WARNING: The videos below contain a lot of profanity. It seems the Baracka Flocka Flames controversy has heated up since the October 26 publication of Prez N the Hood: A Hip-Hop Parody Stirs Up Issues in the New York Times (video below; article requires log-in). America’s foremost old cranky black man, Stanley Crouch, had nothing [...] [Posted: 31 Oct 2010]
Western thinkers must begin to recognize the difference between Islamism and Islam, or we are headed toward an ideologically defined battle with one quarter of humanity. That’s the entire point of Newsweek’s Is It Islamic or Islamist? I’ll add “jihad” and “Jihadism” to the mix. The political or social philosophies of Islamism and Jihadism (note [...] [Posted: 22 Oct 2010]
The classic explanation of the evils of deflation is that it makes individuals and businesses less willing to use money, because the rational way to act when prices are falling is to hold onto cash, which gains in value. But in Japan, nearly a generation of deflation has had a much deeper effect, subconsciously coloring [...] [Posted: 16 Oct 2010]
The fact that the user has a small screen in their hand is one thing – the fact that it is in their hand at all is another. The fact that the user may be walking, driving, or lounging is yet another. In fact, it’s quite likely that they really deserve different content and services [...] [Posted: 15 Oct 2010]
But the Great Recession was different: It was triggered by a financial meltdown brought on by excessive lending, reckless risk taking, the implosion of an unregulated shadow banking system that assumed that short-term money would always be available — and ignorant and careless borrowing by people and institutions. The key paragraph from Who can magically [...] [Posted: 15 Oct 2010]
There are three happiness killers — doing work you do not love and are not passionate about, surrounding yourself with people who you do not really like (someone who just fills time), and living somewhere that does not let you be you. Just stop it. Life is far too short. Also, materialism. We know that [...] [Posted: 15 Oct 2010]
And yet, black folks are determined to traffic in a politics of respectability that does little but make some of us tokens for a power structure that not all of us can access. … That said, I get the nihilism and “do you” mentality of so many black folks excluded from “proper” blackness. When you [...] [Posted: 14 Oct 2010]
From the Findings from the A List Apart Survey, 2009. Wow. A whole 7.6% of us. And that’s all women. Not just the black ones. Related to the above chart, but still disappointing: The survey didn’t break out salaries by job title, but I’m pretty sure the gender distribution among job function is the reason [...] [Posted: 5 Oct 2010]
Washington is absolutely committed to the proposition that 9/11 came out of the blue. There’s no historical context. Because if you insist that there ought to be some historical explanation for 9/11 — which is different from saying that there is a justification for 9/11; there cannot be a justification — and you look for [...] [Posted: 2 Oct 2010]