Apr 13, 2011

Singled Out: DJ Quik's 'Luv Of My Life' : The Record : NPR

DJ Quik is an elder statesman of the West Coast rap scene. He dropped his first album, Quik Is The Name, in 1991 and set the tone for much of gangsta rap made in California that decade with his allegiance to Roger Troutman-style talkbox and Parliament Funkadelic samples. Since his debut, he's released eight more albums and produced tracks for 2Pac's album All Eyez On Me and Snoop Dogg's Ego Trippin' (with Teddy Riley and Snoop), and two years ago collaborated with Kurupt on BlaQKout.

The man still loves '70s funk and R&B. He says his latest album, which will be released next week, called The Book Of David, is "really honest" and the first single, "Luv Of My Life," is "not to be overthought." He says it's punchlines and fun. To make it, he relied on the same company's drum machines that have been the standard in rap music since the late '80s, Akai, and he's proud of the result.

Luv Of My Life

Billy Bang, Jazz Violinist And Vietnam Veteran, Dies At 63 : A Blog Supreme : NPR

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His experiences in combat scarred him mentally, and he generally avoided speaking about them until Leduc encouraged him to create what would become 2001's Vietnam: The Aftermath. The album — and its successor, Vietnam: Reflections — received critical acclaim and proved cathartic for Bang.

"There used to be a time where I used to have dreams about it a lot and it's not as often now," he told Howard Mandel for NPR in 2004. "But for a very long time, I suffered a lot in my sleep. But to be honest, I think after I faced the ordeals of what I've gone through — after completing that music, and after rehearsing it, particularly after recording it — I've felt a lot lighter."

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Apr 12, 2011

Eugene Robinson- ournalist and Author

RealClearPolitics - Authors
In a three-decade career at The Post, Robinson has been city hall reporter, city editor, foreign correspondent in Buenos Aires and London, foreign editor, and assistant managing editor in charge of the paper’s Style section. He started writing a column for the Op-Ed page in 2005. And in 2009, he received the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary. The award cited his "eloquent columns on the 2008 presidential campaign that focus on the election of the first African-American president, showcasing graceful writing and grasp of the larger historic picture."

Robinson has written two books, "Disintegration: The Splintering of Black America" (2010) Transcript,Coal to Cream: A Black Man’s Journey Beyond Color to an Affirmation of Race, published in 1999, and Last Dance in Havana: The Final Days of Fid el and the Start of the New Cuban Revolution, published in 2004.
disintegration-of-america-s-black-neighborhoods

Robinson Wins Commentary Pulitzer
Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson captured the prize for commentary for his writing about the campaign that led to Barack Obama's election.

Robinson said he did not wrestle with being a black journalist covering a black presidential candidate because "the great thing about a column is that you have a license to feel" and "I tried to allow myself to go with those feelings at times when it was appropriate."

Civil War Anniversary: Celebration of Confederacy or Segregation Reminder?

Winslow Homer’s The War for the Union, 1862 - A Bayonet Charge(Rama/Wikimedia Commons)

Civil War Anniversary: Celebration of Confederacy or Segregation Reminder?

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Today marks the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War. For whites in the south, the anniversary marks the start of a proud military engagement. For blacks in the south, the war led to the end of slavery and the start of the civil rights movement. And while celebrations for the event will be grand in scale and scope, this year's commemoration will not reverberate nationally as it did during the centennial. How do the two anniversaries compare?

t became difficult for the country to create a narrative around the Civil War and freedom and liberty, when African-Americans inside the country felt still oppressed by laws and by customs.

— William Boone William Boone, professor of political science at Clark Atlanta University

Looking At The Civil War 150 Years Later

historian Adam Goodheart explains how national leaders and ordinary citizens responded to the chaos and uncertainty in the days and months before and after the struggle at Fort Sumter, an almost-bloodless two-day battle that became the start of the Civil War almost by mistake.

1861: The Civil War Awakening Read An Excerpt

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The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery

Tracing President Lincoln's Thoughts On Slavery
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lincolns-evolving-thoughts-on-slavery-and-freedom

But like many Americans, Lincoln was unsure what to do once slavery ended.

"Lincoln said during the Civil War that he had always seen slavery as unjust. He said he couldn't remember when he didn't think that way — and there's no reason to doubt the accuracy or sincerity of that statement," explains historian Eric Foner. "The problem arises with the next question: What do you do with slavery, given that it's unjust? Lincoln took a very long time to try to figure out exactly what steps ought to be taken."

'Send them back to Africa,' he says. And this was not an unusual position at this time."

the Peoria speech

VisualTwitter

VisualTwitter is the latest to build on the Twitter API. With this tool you quite simply send an image to your Twitter updates by sending it to me@visualtwitter.com. You’ll need to give VisualTwitter your phone number for validation purposes. You can sign in with your Twitter information. From there, everything is very straight forward. There’s not much community on VisualTwitter’s own website–there’s really no need. You can, however, see the photo stream for users listed on the site. The service plain and simply lets you send images to your Twitter page. My only concern is their use of Twitter’s logo with their own. Questionable?

Other Twitter image services and clones include MobyPicture and Yappd.

SNITTER: a desktop Twitter client

SNITTER

Snitter is "Snook's Twitter": an Adobe AIR-powered application for twittering.

Twitter allows you to send messages of up to 140 characters. You can follow what other people are doing and they can follow what you are doing.

It's a neat little app and it's been handy and fun to follow what other people are up to. However, I've never been overly impressed by the web site. It seemed inefficient and problematic. To fill the void, there have been plenty of desktop applications built to make it easier to twitter, most notably Twitterific. It being a Mac program, and I being a Windows user, have rarely been able to take advantage of it.

Snitter is a new Twittering tool that brings your tweets to your desktop, and works on both Macs and PCs.

The application runs on Adobe AIR, and you’ll need to download it in order to enjoy all of its features. It very much resembles an instant messaging client. And what are these features that required you to bring yourTwitter to your desktop using Adobe AIR? It will highlight messages sent to you via @ syntax and make a chirp sound. You’ll also be updated with your current list of tweets in an easily accessible desktop window that can be resized and minimized.

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