Ski feat. Mos Def-Taxi from Creative Control on Vimeo.
Earlier this week, I chronicled a bit of the musical selections that provided the soundtrack to my paper-writing adventure. Since sharing is caring, I decided to put those songs into a mix just for you!
I played each of these songs on repeat at least 15 times (Francis & The Lights' cover of Kanye's "Can't Tell Me Nothing" was the undisiputed champion with 164 plays) as I wrote about the influence of Edward Bernays' 1928 book, Propaganda, on the last 80+ years of American mass manipulation and media scholars' discussion thereof.
The tracklisting is below. Click here or on the album cover to download. Enjoy!
1. In My Dreams (Cudder Anthem) - KiD CuDi - 2009
2. The Bells (feat. Patti Labelle & The Bluebelles) - Laura Nyro - 1973
3. Can't Tell Me Nothing - Francis & The Lights - 2008
4. Everybody Touch - J*Davey - 2006
5. Eclipse - Ahmad Jamal - 1974
6. RobertaFlack - Flying Lotus - 2008
7. Paper Chase - Do Or Die - 1996
8. The Rotten Apple - Prodigy (of Mobb Deep) - 2007
9. I Wanna Know - The Foreign Exchange - 2008
10. Baby (You Know I'm Gonna Miss You) - The Montclairs - 1972
11. (Love) Lock Down - Rashid Hadee - 2009
If you follow the debate around the energy/climate bills working through Congress you will notice that the drill-baby-drill opponents of this legislation are now making two claims. One is that the globe has been cooling lately, not warming, and the other is that America simply can’t afford any kind of cap-and-trade/carbon tax.
But here is what they also surely believe, but are not saying: They believe the world is going to face a mass plague, like the Black Death, that will wipe out 2.5 billion people sometime between now and 2050. They believe it is much better for America that the world be dependent on oil for energy — a commodity largely controlled by countries that hate us and can only go up in price as demand increases — rather than on clean power technologies that are controlled by us and only go down in price as demand increases. And, finally, they believe that people in the developing world are very happy being poor — just give them a little running water and electricity and they’ll be fine. They’ll never want to live like us.
Yes, the opponents of any tax on carbon to stimulate alternatives to oil must believe all these things because that is the only way their arguments make any sense. Let me explain why by first explaining how I look at this issue.
I am a clean-energy hawk. Green for me is not just about recycling garbage but about renewing America. That is why I have been saying “green is the new red, white and blue.”
My argument is simple: I think climate change is real. You don’t? That’s your business. But there are two other huge trends barreling down on us with energy implications that you simply can’t deny. And the way to renew America is for us to take the lead and invent the technologies to address these problems.
The first is that the world is getting crowded. According to the 2006 U.N. population report, “The world population will likely increase by 2.5 billion ... passing from the current 6.7 billion to 9.2 billion in 2050. This increase is equivalent to the total size of the world population in 1950, and it will be absorbed mostly by the less developed regions, whose population is projected to rise from 5.4 billion in 2007 to 7.9 billion in 2050.”
The energy, climate, water and pollution implications of adding another 2.5 billion mouths to feed, clothe, house and transport will be staggering. And this is coming, unless, as the deniers apparently believe, a global pandemic or a mass outbreak of abstinence will freeze world population — forever.
Now, add one more thing. The world keeps getting flatter — more and more people can now see how we live, aspire to our lifestyle and even take our jobs so they can live how we live. So not only are we adding 2.5 billion people by 2050, but many more will live like “Americans” — with American-size homes, American-size cars, eating American-size Big Macs.
“What happens when developing nations with soaring vehicle populations get tens of millions of petroleum-powered cars at the same time as the global economy recovers and there’s no large global oil supply overhang?” asks Felix Kramer, the electric car expert who advocates electrifying the U.S. auto fleet and increasingly powering it with renewable energy sources. What happens, of course, is that the price of oil goes through the roof — unless we develop alternatives. The petro-dictators in Iran, Venezuela and Russia hope we don’t. They would only get richer.
So either the opponents of a serious energy/climate bill with a price on carbon don’t care about our being addicted to oil and dependent on petro-dictators forever or they really believe that we will not be adding 2.5 billion more people who want to live like us, so the price of oil won’t go up very far and, therefore, we shouldn’t raise taxes to stimulate clean, renewable alternatives and energy efficiency.
Green hawks believe otherwise. We believe that in a world getting warmer and more crowded with more “Americans,” the next great global industry is going to be E.T., or energy technology based on clean power and energy efficiency. It has to be. And we believe that the country that invents and deploys the most E.T. will enjoy the most economic security, energy security, national security, innovative companies and global respect. And we believe that country must be America. If not, our children will never enjoy the standard of living we did. And we believe the best way to launch E.T. is to set a fixed, long-term price on carbon — combine it with the Obama team’s impressive stimulus for green-tech — and then let the free market and innovation do the rest.
