Archive for May, 2008

On first blush, I’m gonna go with Bruce Wayne. I guess it’s all about the quality of opponent he’s defeated. But then, with Batman being one of DC’s premier heroes, he would have a much more impressive record than Iron Man, who, co-founder of the Avengers and all that, has never seemed to be much more than a second-tier name in the Marvel Universe.

Aside from that, I think they’re actually fairly evenly matched, and I couldn’t rule out an Iron Man win. I just wouldn’t expect it.

From the Professional Bowlers Association Guide to Better Bowling by Chuck Pezzano.

Take a look at any TV show featuring pro bowlers and you can see that bowlers can hold their own with any athletes when it comes to sharpness of dress, and still not lose any of their athletic prowess
[...]
Underwear is an individual preference. Some like undershirts to absorb the prespiration. Some like none at all because they like to prespire freely. Shorts can help give extra abdominal and back support. In the female’s case, women’s lib with respect to the no-bra look should be discarded when it comes to bowling. Foundation garments help keep all parts of the body firm. With all the movements bowling takes, any unnecessary flapping should be avoided, purely in the interest of higher scoring, of course.

That about says it all.

Speaking of boxing, here’s the lead-up to one of the greatest fights ever.

(Embedding is disabled. But still. It’s MARVELOUS.)

To the actor in what is one of the greatest scenes in all of cinematic history.

I Want to Know – Living Colour
MC’s Act Like They Don’t Know – KRS-One
Invisible Lady – Charles Mingus
Know That – Mos Def
Dance To The Drummer’s Beat – Herman Kelly
Cold Bear – The Gaturs
For the Good Times – Al Green
Sweet Love – Anita Baker
Hip Hug-Her – Booker T. & The MG’s
Ether – Nas
Dance Girl – The Mighty Tom Cats
Black and Blue – Louis Armstrong
It’s All In Your Mind – Soul Angels
Adventures In The Land of Music – Dynasty
Funky Lady – Slave
Thinking Of You – Tony! Toni! Tone!

Not too long ago, I resurrected the good ole seating chart. The initial post was because of the new trend of white girls with booties. But those are, as the saying goes, the exceptions that prove the rule. For the rest of the beckies, there’s Booty Pop Panties.

On the dead serious, I wouldn’t have believed that there was such a thing if I hadn’t strolled by The War On Folly. I’m lyin. I’d believe it. This type of figure enhancement has been available for years and years. I guess what’s really got my attention is the marketing. This is plainly being marketed to teenagers. That’s problematic. Let the little girl be a little girl while she’s a little girl.

Posdnuos’ line seems particularly apropos here:

And her facial gleams are sweet, but soon to switch to bitter
cause when she reaches sixteen she’ll be considered a piece of meat
Not a treat but a trick to sex in showers

Maybe not even sixteen any more.

Philly won’t be a wireless city for much longer.

Philadelphia’s citywide wireless network, which drew international attention and praise when it was launched, is likely to be scrapped. EarthLink Inc., which built and maintains the system, announced yesterday that it would end service June 12 and begin dismantling the system’s physical infrastructure soon after.

As recently as two weeks ago, a deal seemed imminent that would have let the network survive and even grow under the ownership of an Ohio-based nonprofit called OneCommunity, all at minimal co

While there are obviously folks of different races running around, the amount of import that we give to it differs. Take this article in which it’s written that at three months, babies prefer to look at faces of the same race. When that’s the race of the faces they’re used to seeing. Sorta. The experiment was done with Israeli babies in Israel, Ethiopian babies in Ethiopia, and Ethiopian babies in Israel, the latter of which would be the control group, since they would be expected to regularly see faces of both races. Just thinking about it real quick, an interesting follow-up experiment would be to see if babies make intra-racial distinctions. That is, would an Ethiopian baby from Ethiopia look more at the face of a Nigerian or an Israeli? Simple questions can’t get at the good complexities.

Even more complex is something that we take for granted in the United States, because even though we have different dialects, the differences are minor. We’re all basically intelligible to each other, which means that language bias doesn’t come into play (at least, not among babies). To wit:

[Babies] like toys more that are associated with someone who has spoken their language. They prefer to eat foods offered to them by a native speaker compared to a speaker of a foreign language. And older children say that they want to be friends with someone who speaks in their native accent.’ Accents and vernacular, far more than race, seem to influence the people we like. ‘Children would rather be friends with someone who is from a different race and speaks with a native accent versus somebody who is their own race but speaks with a foreign accent.’

These findings make perfect sense according to two California-based pioneers of evolutionary psychology, John Tooby and Leda Cosmides. In the Stone Age, race was next to useless as an identifier, because most people would never have travelled far enough to see anyone of a different skin colour. Accent, vocabulary and dialect would have helped distinguish friendly tribes from foes. Tooby and Cosmides concluded that humans are born with a predisposition to divide the world along ethnic lines traced out by language and accent, more than racial lines.

This also explains the preference of “Black” Hispanics to think of themselves as “Hispanic” first, and Black second, if at all. Having been raised in the US, where skin color trumps all, I always thought something was weird about that. But then, I’m in the linguistic majority. I suppose that in a country where the primary language was different than my own, I’d fall in with other speakers of my language group, too.

Darling Nikki – Prince
Rain Maker – Harry Nilsson
Ashley’s Roachclip – Soul Searchers
Break My Heart – Jimmy G & The Tackheads
Boulevard Connection – Masta Ace
Da Ill Out – Redman
Quimbara! – Bamboleo
Gatur Bait – The Gaturs
Where Do the Children Play? – Take 6
Watching You – Slave
Pump Your Fist – Kool Moe Dee
I’m Goin’ Away – Walter Hawkins
Maggot Brain – Funkadelic
Maybe The Last Time – James Brown

Free – Deniece Williams
Have A Talk With God – Stevie Wonder
Sweet Sixteen – B.B. King
Everybody Ought To Know – Tramaine Hawkins
Can I Kick It (Spirit Mix) – A Tribe Called Quest
I Wanna Be Yo Ho (Remix) – AMG
I Used to Love H.E.R. – Common
At Last – Etta James
Got To Be Real – Cheryl Lynn
Humpty Dump – The Vibrettes
Crown Royal – Jill Scott
Anti Love Song – Betty Davis
The Louisville Lip – Eddie Curtis
God Made Me Funky – The Headhunters
17 Days – Prince
Passions of a Woman Loved – Charles Mingus
Never Knew Love Like This Before – Stephanie Mills
All I Am – Heatwave
I Put A Spell On You – Screamin’ Jay Hawkins
Minute By Minute – Michael McDonald
Come Sunday – Cannonball Adderley
I Just Want to Celebrate – Rare Earth
Holy Calamity (Bear Witness II) – Handsome Boy Modeling School