Archive for 2010
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[ 1 Comment ]Posted on January 19, 2010 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture
Tuesday, January 19th, 2010Musings on the Pauli Effect, humans as batteries, tantrism and chi, and people who seem to get an unnatural charge out of life.
 Maybe you’ve just seen the movie “Powder” a few too many times. |
Are you or someone you know the sort of person who can’t wear watches, seems to regularly “blow out” light bulbs or other electronic devices, or routinely has street lights go off or on when you pass by? Maybe you’re a victim of the Pauli Effect. Or maybe you’ve just seen the movie Powder
MLK Day – You Can Kill The Man But Not The Message
[ Comments Off ]Posted on January 18, 2010 by admin in Holidays
Monday, January 18th, 2010Martin Luther King Jr. is one of my few heroes, but somehow I’d feel better about his life if I knew who ended it.
MLK day is a holiday that triggers a lot of mixed feeings for me. Martin Luther King, Jr. is probably one of the few people I consider a hero, and I find it especially inspiring that on this MLK Day, an American man of color who has won the Nobel Peace Prize and has risen to a position of leadership with a message of hope and change can suggest that we honor another man who did exactly the same thing. I hope that’s where the similarities end, and that’s the main reason this day of rememberance gives me such mixed feelings. Probably no American figure of the last century brought the message that truth and love can conquer almost anything with more power and diginity than Martin Luther King, Jr., and sadly, it has seemed to be a trend in recent American history that peace-minded leaders meet their demise at the hands of assassins. I’m not a conspiracy nut by any stretch, but one has to be ignorant to believe that the deaths of JFK, RFK, MLK, or even possibly Paul Wellstone were not the result of their being forces for peace in a world run by militant, angry, frightened white men. If I were Paul Wellstone’s family, I probably wouldn’t want Dick Cheney at the funeral either. In the case of MLK, even his family didn’t believe that James Earle Ray was the killer, and in spite of lengthy assurances from the Justice Department that they got the right man, there were never conclusive results that his gun was the one used in the assassination. To me this would be a much more meaningful day if we could at least know for sure who was truly behind the death of such a great man. In spite of all this, King is proof that you can kill a great man, but not kill his message. On that note, a few of my favorite MLK quotes are below. Read the rest of this entry »
Inception The Movie: Your Mind Is The Scene Of The Crime
[ Comments Off ]Posted on January 17, 2010 by admin in Popular Media
Sunday, January 17th, 2010The trailers for Christopher Nolan’s new movie Inception are out, as is an online game. Plot details are still thin, but with the director of Memento and Dark Night at the helm, who’s worried?
I almost never get wet-my-pants excited about upcoming film releases, especially anticipated blockbusters, but I’m making an exception in the case of Inception, the new film directed by Christopher Nolan (Memento, Insomnia, Batman Begins, The Dark Knight). Aside from the trailers (see below), the only details about Inception so far consist of the tagline “Your mind is the scene of the crime“, the pitch “In a world where entering dreams is possible, a single idea from the human mind can be the most dangerous weapon or the most valuable asset“, and some random thoughts about the film from Chris Nolan in this LA Times piece. Anything else right now is pure conjecture (which they’ve done a lot of over at Screen Rant ), except for the alleged scoop on the plot at (WARNING: Spoilers, assuming they’re right) InContention.com. Personally, I don’t care about all this speculation, anybody who can make a film like Memento and then later actually make me LOVE a Batman movie has my unqualified trust. Inception is slated for a July 2010 release, and the early virals are in motion; the Inception movie site has a link to a game at Your Mind Is The Scene Of The Crime. We have a mini-preview of the game with screen grabs for your amusement below, but only played as far as the first level, so who knows where the game leads? Try it and let us know. For now, we’ll wait and watch for more marketing teasers. Trailer and game details below. Read the rest of this entry »
Two Tuned Tablas And A Microphone Part II: Ululate To The Party
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on January 16, 2010 by admin in Music
Saturday, January 16th, 2010Who knew Brimful of Asha was considered desi? Part two of our look at desi pop and hip hop with Panjabi MC, Notorious Jatt, Juggy D, Punjabi By Nature, and the Rishi Rich Project.
