In Monday's LA Times, car columnist Dan Neil (a recent guest on the show and the only automotive journalist to be awarded a Pulitzer), writes about the epic fall of General Motors. The article is immensely insightful, comparing the decline of GM to the decline of the American economy in general, while outlining the myriad blunders and misfortunes that led to the bankruptcy of a company that once accounted for 10% of the American economy.
If anything, however, the article is worth reading for the following sentence alone:
"Any organization that fails to sufficiently safeguard its means of self-correction and reform, that forsakes long-term investment for short-term gain, that piles up debt year after year, will eventually fail, no matter how grand its history or noble its purpose."
It's a potent message, and one I think we'd all be good to take to heart. If it isn't already too late.
But all of this preparation for the big Mideast speech seems to have put the White House in “America <3 Muslims” mode. In the run-up to the speech, the White House thought it would “share with you a few stories of Muslim Americans who are proudly serving the nation in the federal government.” Check out the video and also tell us what you thought of Obama's speech about America's relationship with the Muslim world.
If we allow for the fact that A) every princess can't be expected to pair with a mate of the same ethnicity, B) the creators might have chosen New Orleans to celebrate the historical beauty of the hurricane-damaged city, C) a witch doctor might be more of a culturally insensitive character than a racially insensitive character, D) characters who play musical instruments and dance are quite the norm in musicals, E) an alligator who plays jazz makes sense in New Orleans and F) fireflies just might be missing teeth, then we are left with just another Disney princess movie.
Then, if we put aside the fact that Tiana is Disney's 9th princess, and they might want to hold off on making any more female characters who are ... well ... princesses (even if Queen Oprah provides the voice for the lead character's mother), that leaves us with one thing that made my hair stand on end when I heard it in the trailer. A character, whose species, race and/or gender I could not determine, exclaims “'Dis Gon' Be Good!”
Not sure who, but someone, somewhere is going to complain about that line.
“Web 2.0” became the one-millionth English word Wednesday (Does “one-millionth” count as a word?), according to The Global Language Monitor, a Texas-based Web site that tracks the creation of new English words.
One million English words? (And does “one million” count as one word or as two words that contribute to a one-word idea?)
The Global Language Monitor says it's a celebration of the world's wordiest language at the very least. (We're counting “it's” as a word along with “it” and “is” just for fun).
Attention Susan Boyle, your 15 minutes are up. Not that I don't applaud Ms. Boyle's success on Britain's Got Talent (although I find the “shocking” revelation that yes, even ugly people can be good singers, to be more than a little distasteful), but to be very honest, her music doesn't do much for me.
I mean, really, haven't we all had enough of Les MiserablesandCats by now? It's hard to argue with 26 million YouTube views, but seriously, people dressed up like cats singing love songs is just a little bit creepy, right? Maybe that type of thing was cool in the eighties, but that was a pretty messed-up decade. That's crazy cat lady stuff. Oh... right. No offense, Susan Boyle.
In any case, as Boyle slips into Internet meme history alongside Tay Zonday and Stuff White People Like, another singing sensation is poised to take her place. As yet known only by his YouTube handle, Scribe114 is a 40-year-old former Marine and school teacher living in Detroit. When he's not teaching, however, Scribe114 records videos of himself singing cover versions of classic rock and Motown songs.
Check out his cover of The Drifters' “Up on the Roof,” and tell me this guy doesn't have what it takes to be the Susan Boyle of Summer 2009.
A documentary opened recently that could change the way we eat. But it probably won't.
Food, Inc. is a film about how and what we eat, something which director Robert Kenner pointedly states, "has changed more in the last 50 years than in the previous 10,000." It's a startling assertion, and one which, with a little thought, we can accept as true.
For a long time, more Americans lived outside of cities than in them. If they weren't farmers themselves, they knew farmers, or at least shared communities with them. Not anymore. Most people these days will have to think long and hard about when it was they last set foot on a farm, if they ever have.
To those who are familiar with the work of Pollan and Schlosser, this will not come as a surprise. Back in 2002, Pollan wrote about the horrific conditions at factory farms in his New York Times Magazine story, "Power Steer." Since then, there have been numerous books and articles written on the topic, as well as the subject of factory farming in general, and the ruinous affect it's having on our society and landscape.
Now more than before, there seems to be a growing awareness of the importance of eating locally, sustainably produced food. But it seems most of the people jumping on this bandwagon are the ones who are not only inclined to read books about the eco-politics of food, but can also afford to pay a premium for free-range eggs and organic orange juice.
