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The Federal Communications Commission doesn't have too much more time to decide who will get those minority channels that Sirius and XM Satellite Radio promised to lease out after they merged. And judging from the suggestions that the FCC is getting from various minority broadcasting groups, the question is still pretty wide open.
As Ars Technica has reported, one of the voluntary commitments that Sirius XM made to the FCC in exchange for permission to marry was that within four months of its merger, the new firm had to give at least one "qualified entity" leasing access to four percent of Sirius and XM's full-time audio channels. That currently represents six channels from each service.
The FCC's Order approving the union defined a "qualified entity" as one that is "majority-owned by persons who are African American, not of Hispanic origin; Asian or Pacific Islanders; American Indians or Alaskan Natives; or Hispanics." Since Sirius and XM formally merged on July 29, the decision about who will get these channels would presumably have to be made by November 29 or around then. And since Sirius and XM agreed not to be involved in the selection process, the method by which these leasers will be chosen is pretty much sitting at the FCC's door.
Robert Kenny of the Commission told Ars on Monday that the agency is "setting the criteria for qualified entities, but that process has not yet been completed." Meanwhile, several companies have offered the FCC friendly advice on how to meet this challenge.
Super channels
The latest filing comes from Radio One, which owns over 50 radio stations in 16 urban areas, many of which target African-American listeners. Radio One suggests that the six channels for each service be divided into two groups. The first would consist of three "super channels" broadcast on Sirius, simulcast on three XM channels. The second would occupy the nonsimulcast tier of channels, created to "provide national programming that is important to minority communities but does not have widespread support and therefore can not be sustained as a 24/7 operation."
This would obviously create a framework contoured to Radio One's relatively resource rich operation, but it's still not a bad idea, offering a professional outfit the chance to create a viable mininetwork within Sirius XM, while giving smaller operations some air time as well. Super channel applicants would need to show an established track record, propose a 24/7 schedule, and demonstrate a certain level of minority Arbitron rating strength.
Regular channel applicants would target a specific minority group, Radio One proposes, commit to a two year lease term, and be willing to accept less than a 24/7 schedule. If a lot of applicants show up for the non-super channels, they would share various amounts of air time.
Is this thing legal?
Not everybody appears sympathetic to the idea of time sharing. Steve Hilliard of Mosaic Communications Partners argues that the Commission should require a Qualified Entity to be able to lease as many as six channels. "Absent special circumstances, an operator with access to a single channel or two channels likely would not be able to compete in an increasingly consolidated media marketplace," Hilliard wrote to the FCC at the beginning of October.
Hilliard also warns that because the Commission has become involved in the process, which involves defining categories based on race, the whole Qualified Entity program could come under legal fire. "While we believe the definition should remain intact, we believe that applicants should be required to address their assessment and proposed resolution of this matter, if any, as part of the selection process," Mosaic's letter concludes.
The rest of the recent filings are basically applications for one or more of the Qualified Entity channels. They include comments from the Hispanic Information and Telecommunications Network, Media Ventures Unlimited, and Radio Erin, an Irish music Internet radio station whose proprietor is under the impression that Sirius XM "has agreed with the FCC to make a total of 24 channels available to ethnic groups."
Irish-Americans "deserve a channel on satellite radio which informs, educates and entertains them with all things Irish," he writes. This may be true, but the FCC's Order did not include the Irish in its Qualified Entity list.

subset: commoncrawl


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"With a successful new Otello," writes ConcertoNet's Paul Wooley, "a new house, and a new fervor from the city's residents, Dallas Opera has without question joined the ranks of the elite houses in the country."
Read the rest of his very detailed review of the opening night performance here.
We also got our first taste of Life-Style Editor Arnold Wayne Jones' review in The Voice (Dallas). Not so keen on the production but high on the house.
Photos courtesy of Production Photographer Karen Almond.
Suzanne Calvin, Assoc. Dir. of Marketing, The Dallas Opera


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I am in Dubai for ten days, shooting in the desert and other parts of this exotic, peculiar place. Late June is probably not the optimal time to visit this corner of the planet — I have never experienced the sort of oven-heat that suffocates the place over after 9 a.m.
I'm making commercials that will be shown here and around the world. We are shooting in English and in Arabic. We are also making a film about the shoot itself. It's all quite complicated.
90% of the people in Dubai are not from here. They come in search of opportunity and a piece of the oily pie. Our crew is English, American, German, Pakistani, Indian and me.
A horrible accident. I somehow sprained my pinky. Forty eight hours late, I was miraculously healed.
My journal looks a little more austere than usual. I only brought my trusty Lamy Safari fountain pen with me and a Q-tip made a serviceable brush. If you click on this picture, you can see a blowup of the page and read my most intimate thoughts.
Some thoughts on my neighbor, the world's tallest building.
I'll try to post some more notes over my remaining days in Dubai.


