(cross-posted from US of J) When you have the time, you should listen to last week’s This American Life; it deals with an outbreak of measles among a group of children in San Diego, brought on by parents who refused to vaccinate their children. Here’s a quick summary: Measles cases are higher in the U.S. Read More
Jay’s latest touches on a point made by the Philadelphia City Paper not long ago: in the age of YouTube, what’s (the point of) beef? If Artist X lobbed some volleys via mixtape or YouTube at the target of his ire, by the time he actually dropped an album, any diss track on said album would already Read More
…I’m not sure there’s much else for me to say about this. Should I change my mind, I’ll be back with more.
This depressing graph comes from a Northeastern University report released today, which as the Wall Street Journal explains, shows a marked increase in the number of African-American teens who were the victims of violent crime: Murders of African-American teenagers have risen 39% since 2000 and 2001, according to a report due out Monday. Homicides in Read More
Some people want to extend the benefit of the doubt to James Bevel, who died last week of pancreatic cancer. Is that wise, though? None of his accomplishments in the Civil Rights Movement offset the physical and psychic trauma he visited upon his daughters for decades. Indeed, he mocked the idea that he would apologize Read More
Conor Friedersdorf lists the best news features of 2008, and says that Nick Paumgarten’s “Up and Down” from the New Yorker is the “best article on a topic you don’t need to know anything about.” I couldn’t agree more. The story, about the physics and culture of the elevator, should be dry as hell, but anchored Read More
While I was cleaning, I set my ITunes to Genius based on “Don’t Disturb This Groove,” by The System. The playlist started up sort of chill and midtempo before veering decidedly into rainy-day-sex territory. Perhaps the universe is trying to tell me something. 1. The Dramatics – “Whatcha See Is What You Get,” from Whatcha Read More
(To read the first installment, written by slb, go here.) The town in which I was born and raised, Clinton, Arkansas, is deep in the sparsely populated Ozark Mountains in the Bible Belt. Both of my parents were born there as well, but spent some of their childhoods in different states. My father’s parents were Read More