What about everybody else? Films like Food, Inc. are important, because the more people who see them, the more awareness there will be about this important issue. But most people will not see this film on the weekend. They'll go see The Year One instead, a comedy about cave men. And can you blame them? Food, Inc. is a really depressing movie.
Sharon Jones' story is a pretty remarkable one in music. After being told she was too dark, too short, too fat and too old to be a pop singer, she persevered, spending 30 years becoming the international star she is today.
Jones, who was a guest on the show earlier this week, is now in her fifties (although you'd never guess that from her youthful energy) and is enjoying enormous success since collaborating with the Brooklyn NY-based Dap-Kings. Their latest album, 100 Days 100 Nights, is a delightfully faithful return to the days when funk and soul dominated the airwaves.
The Dap-Kings formed in 2001, and first came to my attention (and the attention of many) through their backing instrumentals on Amy Winehouse's breakthrough album, Back to Black. The producer of that album, Mark Ronson (who also produced Lily Allen), brought the Dap-Kings into the studio again for his album Version, which is a collection of covers.
Their work on Back to Black and Version is of equally high quality, but it's clear that the Dap-Kings are doing their best work when backing Sharon Jones. Musically, it's a match made in heaven.
2. Search online for textbooks. Everyone likes a good deal, right? In this economy, there's no sense paying $125 for a book that's online for $90, right? So, do some digging on Amazon.com or other book sites to see if you can get the best book for your buck.
4. Visit pickaprof.com. This is one of the best inventions since the Internet. It's an online database of schools where students rate their professors and can tell you things like which professor is the easiest to understand, gives pop quizzes, assigns tons of homework and a whole lot more.
“live the days we do have on this earth boldly and without fear”
After a week of high profile celebrity deaths, ranging from the likes of comedy straight men to international icons and superstars, it's easy to feel overwhelmed by all of the tragedy.
Sources indicate that his wife found him in his bed and unresponsive when she tried to awaken him in their Tampa, FL home.
When I heard about these recent deaths, it really hit me hard. A great deal of reflection took place on my part as I began to evaluate how short life can be.
We could all leave this earth, without a moment's notice. So my suggestion is to live the days we do have on this earth boldly and without fear. It's one of the few real choices over which we actually have control.
There are those YouTube members who upload video. Then there are those YouTube members who upload video that also happens to be news (you know who you are).
For all of those citizen journalists in the crowd, YouTube launched its new YouTube Reporters' Center project Monday to help aspiring reporters learn tips from seasoned journalism professionals.
The list of journalists and reporters who contributed to the project is impressive, with videos from Bob Woodward, Katie Couric, Arianna Huffington and, of course, Tavis Smiley, to name a few.
Michael Jackson was occasionally a topic of discussion on the show. In a conversation a few months before his death, Tavis talked with singer-songwriter James Ingram about working with the "King of Pop." Also Grammy-winning artist Ne-Yo discussed being compared to Jackson in his 2007 appearance.
Share your MJ thoughts, memories and favorite songs below.
Whatever your feelings about the pop legend, his impact on music cannot be denied, nor the fact that there hasn't been a celebrity, since, that could come close to matching his fame or stature as a performer. Yes, that was often overshadowed by weirdness, as plastic surgery transformed his face, and lawsuits tarnished his reputation, but his legend will certainly live on.
Toda on the blog BoingBoing is a repost of an essay by music critic Bob Lefsetz which I think sums it up as well as anyone could hope to. Despite it all, the King of Pop had many die-hard fans that stuck with him until the end. Here are some pictures of them by photographer Naomi Harris, via 125Magazine.
June 30th was declared "National Sovereignty Day" as Iraqi security forces took over control of Iraqi cities from U.S. troops six years after the U.S.-led invasion.
Seemingly emphasizing just how significant it is that Iraq would now be securing its own urban areas, a car bomb attack in Northern Iraq cut short the festivities, killed at least 20 people and injured 40.
"Those who think that Iraqis are not able to protect their country and that the withdrawal of foreign forces will create a security vacuum are committing a big mistake," Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki said Tuesday in a televised address.
Film director Michael Bay saw the release of the epic film on the big screen July 3, 2007 and watched how it wowed audiences across the country. Now, with the second installment of the series, Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen promises to be even better.
I can't wait to see the film. Here's one fan in Stockholm, Sweden who got a chance to recently check out the film. I hope we all enjoy it as much as he did.
