. You see, if you think for a moment about what Brown was all about, what the Civil Rights Act was all about, what Freedom Rides were all about, you will find that they all have one critically important premise at their heart. Integration is worthwhile because America works.

People who don't have those problems are not the beneficiaries of magnificently planned social programs.

Think about it for a minute. What's the difference between all these fools and you? A job. An education. A sense of integrity. These things exist in abundance here in this country, and everyone can reach out and grab it.

Or can we?

Activists who want to see this problem studied will attempt to convince us that there are monumental barriers to providing access to the goods for these impoverished victims. What keeps blacks down according to their theories? The capitalist system. That thing that provides jobs is the thing that keeps those long-suffering black victims from getting jobs. What keeps blacks down according to their theories? The educational system. That thing that provides education is the thing that keeps those long-suffering black victims in ignorance. Huh? What?

Understand that this is the bulk of the argument. The system is corrupt and the Man uses it to destroy black people. And they will have you believe that the capitalist system, because it keeps 10% of blacks unemployed is no good for the other 90%. And they would have you think that the educational system, because it keeps churning out illiterates should be overhauled despite the brilliance it sustains.

The revolution won't be televised because a machine that works with 90% efficiency doesn't require a revoution. Fine tuning perhaps. But the system works. Let's call the dropouts what they are. Dropouts. Nobody is going to sacrifice these systems for them. It's like that and that's the way it is.

Second Coming Speculation

Somebody asked about where Jesus would show up for the Second Coming.

Well, Jesus would have to show up somewhere that everyone could see. If he was to appear as an ordinary human, there would have to be a way that everyone on the planet would be made aware of his presence. That argues for a story which would travel around the world, presumeably by mass media.

Nick Berg.

I'm really not up on the prescriptions most Christians have of the Second Coming. We Episcopalians say 'He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead'. So if Jesus were Episcopalian, then he certainly wouldn't go out like Berg. He'd do something like raise Atlantis from the ocean and teleport people in mid-sentence. He'd be on our cell phones, pagers, PDAs and car radios telling us each about our sins and what's about to come next. He wouldn't bother with one simple human form or our space time continuum, and he damned sure isn't about to be crucified again. It would be the end of the world and the human experiment.

I have a great deal of faith that the Trinity isn't finished with humanity by a longshot. We still have, by my watch, several thousand generations to go before we take up a reasonably good chunk of our galaxy and therefore more of the Trinity's attention. We have yet to meet the challenges of dealing with alien species, of which there must be plenty.

On the other hand, what if the truly righteous among us were so few that Jesus has actually had a second, third, fourth and 20 other visits but we were all preoccupied watching Fox?

Fragments

Philippino Diplomacy
There's a phrase which ought to take on a life of its own. A punch in the nose to them.

Foothill Fire
Firefighters are doing an extraordinarily outstanding job. I find it miraculous that nobody has lost a house. My hat's off.

Divac Back To LA
That's great news. We love you Vlade! Suddenly I don't like or respect Kobe Bryant any longer - as a player. He's just so over.

Sandy Berger, Pilferer
Will somebody finally tell all these partisans to shut the hell up? I can't believe this is more than an honest mistake. This happened to an FBI director a couple years ago, no?

Shreiking Florida Congresscritter Censured
I would have added a bucket of cold water, but then again I suppose that every opinion needs to be heard.

Girly Men
Anyone who complains about somebody being called a 'girly man', is by definition, a girly man. I am mortified by the reporting on this - it's not even meaty enough for its own blog post.

Plogged

I have been plogged by Amazon.com.

As if I didn't already have enough to read, Amazon has managed to make a new serial. Instead of just 'The Page I Made', now my exploits in online shopping are being blogged by the Amazonbot.

The Plog™ Service is a personalized blog. A blog is a straightforward and now widely adopted method of posting a reverse chronological diary on the Internet.

Then they go on to plug blogs that need no traffic. I wonder how that happened.

FedEx & The Instant Working Class

I'd like to fly far away from here
Where my mind is fresh and clear
And I'd find the love that I long to see
Where everybody can be what they wanna be
-- Lionel Ritchie

New blogger Negromaticus points to the boundaries of Second World employment. Recieving high marks from folks you don't respect puts one in an interesting predicament. You see the value of the System, you could invest, you could game it, you could play it off and do something else.

My brother Doc, now knocking knuckleheads for a living with the Great and Powerful Oz LAPD worked his way up the chain and finally off the chain at FedEx. Like most, he started moving boxes at the airport and found himself in the company of a statistically significant bubble of young black men. Now this was pre-riot LA and so it's difficult for me to recall whose values rubbed off on whom. But I always seem to recall that Doc was as punctual as it is humanly possible to be, and being one of my father's unpaid house elves sons, he like the rest of us had been infused with a mighty work ethic. So the tales of Negromatic are not the first time I've heard commentary on the trife, slapdash, and drama among the youngbloods at the docks.

