* So, why is it that Brad Pitt’s housing project moves forward (with time for hot spots and shots), while anything FEMA-related putters along? The system is heavy and broke, fix it.
* Discover Magazine’s Jaron Lanier keeps it real:
… Science can declare the approximate limits of its territorial ambitions and be stronger for it. My dearly missed old friend Stephen Jay Gould framed this possibility beautifully with his proposal for “nonoverlapping magisteria. I’ll go further and suggest that scientists should not only refrain from ridiculing people who find hope on the other side of the border but should also actively delight in a cacophonous, multicultural colonization of that far frontier so that it can’t be monopolized by fundamentalists. A workable definition of spirituality is one“s emotional relationship with unanswerable questions. It’s possible to find joy in them.
* If you haven’t heard, the Data Mining dude mapped the blogosphere on a, well, sphere, and finds that Kos, Michelle Malkin, pornographers, sportswriters and other charlatans are the shining stars of weblogging but in different relational ways.
* Inspite of myself, I appreciate and laud Maya Arulapragasam’s energy, spunk and go-getter business savvy. Rolling Stone gives M.I.A.’s new Kala 4.5 out of 5 stars, while not noticing that her reworked version of disco “classic” Jimmy [video] is mostly objectionable. What say you, peeps, to the rest of the album – aamam or illai?
I love the whole album. I can’t help myself.
I’ll tell you this much. If you ever catch me recommending music to you based in any way upon the artist’s “business sense”… just kill me then.
That’s just it, jeffrey. I don’t like MIA’s music all that much, but have to give her props for going all the way from political refugee to an international star, all while the United States will not give her a visa to work here. She turned her shitty past around to a great future and told the American recording industry and government to suck it.
Okay that makes sense then.
Oh and that blogosphere map is really neat.