Educate and excite, inform and infuriate.
May 19th, 2008 — Art, Culture, Design, Technology
From his Steampunk Workshop web site, Jake von Slatt not only talks the steampunk talk, but walks the steampunk walk. Here, he delivers step-by-step low-down on how he built this gorgeous Victorian desktop PC mod. You won’t believe your pince-nez as you eye the finely crafted detailing, below. Continue reading →
May 16th, 2008 — Controversy, Culture, Politics, Race
They prefer Americans, not Muslims: W. Virginians Tracy and Janet
The Real News Network (Motto: “The Future Depends On Knowing”) describes itself as “a television news and documentary network focused on providing independent and uncompromising journalism.”
So, it was fitting, a little before this past Tuesday, that TRNN journalist Matthew Palevsky went down to West Virginia to cover what this traditionally blue collar, Democratic-voting bloc was saying about the then upcoming primary. (Huffington Post linked to this video, but TRNN‘s own page contains a transcript to the video, part of which is reproduced below.)
May 13th, 2008 — Culture, Sex, Technology
As opposed to getting back at cheating S.O.’s the old-fashioned way, above, more and more women are choosing to take “e-venge,” says this Daily Mail piece, serving the cold dish digitally. Continue reading →
May 6th, 2008 — Controversy, Culture, Entertainment, Media, Politics, Race, Religion
Actually, no: Cartoonist Daryl Cagle underestimates white backlash
How has Oprah Winfrey’s standing with her overwhelmingly white audience been affected by her association with Barack Obama?
In her piece for The Root.com, “The Trouble With Transcending Race: Why the Double O’s are standing on shaky ground,” Majorie Valbrun expands on what most Black women probably long expected, even before Fordham professor Costas Panagopoulos’s Politico.com piece, which she quotes, below, made it explicit:
“Ten days after she went on the stump for Obama, Oprah’s favorability ratings dropped to 55 percent, the lowest level of favorability ever registered for Oprah in opinion surveys,” the article states. “Oprah’s negatives also spiked, with one in three respondents (33 percent) reporting unfavorable impressions of her.”
April 30th, 2008 — Controversy, Culture, Government, Military, Politics, Race, Religion
As anyone whose read MEDIA ASSASSIN, or any significant portion of my two decades-plus writing about race, might venture, I probably agree with almost everything Jeremiah Wright, the former pastor of the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, above, has said, in his oft-quoted and misquoted public statements.
April 25th, 2008 — Controversy, Crime, Culture, Entertainment, Law, NONFICTION, Photography, Politics, Race, Sex, Terrorism
An estimated 5,000 Black human beings were lynched in the United States between the years 1890 and 1960. By averages, that’s one African-American dying horribly, in racist mob violence, every five days for seventy years. In almost all of these cases, no one was ever charged for the crimes. So affirms the guest on my WBAI-NY / 99.5 FM radio show, NONFICTION, this afternoon, Friday, April 25, 2 pm ET.
April 17th, 2008 — Controversy, Culture, Finance, Media, Money, Work
According to Forbes.com’s 2007 list of top TV personalities, in the year between June 2006 and June 2007, talk show host Oprah Winfrey earned over a quarter of a billion dollars, $260 million, precisely, or over $1 million a day.
Pauper.
In a report cited by The New York Times yesterday, Institutional Investor’s Alpha (IIA) magazine ranked the 50 top hedge fund earners of last year. (The incomes on this list are so outrageous that you need to have made at least $210 million to get on it. Were Oprah a fund manager, she’d have ranked 38th.)
At #1, John Paulson, right, 52, of Paulson & Company, utterly nuked his competition by taking home compensation of…hold your breath, people…$3.7 billion.
That’s not his net worth. That’s three billion, seven hundred million dollars in salary.
March 31st, 2008 — Blogs, Controversy, Culture, Design, Fashion, Film, Journalism, Magazines, Media, Pop Culture, Race, Sports
Everything but the helmet: LeBron James meets his doppelganger
“Vogue spokesman Patrick O’Connell said the magazine ‘sought to celebrate two superstars at the top of their game’ for the magazine’s annual issue devoted to size and shape.
“‘We think Lebron James and Gisele Bundchen look beautiful together and we are honoured to have them on the cover,’ he said.”
“But magazine analyst Samir Husni believes the photo was deliberately provocative, adding that it ‘screams King Kong.” Considering Vogue’s influential history, he said, covers are not something that the magazine does in a rush.
“‘So when you have a cover that reminds people of King Kong and brings those stereotypes to the front, Black man wanting white woman, it’s not innocent,’ he said.”
—“Vogue cover starring LeBron James is called racially insensitive by some,” Megan Scott, The Associated Press
“Lying,” photographer Annie Leibovitz’s late lover, Susan Sontag, famously said in an essay, “is an elementary means of self-defense.”
Perhaps knowing this is why both Leibovitz, right, creator of VOGUE’s controversial April 2008 cover photo, above right, and Anna Wintour, VOGUE editor-in-chief, below, both 58, have remained absolutely mute since accusations began to fly, over a week ago, that their coy image—featuring Cleveland Cavaliers point forward LeBron James, 23, and supermodel Gisele Bündchen, 27—was a less-than-subtle piece of racist indoctrination.
March 26th, 2008 — Books, Culture, Sex
When asked about marriage, or even when not, I typically say that it’s a hard thing to do well; that probably, apart from raising children, it’s the hardest thing anyone will ever attempt. And that, in marriage, communication is not only important, but that it is the blood plasma of your relationship, though, again, it is always a difficult thing to do correctly. And that you need to have an unbreakable agreement that your marriage is for life for it to even have a chance at working. And that, particularly as a person who aspires to Christianity, you need God in your relationship to make it work. And that…well, you get the idea.
These are hard-earned truths from over 15 years of betrothal to Zakiya, and, believe me, I’m learning more all the time, every day, or at least trying to do so.
But this guy says forget all that: Just don’t get married and, if you do, do not, under any circumstances, marry an American woman.
March 26th, 2008 — Books, Culture, Mathematics, Science
Book agent John Brockman’s Edge site is like crack if you’re into reading some of the world’s smartest thinkers address compelling questions related to their own typically cutting-edge research, or larger issues about the role of science in human culture.
Reuben Hersh is one such Edge intellectual. He’s professor emeritus in the University of New Mexico’s department of mathematics and statistics and author of the 1999 book What Is Mathematics, Really?, right.
Hersh’s 1997 mind-blowing elaboration on numeracy, below, is proof perfect, not only of the maxim that the more one understands a subject, the more simple and elemental their questions become but, that those questions—the simplest ones—are always the hardest to answer.
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