Now in transition from Hollywood to Academia, my other brother Deet is making ends meet as a permanent part-timer at FedEx. Working just half a day, he's got full benefits for his family. What a country!

FedEx is now the Post Office that Robert Townsend was talking about in 'Hollywood Shuffle'. There's always work at FedEx. When times get tough in the labor market, their planes still fly on schedule, and there seems to always be some scutwork for the able-bodied. In that, there is a love-hate relationship for such work. You can get it if you want it, but who wants it? There's not much glamour. Ever since Biz Markie said "Nigga please, you work for UPS", we've been reminded that delivery, in the eyes of many aint too respectable. Can you hear me revving up another plug for the Second World?

Back in the dark days of 2003, I came very close to finding myself on the payroll. But since, on good days, I make in the top bracket for unemployment compensation, I got more money sitting on my butt and looking for work rather than finding it. It would have been a welcome change. Eventually I did get some blue collar employment. I own my snobbery, but I was led towards this attitude not only because of who I might be, but also because of what people thought I needed to be.

As time goes by, I see more and more clearly how much has conspired against the ambitions of blacks in my generation, and how tough it must be for those in the next. I see the angle of the soft bigotry of advanced expectations in cahoots with the arrogance of the bogard a combination of motivations that rocketed us headfirst into the glass ceiling. I think I am fortunate enough not to have stalled in my corporate career before I went entreprenuerial to experience that frustration, although in the latter Dotcom days I saw it approaching. Why must a black man be a superman just to be a man? Why can a black man just being a man be considered a boy? So much of what we get out of the fact of our gainful employment goes to signify rather than just to get us paid. We have ourselves via W.E.B. to blame, and of course we know how much others want to touch our hair.

Tangential to this the other thing that I feel I have to assert is that participation in the market requires little of us. The dignity we carry is our own and that comes from the home. There are wonderful strengths our nation has because of our willingness to take from and trade on the status a job gives, but the trade of honest work for honest pay is enough. So that means we shouldn't concern ourselves about how articulate is the basketball star. He brings his skills and he's the best in the world at that. It's enough. Let's not expect him to write poetry. He does his job, so stop signifying. Likewise, the man lifting crates at the airport ramp is doing his job. Everybody find the right way, somehow, someway, someday.

Say It Ain't So Lucy Flo

Rumor has it that the twins who ran Lucy Florence Cafe were in hock to the order of 31k to their landlord and that the joint is closing down. It's a damned shame.

I had been under the mistaken impression that they were part owners of the building, which is one of the reasons I gave Kamau such a hard time when the World Stage went through it's pityable demise.

I haven't been over to Lucy Florence in over 4 weeks - not since the Soul Plane controversy. I have been less than impressed with the selection of topics, most recently the noise over Stanley whats-his-name, the car thief who ran into the business end of a flashlight. Ofari takes over the joint on Saturday mornings but hands over the mic to a collection of whiney leftists, and although many sensible conservatives were regular attendees, their was a bit too little signal and too much noise for my tastes. Nevertheless it was a reliable place to catch some of the sentiments coming out of black LA.

Part of the problem in drawing crowds to Lucy Florence was that it didn't appeal to crowds, especially young ones. As a hangout, Magic's Starbucks and Fridays sucked all of the attention out of Liemert Park, except for those who had to, of cultural necessity, make a statement. It's a lesson hard learned. Sometimes brainless is the best way to make a buck.

I hope the brothers get another chance. As institutions go Lucy Florence was very good. Once again the Landlord has the last word.

Fire Logic

I just figured out something about the deployment of firefighters that had me puzzled yesterday. It's about oil.

I might have mentioned that on the north side of the 14 as you go past Placerita, there is an oil field. We went past yesterday morning and only the south side of the freeway was burnt - trees were still smoking. I wouldn't be surprised if that was a backfire set to help prevent whatever was to the east from burning across at the western edge, not only to protect highway 5, but the oilfield.

I talked with a buddy of mine who used to work at a refinery. They had a coke unit explode and it sent all kinds of toxic garbage into the plume. They were liable, literally for free car washes for a year for area residents, not to mention the more obvious torts.

So when I only saw helicopters to one side and not in front of me, what was going on? They must have been protecting the oilfield. You don't want to have a fire in the oilfield. Avoiding that at all costs is going to mean some houses are going to be sacrificed.

That was the section of the 14 that was closed. I think that if the southbound traffic on the 14 had seen all the firefighters in the oilfields there might have been some suspicion about why there and not with the residents. So while I didn't see them, that's where I think they were, and for good reason.

Slander

I heard a story on the radio about a drug scandal and Marion Jones. I read a story in the paper about a drug scandal and Marion Jones comparing her to Martha Stewart, the convict. I read a third story at MSNBC about several other people being investigated who have relationships with Jones. Why not just throw her in Gitmo until the Games are over?

Somebody show me the money, because I don't see it. All I see is a disgusting whispering campaign. This is how we treat our own best athletes?

