Black Rabbi in Chicago crossing boundaries

A-A authors who converted to Judaism:

• Julius Lester
• Carolivia Herron

This NY Times article "Black Rabbi Reaches Out to Mainstream of His Faith" reminded me of my youthful days of reading Chaim Potok whose Hasidic depictions enraptured me.

I grew up Southern Baptist and consented to being baptised, late as a teenager, merely to please my mother who wanted to have a place to bury me if I were to die. For seven years I attended a single-sex Episcopal school where I attended chapel daily. I went off to college where I probably claimed to be agnostic. Then, I stopped affiliating. When I had a commitment ceremony, it was in a Unitarian Church. And, matters of faith still intrigue me. I like ritual; perhaps that is some of the appeal.

Colt .45 in comics: sippin' and chillin'

I rarely drink alcohol since personally it's not as yummy as orange soda or an IBC Root Beer. And, I have absolutely no idea what Colt .45 tastes like since I never ran in those circles. But, being an overly educated brown-skinned person who's only lived in urban areas, I know what it signifies to me:

• a cheap high
• more bang for your buck

packed in a whopping 40 ounces. So it's amusing to read at MSNBC's Ads of the Weird about the effort to upscale the thin swill with a big kick.

So I got curious about the actualities of the demon brew.

Would you have imagined that malt liquor has been the subject of a PhD dissertation? I kid you not (and, the first twenty-five pages are allegedly available for free):

Brown Taylor, Didra. 2000. Knowledge, Attitudes, and Malt Liquor Beer Drinking Behavior Among African American Men in South Central Los Angeles. Thesis (Ph. D)--California School of Professional Psychology, 2000a.

In the wings, there are more scholars waiting. [What did we do before we had the web?] See what further unblinking can unearth. Now, go forth, read and become more truly aware with "A Story without Heroes: The Cautionary Tale of Malt Liquor".

Nike celebrates a century of Converse shoes

In college I was the proud owner of a pair of black leather "Chucks" -- and, I just realized that actually everyone in the family has a pair. So if you don't need to quibble over the actual birth day and the cheap marketing ploy, you can probably enjoy the photos @ Boston.com.

Inhabitat » VIDEO: Grow a Treehouse

Just another nifty notion from people with way more time and brains than I in this "Grow a Treehouse with Terreform" video on Inhabitat.

Why I'm Thinking Obama Can

If it was just about who I want, I'd vote for Hilary in a heartbeat even as I am cognizant of what happened the last time Bill got bored in the White House -- think back to 1995 & re-think Monica Lewisky as a presidential distraction because he had time on his hands because of Congress' government shutdown.

But if the question is who I think can win, then I'm another vote now squarely behind Obama. (Especially, now that Romney has dropped out and I think Obama v. McCain is a more winnable battle.)

Folks (both, in print and in person) have convinced me that there is substance behind Obama's "Can't we just all get along" affect. So I gladly hear the history, and the uplift, of the moment arriving in this song -- masterfully choreographed by will.i.am:

Now, if someone can just keep Nader from spoiling the party again!

Classroom Incident Sparks First Amendment Debate - News Story - WISC Madison

Of course, this wanna-be librarian thinks tearing up a book is sacrilege but would I feel threatened by someone ripping pages out of the Bible? Doubtful unless maybe if it had some significant historical import...and I knew that was why said person was desecrating the book. Then, I would consider the act one of terrorism -- to use a much overused word. And that would be equally true for historic books I know to considered sacred or valued by others even if I don't follow or know the belief system.

Listenin to...

remixes uploaded and created by Dez

When USB accidents happen

The Risks Digest offers up a scary tale of what your cell phone may be doing to your laptop when you're not looking. Caveat emptor!

Do you buy meat thinking it's been carbon monoxided?

Regardless, you may want to read ABC News: Hill Debates 'Carbon Monoxide Meat' where you can learn that CO makes meat and fish look fresh indefinitely.