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We revisited more than one piece for the Fourth of July this year… in 2008, when we offered our collaboration with ThePartyParty.com as an Independece Day eCard, it featured footage of presidents from the past century, sliced up to sing us a rendition of "The Star Spangled Banner". After a few years passed on our site, it became apparent that one thing was missing… our current commander-in-chief!
Thanks to the guys at the Party Party, now we have an updated version offering some Obama action into the mix. Like this song? You can also buy it over on iTunes!


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Cultdom Epi 28 'Sport in Sci-Fi' Promo
On Superbowl Day – Sunday 7th Jan 2010 The Cultdom Collective Podcast at 2PM EST on Talkshoe ID 54821 discuss Sport in Sci-Fi.
February 1, 2010 Posted by daveac | 1 | cultdom, podcast, sci-fi, sport, talkshoe | Leave a comment
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Writing made easy with Writing Helper
We know the hardest part of blogging is actually writing posts. And most blogging software, and even word processors, do little to help writers write. Today at WordPress.com we're proud to announce a new kind of feature, aimed at helping the writing process, called Writing Helper. It's a new box that appears underneath the edit box on the Add a Post Screen (the entire box can be dragged to the right side if you want it next to the edit box, instead of underneath).
First up is Copy A Post. You can now reuse the hard work of previous posts as the basis for the next one. Simply hit the Copy A Post button, pick a post, and we copy the title, content, tags and categories for you, saving you steps. If you often have similarly tagged or formatted posts, this will save much time. We will always show your most recent posts in the list, but you can search by title too.
Next is Request Feedback. You can now share a private draft of a post with a friend before it is published. They can help you find typos, suggest improvements and give advice to make the post amazing before you publish it to the world.
When you click on Request Feedback, you can enter email addresses of friends who are willing to help. They'll receive a special private link to see your draft, where they can leave feedback on your post (see image above). Their feedback will appear in your post's Request Feedback area when it arrives, so you can make changes to your draft accordingly.
For more about how Writing Helper works, read the support pages for Copy a Post and Request Feedback.
And if you have ideas for other Writing Helper features you'd like to see, leave us a comment.
365 Comments
That's awesome! I can also go on record as being one of the many bloggers that will use this helpful feature. WordPress Rocks! 🙂
Interesant ceea ce ati facut…
Woo! Thank you WordPress
Another cool feature from WP 🙂
Wow! Amazing feature! My friends can now help me write posts!
The feedback feature is cool (I did this recently, via email), but instead of the Copy a Post thing, I'd rather have post templates. All the formatting, tags, categories saved, but without having to delete/overwrite all the content.
Very cool and handy! I hope the next update will be monkeys that write the post for me!
re: comment about "men"
why don't you write about "wild women"
now, that you have subject matter,
which you did not have before, something to copy…
go girl.
Wow! Everythings going to be better here! It saved me already a lot of time with linking posts. And I loved the contactform, but this feature?
I guess, it is almost the best. I will try it out and look how it works, but I like such stuff, becaus it helps blogging 🙂
Thanks, thanks, thanks 😀
Pretty awesome feature!
It's gonna be a Jetpack feature for self-hosted blogs soon, right?
I hope so…
I love these new features! Thanks WP!
This is really useful for updating information on older posts, particularly ones in which technology moved ahead and the old post isn't up-to-date. Of course, I'm assuming that this doesn't work for copying other people's post–copyright is often sacrificed to blog ratings.
Hope both features are hitting Jetpack as soon as possible!
Thank you, thank you, Thank! You!
thank you for sending this I had no idea I was to get a feed back before publishing now I know 🙂
looking for someone to read my posts before posting, lol 🙂
thank you for the new options!
Looks like a real timesaver – thanks.
MMmm…. I love new functionality! Keep them commit please!
Its the smallest of things that make wordpress a better blogging arena. Good job guys.
I have such a unique spin on life and the struggles I deal with (and helping those like me through it) that I am not sure how it would work for me. Fans would go on my website and say, "what the hell?!" and then run away. The whole attraction of my sight is the unexpected weirdness one comes across. How would I be able to find other people's posts just as nutty? It wouldn't be "steal a post" , it would be "oh God, what has our world come to?" 🙂
Great features! Thanks WordPress.com , i love this!
Verry cool. I like it
you know how you often have the problem of remembering a word? as in, you know what it means and you can think of synonyms but you can't get the exact word? that sort of disturbs my entire thought-process. it would be great if we had a feature to look at the synonyms of a word.
Amazing feature thank you WordPress team
Can't wait to try it! Sounds like a big help. Thanks Team Dudes for working for US!
Now even I can write half-decent blogs!
Thanks, this is a tool I'll be using.
Agreed 100%
Hi, thanks for the tips. The "Request Feedback" feature is going to be really useful!
For someone new to blogging this is a fantastic feature. I'm a fan!