Who Is The Star of This Show?

Fire on the 14

My bros and I went hiking up Whitney Portal this morning. On the way back from a long and exhausting day, we got caught in the latest So Cal conflagration.

We had sweated all last night having heard that the 14 had been closed. And since this fire is 'only' 14k acres and not a lot of people have lost their homes, there hasn't been much news coverage. Caltrans has absolutely nothing on their websites. We lucked out and heard something on KNX around 11pm which said that the 14 was open to through traffic, you just couldn't get off the freeway.

We hit the intersection above the Van Norman dam just about 7 this morning and I have never seen something so dramatic. At the top of the hill above that cascade for the California Aqueduct on the east side of the 405, flames were towering over 100 feet in the air. It was magnificent and awesome. There was a huge column of orange, rose and purpleish white smoke rising vertically like a smoking volcano or a thunderhead. A plume blew towards the south as the light winds over the hills disturbed the column at it's lower levels. A big Sikorsky passed right overhead to pick up a load of water from the reservoir to our immediate southwest.

As we swung around towards the 14, Deet got a couple shots of the rising sun turned blood red through the fog of brushfire smoke. It was beautiful and frightening. Heading northeast on the 14 we could see how the freeway had been an effective break. Everything on our right, to the south and up the mountain had been burnt to a crisp. An oilfield on the right was untouched.

It was on the way back that all of this started to cause trouble. Just a few minutes past Palmdale where the 14 swings from the North down to the West, the CHP was directing traffic off the freeway. At about 6:20pm we could see the cars slowing down and so we decided to get off early at Agua Dulce Road. We concluded that the fire had changed directions during the day and jumped back north over the 14. It was hard to imagine this happening, but as we got out to make some phone calls, the ashes were falling thickly like fat snowflakes. We were down to a quarter of a tank and out of cell phone range - a modern emergency in and of itself.

As the number of cars getting off at Agua Dulce increased, so did a palpable sense of panic. There was nobody there to show anyone where to go. Soon a Sheriff's deputy arrived on the scene and directed us to take Agua Dulce road north the Sierra Hwy and out. Any of you who have a Thomas Guide know how indespensible it is, unless you are on the border of its coverage area. In our case we were on the diagonal line that went inexplicably from page 4541 to 4281 to 4425 which was a different scale. In short, we were lost.

There was never much danger from the fire since we got off the 14 before the roadblock. But we languished in the cow country north of Vasquez Rocks for an interminable period as we watched the gas tank empty. Making the left turn onto Sierra Highway took 45 minutes with no CHP on the scene. By the time we got into Santa Clarita, we were plenty crabby. But then the sense of panic and disaster came back. At the intersection of Sierra and Soledad Canyon Roads, people were in that state of agitation we all recognize instinctively. Just south of us, four plumes of smoke were clearly visible just above houses on the hillsides. There were no helicopters in sight. Houses were going to burn right in front of us.

Filling up the Avalanche at the Mobil station, I tried to understand the logic of.. oh wait. There was a helicopter finally over to the east. Right over where Lang is shown on the map, I could see a red chopper making rounds. There were three columns of smoke over in that direction but we couldn't see flames. The flames were right in front of us up the hill near the Friendly Valley Country Club. People were moving their horses out of the area all over the place. But we figured those were goners. We drove through and became momentarily disoriented as we drove on. But eventually we got back on the 14 at what must have been Placerita Canyon. Doc says they don't fly the choppers at night, so folks up that way are in for a hell of a time.

I know the Angeles National Forest pretty well, so I got really tired of not hearing what part of it was burning. I thought you all might like to know as well.

From the Kitchen Table on McW

McWhorter beats the NAACP about the face and head. Various Bowens comment.

Pops:

there was a time when i would have dashed off a heavy duty letter of
rebuttal.

life and age being what they are, all i now feel inclined to do is say,
AMEN!!!

Doc:

I saw this letter to the Times and said EXACTLY the same thing. Fact of the mater is there are countless of us who share these very same sentiments.

Additionally there were some well-thought letters written to the Times on the lack of "Outrage" expressed when blacks shoot, beat and exploit each
other. "So long as it's not the LAPD landing the blows, nobody cares how many balcks are beat up south of the 10 FWY"

This is a point well-made and unfortunately, conservative, law-abiding, educated blacks are the LAST place liberal newspapers go for "a word from the
hood" when something goes down between law enforcement and blacks.

One last little point. Bill Cosby made some great remarks at the NAACP's annual meeting recently. he said , in so many words, "You (refering to black men) need to stop beating your women, get an education and stop taking your frustrations out on the world because you can't get much more than a minimum wage job."

Word!!

It's worth noting that Pops is the liberal standard bearer in the clan with Dutz to his immediate left. Doc and I stand to the right. Deet is less political and more inclined towards interpreting the life of Christ. I''ll see if I can get him to speak on it.