On a completely random note but am I the only person out there that did not know that the singer Teena Marie was white? Yeah I'm in my 20s but I thought that this would have come up at some point in my life. TVOne had a special on her and I was in shock! My god she even sounds black.
I loved her from her first record. I knew she was white and i loved her music and I thought her music gave Rick james a more refined sound and a more delicate production hand which came in handy later on in his own stuff. I remember when Madonna had the nerve to try and diss Teena I don't remember the exact quote but it amounted to her calling Teena a wannabe black. The fans were all over "Radio Scope" clowning on Madonna. "You can't mess with Teena, she's ours and we still haven't made up our minds about you yet."
The Atlantic Food Channel, in response to a NYT opinion piece, picks up on a topic that was under discussion here last week, namely the link between meat consumption and climate change. I think the author strikes the right balance and says that methane emissions from ruminants contribute more to the industry's greenhouse gas footprint than carbon emitted by virtue of energy used (e.g. from farm vehicles, transporting the animals or meat, lighting, energy cost of the feed etc).
I am feeling both the point and the counter-point articles. I mean, really, what is most important is that we have the discussion. If meat and dairy really are as destructive to the environment as many claim, I think that consumers should be made aware and allowed to choose. But most importantly, the playnig field should be level, which would mean that government subsidies of industrial food production should be available to smaller operations on a proportional level or should be abolished. Also, industrial operators should be required to internalize the environmental costs of thier operations just as smaller operations have chosen to do. Only then can the consumer have real choice or real voice in the debate.
I mean, really, what is most important is that we have the discussion.
Well, and then we make good decisions accordingly, but yes. Corn subsidies have led to a lot of unintended consequences; we should try to avoid them when we discuss the best meat/produce policy.
Sometimes, I guess if you live long enough, it's as if you were in one continuous time loop. These issues about food were seriously being discussed during the seventies. Frances Moore Lappe's books on diet for a small planet were the first I knew of that really discussed the issue with depth. The organic gardening movement was alive and thriving and the Rodale book people had a thriving book industry about raising food--how many here talking about this issue know much about soil--what French wine growers call terroir, which presaged the local foods foodie movement in California that we associate with Alice Waters. Wendel Berry, the Kentucky farmer, poet, novelist, and essayist did everything in his power to popularize old fashioned farming techniques including plowing with a team of horses. A handful of people took it all seriously and we do have a small organic farm industry in the US.
I tend to think that however one looks at it, the globalization of agriculture will have deleterious ecological consequences that will like other environmental briar patches in which humanity has entangled itself. But one thing to the extreme vegetarians; this is something I know, nature exists in a world rich with plant and animal diversity; animal and plant life in the wild are symbiotic. We go to the extremes in either direction, as we have with animal production, we are not paying attention to what nature has proven tried and true.
Compost; grow your own even in tiny pots on the balcony.
Yes, it really does. I'm next door to 60 and I sure do remember this, and all the rest of it. I like your idea about not going to extremes. That's what we seem to do in this culture, about everything. Can we just stop swinging the pendulum all the way, and find a balance? Aargh! And we are all symbiotic; if we aren't acting like it then we become parasites. Which I fear we have done. I wish I could offer something more positive, but your post was good and I appreciated it. Thanks!
this bit from Walker Percy on fiction writing (which he saw as a serious exploration of our being individuals trying to make our way in the world into which we are thrown)seems to have some resonance for blogging/commenting in the 1st person:
I suppose that another danger, as Ralph Ellison pointed out in an interview with 3 young Negro writers, is the temptation to understand the issues of the times in terms of sociology, in terms of abstractions. Perhaps the danger here is greater than that of becoming embroiled, or getting too caught up in an issue, or getting embittered...They begin to feel themselves as exemplars of this or that sociological theory, forgetting many of the riches of their own lives.
I've seen two near-fights at the World Trade Center PATH station in the last five days in the exact same spot for the exact same reason.
With the construction they're doing they've restricted use of the the stairs a bit and people are now squeezing past each other to go up and come down teh stairs simultaneously. Two women got into it on Thursday (they were callinge ach other fat - and neither of them was fat) adn two men got into this morning. One man pushed the other man, but I could tell neither of them really wanted it. All those bagrillion cops at the bottom of the escalators, and none were remotely close to these incidents.
