APPRECIATION: Nathaniel ‘Nate Dogg’ Hale RIP

BY MATTHEW HENGEVELD Alas, the death of another hip-hop icon— the ever raspy Nate Dogg. He was a frequently phoned-in guest rapper for anyone who needed a pristine hook. His works were catchy, but nothing that pushed away the hardcore fans. He made a name for himself as a singer amongst the G-Unit army and Death Row drones, and still got his props from waves of R&B fans, including R. Kelly, tha Kang himself. He got his two feet on the ground with tracks like “Deeez Nuts” on Dr. Dre’s The Chronic (“IIIII can’t be faded.. I’m a nigga from […]

NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t

FRESH AIR In most medical schools, students recite the Hippocratic Oath together to mark the start of their professional careers. The soon-to-be physicians swear to uphold the ethical standards of the medical profession and promise to stand for their patients without compromise. Though the oath has been rewritten over the centuries, the essence of it has remained the same: “In each house I go, I go only for the good of my patients.” But the principles of the oath, says Dr. Gregg Bloche, are under an “unprecedented threat.” In The Hippocratic Myth, Bloche details how doctors are under constant pressure […]

MUST SEE TV: Die Antwoord + Harmony Korine

MOVIELINE: “We need to keep it gangsta and take our sh*t to the next level,” pleads Die Antwoord rapper Yo-Landi to Ninja, her partner in crime in the Harmony Korine-directed short Umshimi Wam (translation: ‘Bring me my machine gun’) . And just how do the South African zef hip-hoppers do just that? By pimping out their wheelchair rides, shooting guns in empty suburban parking lots, smoking comically large joints, and dreaming of life as “Gang$ta number one.” Watch the entirety of Umshini Wam. MORE WIKIPEDIA: Die Antwoord (Afrikaans: “The Answer“)[2] is a rap–rave[3] group from Cape Town, South Africa consisting […]

3rd Man Files Abuse Lawsuit Against Archdiocese

ASSOCIATED PRESS: A third man has filed a civil lawsuit that says officials from the Archdiocese of Philadelphia covered up sexual assault allegations against a priest who molested him in the late 1960s. The lawsuit filed Wednesday in the city’s Court of Common Pleas says the man was assaulted as a boy by a priest from St. Francis Xavier parish and Roman Catholic High School in Philadelphia. MORE PREVIOUSLY: Only days after three Philly priests and a teacher were charged with raping boys, a new lawsuit popped up against the archdiocese, accusing top church staff of conspiracy. A national advocacy […]

The End Of The Album As We Know It And I Feel Fine

THE FINEST HOUR: R.E.M., The Mann, 6/18/08 [Photos by JONATHAN VALANIA] BLACK RIM GLASSES: Last week marked  the release of an album I have been associated with in some form for two years now. That doesn’t mean that I had anything to do with its creation, just that I was associated with it. To that regard, I was there for mixing, marketing and release. The record is from a group of people collectively known as R.E.M. I predict it is the last “Album” they will release. In fact, I predict that 2011 is the last year of the Album (capital […]

WIKI: The Survivor’s Guide To Japan

Click to enlarge, read and live. RELATED: As the crisis at the power plant entered its sixth night, the situation appeared to be deteriorating. One sign was that the Japanese government increased the maximum radiation dose that workers could be exposed to from 100 millisieverts to 250 millisieverts, describing the move as “unavoidable due to the circumstances.” The workers are all wearing full protective gear and working only in short shifts, but they are still believed to be exposed to significant doses of radiation. All of the workers were pulled out of the plant for nearly an hour Wednesday when […]

WORTH REPEATING: The Timely Death Of Anti-Gonzo & The False Equivalence Between Left And Right

DRIFTGLASS: While there were many, many things David Broder loved — centrism, politics, bi-partisanship, equidistanthood, divarication, bisect-uality, decussation — one thing he really hated was hippies. Those those damn, dirty, disrespectful fucking hippies. He especially hate those fucking imaginary hippies: they were the sawdust and breadcrumb filler he kept heaping into his increasingly inedible journalistic meatloaf; the thumb he pressed down ever harder on the scales of his funny little rambles about America during his declining years (which encompassed all of the 21st Century and a big chunk of the end of the 20th) to artificially “balance out” the clear […]

WORTH REPEATING: Welcome To The Fragmentation

NPR: Stop by one of the 200 or so Borders stores that soon will be closing, and you can pick through the rubble. Under the Everything Must Go signs, you will find the building blocks of the last half-century of popular culture — in discounted disarray. Here are the self-help books that promise to make us better people. There are the novels — by Tom Clancy and Janet Evanovich — that make us think about the world we’ve created. Over there are history tomes and workout tapes and compilation CDs and bright boxes containing the do-it-yourself language course Rosetta Stone. […]

CHANOLOGY: 4chan Founder Goes Semi-Legit

TECH CRUNCH: According to an SEC filing, 4chan founder Christopher “Moot” Poole has raised $625,000 in funding for a stealth startup called Canvas Networks. We’ve emailed Poole to confirm the funding. 4chan is an online bulletin board where anyone can post comments, expound on topics and share images. Poole was featured as one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world last year. As of March, 4chan was receiving around 8.2 million unique visitors per month. Poole told the New York Times’ Nick Bilton that the site receives an average of 800,000 new posts a day. MORE NEW […]

AMERICAN IDIOT: Clueless UCLA Coed’s Anti-Asian Rant Goes Viral, Offends Entire Internet

DAILY BRUIN:  A UCLA student has received multiple death threats in response to her video “Asians in the Library,” which was posted Friday. In the video, third-year political science student Alexandra Wallace makes a number of disparaging comments about Asian students. “The problem is these hordes of Asian people that UCLA accepts into our school every single year,” Wallace said in the video. She described her annoyance at Asian students talking noisily in the library, and imitated one student with the phrase, “Ohhhh. Ching chong ling long ting tong.” The video quickly went viral and, despite being removed by Wallace […]

RIP: Owsley, Legendary Acid Alchemist, Dead At 76

NEW YORK TIMES: Owsley Stanley, the prodigiously gifted applied chemist to the stars, who made LSD in quantity for the Grateful Dead, the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Ken Kesey and other avatars of the psychedelic ’60s, died on Sunday in a car accident in Australia. He was 76 and lived in the bush near Cairns, in the Australian state of Queensland. Mr. Stanley, the Dead’s former financial backer, pharmaceutical supplier and sound engineer, was in recent decades a reclusive, almost mythically enigmatic figure. Once renowned as an artisan of acid, Mr. Stanley turned out LSD said to be purer and finer […]

APOCALYPSE NOW: Japanese Reactor Goes Chernobyl

NEW YORK TIMES: After an emergency cabinet meeting, the Japanese government told people living within about 20 miles of the Daiichi plant to stay indoors, keep their windows closed and stop using air conditioning. Mr. Kan, whose government was extraordinarily weak before the sequence of calamities struck the nation, told the Japanese people that “although this incident is of great concern, I ask you to react very calmly.” And in fact, there seemed to be little panic, but huge apprehension in a country where radioactivity brings up memories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the haunting images of post-war Japan. The two […]