general

You know a college is guilty as hell of covering up molestation when Malcolm Gladwell pulls out his million dollar laptop to convince you, in slick contrarian fashion, that the molester was just a master manipulator.
Gladwell's snake oil.
The brief against Gladwell.

Screenshot from cable provider Comcast's front page.
Suggested alternate language: "Uh-oh, you made a boo-boo and are a big doody-head."
(Comcast owns NBC.)

Music writer Simon Reynolds, on his blog, asks people to post YouTube clips of people drumming. Boring!

Drum Stuff : examples please of your favorite drummage, with YouTube clips + comments. Blog them and let me know so I can link, or email and I'll post up here.

Drum stuff defined as: drum patterns, drum breaks, drum sounds, drum flourishes, drum solos. Or, more loosely, grooves: just so long as the drummer is right in the thick of the reasons why the groove is so groovy.

Here's the part that makes us post-humans barf through our nano-receptor-lined orifices:

Sole stipulation: stick to human and hand-played. Nothing made using a drum machine, nothing sample-looped or edited together out of micro-samples. Mainly because it'd be just too huge a topic if we get into machine-rhythm (I could spend a year, easily, just on jungle*). But also because there's more philosophical integrity if we steer clear of programmed beats.** This is about the human body possessed by rhythm, but more than that, about musicians who are physically close, sharing the same space, joining together in the moment to build that mundane miracle, a groove. About presence and present-mindedness.

*in other words there are so many good examples it would annihilate the quaint old style drumming
**please tell me I didn't just read that

There's nothing quite like a dozen YouTube clips of integrity-filled moments enjoyed in shared sweaty communal space to blow away the alienation blues of sitting alone at a computer or staring intently into a mobile device. It's right up there with looking at jpegs of paintings on canvas hanging in gallery spaces as a balm for the soul. Or a video fireplace...

The usual gaggle of religious fanatics and war profiteers permanently infesting our nation's capital keeps trying to get a US war up with Iran. We're told that Iran is a pariah state, isolated by world sanctions, but outside our bubble of propaganda you can find maps showing a healthy percentage of countries actively trading with it.

Stephen M. Walt sticks another pin in the hype bubble (emphasis added):

We are often told that Gulf states like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait are deeply worried about Iran, and eager for the United States to take care of the problem. This is usually framed as a reflection of the Sunni-Shiite divide, and linked to concerns about Iranian subversion, the role of Hezbollah, and of course the omnipresent fretting about Iran's nuclear energy program.

... But there may be another motive at work here, and Americans would do well to keep that possibility in mind.

That motive is the Gulf states' interest in keeping oil prices high enough to balance their own budgets, in a period where heightened social spending and other measures are being used to insulate these regimes from the impact of the Arab Spring. According to the IMF, these states need crude prices to remain upwards of $80 a barrel in order to keep their fiscal house in order.

Which in turn means that Saudi Arabia et al also have an interest in keeping Iran in the doghouse, so that Iran can't attract foreign companies to refurbish and expand its oil and gas fields and so that it has even more trouble marketing its petroleum on global markets. If UN and other sanctions were lifted and energy companies could operate freely in Iran, its oil and gas production would boom, overall supplies would increase, and the global price would drop.

Standing near the doors on a crowded 5 train I heard a mother ranting non-stop at her approx. 9 year old son in a language that might have been Mongolian. The boy made the occasional barely audible one or two syllable response. The ranting continued and reached a climax as Mom slapped the kid on the forehead, harder than I would hit a child. He didn't seem fazed -- must happen a lot.

A few minutes went by and as we were nearing a station the mom abruptly turned around and started walking into the middle of the subway car. She didn't tell the kid her intentions or even turn around to see if he was following her. She grabbed a pole for herself and left the kid swaying uncertainly in the middle of the car, surrounded by strangers. Another woman noticed the abandoned boy and with a look of concern, took his shoulder and guided him to a pole, pushing him past his own mother so he'd have something to hold on to.

Possibly this wasn't really the boy's mom and I was witnessing the treatment of a brainwashed kidnap victim. I was standing too far away to intervene, pinned next to the doors, so I settled for giving Mom a Seinfeldesque Hard Stare (as in "What was I supposed to do? I gave her the head shake! I gave her the Hard Stare!").

I was having Chuck Palahniuk thoughts about how yeah, men are swine, but we get it from somewhere.