It's obvious that these commutes put people in a really sour mood just in and of themselves, plus the fact that people don't want to be going to work, and it's Monday.
Any Bill Thompson supporters feel like talking me into voting for the man? Right now I'm not planning on voting for him, but I am a Democrat and I have no great love for Bloomberg, so I could still be persuaded, I think.
I am not registered to vote in NYC but spend a lot of time here and am really miffed about the term limits thing. I would vote against Bloomberg just so that he knows that people will not be as kind the next time he wants to play emperor.
Folks on a few Broncos sights are pretty pissed that, apparently, a number of Broncos fans were kicked out of the game in Baltimore for doing nothing other than standing up during the "wrong" points in the game. (See this post for a longer explanation and some video)
I know there are a lot of NFL fans and some Ravens fans in here. Has anybody ever heard of anything like this? Is it actually Ravens' policy, or the policy of any other teams, to kick fools out of the stadium for standing up to cheer for the visiting team?
From watching the videos, it seems like it was that one Ravens' employee who had a power trip or some personal vendetta. I have been to eight or nine Ravens games and while I have seen fans taunt and scrap with those who have audacity to wear a color other than Purple, I have never seen well-behaved fans kicked out. If that is what happened, the Broncos fans, no matter how misguided for travelling to Baltimore and wearing Orange, should get refunded for tickets and travel costs.
So I'm begining to wonder if someone shouldn't send copies of the The Hitchicker's Guide to the Galaxy to the people at Fox News. After all it is a lot cheaper than the Intergalatic Encyclopedia and it has the words "DON"T PANIC" written on the cover in large friendly letters.
Let me be the first to thank the falcons for ruining the spread with their futile attempts to come back against the saints. I really didnt need those 13 points anyway....
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 
Matt Yglesias has a good point on why racial and gender diversity is important in politics and in the media.
On a completely random note but am I the only person out there that did not know that the singer Teena Marie was white? Yeah I'm in my 20s but I thought that this would have come up at some point in my life. TVOne had a special on her and I was in shock! My god she even sounds black.
I am currently jamming to "ooh la la la."
I seem to remember a segment on VH1 or something about this very issue! So you're not alone.
Square square biz ... Yup, she's white, and a Rick James protege. Her name brings back memories ... glad someone is rediscovering her!
I loved her from her first record. I knew she was white and i loved her music and I thought her music gave Rick james a more refined sound and a more delicate production hand which came in handy later on in his own stuff. I remember when Madonna had the nerve to try and diss Teena I don't remember the exact quote but it amounted to her calling Teena a wannabe black. The fans were all over "Radio Scope" clowning on Madonna. "You can't mess with Teena, she's ours and we still haven't made up our minds about you yet."
Square biz is another good one.
The Atlantic Food Channel, in response to a NYT opinion piece, picks up on a topic that was under discussion here last week, namely the link between meat consumption and climate change. I think the author strikes the right balance and says that methane emissions from ruminants contribute more to the industry's greenhouse gas footprint than carbon emitted by virtue of energy used (e.g. from farm vehicles, transporting the animals or meat, lighting, energy cost of the feed etc).
I am feeling both the point and the counter-point articles. I mean, really, what is most important is that we have the discussion. If meat and dairy really are as destructive to the environment as many claim, I think that consumers should be made aware and allowed to choose. But most importantly, the playnig field should be level, which would mean that government subsidies of industrial food production should be available to smaller operations on a proportional level or should be abolished. Also, industrial operators should be required to internalize the environmental costs of thier operations just as smaller operations have chosen to do. Only then can the consumer have real choice or real voice in the debate.
I mean, really, what is most important is that we have the discussion.
Well, and then we make good decisions accordingly, but yes. Corn subsidies have led to a lot of unintended consequences; we should try to avoid them when we discuss the best meat/produce policy.
Sometimes, I guess if you live long enough, it's as if you were in one continuous time loop. These issues about food were seriously being discussed during the seventies. Frances Moore Lappe's books on diet for a small planet were the first I knew of that really discussed the issue with depth. The organic gardening movement was alive and thriving and the Rodale book people had a thriving book industry about raising food--how many here talking about this issue know much about soil--what French wine growers call terroir, which presaged the local foods foodie movement in California that we associate with Alice Waters. Wendel Berry, the Kentucky farmer, poet, novelist, and essayist did everything in his power to popularize old fashioned farming techniques including plowing with a team of horses. A handful of people took it all seriously and we do have a small organic farm industry in the US.