So, as I said, you don’t believe in global warming? You’re wrong, but I’ll let you enjoy it until your beach house gets washed away. But if you also don’t believe the world is getting more crowded with more aspiring Americans — and that ignoring that will play to the strength of our worst enemies, while responding to it with clean energy will play to the strength of our best technologies — then you’re willfully blind, and you’re hurting America’s future to boot.
The Supreme Court on Monday declined to revive a lawsuit on behalf of Native American activists who claimed that the Washington Redskins' team name is so offensive that it does not deserve trademark protection.
The court without comment refused to get involved in the long-running dispute. The decision essentially lets stand a lower court ruling that the activists waited too long to bring the challenge.
The team has been known as the Redskins since 1933, when the name was changed from the Boston Braves. It became the Washington Redskins in 1937, when the team moved south.
The lawsuit was filed in 1992, when seven activists challenged a Redskins trademark issued in 1967. They won seven years later in a decision by the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, which said the name could be interpreted as offensive to Native Americans. The case is Harjo v. Pro-Football, Inc.
Trademark law prohibits registration of a name that "may disparage . . . persons, living or dead, . . . or bring them into contempt, or disrepute."
The team appealed to federal court.
Judges at the district and circuit levels said the activists' trademark cancellation claim was barred by the doctrine of laches, which serves as a defense against claims that should have been made long ago.
The activists argued that disparaging trademarks can be challenged at any time, citing a decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit. The decision was written by then-judgeSamuel A. Alito Jr., who now sits on the Supreme Court.
But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit said that was merely a "suggestion" of how to interpret the law.
The federal district judge who heard the lawsuit also said the activists had not proven that the name was disparaging.
The Supreme Court considered only the question of whether the suit was barred because of the passage of too much time.
Clipse feat Pharrell - I'm Good from Malice of the Clipse on Vimeo.
Clipse - Doorman Music Video - Til The Casket Drops Dec 8 from Malice of the Clipse on Vimeo.
When you first hear of this mixtape (prolly right now) - you're like who are these dudez??? Madison Wisconsin??? Well, just give it a listen, try 'em out... For those of you who don’t know, this midwest shit is ill, shit is illlllll.
After hearing the intro, which is a combination of audio samples from the lead voice, MC F. Stokes, as well as some real tight scratches by Mr. Vinnie Toma, you'll want to hear more. They build the momentum up, pushing you into a hip-hop funk that you will dig.
The opening track, "Sparse Parts Remix", hits you like a ton of bricks, I started bobbing my head instantaneously as the first bar dropped. That ol' Run DMC Peter Piper bell riff plus some ill strings, this beat bangs hard. The body of the album is very solid, with tracks that vary in beats, rhymes and in character. It’s hard for me to pick favorites – so I’ll break into a double – for beat I have to pick “Sparse Parts Remix” and for lyrics I have to go with the “Blessings Remix”.
My boy Mr. Physix, and the Dirty Disco Kids, produced the album. The most interesting aspects of the project are that the sounds are so original and the beats and lyrics really show how versatile their whole crew is. This is a very tight underground mixtape album, I suggest you download it now. You will be sure to find some tracks that you will put on your Friday afternoon cruisin’ playlist.
Big ups to Madison, big ups to Legendary Jackson, big ups to the Dirty Disco Kids. Big ups to the Midwest, more coming soon, stay tuned… FILM!
Hip-hop isn't dead -- it's just going through a monumental identity crisis.
Jay-Z clings to his credibility while Miley Cyrus gives him a shout-out on her latest single. Kanye West follows an awards show outburst with a blog apology that feels both petulant and contrite. Lil Wayne tells Katie Couric he's a gangster, then takes her bowling.
If hip-hop -- once our most radical, rebellious popform -- is finally congealing into the snoozy status quo, how can today's rappers feel anything but conflicted?
The genre's latest ball of contradictions comes bouncing out of Washington, D.C. His name is Wale, and after a two-year slog through the record industry's broken-down hype machine, his major-label debut "Attention Deficit," finally arrives Tuesday. It's a stellar offering from a wildly gifted rapper, but almost predictably, Wale's feelings are mixed.
"I won't rest till I'm given my respect," he proclaims on "Triumph," as if fame is something he deserves.
"Am I doing this for them or me?" he second-guesses on "Contemplate," as if fame is something he dreads.
And back and forth it goes, with the rapper's sticky, dexterous flow holding the proceedings together like so much rubber cement.
For proof of Wale's lyrical acrobatics, look no further than "Pretty Girls," where the rapper's best pickup line involves two bottles of champagne, a football joke and a healthy credit rating: "What you sippin' on? It's no problem/Black and gold bottles like I'm pro-New Orleans/But shorty, I'm far from a Saint/But I got two AmExes that look the same way."