In part one of our little exploration of desi pop, we mentioned the difficulty of sifting through complex history of the music, and the mountain of material that’s out there. Even after a lot of digging, that remained an obstacle to finding material we thought worth sharing. A great example of just how convoluted the history is would be the 1997 international hit Brimful of Asha, by Cornerstore. You almost certainly know the tune, but likewise, you almost certainly don’t know that it’s considered desi. There’s a great explanation of how it’s a Bollywood tribute here. This kind of music also really needs some better distribution channels and terminology. A good example of the lack of terminology is Juggy D’s Sohniye, which has a little reggae-ish tinge, but not enough bhangra feel to use one of the few common terms like bhangramuffin. Juggy D, by the way, is one of three fairly established UK artists that gained most of their recognition via the Rishi Rich Project, the others being Rishi Rich himself, and Jay Sean. For my tastes, the Rishi Rich crew is a bit too white bread R&B. A little more up my alley is stuff like Notorious Jatt. Never mind his affected smooth gangsta fashions, this dude can ululate, and throws down some fat-bottomed rhythms. I especially like the urban-to-turban Marrey Dil Vaaliyan De’. In the same way that you’d have to have a serious nerve disorder to not move to mambo, you’ve got a serious problem if that tune doesn’t cause something in you to wiggle a little. Also inclined to make something in you move is Panjabi By Nature’s Jaan Punjabi. I have no idea who the featured rapper in that clip is; help me out if you do. A rapper I do recognize is Jay-Z, who manages to not get in the way too much in Panjabi MC’s Beware, which is a bit funkier than these other tunes while still maintaining the Panjabi vibe. As we get a better grasp on the larger view of this incredibly diverse market, we’ll be back in part three with a list of the best sources we’ve found, and clips from about ten more artists we’d like to share. For now, enjoy the clips below, and feel free to correct any artist names or song titles. Or turn us on to artists we should know about. Read the rest of this entry »
Is Obama’s Proposed Bank Tax Purely Political?
[ 2 Comments ]Posted on January 15, 2010 by admin in Politics
Friday, January 15th, 2010Well OF COURSE it’s political, but something like it is certainly warranted. Or maybe we could do the old Roman thumbs-up thumbs-down thing, complete with lions and stuff.
If you’re a conservative, you may be finding yourself in a slightly untenable position right now. Your obligatory knee-jerk response to Obama’s new proposed tax on bailed out banks will be to say: “Sure. More taxes are the solution for everything for you ignorant weepy liberals“. At least that’s the stance of business-minded republicans like Tom Donohue, the CEO of the US Chamber of Commerce, who calls the plan a bad idea. So why is your position going to be untenable? Well, the first part of your problem is that if they’re not taxing the banks, they’ll be taxing you and your offspring for generations to come. And because the next part of your argument is going to be that that the banks won’t even feel it, or will pass the buck to consumers. Which suggests that either a.) The fees should be even higher, or b.) That we need to regulate the banks so they’ll stop raping the consumer and anybody else in sight that they’re not directly invested in. Granted, this is a complicated situation, and there’s a fair amount of political populism in the president’s proposal, but how could any American – other than a banker who just got his multimillion dollar bonus, of course – be against the idea of punitive measures against the bankers who created this entire travesty continuing to benefit from their failures and miscalculations? I mean, especially if you believe in Ayn Rand-driven laissez-faire capitalism like a good Republican should? Even Timothy Geithner says it’s sensible. Of course, he’s got his own problems, so maybe that’s some personal damage control at work. In any case, I have a better idea for dealing with the bankers. Put it to simple popular vote and see what the average hardworking American would do about it. I’m sure the results would be fairly grisly, but gratifying. What do you think?