I was driving home from a cookout on Saturday night with a few friends when the Nas (plus the Firm) song Affirmative Action came on. Classic track, right. Anyway, a discussion followed about Foxy Brown's memorable verse, notably this part.
"Thirty-two grams raw, chop it in half, get sixteen, double it times three. We got forty-eight, which mean a whole lot of cream Divide the profit by four, subtract it by eight We back to sixteen..."
It didn't make sense to most of us in the car (3 out of 4) why you'd spit math that was so wrong. However, my friend in the back (coincidentally a white kid from Mt. Laurel) said he read the explanation somewhere, but couldn't remember the gist of it. He said he'd email it to us if we'd like. I thought he was BSing, so I said yeah. Sure enough, I woke up the next morning morning, opened my email, and found his email. Here it is for anyone who cares.
[EMAIL]
"32 grams raw" meaning pure cocaine. Crack is a manufactured version, it's not considered raw. When ever you turn cocaine to crack, the amount of substance increases, usually doubling the amount, but it depends on how you do it. This is an example of an unusual increase, which I will explain in a sec.
"Chop it in half" 32/2 = 16 or half of 32. "Double it times three" in the drug black market, when you stretch the drugs by adding stuff to it, it is refered to as "doubling" because that's what your doing to the investment. so he's saying double it times three simply to mean stretch it to yield three times what you had. Which would be 16 x 3 = 48.
Now what he left out, was if you do that to BOTH halfs of the raw, the entire 32 grams, you'll end up with 96 grams. so when you divide 96 (The profit, but it's really the gross profit) by four you get 24. subtract 8 from 24 and your back to 16.
NOW do you math flunkies understand? BTW, for those that don't know, Nas wrote this shit. This is some Allah The Father Nation Of Gods & Earths Supreme Mathematics from the Streets of Mecca. Do the knowledge.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned the NBA Finals yet--do the Lakers realize they should have lost that game last night? That final play works a fair amount of the time, and when I saw it unfold, I was convinced it was going down and that Kobe would be staring in shock for the next ten minutes.
It should have gone down, and yes, the Magic should have won. It almost seemed like Courtney Lee couldn't believe how good of a shot he was going to get. And he blew it. The series went from being a toss-up to being just about over. What a shame...
(Missed FT's and the bullshit charge call on Hedo are the other reasons why they lost the game.)
Gasol made him alter the shot (no, not by goaltending, as some claim - he only grazed the rim and didn't shake the thing at all). I saw one fantastic angle on the play which shows Lee clearly shooting the ball much more straight up to avoid the block, even though I doubt Gasol actually would have gotten there in time.
But overall, the Lakers were lucky to get away with that one. I think the Magic mostly outplayed them in the 2nd half, but turnovers killed them. Sometimes that's all it takes.
If the Magic hold serve in Orlando over the next 3 they still got a shot. Granted, Kobe will likely go superhuman in one of those games. Also, I think they should do what they can to keep Andrew Bynum on the floor, because he was Brandon Haywoodin' throughout the entire night.
With your interest in the Civil War and related topics, Ta-Nehisi, you may be interested in Russel Banks's historical novel about John Brown called "Cloudsplitter". It's historical fiction, so there are some liberties taken, in terms of dialogue, etc., but his depictions of some of the stuff that happened in Kansas and also the raid on Harper's Ferry seem frighteningly realistic. There's a more artful way of putting it, but Banks is masterly in writing about violence.
There's also a compelling set-piece in the book where John Brown lectures his small Adirondack farming town on the Book of Job, after they have a run in with the U.S. Marshals due to Brown's Underground Railroad activities. Most of the townsmen shared Brown's antipathy toward slavery, to a point -- the point where it actually became painful to them to help freed slaves. Brown uses his interpretation of Job's story to chasten and rebuke his townsmen.
Here's a piece no one cared about. Meh, whatever, probably the most enjoyable article I did during my stint at TIME. Premiered a month before I got laid-off. The nail in the coffin? Ya think?
Here's me going after Al. I didn't so much have a problem with him, as I had a problem with media acting like this dude was the go-to guy for everything black.
This was my first real story at time. I was writing for the Business section, a real change of direction for me. At any rate, it's about Wal-Mart's attempts to colonize the inner-city. As much as I enjoyed this piece, I mostly enjoyed going out to Chicago, which is a beautiful, beautiful city.
