Perfect review of Shadow's Outsider

The fact (ok, widely held opinion) that Dj Shadow's last album, The Outsider, was awful is not news, but I just came across this great Pitchfork review of it, it says:

On his first two albums, DJ Shadow-- mired in memories of Eric B., Brian Eno, and the Meters-- seemed worlds away from the conceits of mainstream rap. But underneath his detached exterior lies all the egoism and paranoia of the best hip-hop stars: "There are songs on [The Outsider] that I think blow away almost anything else I've ever done. One thing’s for sure-- it's going to make it very difficult for people to imitate my sound," Shadow posted on his website. It wasn't just talk. His new album slyly sabotages the biters: Who'd be dumb enough to copycat all this watered-down exotica and epileptic hyphy?

Ehrenreich on the Imus remarks

Like most of these media spectacles, you tend to hear the same coverage over and over, with no one thinking independently. But Barbara Ehrenreich writes here that,

Imus didn't utter those poisonous words in a tone of racist, misogynist, contempt, but with something that sounded like admiration. "That's some rough girls from Rutgers," he told producer Bernard McGuirk, "Man, they got tattoos ..." It was McGuirk who introduced the ho theme, responding, "'Some hardcore ho's."

Not to be out-done in the tastelessness department, Imus then muttered appreciatively, 'That's some nappy-headed ho's there, I'm going to tell you that." In the same way, an African-American might compliment a male athlete of his own race as "one bad-ass n-word," or something like that. The Rutgers women were "rough"--which is good in an athlete, right?--inspiring McGuirk and Imus to flex their testosterone glands and act even tougher, and the only way they could think to do that was by adopting the argot of hip-hop. It was like watching a couple of suburban white boys slouching around in full ghetto get-up: Cute, in a way, but mostly pathetic.

the ethanol hoax

"In a few years the articles and books about the ethanol hoax will begin to appear, and we will learn who got rich while the earth got warmer and almost nobody--at least nobody important, nobody with influence and power--took note."
- http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070423/von_hoffman

Noam Chomsky on Iran

The lack of debate over the Iran war-mongering is frightening.

According to Noam Chomsky:

"Even in neighboring Sunni states, no friends of Iran, majorities, when asked, favor a nuclear-armed Iran over any military action against that country."