I tend to think that however one looks at it, the globalization of agriculture will have deleterious ecological consequences that will like other environmental briar patches in which humanity has entangled itself. But one thing to the extreme vegetarians; this is something I know, nature exists in a world rich with plant and animal diversity; animal and plant life in the wild are symbiotic. We go to the extremes in either direction, as we have with animal production, we are not paying attention to what nature has proven tried and true.
Compost; grow your own even in tiny pots on the balcony.
Yes, it really does. I'm next door to 60 and I sure do remember this, and all the rest of it. I like your idea about not going to extremes. That's what we seem to do in this culture, about everything. Can we just stop swinging the pendulum all the way, and find a balance? Aargh! And we are all symbiotic; if we aren't acting like it then we become parasites. Which I fear we have done. I wish I could offer something more positive, but your post was good and I appreciated it. Thanks!
this bit from Walker Percy on fiction writing (which he saw as a serious exploration of our being individuals trying to make our way in the world into which we are thrown)seems to have some resonance for blogging/commenting in the 1st person:
I suppose that another danger, as Ralph Ellison pointed out in an interview with 3 young Negro writers, is the temptation to understand the issues of the times in terms of sociology, in terms of abstractions. Perhaps the danger here is greater than that of becoming embroiled, or getting too caught up in an issue, or getting embittered...They begin to feel themselves as exemplars of this or that sociological theory, forgetting many of the riches of their own lives.
I've seen two near-fights at the World Trade Center PATH station in the last five days in the exact same spot for the exact same reason.
With the construction they're doing they've restricted use of the the stairs a bit and people are now squeezing past each other to go up and come down teh stairs simultaneously. Two women got into it on Thursday (they were callinge ach other fat - and neither of them was fat) adn two men got into this morning. One man pushed the other man, but I could tell neither of them really wanted it. All those bagrillion cops at the bottom of the escalators, and none were remotely close to these incidents.
It's obvious that these commutes put people in a really sour mood just in and of themselves, plus the fact that people don't want to be going to work, and it's Monday.
Any Bill Thompson supporters feel like talking me into voting for the man? Right now I'm not planning on voting for him, but I am a Democrat and I have no great love for Bloomberg, so I could still be persuaded, I think.
I am in the same boat.
I am not registered to vote in NYC but spend a lot of time here and am really miffed about the term limits thing. I would vote against Bloomberg just so that he knows that people will not be as kind the next time he wants to play emperor.
Gawker sums up his tenure quite nicely.
http://gawker.com/5395311/gawker-endorsement-dont-vote-for-bloomberg?skyline=true&s=x
Thanks for that, but even after explaining why not to vote for Bloomberg, the Gawker article stops short of endorsing Thompson. What gives?
Folks on a few Broncos sights are pretty pissed that, apparently, a number of Broncos fans were kicked out of the game in Baltimore for doing nothing other than standing up during the "wrong" points in the game. (See this post for a longer explanation and some video)
I know there are a lot of NFL fans and some Ravens fans in here. Has anybody ever heard of anything like this? Is it actually Ravens' policy, or the policy of any other teams, to kick fools out of the stadium for standing up to cheer for the visiting team?
From watching the videos, it seems like it was that one Ravens' employee who had a power trip or some personal vendetta. I have been to eight or nine Ravens games and while I have seen fans taunt and scrap with those who have audacity to wear a color other than Purple, I have never seen well-behaved fans kicked out. If that is what happened, the Broncos fans, no matter how misguided for travelling to Baltimore and wearing Orange, should get refunded for tickets and travel costs.
Well, we used to have a big problems with fights, and I think there is a holding cell in the stadium. A code of conduct is read during every game.
That being said, if the ushers acted like that all the time, Steelers games wouldn't happen in Baltimore
So I'm begining to wonder if someone shouldn't send copies of the The Hitchicker's Guide to the Galaxy to the people at Fox News. After all it is a lot cheaper than the Intergalatic Encyclopedia and it has the words "DON"T PANIC" written on the cover in large friendly letters.
you would have to send along a babel fish to translate the irony for them...
The same babel fish that proves that god doesn't exist?
Let me be the first to thank the falcons for ruining the spread with their futile attempts to come back against the saints. I really didnt need those 13 points anyway....