PLAYING CATCH UP
wait until see the jabba made from jello
I liked Junichi's way of breaking down stories by its media so I'm just going to jack it.
WEB-O-RAMA
- New blogs from two of the smartest dudes I know, especially when it comes to music. 1) Soul Imperialist by professor, ethnographer, and illmatic b-boy, Joseph "Non Compos Mentis Legs" Schloss. Act like you knew about his book Making Beats: The Art of Sample-Based Hip-Hop. Joe's site has only been up a few weeks but he's already dropping nuggets of wisdom on the nature of doing research on culture. Seriously, Joe is going to be one of the finest scholars in our generation, no question.
- Meanwhile, Mark Anthony Neal has already established himself as one of the finest scholars of our generation and now he's dropping science vis รก vis his new blog, The New Black Man, which happens to also be the title of his new book. People have sometimes described me as a prolific writer but Mark makes me look comatose. He writes more articles and books in one year than many could hope to do in a lifetime and with his blog, he's covering even more ground. For example, I didn't realize that Mark Felt, aka Deep Throat, was also a prominent mover and shaker with the FBI's COINTELPRO, until Mark broke it down. Looks like when Felt wasn't busy leaking info about Nixon to the Post he was helping bring down Leftist organizations the Hoover way.
- How blogging solved a murder. Unfortunately, the victim was the blogger. Spooky.
- On the Internet, the past is always present.
- An oldie but a goodie, especially with all the recent Star Wars fervor being kicked off again: Man makes a life-size replica of Han Solo frozen in carbonite. From Legos.. Blows the mind. doesn't it?
- Kareem teaches Chinese b-ballers how to trash talk. Looks like the Big Man is taking it back to his Game of Death days with his Afro-Asian cultural connections.
- We might be overrun in blogs, but I like certain applications of it. For example, the authors of this year's hot pop theory book, "Freakonomics : A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything" have started a blog where they can continue the conversations started in the book. This isn't a revolutionary idea, per se, but I think it's a remarkably smart way to give their writing and theories a life that extends beyond just the moment of publishing. The only problem is - for many authors, by the time their books come out, they're so sick of it, they just want to get onto the next project. I'm glad these two are making the most of their time in the spotlight - check it, they've got a monthly column in the NY Times Sunday Magazine. (Is Malcolm Gladwell out there thinking, "damn, why didn't I think of that?") I also just realized that Levitt is only five years older than me. Damn, I need to get my hustle on.
- "More Sex, Less 'Joy'": the new sex ed hits bookshelves.
- eBay (tries) to capture the Chinese market: hey, 1.5 billion potential customers is enough to make any company drool but as my friend Ling Liu reports, eBay's got some competition brewing in the Middle Kingdom.
- Is S.F. going to ban pit bulls? This is in response to the death of a 12-year old by the two family pitbulls. This literally happened down the block from where I live - I came out the door one afternoon and there were three helicopters floating above and crazy traffic was being diverted up my street. Apparently, SFPD was looking for a potential third dog (there turned out not to be one).
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