Vaughn Shirley

J. Cole featuring Deacon, “Carolina On My Mind”, The...

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:27:38 -0800

J. Cole featuring Deacon, “Carolina On My Mind”, The Come Up

(via Sports Illustrated)

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:20:00 -0800

(via Sports Illustrated)

Via “The Berlin Wall: A Lesson in Change”, The...

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:15:00 -0800

Via “The Berlin Wall: A Lesson in Change”, The Atlantic:

There’s been a lot of discussion, this week, about whether President Obama has fulfilled enough promises or expectations of change since his election a year ago. “I voted for him, and I really thought everything would be different,” one disappointed voter from Iowa said in a televised interview.

It would be easy to dismiss the expectations of such voters as unrealistic or naive, but we often expect more from big watershed events, and in more sweeping, immediate fashion, than life dishes out. Consider, for example, another important anniversary coming up on Monday: the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

On November 9, 1989, after weeks of protest and slow chiseling away of the East German Politburo’s power, the East German government announced that henceforth, East Berliners could travel freely to the west. Faced with massive crowds at the border checkpoints, the guards opened the gates, and people streamed through. A party erupted on top of the wall, and people started hacking away at it with hammers and picks.

It was a celebration and global party; the end of an era that had brought incalculable pain to millions of Germans separated from family members and death to thousands, over the years, who had tried to cross over to the west anyway. I wrote about some of the sacrifices, and the lingering legacy of the Wall, in an essay on this site last May, after a German artist released an exhibit sparked by the anniversary of the Wall’s demise.

Full Article.

(via graphic hug)

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 23:56:03 -0800

(via graphic hug)

(via cosmic disciple)

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 23:49:00 -0800

(via cosmic disciple)

(via The New York Times)

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 21:03:00 -0800

(via The New York Times)

Mos Def, “No Hay Nada Mas”, The Ecstatic

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 12:51:20 -0800

Mos Def, “No Hay Nada Mas”, The Ecstatic

(via Erik Nitsche)

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 16:35:00 -0800

(via Erik Nitsche)

Barry Stone via Tiny Vices.

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 16:15:00 -0800

Barry Stone via Tiny Vices.

(via offal ficks)

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 16:14:00 -0800

(via offal ficks)

Dr. Dre featuring Snoop Dog, “Little Ghetto Boy”, ...

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 16:10:00 -0800

Dr. Dre featuring Snoop Dog, “Little Ghetto Boy”, The Chronic

[Ed. Note: I used to hear this same flute — in my head — when I would play ball. Also, this is a re-imagining of Donny Hathaway’s original, which was just as sociologically valid for its time and the societal niche it dealt with, pre-dating the updated track by roughly thirty years. And further, this song rips, because this is early, peak of his powers, to the point of even, at times, using a Jamaican patois —super-raw-and-not-a-somewhat-burned-out-joke — Snoop Dogg. The audio clip at the beginning is from the 1992 L.A. riots or the “1992 Civil Unrest,” and it is a fairly famed piece of L.A. news clip fodder from that time. The music that came just before and after the burned-out buildings and the vivid display of have-nots fully expressing their frustrations at what they perceived — and I agree — to be a rigged system of capitalism and institutionally entrenched inequalities, are throughout most of the hip-hop work of early ’90s L.A.; and in Ice Cube and Dr. Dre in particular, but it’s too bad the only people who were listening were kids. This song is more individually introspective than those other works, but it explains fairly well a particular social psychology that is present out there in the marginalized populations. (Off my soapbox.)]

Via “Narcotic Stimulant Norms”, Future...

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 16:00:00 -0800

Via “Narcotic Stimulant Norms”, Future Perfect:

Packaging for the local stimulant Nasvai, widely available [in] downtown Kabul.

Compare and contrast the packaging to Tajikistan here and enjoy this write-up of side-effects from the ever dependable Khazakstan Pravda. For once [I] didn’t feel compelled to taste.

Via “Designing Obama”, Design Observer: I was...

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 05:25:00 -0800

Via “Designing Obama”, Design Observer:

I was talking recently with a group of graphic designers. The subject was good work: not doing it, but how to get it accepted. Designers like to complain. We cast ourselves as embattled defenders of good taste and inventive ideas; arrayed against us are armies of insensitive clients, determined to thwart us, whose pigheadedness can only be defeated by dedication, cunning and guile.

We traded war stories for a while, but one seasoned designer in our midst was silent. We finally asked him what tricks he used to get good work done. “Well, I guess I’m lazy,” he said. “I just make sure all my clients are smart people with unique messages and good products. The rest is easy.”

