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May 9, 2006
Brian Eno is the godfather of electronica, the inventor of ambient music, and producer of the best work by bands like the Talking Heads and U2.
Tchad Blake has helmed the mixing board for Elvis Costello, Tom Waits, Soul Coughing and the Bad Plus, to name just a few.
Paul Simon is one of the most recognized names in pop music both for his work with Art Garfunkel and for his fusion of American pop music with African and South American music.
Surprise is the the album they collaborated on, the new Paul Simon record featuring Eno's signature sonic landscapes all over it, and the entire lovely thing, complete with liner notes, is
available to listen to on Simon's website.
posted by eustacescrubb at 7:43 PM PST - 69 comments
"The mind-set that invites a couple to use contraception is an anti-child mind-set," she told me. "So when a baby is conceived accidentally, the couple already have this negative attitude toward the child. Therefore seeking an abortion is a natural outcome.
We
oppose all forms of contraception." Don't even mention the mind-set behind
a vaccine for HPV.
posted by missbossy at 7:01 PM PST - 1194 comments
Is Stephen Merritt a racist? Sasha Frere-Jones, the
New Yorker's Pop Critic and maybe the finest music critic writing today, has long been an
activist against
rockism.
Stephen Merritt, the gay, white
auteur behind such postmodern pop experiments as
69 Love Songs, and sometime
target of S/FJ's
ire, recently got into hot water with
Jessica Hopper, among others, for allegedly racist comments made at the
EMP Pop Music Conference, which is Christmas and Halloween all rolled into one for music crits and their fellow nerds. Slate's
John Cook defends Merritt, claiming that disliking rap doesn't necessarily make one a racist, and
S/FJ responds with some further thoughts. But was Frere-Jones accusing Merritt of racism, specifically, or simply of
wack unexamined biases? And is that a fair criticism?
Slate's readers don't seem to think so.
posted by maxreax at 4:53 PM PST - 184 comments
Yesterday, the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, wrote a letter to the President of the United States of America, George W. Bush.
Here it is. (Courtesy Le Monde, 8 page PDF, English.) The letter has been "dismissed by its recipients as a rambling philosophical treatise." (
Times) Further coverage at
NYT and
Le Monde (French). The letter ends 27 years of diplomatic silence.
posted by blacklite at 3:58 PM PST - 95 comments
Nueva Orleans Before Katrina, Hispanics accounted for 3 percent of New Orleans’ population, with just 1,900 Mexicans showing up in the 2004 Census. No one knows for certain how many new ones have arrived, but estimates put the number between 10,000 and 50,000.
posted by ColdChef at 10:35 AM PST - 105 comments
Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C. is a liberal arts college and graduate school for the deaf (there's also a
high school and primary school).
In 1988, Gallaudet students protested when a hearing person was chosen as university president, and until today,
I. King Jordan has served. Recently, a new president was chosen--
Dr. Jane K. Fernandes, the school's Provost, who was born deaf but grew up speaking thanks to new therapies and technologies. A varied, vibrant student body never afraid to make their "voices" heard
has spoken (with photos). Last night,
so did a majority of the faculty, but Dr. Fernandes says she will stay.
posted by bardic at 10:14 AM PST - 167 comments
Running nearly a marathon every single day (24 miles) might seem a little crazy. Keep perspective, though: it's all in preparation for running
40 miles a day for
three months straight, across the country. What's more, the guy is 6'5", and will go through roughly 8000 calories a day -- as many in the jaunt as most people eat in an entire year. And then you realize that the whole thing is being done
for charity. Now that takes balls (of your feet).
posted by ajshankar at 1:59 AM PST - 50 comments
