Barrett Brown (
previously),
journalist, researcher, and
activist formerly associated with Anonymous, was
raided at his Dallas home on September 12 and brought into Federal custody in Texas. Video and audio of the raid exist, as Brown was hosting a video chat at the time of the raid. (Brown's girlfriend was present during the raid and has published
a partial account.) Brown now faces
indictment on counts related to his comments about an individual FBI agent in
three Youtube videos he had posted in the day before his arrest, and to some of his recent tweets (including a retweet of a Fox News commentator's 2010
remark about Julian Assange).
[more inside]
posted by FrauMaschine
on Oct 7, 2012 -
40 comments
California has become the first state in the country to
ban the so-called "reparative" ex-gay therapy for people under the age of 18 years old. "This bill bans non-scientific 'therapies' that have driven young people to depression and suicide. These practices have no basis in science or medicine and they will now be relegated to the dustbin of quackery," Brown said in a statement to The San Francisco Chronicle.
[more inside]
posted by roomthreeseventeen
on Sep 30, 2012 -
37 comments
William Brown was a man who recorded a handful of blues on Sadie Beck's Plantation on July 16, 1942 for
Alan Lomax. Once thought to be the same man as the Willie Brown who played with Son House and Charley Patton--and was immortalized in Robert Johnson's
Crossroad Blues--the consensus now is that William Brown was a different man, about
whom we know next to nothing. Certainly, the handful of recordings we have that feature him supports this. The Willie Brown who recorded
Future Blues and
M & O Blues was an archetypal Delta bluesman, with both songs being stripped down versions of Charley Patton's
Screamin' and Hollerin' the Blues, among others, and
Pony Blues, respectively. The
William Brown who recorded
Mississippi Blues,
Ragged and Dirty and
Make Me a Pallet on the Floor plays and sings nothing like that Willie Brown. That we know nothing about him and never heard any more of his music is one of the many tragedies of recorded blues.
[more inside]
posted by y2karl
on Aug 30, 2011 -
15 comments
Matthew Irvine Brown has written 18 short pieces specifically to be played in iTunes shuffle mode. The fragments can be downloaded from his site to create your own original track. A liking of
glitch will probably increase your enjoyment.
posted by meech
on Jan 17, 2011 -
22 comments
The stuff of legend, Van Halen's "No brown M&Ms" concert rider (most recently mentioned on MetaFilter
here) has made the rounds by word of mouth, and word of internet, for years. Now, the Van Halen 1982 World Tour backstage rider has been found. It consists of 53 typewritten pages and contains the M&Ms prohibition - which actually says
M & M's (WARNING: ABSOLUTELY NO BROWN ONES) - as well as other interesting demands, excerpted at The Smoking Gun.
Via.
posted by amyms
on Dec 12, 2008 -
91 comments
Tevis Howard, a 2007 Brown University graduate and recent recipient of the
Draper Richards Fellowship and the
Rainer Arnhold Fellowship, is the 2005 Founder and Executive Director of
KOMAZA, a non-profit community-based organization in Kenya. KOMAZA's mission is to "end chronic poverty in Kenya by promoting health, economic growth, education, and infrastructure development" through a tree farming
social enterprise. Partnering with the
Tree Biotechnology Project, KOMAZA plants
fast-growning, drought-tolerant Eucalyptus trees as a cash crop for rural, substinance farming communities.
[more inside]
posted by lunit
on Apr 10, 2008 -
7 comments
Kid Bailey was a Mississippi Delta bluesman blessed with the kind of slightly gravel-tinged voice that emanates authority. His recording career was a very short one, however, consisting of
precisely one day, and yielding
precisely two songs. Very little is known about Bailey himself, and the identity of the 2nd accompanying guitarist on his only known recording remains a mystery, though there has been some
some speculation. I've been doing a little speculating myself, regarding some of Bailey's lyrics, and any of you blues linguists who might want to help fill in the blanks, please see the [more inside].
[more inside]
posted by flapjax at midnite
on Feb 21, 2008 -
16 comments
It was just horrifying how quickly they became what I told them they were. The day after Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered in 1968,
Jane Elliott, a
elementary school teacher in
Riceville,
Iowa, conducted her
Blue Eyes Brown Eyes exercise with her students, dividing them by eye color to ilustrate prejudice and racism. Since retiring from teaching in the early 1980s she's repeated the exercise for adults in corporations, at colleges, and
on Oprah.
PBS's 1985 documentary
A Class Divided is
viewable online [Real and Windows Media], as are parts of the 2002 documentary
Australian Eye [QuickTime and Windows Media]; both feature
participants' reactions. (Related:
different reflections by a participants in similar exercises; and
a program evaluation and
transcript of the exercise.)
Ms. Elliott
recently said, "What is distressing is that I get the same results today with adults that I got using the exercise with children in 1968."
posted by kirkaracha
on Jun 13, 2005 -
64 comments
Now there's a time but I say none like now: After the eastern cantilever span of the
Oakland-Bay Bridge collapsed in the
1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, CalTrans engineers recommended
replacing it with a
cable-stayed bridge. The estimated cost was roughly 1 billion and would be completed in 2003--that is, until the Mayors Brown got involved.
Then-SF-Mayor Willie Brown objected to the
new design, saying the abutment at Yerba Buena island would interfere with his planned condominium development. Brown coaxed the Navy--who owned the land on which the foundation would be built--into preventing CalTrans from performing soil-engineering tests, saying the new bridge wasn't safe, making references to
other bridge disasters, and interviewing engineers all over the Bay Area until he
finally found one who agreed with him.
Jerry Brown--
former governor of California and current mayor of Oakland--
voiced his opposition, calling the design a "bland viaduct" and proposing an international competition to design "a world-class bridge." When CalTrans told Brown his objections were a year late, he dug up an
old Frank Lloyd Wright design and asked CalTrans, "Say, can we
put trains on it, too?" The delays and design changes have increased the cost to over five billion, and its completion date is anyone's guess.
According to Governor Schwartzenegger, this is the Bay Area's problem, not California's. (Fine then! Can we have
our water back?) Fifteen years, two audits, and
one angry architect later, the questions remain: how and by whom will this new bridge be funded,
what will it look like, and
will it be finished when the
The Big One hits?
posted by fandango_matt
on Nov 29, 2004 -
18 comments
Brown Equals Terroist - the story of a photography student who refuses to provide his ID to a security officer, and is swiftly confronted by Homeland Security. His ongoing struggle with the event is chronicled in the related
blog.
posted by falconred
on Jul 9, 2004 -
112 comments
Black, White & Brown. A great 9-part video feature on the NYT site (registration required) featuring a discussing between Cornel West and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. commemorating the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education.
posted by adrober
on May 16, 2004 -
2 comments
"Sometimes you just have to make the cats." Civil War buffs Ruth and Rebecca Brown have created thousands of clay cats in Union and Confederate uniforms.... the twins bring history to life by creating sweeping battle scenes and dioramas of dramatic moments, as interpreted with clay cats. Via
Obscure Store.
(and here comes mr. hand, Oh Noooooooo!)
posted by dchase
on Oct 19, 2001 -
35 comments
Students for Suicide Pills? On October 12th, 1984, 1900+ students turned out to vote on a referendum asking that their university's Health Services be allowed to offer cyanide pills in the event of nuclear war.
57% of students said they wanted it.
posted by Fat Elvis
on Sep 4, 2001 -
11 comments