The rest is easy. Looking back at the design work that led to Barack Obama’s historic victory in November 2008, I wonder if that was the trick. Although much has been made — rightly so — of the ingenious and adaptable “O” logo developed by Sol Sender’s team, Obama himself was his own best logo. Young, African-American, charismatic, change wasn’t just a message, it was the candidate’s very embodiment. When it was all said and done, Barack Obama was a smart guy with a unique message and a good product. And what designer wouldn’t wish for that in a client?

Selling change isn’t easy in a world that tends to prefer the comfort of the familiar. We all know what a revolution looks like: handmade signs, scrawled graffiti, the voice of the people. But Obama’s campaign was the opposite. Reportedly, the candidate resisted at first. “He did not initially like the campaign’s blue and white logo — intended to appear like a horizon, symbolizing hope and opportunity — saying he found it too polished and corporate,” reported the New York Times. But David Axelrod and his team prevailed. They must have known that the revolution, when it finally came, would have to be wrapped up in the most comprehensive corporate identity program the 21st century has yet seen. And it worked, as Designing Obama, the new book from Scott Thomas, Design Director of New Media for Obama for America, reveals.

Full Article.

[Ed. Note: Charlotte’s reaction to this interaction, is...

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 05:15:00 -0800

[Ed. Note: Charlotte’s reaction to this interaction, is pretty much me; in real life.]

(via REGIA MAG)

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 05:05:00 -0800

(via REGIA MAG)

(via Twelve Car Pileup)

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 05:05:00 -0800

(via Twelve Car Pileup)

"Never before has this country seen so many women paralyzed by the psychological scars of combat. As..."

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 12:06:00 -0800

“

Never before has this country seen so many women paralyzed by the psychological scars of combat. As of June 2008, 19,084 female veterans of Iraq or Afghanistan had received diagnoses of mental disorders from the Department of Veterans Affairs, including 8,454 women with a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress — and this number does not include troops still enlisted, or those who have never used the V.A. system.

Their mental anguish, from mortar attacks, the deaths of friends, or traumas that are harder to categorize, is a result of a historic shift. In Iraq and Afghanistan, the military has quietly sidestepped regulations that bar women from jobs in ground combat. With commanders needing resources in wars without front lines, women have found themselves fighting on dusty roads and darkened outposts in ways that were never imagined by their parents or publicly authorized by Congress. And they have distinguished themselves in the field.

Psychologically, it seems, they are emerging as equals. Officials with the Department of Defense said that initial studies of male and female veterans with similar time outside the relative security of bases in Iraq showed that mental health issues arose in roughly the same proportion for members of each sex, though research continues.

”

- “A Combat Role, and Anguish, Too”, The New York Times, 9/31/09

"Can Our Shameful Prisons Be Reformed?", The New York Review of Books

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 17:01:58 -0800

"Can Our Shameful Prisons Be Reformed?", The New York Review of Books:

With approximately 2.3 million people in prison or jail, the United States incarcerates more people than any other country in the world—by far. Our per capita rate is six times greater than Canada’s, eight times greater than France’s, and twelve times greater than Japan’s. Here, at least, we are an undisputed world leader; we have a 40 percent lead on our closest competitors—Russia and Belarus.

Even so, the imprisoned make up only two thirds of one percent of the nation’s general population. And most of those imprisoned are poor and uneducated, disproportionately drawn from the margins of society. For the vast majority of us, in other words, the idea that we might find ourselves in jail or prison is simply not a genuine concern.

For one group in particular, however, these figures have concrete and deep-rooted implications—African-Americans, especially young black men, and especially poor young black men. African-Americans are 13 percent of the general population, but over 50 percent of the prison population. Blacks are incarcerated at a rate eight times higher than that of whites—a disparity that dwarfs other racial disparities. (Black–white disparities in unemployment, for example, are 2–1; in nonmarital childbirth, 3–1; in infant mortality, 2–1; and in net worth, 1–5^[1]).

In the 1950s, when segregation was still legal, African-Americans comprised 30 percent of the prison population. Sixty years later, African-Americans and Latinos make up 70 percent of the incarcerated population, and that population has skyrocketed. The disparities are greatest where race and class intersect—nearly 60 percent of all young black men born between 1965 and 1969 who dropped out of high school went to prison at least once on a felony conviction before they turned thirty-five. And the incarceration rate for this group—black male high school dropouts—is nearly fifty times the national average.^[2]

Full Article.

(via Absolute Sellout)

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 13:53:19 -0800

(via Absolute Sellout)

(via NY Times/The Moment) [Ed. Note: The season is almost over,...

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 13:34:31 -0800

(via NY Times/The Moment)

[Ed. Note: The season is almost over, then what?]