This a piece I did about the cops just outside our nation capitol, in Prince George's County, a few years back. I wanted to offer a counter to the dumb, conventional wisdom that if you paint your police force black, you could eradicate police brutality. In fact, Prince George's--one of the richest, blackest counties in the country--also had one of the most brutal police force's in the country.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
I was driving home from a cookout on Saturday night with a few friends when the Nas (plus the Firm) song Affirmative Action came on. Classic track, right. Anyway, a discussion followed about Foxy Brown's memorable verse, notably this part.
"Thirty-two grams raw, chop it in half, get sixteen, double it times three. We got forty-eight, which mean a whole lot of cream Divide the profit by four, subtract it by eight We back to sixteen..."
It didn't make sense to most of us in the car (3 out of 4) why you'd spit math that was so wrong. However, my friend in the back (coincidentally a white kid from Mt. Laurel) said he read the explanation somewhere, but couldn't remember the gist of it. He said he'd email it to us if we'd like. I thought he was BSing, so I said yeah. Sure enough, I woke up the next morning morning, opened my email, and found his email. Here it is for anyone who cares.
[EMAIL]
"32 grams raw" meaning pure cocaine. Crack is a manufactured version, it's not considered raw. When ever you turn cocaine to crack, the amount of substance increases, usually doubling the amount, but it depends on how you do it. This is an example of an unusual increase, which I will explain in a sec.
"Chop it in half" 32/2 = 16 or half of 32. "Double it times three" in the drug black market, when you stretch the drugs by adding stuff to it, it is refered to as "doubling" because that's what your doing to the investment. so he's saying double it times three simply to mean stretch it to yield three times what you had. Which would be 16 x 3 = 48.
Now what he left out, was if you do that to BOTH halfs of the raw, the entire 32 grams, you'll end up with 96 grams. so when you divide 96 (The profit, but it's really the gross profit) by four you get 24. subtract 8 from 24 and your back to 16.
NOW do you math flunkies understand? BTW, for those that don't know, Nas wrote this shit. This is some Allah The Father Nation Of Gods & Earths Supreme Mathematics from the Streets of Mecca. Do the knowledge.
Proper Education Always Corrects Errors
[END OF EMAIL]
The more you know.
BTW, Mt. Laurel is a nice little suburb in South Jersey. Everyone in the car resides in different parts of Philadelphia.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned the NBA Finals yet--do the Lakers realize they should have lost that game last night? That final play works a fair amount of the time, and when I saw it unfold, I was convinced it was going down and that Kobe would be staring in shock for the next ten minutes.
It should have gone down, and yes, the Magic should have won. It almost seemed like Courtney Lee couldn't believe how good of a shot he was going to get. And he blew it. The series went from being a toss-up to being just about over. What a shame...
(Missed FT's and the bullshit charge call on Hedo are the other reasons why they lost the game.)
Felt bad for Courtney Lee. I think you're describing a rookie's response, Stacy. He did blow it, like rookies do.
Chicago Now headline: Courtney Lee will be forever crucified. No nothing about him but hope it doesn't scar him.
Gasol made him alter the shot (no, not by goaltending, as some claim - he only grazed the rim and didn't shake the thing at all). I saw one fantastic angle on the play which shows Lee clearly shooting the ball much more straight up to avoid the block, even though I doubt Gasol actually would have gotten there in time.
But overall, the Lakers were lucky to get away with that one. I think the Magic mostly outplayed them in the 2nd half, but turnovers killed them. Sometimes that's all it takes.
If the Magic hold serve in Orlando over the next 3 they still got a shot. Granted, Kobe will likely go superhuman in one of those games. Also, I think they should do what they can to keep Andrew Bynum on the floor, because he was Brandon Haywoodin' throughout the entire night.
With your interest in the Civil War and related topics, Ta-Nehisi, you may be interested in Russel Banks's historical novel about John Brown called "Cloudsplitter". It's historical fiction, so there are some liberties taken, in terms of dialogue, etc., but his depictions of some of the stuff that happened in Kansas and also the raid on Harper's Ferry seem frighteningly realistic. There's a more artful way of putting it, but Banks is masterly in writing about violence.
There's also a compelling set-piece in the book where John Brown lectures his small Adirondack farming town on the Book of Job, after they have a run in with the U.S. Marshals due to Brown's Underground Railroad activities. Most of the townsmen shared Brown's antipathy toward slavery, to a point -- the point where it actually became painful to them to help freed slaves. Brown uses his interpretation of Job's story to chasten and rebuke his townsmen.