The FDA's David Acheson, who along with other FDA and USDA officials sat at a table covered with various samples of year-old meat that still appears fresh, and said that 'this particular issue is not a safety concern even remotely high on our radar screen.' He added that he believes that most people are aware that meat is packaged with carbon monoxide...

It just makes me wonder what exactly would make this a bad idea to officials; I can only guess their thinking...since it don't kill it's okay for corporations to add whatever they deem necessary to the food web.

20071117 info UPDATE: Even after reading about the scientific merits of the minute levels of CO exposure, I still think it's a slippery slope ... because of unanticipated consequences and strange coincidences. I still want greater assurances ... with regard to actual habits of those increasing numbers at the margins -- on the street, or unsupervised -- along with the unknown animals being fed whatever from who knows where ... ! I understand the need to save the many over the imagined or projected unknowns but recollections of efforts to track down mad cow disease makes me pause and ask do we really ever know what monsters we're creating.

"If you ask amateurs to act as front-line security personnel, you shouldn't be surprised when you get amateur security"

Fav infosec guru Bruce Schneier clarifies what's important -- and ignored in by most current government attempts to makes "US" safe in Schneier on Security: The War on the Unexpected, which originally appeard in Wired.com.

"the Chemistry Set is toast"

The 12 Angry Men Blog's recalls my own youth with two chemistry sets in its take on the "Endangered Species - The Chemistry Set.."

Is saying you got kiddie porn the same as actually having it?

What a slippery slope the porn plane becomes if the Supreme Court agrees with Slate Magazine's characterization of the legal merits when the Solicitor General Paul

...Clement says that to be liable under the PROTECT Act, you need not be selling or advertising the porn. It's enough to say you have it.

A sad day indeed. Oral arguments were yesterday.

DNA Pioneer, Suspended Over Racial Comments

The Wall Street Journal's Health Blog brings us old news from the UK where the October 14, 2007 The Sunday Times Magazine displayed more than we wish to know about how Doc Watson thinks.

But, a few days later he goes on to assure us, he didn't really mean what his words said:

To all those who have drawn the inference from my words that Africa, as a continent, is somehow genetically inferior, I can only apologise unreservedly,” he said. That is not what I meant. More importantly, there is no scientific basis for such a belief.

Early onset... Or, perhaps, he needs a better keeper.

Street Mathematics vs School Mathematics

I love what I know of the mathematician Keith Devlin -- aka The Math Guy on NPR's Weekend Edition -- who is a researcher at as well as the executive director of Stanford University's Center for the Study of Language and Information. Here are two good reasons for my adoration:

1. His October 2007 "Devlin's Angle" at MAA Online wherein he adds fuel to my qualms about school math in

   Kinds of Math

2. Mathematics, the Science of Patterns The Search for Order in Life, Mind, and the Universe. New York: Henry Holt, 2003.

By the way, yesterday I finally saw Danica McKellar's Math Doesn't Suck: How to Survive Middle-School Math without Losing Your Mind or Breaking a Nail which I only wish also came out with a boy-cover....maybe I'll design one to print up so I can try using it w/J. Check out a review at MAA Online.

Richard Scarry's The Best Word Book Ever: 1963 vs. 1991

Who wins? Us or our children?

Perhaps this is a good place to reference Sidney Hook's 10 rules for discourse from "Ethics of Controversy" given that #1 is Nothing and no one is immune from criticism. And, #4, reminds us that while words may be "legally permissible" does not mean they are also "morally permissible". Here, I'm reminded of my unease when J., in first grade, brought home an alphabet worksheet referencing "Eskimos".

someone on the "social graph"

Or, as he says, let me declare the problem statement, as I see it, and the underlying assumptions I've been making.

The someone is Brad Fitzpatrick whose company developed LiveJournal and its backend software all of which were purchased by Six Apart.

Conspiracy Theory + Schoolhouse Rock

"Media-opoly" from Saturday Night Live's TV Funhouse skit was created by Robert Smigel and broadcast on "Saturday Night Live" during the March 14, 1998 airing on NBC, a subsidiary of GE; it was shown only once and edited out of subsequent reruns.

