Over the past three decades black culture has grown so conflated with hip-hop culture that for most Americans under the age of 45, hip-hop culture is black culture. Except that it's not.
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A 2005 study by Roland G. Fryer of Harvard University crystallizes the point: While there is scarce dissimilarity in popularity levels among low-achieving students, black or white, Fryer finds that "when a student achieves a 2.5 GPA, clear differences start to emerge." At 3.5 and above, black students "tend to have fewer and fewer friends," even as their high-achieving white peers "are at the top of the popularity pyramid." With such pressure to be real, to not "act white," is it any wonder that the African American high school graduation rate has stagnated at 70 percent for the past three decades?

Thomas Chatterton Williams - Black Culture Beyond Hip-Hop - washingtonpost.com

It seems the more unpopular Pakistan’s military dictator, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, becomes at home and the less he is willing to fight the Taliban, the more the Bush administration clings to him.
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A succession of uniformed dictators has misruled Pakistan for more than half of its 60-year history. All have advertised themselves as great friends of Washington, but all have fanned extremism while discrediting America’s reputation among ordinary Pakistanis. There is no security with General Musharraf. The United States belongs on the side of Pakistani democracy.

Propping Up the General - New York Times

The vote on a resolution of no confidence, to be sponsored by Senators Charles E. Schumer of New York and Dianne Feinstein of California, could come as early as next week, Democrats said. Such votes of censure or condemnation are uncommon, although a handful were held in the 19th century, Congressional historians say. In 1886, the Senate adopted such a resolution against President Grover Cleveland’s attorney general, A. H. Garland, because he had refused to provide documents concerning the firing of a federal prosecutor.

The researcher who dug this up gets a cookie!

Senate Democrats Plan a Resolution on Gonzales - New York Times

i grew up with punk, ska and two-tone
was introduced to Hendrix, Dead Kennedys etc
i found that I loved the tension between noise, discord and melody
the sweet and the sour (to reference Vanilla Sky and it's Spanish original)
introduced to Radiohead, Foo Fighters

40 is on the horizon (18 months or so) and i'm exploring jazz
it has melody it has discord it has pain it has beauty

YouTube - Cantaloupe Island

A three-week wave of massive cyber-attacks on the small Baltic country of Estonia, the first known incidence of such an assault on a state, is causing alarm across the western alliance, with Nato urgently examining the offensive and its implications.

While Russia and Estonia are embroiled in their worst dispute since the collapse of the Soviet Union, a row that erupted at the end of last month over the Estonians' removal of the Bronze Soldier Soviet war memorial in central Tallinn, the country has been subjected to a barrage of cyber warfare, disabling the websites of government ministries, political parties, newspapers, banks, and companies.

Nato has dispatched some of its top cyber-terrorism experts to Tallinn to investigate and to help the Estonians beef up their electronic defences.

"This is an operational security issue, something we're taking very seriously," said an official at Nato headquarters in Brussels. "It goes to the heart of the alliance's modus operandi."

Interesting. This is the first I've heard of this.

If it were established that Russia is behind the attacks, it would be the first known case of one state targeting another by cyber-warfare.

I'm not so sure about that part... I guess it depends on how you define cyber-warfare. I prefer to view this all as different flavors of information warfare, which very much includes espionage activity, which we have often seen.

The crisis unleashed a wave of so-called DDoS, or Distributed Denial of Service, attacks, where websites are suddenly swamped by tens of thousands of visits, jamming and disabling them by overcrowding the bandwidths for the servers running the sites. The attacks have been pouring in from all over the world, but Estonian officials and computer security experts say that, particularly in the early phase, some attackers were identified by their internet addresses - many of which were Russian, and some of which were from Russian state institutions.

"The cyber-attacks are from Russia. There is no question. It's political," said Merit Kopli, editor of Postimees, one of the two main newspapers in Estonia, whose website has been targeted and has been inaccessible to international visitors for a week. It was still unavailable last night.

At the moment, the big question may be if this type of attack qualifies as a military action in the same way that electronic warfare does. At this point, if only websites are being DoS'd, it's one thing. If the attacks are (or become) focused on key infrastructure, it would be more clear cut. If these attacks are driven by state conflicts, this is a dangerous grey area to play in.

Without more information, it is very hard to determine if these attacks are backed by the state, or just being done by rogue hackers that happen to be motivated by the row between Russia and Estonia.

Russia accused of unleashing cyberwar to disable Estonia | Guardian Unlimited

It is 66 days since BBC correspondent Alan Johnston was abducted by a group of armed men in Gaza. Thursday is his birthday.
...
Alan is one of more than 200 BBC correspondents - an extraordinary group of people who remain in the world's trouble spots just as everyone else is getting out.

For 75 years they have been eyewitnesses to history.

Required often to be brave, dedicated and courageous, they endure hardship and danger because they believe a story needs to be told.

But the bomb, the kidnap, the gunshot are the correspondent's worst nightmare. They are the foreign editor's too.

the quiet heroes (male and female) of truth

BBC NEWS | Programmes | From Our Own Correspondent | To our own correspondent, Alan

Here is my selected exerpt, with some content cut and some emphasis added...