The Obama administration, which has created several "dot gov" Web sites to coincide with its policy initiatives, has created Serve.gov. The latest dot gov is a site that helps volunteers find service work in their community, as well as register volunteer organizations and share volunteer stories.
The President and First Lady are also calling on Americans to volunteer this summer in a new nationwide initiative called "United We Serve." Here's the message from the First Lady.
“There are still a significant number of children for whom the only parent they have known in their lives is the father.”
In my quest to find out what people think about the meaning of Fathers Day, I asked one individual to share his thoughts on the subject. I hope you'll enjoy.-S.N.
I grew up in Dar es salaam, Tanzania, where both of my parents were working class citizens with great ambitions and limitless desires for their children. In a family of three, I have an older brother and a younger sister. While our mother has always been the favorite of our family, it's my father who has always been answering calls, clearing paths and supporting every one of us, including our mother, even when he's had some major reservations of his own about what some of us try to do with our own lives.
While many of us may cherish and sometimes take for granted the parental care where both mom and dad are present, there are still a significant number of children for whom the only parent they have known in their lives is the father.
Unlike many nations in the African continent, East Africa's Tanzania has been built with solid foundations that can be traced back to pre-colonial Africa where families and tribes lived together and supported each other against any odds. Some of these families have had the presence of two parents who are equally interested in the upbringing of their child or children and some families have only had the presence of one—an awesome father.
I'm talking about a father that prays for his child or children before he can pray for himself. Not the one who says to God, "Forgive them Father (when talking about his children) for they know not what they do," but the one who says, "Thank you Lord for all that they do."
My father always found comfort in his fatherhood and spoke to his children openly and lovingly.
He understood that a child is a gift from God—and that not all men are gifted to have a child. He took pride in not just making a baby, but rather raising one. I am talking about the man who not only clothed and sheltered, but also fed my stomach and my brain. He's a father who understood that, in today's world, keeping ignorant of one's own children is just the same as leaving them to suffer in the world alone. I'm talking about an awesome man who did these things for me. I'm talking about my father, my dad. - M. Khalfan, Austin, TX
“My grandfather vowed to be the man in my life that my dad wasn't able to be for me.”
With Father's Day being this past weekend, I wanted to take an opportunity to look at two individual's experiences and asked them what Father's Day meant to them. Both have what I believe to be interesting stories that I hope you'll appreciate as well.
This story is a personal account of one young man's experience of growing up with a unique father figure in his life, his grandfather. - S.N.
My father wasn't in my life to help me to learn how to be a man on a daily basis. My mom did her best to surround me with positive male figures all throughout my adolescent years. She always kept me in the YMCA programs, Boy Scouts, sports programs, and more to keep me around the environment of men. My most recognized father figure would be my grandfather, who recently passed away. As time goes by and the older I become, I realize how much of an inspiration and father figure he was to me. I also had great uncles that took me under their wings, as well. Father's Day means a lot to me. Even though I didn't have my biological father to guide and raise me, I relish the opportunity to let all the positive father figures I have know how much I love and appreciate them for molding the young man that I'm comfortable with growing up to become.
My grandfather was a distinguished and respected man of God. He pastored a church for half a century, taught and lead by example what God wanted from his children. During his years as pastor of his church, he played an enormous role in the civil rights movement in Houston, Texas. He was one of the few pastors in the city to take a stand with Martin Luther King Jr. when he visited for the continuation of the civil rights movement. He stood up for a lot and gave me motivation to keep that tradition going of love and respect that our last name stood for. He did so much to change the lives of others that he neglected his own son by mistake. He left the child parenting to my grandmother, while he provided financial stability and tended to God's work. My father didn't grasp the concept that being a father meant being there for his child, so my grandfather vowed to be the man in my life that my dad wasn't able to be for me. The older I've gotten, I have begun to realize, appreciate, love and understand everything he did to shape me into a true man of God.
I also had 3 loving uncles that were street smart, family orientated, and well-respected around their neighborhood. They showed me about hard work. as my grandfather did, but in a different view. They taught me about how to handle women, turn nothing into something, and also how to be myself and be cool.
Father's Day means a lot to me because I have the chance to let all of these father figures in my life know how much I love and appreciate them. I've learned from all of them that God is the number one priority to becoming a great man, and one day I hope to become a great father as well. - C. Lott, Houston, TX
In this recession-torn, down-on-its-luck 2009 America, people are doing what they can to survive, using whatever gifts God gave them. That's the premise behind Hung, an hilarious new series on HBO, which premieres next Sunday.