This is some masterful wordplay -- with an emphasis on play -- and it makes for the album's most dazzling cut. The song's thundering, go-go-inflected track helps, too. Production duo Best Kept Secret built it around a sample from local stalwarts Backyard Band and it sounds like a house party crumbling in an earthquake. How it will fare on national radio is anyone's guess, but for locals fluent in go-go, "Pretty Girls" is a thriller.
Wale has a fantastic ear for beats, though you wouldn't know it after hearing "Attention Deficit" in its entirety. There's some real dreck from producers Mark Ronson ("90210") and the Neptunes ("Let It Loose"). Wale is either adopting the please-all-audiences model West popularized, or his label's invisible hand is fussing with the dials. (In a delicious stroke of irony, Interscope reportedly zapped a song from the track list titled "Artistic Integrity.")
Sometimes pandering to the masses isn't such a bad idea. The album's lead single "Chillin," is a club-friendly romper with a chorus co-hosted by ascendant weirdo Lady Gaga. Purists balked at the collaboration when it hit the blogosphere last spring, dismissing it as too left field. Had M.I.A. or Rihanna belted that same exact hook, this tune would still be taking hourly victory laps across the airwaves. And there's a precedent here, too. Does anyone remember back in 1985, when local go-go icons E.U. crossed paths with pop-eccentric-turned-gay-culture-icon Grace Jones?
By the end of his 14-track, big-league debut, Wale sounds nothing less than harried, hustling to please the gods of Billboard, radio, MTV, the blogosphere and his home town. But with "Mirrors" he tries to brush those extraneous pressures off his shoulders with his most poignant line: "What the fans can't see, that mirror gonna notice."
What a concept: a rapper who answers to an audience of one.
Congress and federal regulators are poised to make a misguided and reckless decision that will stifle our economy recovery and spur long-term damage to plant and animal life on earth.
In the coming months, the Environmental Protection Agency will hold hearings to justify the movement to brand carbon dioxide (CO2) as a pollutant. Congress will also consider cap-and-trade legislation that, if enacted, could also regulate CO2 as pollution. Why is it such a catastrophic decision? Because there is not a single piece of evidence that CO2 is a pollutant. In fact, lower levels of carbon dioxide actually inhibit plant growth and food production. What we see happening in Washington right now is the replacement of politics for science in conversations about CO2.
For plants, CO2 is the greatest, naturally occurring air-borne fertilizer that exists. Even schoolchildren learn in elementary science class that plants need carbon dioxide to grow. During photosynthesis, plants use this CO2 fertilizer as their food and they “breathe out” oxygen into the air so humans can inhale it, and in turn exhale CO2. This mutually beneficial and reinforcing cycle is one of the most basic elements of life on earth.
An article appeared recently in the Environment and Energy Daily that claimed a “modeled” nitrogen deficiency will occur as CO2 rises. Well, CO2 has already risen over 37%, 105 parts per million, and where is the real world nitrogen deficiency? Why are Earth’s forests lush if the added growth that has already occurred, due to big bursts of CO2, has depleted the nitrogen supply? The nitrogen supply of pristine ecosystems has been resupplied through natural processes for eons. Computer models, manipulated to produce desired results, can generate catastrophic, front page, forecasts. We encourage our government’s scientists to step back from their models and observe what is and what has happened in the real world as well as in actual plant experiments. Doesn’t anyone recognize the good news that is staring them in the face?
It simply defies imagination, let alone science, that the United Nations has now backed an arbitrary limit on atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. The chairman of the politically charged Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said he supports efforts to reduce carbon dioxide to 10% below current levels. In the context of today’s political conversations, this recommendation may sound like an acceptable position to save the environment. But the scientific reality of such a step is quite the opposite. Lowering carbon dioxide in our atmosphere will have catastrophic affects on our food supply. Higher concentrations of carbon dioxide support plant life and helps plants thrive. If our food supply is reduced, the hunger crisis in many parts of the world will worsen. Not only would lowering CO2 levels be wrong, one can make the argument that even higher levels would be desirable. Greenhouse operators routinely increase CO2 to about three times the current level in earth’s atmosphere in order to encourage plant growth.
We know CO2 is vital for plants, but what about the argument that it is a dominant contributor to the greenhouse effect? Again, science does not support this argument either. CO2 is not even close to being the most important of the greenhouse gases. Most of the greenhouse effect is due to water vapor, which is more than 30 times as abundant in the atmosphere as CO2.
As further evidence, we find that as the post war industry boom began to put significant volumes of CO2 into the atmosphere, global temperatures did not rise. Since 1945, there have been about 40 years of cooling trend and only 20 plus years of warming. While the warming is significant, it followed an unusually high period of solar activity.