How aggressively would you interrogate those being held at Guantanamo Bay for information about where the next attack might be?

SEN. MCCAIN: The use of torture -- we could never gain as much we would gain from that torture as we lose in world opinion. We do not torture people.

When I was in Vietnam, one of the things that sustained us, as we went -- underwent torture ourselves, is the knowledge that if we had our positions reversed and we were the captors, we would not impose that kind of treatment on them.

It's not about the terrorists, it's about us. It's about what kind of country we are. And a fact: The more physical pain you inflict on someone, the more they're going to tell you what they think you want to know.

MR. GIULIANI: In the hypothetical that you gave me, which assumes that we know there's going to be another attack and these people know about it, I would tell the people who had to do the interrogation to use every method they could think of. It shouldn't be torture, but every method they can think of --

MR. HUME: Water-boarding?

MR. GIULIANI: -- and I would -- and I would -- well, I'd say every method they could think of, and I would support them in doing that because I've seen what -- (interrupted by applause) -- I've seen what can happen when you make a mistake about this, and I don't want to see another 3,000 people dead in New York or any place else.

MR. HUME: Governor Romney, I'd like to draw you out on this.

MR. ROMNEY: Now we're going to -- you said the person's going to be in Guantanamo. I'm glad they're at Guantanamo. I don't want them on our soil. I want them on Guantanamo, where they don't get the access to lawyers they get when they're on our soil. I don't want them in our prisons. I want them there.

Some people have said, we ought to close Guantanamo. My view is, we ought to double Guantanamo. We ought to make sure that the terrorists -- (applause) -- and there's no question but that in a setting like that where you have a ticking bomb that the president of the United States -- not the CIA interrogator, the president of the United States -- has to make the call. And enhanced interrogation techniques have to be used -- not torture but enhanced interrogation techniques, yes.

REP. PAUL: I think it's interesting talking about torture here in that it's become enhanced interrogation technique. It sounds like Newspeak.

REP. TANCREDO: Well, let me just say that it's almost unbelievable to listen to this in a way. We're talking about -- we're talking about it in such a theoretical fashion. You say that -- that nuclear devices have gone off in the United States, more are planned, and we're wondering about whether waterboarding would be a -- a bad thing to do? I'm looking for "Jack Bauer" at that time, let me tell you. (Laughter, applause.)

And -- and there is -- there is nothing -- if you are talking about -- I mean, we are the last best hope of Western civilization. And so all of the theories that go behind our activities subsequent to these nuclear attacks going off in the United States, they go out the window because when -- when we go under, Western civilization goes under. So you better take that into account, and you better do every single thing you can as president of the United States to make sure, number one, it doesn't happen -- that's right -- but number two, you better respond in a way that makes them fearful of you because otherwise you guarantee something like this will happen.

Rep. Tancredo, the reason western civilization looks hopefully upon you is the sort of values that Sen. McCain mentioned. If your perspective triumphs, you've already gone under. Its over.

Republican Presidential Candiates on Torture

Pakistan is in turmoil. A lawyers' protest against the unconstitutional dismissal of the chief justice of the Supreme Court in March has become a nationwide movement. The country's military ruler, General Pervez Musharraf, must be afraid.
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But the latest protest movement is no ordinary swelling of public anger over the low quality of life. It is about something more lofty - the sanctity of the Constitution, which has been flagrantly abused by Musharraf's government.

It is a movement led by lawyers who are the kernel of Pakistan's middle class, professionals who form the intelligentsia throughout the country. Having watched the judiciary be manipulated for years by Musharraf, they have decided it's time to speak up.

Democracy over dictatorship - International Herald Tribune

This is where you can watch the entire Scientology documentary from the bbc.

What I find so strange is how close to people the scientologist defender gets in this video - really in the reporters personal space. I've seen that in other scientology videos. It is a creepy to me when people do that.

Scientology Documentary from the BBC that is in the news

It is commonly agreed that the destruction of the ancient Library of Alexandria in Egypt was one of the most devastating losses of knowledge in all of civilization. Today, however, the digital information that drives our world and powers our economy is in many ways more susceptible to loss than the papyrus and parchment at Alexandria.

An estimated 44 percent of Web sites that existed in 1998 vanished without a trace within just one year. The average life span of a Web site is only 44 to 75 days.
...
Changing file and hardware formats, or computer viruses and hard-drive crashes, can render years of creativity inaccessible.

By contrast, the Library of Congress has in its care millions of printed works, some on stone or animal skin that have survived for centuries. The challenges underlying digital preservation led Congress in 2000 to appropriate $100 million for the Library of Congress to lead the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program, a growing partnership of 67 organizations charged with preserving and making accessible "born digital" information for current and future generations.

Some of the crucial programs funded by NDIIPP include the archiving of important Web sites such as those covering federal elections and Hurricane Katrina; public health, geospatial and map data; public television and foreign news broadcasts; and other vital born-digital content.

Unfortunately, the program is threatened. In February, Congress passed and the president signed legislation rescinding $47 million of the program's approved funding. This jeopardizes an additional $37 million in matching, non-federal funds that partners would contribute as in-kind donations.

Jim Barksdale and Francine Berman - Saving Our Digital Heritage - washingtonpost.com