According to Lorne Michaels, he "didn't think it worked comedically."

More commentary @ http://snipurl.com/contheoryrock

Soul Sides: my fav audioblog

Trying to explain to C the source for a song that she was grooving on...I was listening to Soul Symphony, the downloadable mix of some Asian guy's first soul/jazz/funk mix CD...I realized how little I really knew about DJ O-Dub. So I went and read his bio only to discover that I probably have heard (maybe, even read) him without knowing given the breadth of his portfolio. Also, he maintains Poplicks.com. And, his day job -- like that of many of my St. A's siblings I envy -- is professor. But, I should probably check out the parenting blog in which he's involved Rice Daddies.

Finally, a news-y item to get the child to wash better, more often

aka Cheerleaders' Lemonade Stand Makes Folk Ill

A cultural transliteration: Harry Potter to the 'hood?

Is that even practical? Readable? A possible answer resides in one Troy CLE.

Now, I offer a long intro en route to the point...

As a black kid who grew up in that lap of all that is black and soul-identified -- Memphis, TN, I left as a Jethro Tull loving folkie it is only fitting that I'd remain at the margins with a list of Eurocentric literary favs that include classics such as Stendahl's The Red and the Black, Thackery's Vanity Fair and anything penned by a Bronte sister. Epic and dramatic, and I'm enthralled; see Mario Puzo's The Godfather: Parts I (1972) and II (1974) but NOT III (1990) which was pretty much ruined by the director replacing Winona Ryder with his daughter Sofia Coppola. (And, who knew she'd blossom into a decent director.)

I also loved the Arthurian tales as captured by TH White's The Once and Future King and Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon. Yep, just another little brown girl with a classical education; I didn't resist what I was fed even as I now flirt with the margins. So while I love mythology having a child makes me more fond of fractured tales and re-tellings such as Eve Merriam's Inner City Mother Goose.

I think I may have attempted The Hobbit when younger I never cozied up to LOTR although Peter Jackson's films have a similar place in my heart as the books I've mention.

To further elaborate the odd outsider theme... I am a child of the sixties who today is a reformed pessimist with a soft spot for dystopias and disquieting utopian visions -- the ususual suspects: Brave New World, Farenheit 451, Solyent Green, and Gattaca; also add Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time and Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game. (And, I still wonder how I got here from back there...a midnight train from my reality (?).) But, I digress.

Somewhere along the path, I discovered Samuel Delany, still in his SF days; I still love the sound of the first one I read Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand. And much later found Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis trilogy which led me to her Patternists series.

But I was a reluctant late arrival to the Harry Potter band wagon; I enjoyed the series despite their unevenness always reading the book before seeing the film. I think it was book #6 that I mused about what would it take for a fiction book to have that level of appeal to urban youths with whom I work and see where I live.

Of course, JK Rowling's books already appeal to those kids who do read big long books yet I wondered about what might populate a story with a broad appeal AND have the vibrancy of actual flavors that feel their eyes and ears daily. Few names came to mind; ok, one -- Nalo Hopkinson who I still haven't managed to read but know I should. If I push my brain, I think of a few others I might imagine taking that plunge: Neil Gaiman, China Mielville, Pat Cadigan, Harryette Mullen, Colson Whitehead (ne Arch Colson Chipp Whitehead), Don Byron, directors Julie Dash or Kasi Lemmons.

And finally, we arrive at the point...
The simple truth is the epic tales I love on screen or in print never have faces with complexions close to mine or the kids with whom I've worked. So I was delighted to learn about Troy CLE who has laid out plans for The Marvelous World series which has its own website and has been described as the "black Harry Potter". And, if we're to believe the hype The Marvelous Effect combines elements of fantasy, science fiction, hip-hop, video gaming, NASCAR and anime.

NOTE: Episode #327 of PBS's NOW is where I saw the author in early July when I began the original draft for this post.