Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic

This past week I added "Hot Buttered Soul" back into my music listening rotation. "Hot Buttered Soul" is part of the Soul music canon, and by extension a part of the Twentieth Century Black Music Canon. Most notably, the album makes me nostalgic for the era in Black music when the music scene was dominated by musicians who were also gifted instrumentalists. I often long to hear about the rise in popularity of five piece soul/rock/funk/R&B ensemble, or some gifted soloist who plays multiple instruments. To be more precise, I am waiting for the next James Brown, Otis Redding, or Marvin Gaye to make his way from the Chitlin Circuit to the mainstream and set the music world on fire.

Unfortunately, this kind of nostalgia can be dangerous. Waxing poetic about golden years long past can cause someone to loose sight of the present and miss out on the future. Additionally, this kind of nostalgia has its own brand of amnesia where only the positive aspects of an era are remembered. It is not 1967 and never will be again-- a good thing. Nonetheless, I do miss the music.

Progress and change beget innovation and invention. I will not pretend that I do not keep T.I. and Outkast in my listening rotation, or bob my head to Lil Jon. For all intents and purposes they are the rap era's version of James Brown, Otis Redding, and Marvin Gaye. Someday, someone might look back on "Atliens" with a similar regard as "Hot Buttered Soul."

mount (8)

/dev/hda1 is first partion of a primary IDE drive, not /dev/hda.
/dev/hda1 is first partion of a primary IDE drive, not /dev/hda.
/dev/hda1 is first partion of a primary IDE drive, not /dev/hda.
/dev/hda1 is first partion of a primary IDE drive, not /dev/hda.
/dev/hda1 is first partion of a primary IDE drive, not /dev/hda.
/dev/hda1 is first partion of a primary IDE drive, not /dev/hda.
/dev/hda1 is first partion of a primary IDE drive, not /dev/hda.
/dev/hda1 is first partion of a primary IDE drive, not /dev/hda.
/dev/hda1 is first partion of a primary IDE drive, not /dev/hda.
/dev/hda1 is first partion of a primary IDE drive, not /dev/hda.

The Ballot or The Bullet

On or about this date in 1925, Malcolm Little was born near Omaha, Nebraska. He would go on to live an epic life that ended tragically a couple of months before his fortieth birthday. That short, epic life saw the worst of the Black American experience in the Twentieth Century.

While many dwell on his years of of affiliation with the Nation of Islam and his intermediate chosen name, Malcolm X, few consider the total of his life. A life that saw the effects of violence and racism in the United States. A life that took him around the world and earned him disenfranchisement by the Nation of Islam. A life that ended shortly after his true awakening to the implications of apartheid and racism and the self-hate it fostered in the so-called Negro in America.

Aside from encouraging Blacks in American to take responsibility for their destiny through enterprise and self-empowerment, one of Malcolm X's fundamental messages was for the so-called Negro in America to love himself. This came about because Malcolm saw in himself and his Black contemporaries a self-hate that lead to ignorance, crime, and social indifference. His conclusion was that changing the circumstances of Black America was to change this.

It has long confused me as to why teaching Black people to love themselves was so controversial. Another prominent leader who was a contemporary of Malcolm X, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., based his message on everyone learning to love one another. These are not disparate messages but rather the latter relies on the former. Still, during their lives and long after, Malcolm and Martin were portrayed as adversaries. This, too, baffles me.

I would encourage anyone interested in American history in the Twentieth century to read The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley. It provides a remarkable perspective on the American experience.

timing

20080426,
originally uploaded by wilmars.

It was not until after I got home and took a good look at this picture that I discovered its near impeccable timing. I somehow managed to snap this picture the instant before Carlos Delgado of the New York Metropolitans made contact with the first pitch he saw from Tim Hudson of the Atlanta Braves. Delgado would fly out to center on this pitch lowering his already embarrassing batting average.

props

Congratulations to Zetetical for finishing the Boston Marathon. He did it for the children.

uncertainty

Question: If the runner from second base passes the runner from third base en route to home plate and the umpires do not see it transpire, is the runner out?

Answer: Not necessarily. At least not if the all umpires are busy watching a fly ball in the outfield and miss the call on the fly ball. In this particular case, after the umpires receive a verbal lashing from the manager of the ball club, and then meet and determine the right call, the baserunners are put back where they would have been had the correct call been made.

Editorial: This missed call followed by a reversal ultimately worked in the favor of the Atlanta National League Baseball Club. Had the umpire made the correct call initially, two runs may have scored considering that the bases were loaded with players from the New York National League Baseball Club.

What puzzles me is why Angel Pagan of the New York Metropolitans, who was the runner on second base, took off running on a ball hit in the air with less than two outs. The reason he passed Ryan Church, who was the runner on third base, was that Church went a third of the way to home and looked back to see the umpire's call. Church was running the bases like a professional baseball player aware of the game and inning situation. Pagan seemed to make a bush league base running error. Had a center fielder with just a little more range than Mark Kotsay, e.g. Andruw Jones, made the catch cleanly, Pagan would have been out and the Mets little rally would have been no more. Now, if the umpire had made the right call initially and Pagan run the bases like a professional, Church would have scored the second run of the play and Pagan ended up on third base with less than two outs.

Misdirection

From The Beaufort Gazette:

"We've had 4,000 soldiers killed in Iraq as of last week. Since the start of the Iraq war, we've had 30,000 American children commit suicide, get murdered or die from child abuse. Yet you haven't heard a word out of Washington."
-- Michael Petit, founder of Every Kid Matters, a Washington advocacy group

I am glad to see that someone is paying attention.