CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: When I described the tumor in my esophagus as a “blind, emotionless alien,” I suppose that even I couldn’t help awarding it some of the qualities of a living thing. This at least I know to be a mistake: an instance of the “pathetic fallacy” (angry cloud, proud mountain, presumptuous little Beaujolais) by which we ascribe animate qualities to inanimate phenomena. To exist, a cancer needs a living organism, but it cannot ever become a living organism. Its whole malice—there I go again—lies in the fact that the “best” it can do is to die with its host. […]
OBUMMER: We Have Met The Enemy, And It Is Us
THE GUARDIAN: Barack Obama has abandoned a commitment to veto a new security law that allows the military to indefinitely detain without trial American terrorism suspects arrested on US soil who could then be shipped to Guantánamo Bay. Human rights groups accused the president of deserting his principles and disregarding the long-established principle that the military is not used in domestic policing. The legislation has also been strongly criticised by libertarians on the right angered at the stripping of individual rights for the duration of “a war that appears to have no end”. The law, contained in the defence authorisation […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: Exporting Totalitarianism
FRESH AIR As protesters in the Middle East use social media to organize and communicate, the regimes they’re battling are using sophisticated technology to intercept their emails, text messages and cellphone calls.On Wednesday’s Fresh Air, journalist Ben Elgin talks about a Bloomberg News series, “Wired for Repression,” which details how Western companies are selling surveillance technology to regimes including Iran, Syria, Bahrain and Tunisia. Those regimes have then used the information obtained from those technologies to torture protesters and dissidents, Elgin tells Fresh Air contributor Dave Davies. “[One Iranian engineer] became caught up in the protest movements after the election […]
VAN HUNT: Eyes Like Pearls
GREG KOT: Hunt is a former major-label up-and-comer who has found a new kind of freedom and confidence doing things on his own. His third album ventures across genres, touching on everything from country twang to sci-fi psychedelia. The glue is Hunt’s acuity as a songwriter; he knows how to drop hooks and turn a smart phrase, and this album brims with surprises. MORE
JAZZER: Meet Keith DiStefano
BY ZIVIT SHLANK Bassist/Composer Keith DeStefano is uniquely quixotic. As a musician, he’s a curious combination of manic focus and reckless composure; sort of a mad, musical scientist. Largely self-taught on guitar and bass, Keith got hooked on jazz early on by the urging of his guitar teacher. A self-proclaimed weirdo, Keith was grooving to the sounds of Charlie Parker and John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme while most kids were listening to rock and pop. Performing alongside local legends (and sidemen to Max Roach) bassist Tyrone Brown and saxophonist Odean Pope opened him up to the different textural possibilities of […]
WORTH REPEATING: Plan 9 From Outerspace
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE: It’s telling that Romney, when encouraged by the debate moderators to criticize Gingrich, refrained from discussing the ethics violations, adulteries and such that form the molten core of Gingrich’s negatives. Instead, Romney went for Gingrich’s boyish fascination with the heavens. “We could start with his idea to have a lunar colony that would mine minerals from the moon,” Romney said dismissively. You can see the appeal, to a determined pragmatist like Romney, of attacking Gingrich’s lunar colony; “loony” is right there in the headline. Yet Gingrich didn’t flinch. Instead, he took the opportunity to champion his idea […]
THE MAN WHO WASN’T THERE: Q&A w/ Wendell Potter, Healthcare Executive Turned Whistleblower
[Photo by ROBIN ODLAND] PART II BY JONATHAN VALANIA This is the second installment of a massive, 30,000 word, three-part Q&A with Philadelphian Wendell Potter*, former mild-mannered Cigna health insurance executive turned whistle-blowing superman standing up for truth, justice and the American way. (You can read Part I HERE.) You may have seen Mr. Potter testifying before Congress or talking about the ills of the health insurance industrial complex on CNN or MSNBC or PBS, or in the pages of The New York Times, Wall Street Journal or Time magazine, to name but a few. Last year he published […]
Stop The End Of The Internet As We Now Know It
RELATED: Click Here To Contact Your Congressman And Stop SOPA
RAWK TAWK: Q&A With Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr.
BY TONY ABRAHAM Following the release of their debut album It’s a Corporate World this past June, Detroit natives Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. have been gradually gaining momentum in the industry despite a band name that frontman Daniel Zott considers both a curse and a blessing. Conceived in songwriter Josh Epstein’s basement, the band creates catchy electronic folk-pop tunes with melodies that replay like a scratched 45 in your head, including Earnhardt Jr. himself who is a fan. To the uninitiated, I would describe them thusly: Pitch-controlled Neil Diamond circa Tap Root Manuscript, backed by a flanged-out 808 and ten […]
MUST SEE TV: The Time Louis CK Wet His Pants In Front Of President Jimmy Carter And The Pope
FRESH AIR: In the FX TV series Louie, comic Louis C.K. plays a divorced father of two struggling to balance his comedy career with being a single dad. The show, which has just been picked up for a third season, is often based on events that have happened to C.K. in his own life. C.K.’s boundary-crossing humor has always appealed to other comedians, but in the past year, the stand-up comic has also racked up a series of honors from more mainstream sources. GQ recently called him the “funniest comic alive” and named him their “Comic Genius of the Year.” […]
PED STATE: Sandusky Waives Hearing, Vows To Win One For The Gipper ‘Fight For Four Quarters’
TIME: The media was all dressed up with nowhere to go. The tiny town of Bellefonte, Pa., usually home to just over 6,000 people, was buzzing with activity and attention unprecedented for the sleepy locale. It’s understandable, then, that the bombshell announcement by Jerry Sandusky, the embattled Penn State coach facing more than 50 counts of child abuse, to waive his hearing caused quite a surprise. By waiving the hearing, the case advances directly to a trial. And today’s move, while a surprise, was not unprecedented. Defense attorneys sometimes waive a hearing to avoid pre-trial publicity. According to the New […]
WORTH REPEATING: The Tao Of Newt
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