Read:My:Back

Meet Jim Keady, the protester told by Gov. Christie to "Sit Down & Shut Up"

Via WNYC, this is too good not to share. Everybody remember this guy's name.

Good Morning, America

It's always pretty after an apocalypse
So we strolled past the flowers planted by the Bloods and Crips
And they chose
white lilies cause they're such wacky kids
It was a good day
Damn right, it was a good day

Almost all the hypocrites and demagogues were gone
Like the sacramental moment In a Last Poets song
And Bayard Rustin came back just to bitch slap Farrakhan
It was a good day
Damn right, it was a good day

Burned to the ground
We knew it would burst into bloom
Healthy and good
So we struck that match and went back to sleep

Lee Atwater was on the corner turning tricks
Clutching the failed box set of his heartfelt blues licks
He said "I think I liked the ghetto better when it was sick"
It was a good a day
Damn right, I gotta say it was a good day

Razed to the ground
We knew it would burst into bloom
Healthy and good
Bayard Rustin smiled and went back to sleep

Good morning, America

-Smart Went Crazy -- "It Was a Good Day"

Reggae Britannia

I would strongly urge you to watch this ASAP, before it gets yanked from YouTube. It's busting at the seams with excellent archival footage, as well as great interviews with scene kingpins and converts like Don Letts, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Jerry Dammers, Viv Albertine, Dennis Bovell, and Stewart Copeland.

And can I just quickly add how jarring it is for me to imagine life in a place where quality art and culture are routinely celebrated the way they are in Britain? Can you imagine American network television producing a documentary of this caliber on any similar subject matter? The British youth culture fixations of my teens and twenties clearly paved the way for my more recent considerations of media, economics, and the complex paradigms that shape them. Considering the way we live, vote, and spend, is it any wonder that we so rarely feel any kind of kinship with the stories told on television?

Where are all the familiar faces?

 

The Iron Maiden scene from "Persepolis"

In further deference to my new life of being woefully behind the cultural curve, I finally watched "Persepolis", the uber-acclaimed animated French film from 2007, based on the graphic novel of the same name. The story considers the 1979 Iranian Revolution, as seen through the troubled gaze of a young innocent named Marjane. Like many other middle class Iranians of the era, Marjane's parents rally against the US-backed Shah, but end up remorseful over the rise of the Khomeini-led fundamentalist government that eventually assumes control.

The perhaps questionable role of graphic novels and political animation serving as historical documents notwithstanding, Persepolis recounts an exceptionally complicated series of events with admirable skill. The characters, especially Marjane and her grandmother (voiced by legendary French actress Dannielle Darrieux), are profoundly engaging and often wickedly funny in spite of the film's grave subtext. To the top of your Netflix cue, stat!

A Brief Moment of Focused Rage

Via On the Media's Facebook feed:

Let's play Mad Libs. It's [adjective] that belief in [theory] as an explanation for the origin of [noun] earns you a [phrase]. Our solution: troubling; evolution; life; political attack ad.

My idea for a reality show: Let's imagine 20 years into Alabama's future and see how well the kids who grow up under the policies of non-science are prepared to compete in the world. I suppose their parents will save thousands in college tuition fees because no college will find them fit for admission. Everybody wins!

Next time: Seriously, why don't we just deport all the smart people?

Forever Droppin' Science with Carl Sagan

One thing that seems especially striking in contemporary culture is how few benign visions on the immediate future are offered up. The mass media show all sorts of apocalyptic scenarios, ghastly futures. And there tends to be a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy to these prognostications. How rarely it is that we see a projection twenty or fifty or a hundred years into the future into a world in which we have come to our senses...

...in which we have figured things out.

-Carl Sagan, from The Varieties of Scientific Experience

Buy it here.

Come, Trentonian... Enshroud me in thy Purple Cloak.

Some days, we're let off the hook far too easily. Nothing requiring any real brainpower commands our attention, and our limits for comprehension go tragically untested.

Fortunately, there is the Trentonian, and their often beguiling headlines. Grasping this one introduced me to a part of my brain I'd never known to exist, and for that (and very little else), I am grateful to their staff.

Via Jon Solomon.

Previously.

Also.

Seriously?

Truth to power, Carl Sagan style

We kill each other, or threaten to kill each other, in part, I think, because we are afraid we might not ourselves know the truth, that someone with a different doctrine might have a closer approximation to the truth. Our history is in part a battle to the death of inadequate myths. If I can't convince you, I must kill you. That will change your mind. You are a threat to my version of the truth, especially the truth about who I am and what my nature is. The thought that I may have dedicated my life to a lie, that I might have accepted a conventional wisdom that no longer, if it ever did, corresponds to the external reality, that is a very painful realization. I will tend to resist it to the last. I will go to almost any lengths to prevent myself from seeing that the worldview that I have dedicated my life to is inadequate.

-Carl Sagan, from The Varieties of Scientific Experience

Logorama

Since almost everyone I know A) doesn't care about the Oscars, and B) already reads Dangerous Minds, it's probably silly for me to bother posting this here. But I'm happy to make exceptions for awe-inspiring works of genius like François Alaux, Hervé de Crécy, and Ludovic Houplain's astounding short film, Logorama.

Logorama from Marc Altshuler - Human Music on Vimeo.

Charlie Brooker—How to Report the News

More about Charlie here.