Hung is the story of Ray Drecker, a red-blooded American man who can't seem to catch a break. A handsome former athlete, Drecker is miserable at his job as a Detroit-area high school gym teacher, behind on his ballooned mortgage payments, and living in a tent on the lawn of the burned-out familial home he can't afford to fix.
In 2009 America, the story sounds all-too familiar, but then it takes some unusual and hilarious turns. With the help of a poet (played for perfect comedy by Jane Adams), Drecker (Thomas Jane) decides to put his greatest God-given talent to work and become a gigolo. Or, as Eddie Griffin so memorably put it, a "Man-ho."
Executive produced by Alexander Payne, whose films Election and About Schmidtcapture the pathos of middle-American life in all of its drab glory, Hung is perhaps the first TV series to make use of America's current dire straights for comedic effect.
While it follows the half-hour comedy format, and has lots to make you laugh (if you find the prospect of a divorced former high school baseball star-turned male prostitute amusing, that is) there's also lots to think about in this show. The whole story is overshadowed by a tangible sense of gloom. This is, after all, Detroit, a city that mirrors Drecker's own crumbling life in its derelict buildings and gutted downtown. While on its surface Hung may indeed be a show about the sex trade, what it's really about is the state of America today, and you can take that how you will.
Because I absolutely hate the fact that my house is a cell phone dead zone, I bought a new gadget that you've probably never heard of. It's called a femtocell and it hit the U.S. market in 2008.
The technology is designed to boost reception in homes and businesses and uses a box that looks like a Wi-Fi router to do that. It's like having a mini-cell tower in your home, because the box uses your broadband network and a GPS connection instead of the nearest cell phone tower.
The base station plugs into your broadband or DSL connection with an Ethernet cable and into your power outlet. And presto! That's it.
I decided to jump on this technology while it was still fairly new, before my mobile carrier (Verizon) gets slick and decides to charge a monthly fee for the service (like Sprint and T-Mobile).
I thought it was going to be some fancy set-up that would involve me watching an online tutorial, studying the manual for several hours and then asking my tech-savvy compadres how to work the darn thing. But that wasn't the case at all. I didn't even read the manual.
I placed the femtocell near my window (for the GPS signal) and on a table (I read the quick-start guide, at least.). After about an hour, my “network extender” was working. I went from no bars to four bars and have been chatting away ever since.
Don't hate.
I have been using the femtocell for all of two days, so I will let you know if it slows down my Internet connection or drops my calls unexpectedly. But so far, so good.
And if you're wondering why you've never heard of it, it's because mobile carriers have not promoted their femtocell rollouts. One theory is that the carriers are waiting until we're no longer in a recession and until they get their femto-testing out of the way. (Okay. I made up "femto-testing.") Another theory is that the carriers—who are all about their nationwide coverage and vast networks—don't want to call attention to the fact that they are selling a device to counteract their dreaded dead zones that we all know exist.
You know, it sounds a little stupid, but every time I see Edie Falco in a role other than Carmella Soprano, I get a bit of a shock. Like most people, Falco (a recent guest, star of HBO's The Sopranos and the new Showtime series Nurse Jackie) came to my attention in her award-winning role as the wife of mobster Tony Soprano. There was the whiny voice, the piercing Jersey accent, plus the big hair, the fake nails, the strained smile. It was all so "Carmella," and I guess I assumed that Falco (like many other actors on the show) was playing something fairly close to home.
Not so at all. Falco, it turns out, is from Brooklyn, but that's where the proximity to her Sopranos role ends. She is, it turns out, just a really talented actress.
The first time I saw Falco in a non-Sopranos role was in John Sayles' 2002 film Sunshine State, an impressive ensemble piece about Florida. Most recently, however, her show Nurse Jackie has proven that she is still a force to be reckoned with on the small screen.
On the show, Falco plays a nurse at a fictional New York City hospital. Addicted to painkillers and in serious trouble with her love life, Jackie is the sort of complex character that actors dream of playing. As with all hospital dramas, the stories are divided between the action of the ER and the turbulent relationships of the hospital's staff. It's often funny, frequently poignant, and unlike any other hospital show I've ever seen, which is a real accomplishment.
For her part, Falco upholds her status as one of the most interesting actresses on TV, with a performance that's nuanced and utterly believable. Like Carmella Soprano, Jackie isn't always likeable, but there's something so fascinating about her that you just can't look away.
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