Temperature did rise steeply in the 1920’s and in the 1930’s in the USA, and 1934 was the warmest year of the 20th century. The rate of warming then was also higher than in the 1980’s and 1990’s, even though CO2 levels were lower.
Many in the scientific community reject reducing atmospheric CO2 to 350 parts per million, as Dr. Pachauri of the U.N. wishes. Thousands of peer-reviewed experiments have demonstrated CO2’ s ability to “green” the earth dramatically. Nonetheless, Dr. Pachauri and those who prefer to debate science with politics are sticking to their old story and clinging to their inadequate climate models and their headline-grabbing catastrophic forces.
Do Americans want to see their government spend trillions of dollars removing CO2 that will not lower the Earth’s temperature but absolutely will risk harming ecologies, economies and mankind itself?
Phil Ade "Hollywood" from Okayplayer on Vimeo.
An environmentalist who claims he was fired for his views has won a landmark legal battle after a judge ruled being green was just as worthy of protection at work as religion.
'Green martyr' Tim Nicholson, 42, claims he was dismissed after his bosses at showed contempt for his philosophical belief the earth faces 'catastrophic climate change'.
He said he lost his job for criticising senior management at Grainger plc - including chief executive Rupert Dickinson who allegedly flew an employee to Ireland and back just to fetch a mislaid Blackberry mobile phone.
Mr Nicholson also found fault with managers for driving 'the most polluting cars on the road' to client meetings at which they would explain their green policies.
Grainger contended his views were political and a 'lifestyle choice'.
But a judge ruled employers should no more discriminate against workers for being green than for their religious or philosophical beliefs.
Today's ruling by Mr Justice Burton now paves the way for Mr Nicholson to claim unfair dismissal at an employment tribunal.
The judgement is likely to be criticised by Christian groups who feel that the decision glorifies environmentalism at the expense of religion.
Mr Nicholson, a married father of one was formerly head of sustainability at Grainger, the UK's biggest residential landlord which manages 27,000 properties worth £3billion in Britain and Germany.
In a witness statement he said he had 'a strongly-held philosophical belief about climate change and the environment.
'I believe we must urgently cut carbon emissions to avoid catastrophic climate change.
'This affects how I live my life... I encourage others to cut their carbon emissions and I fear for the future of the human race.'
Mr Nicholson said his beliefs affected his 'choice of home, how I travel, what I buy, what I eat and drink, what I do with my waste and my hopes and my fears'.
'For example, I no longer travel by airplane. I have eco-renovated my home. I try to buy local produce. I have reduced my consumption of meat. I compost my food waste.
'I encourage others to reduce their carbon emissions and I fear very much for the future of the human race, given the failure to reduce carbon emissions on a global scale.'
Commenting on the ruling by employment Appeal Court judge Sir Michael Burton, Grainger corporate affairs director Dave Butler said: 'Grainger absolutely maintains, as it has done from the very outset of these proceedings, that Mr Nicholson's redundancy was driven solely by the operational needs of the company during a period of extraordinary market turbulence, which also required other structural changes to be made within the company.
'Grainger rejects outright any suggestion that there was any other motivation relating to Mr Nicholson's beliefs or otherwise.
'We are looking forward to addressing the issues at tribunal level and demonstrating that there was no causal link between Mr Nicholson's beliefs and his redundancy.'
Mr Qureshi, head of employment law at Bindmans LLP, representing Mr Nicholson, said: 'Vast numbers of people are now living their lives in accordance with their views on climate change and the environment.
'These are often deeply held views based on the premise that without change humanity will suffer.
'Tim Nicholson believes that people should be able to express such views without fear of retribution or discrimination.'
Mr Nicholson added: 'I am grateful that Mr Justice Burton understood that deeply and genuinely held views about catastrophic climate change and the need to change our ways to protect the human race are philosophical views that are worthy of protection. Such views are more and more relevant to our planet's survival.'
Dope new mixtape from Wiz Khalifa, Burn After Rolling, with DJ Ill Will and DJ Rockstar. Probably one of the best mixtape-covers i've seen in a while. kinda funny.
01. B.A.R.
02. Gettin’ Up
03. Take Yo Bitch (feat. NeakO & Young Jerz)
04. The Thrill
05. One Way
06. Miles
07. If I Were A Lame
08. Meet New People
09. Weekend (feat. NeakO)
10. Young Khalifa
11. Knock U Down
12. On Tha Pill
13. When U Find
14. Mafia Music (Remix)
15. Say U Will
16. Timeless
17. Won’t Land
18. Ode To Naked Pop Stars
19. All My Life Freestyle
20. Great To Be There (Outro)
DOWNLOAD: DJ Ill Will & DJ Rockstar Presents Wiz Khalifa – Burn After Rolling