These are absolutely amazing features. Since I publish fiction on my blog, I'm sure I'll use the 'Request Feedback' often. It'll help me centralize the comments of my Beta readers. Thanks!
Wow! The feature "Copy Post" is a great help for me, because I quote a lot from older posts of mine, specially the URLs. Would be really useful if you could make that window a pull down, so that more than 20 postings can be shown at a time. Can't be that difficult to accomplish! TIA
Hey did you just manage to steal a march on me! … check this out. … http://elasticwords.wordpress.com/2011/04/27/stuff-that-future-should-bring-stelg-3-a-ghost-writer/
It's eerie how some of the thoughts overlap between my post and this new feature!
This is a very useful feature. I tend for example to use the same categories, as many as 10 or more, for specific posts, and it is a hassle having to check all of them with each new post.
Perhaps this option should be visible/usable somehow when one browses the posts from the front-end? I.e. via the wordpress bar on top? For example, when one finds a post they like, they can start one just like it with one click from the frond-end.
This is great! I cannot wait to try it out. Thank you for developing cool yet useful features for us to use!!!
Hmmm, will this be available in self-hosted installes as well? Just upgrader my install to 3.1.2 (newest release) but cant fint this feature! 😦
This is great because i do a few same type of articles a day this will save time because i find tagging etc very tedious. Especially when my mind is racing to get whats in my head out.
Ok what id like to see is after auto spell some auto correct too. for instance to put capitals in automatically after a fool stop and to put apostrophes in too. and much more. also to auto correct words as we type them, it would just speed things up a bit. plz 🙂
Mind = blown. This is awesome. Thank you for reminding why I use Word Press and not blogger. Cheers! 🙂
Amazing feature thank you, This is a very useful feature!
I wish you wouldn't leave pages out so often with your tools. This feature would be much more useful to me if it worked with pages. Also, notification of new posts doesn't work with new pages, either (and making a new post whenever you add a new page really isn't the way to go).
I used to use Microsoft Livewriter, because the format was much nicer. But now that seems unavailable, and i cannot even just copy and paste my essays with pictures from Word, as I used to. This happened since the security problem… Thus I have been unable to publish several essays…
This is special!
I think these both are great ideas. Since my reviews are often of parts of a series (i.e. Doctor Who, Highlander, etc.), and I try to keep the same format for each one, the "copy a post" feature would come in handy. Also because my review format changes slightly for whether I'm reviewing a book, movie, short story, or TV show, and I often have to go back to check the specific format version I've used previously.
it seems there's a bug that removes the comments function. it doesn't matter if I check the comments box or not my draft only comes out with the "comments off"!
please fix it.
I loved it to say the least!!
Very well done… yay!!
Also loved how I can upload bigger image in KOI theme!
Thank you 😀
Sounds like a great innovation, and I will definitely try it!
This is fantastic. It will really help with tags when I blog a series on a specific topic. Wish I'd had it sooner but better now than never!
Thanks again!
since i have several recurring themes on my blog, i shall immensely benefit from this update. you guys just never stop impressing me. part of the reason why wordpress.com has such a fantastic community built on it. kudos to you guys for keeping rolling in the features.
Would like to be able to create and incorporate boiler plate into postings.
i wonder if this is such a good thing?
This is wonderful! I look forward to the possibilities!
I don' t know that this is helpful. What I *do* know is that WP needs to address the screwy wsyiwig/HTML inconsistencies that make posting content a bitter pill.
Great feature! As a writing coach, this will be really helpful for my clients and myself! I will also be able to use this in my college and blogging classes!
It seems no one using IE which returns "undefined undefined undefined undefined…" instead of a list of posts 😉
But this is maybe better – my readers may figure out that they'll have to read copies every day 😆
Love this because my writing is below average so I would definitely benefit from the help. I love the idea of creating post from existing information brilliant. Thanks
Hi, thanks for the tips. The "Request Feedback" feature is going to be really useful!
I love all of these changes..
i like these new feature .thnx for sending this
I love this!! If only there was a version for my papers in school!!!
Thank you wordpress, you guys are the BEST!
Ironically yesterday I mention in one of my posts that I am not a professional writer, but do try to write better. The next day WordPress releases the writing helper to help improve blogging which I find funny because its like they knew what I wrote. Somehow I feel special about all of this (^o^) though I never write on the WordPress site itself so will probably rarely ever use this tool. Not sure if the writing helper tool are on other programs since I use Windows Live Writer to post. I do really want to try the feedback option.
Great idea. I can't wait for the Jetpack feature to be released!
I agree with Maik. Indeed each post of my blog is different, so Copy a Post feature will not work for me. However, I might try Feedback.
In any case, it is nice of you to provide us with these new options.Thanks!
Great job.
Now can you teach my friends to spell, write and edit?
Dear WordPress: There is such a thing as too many features. http://tiny.cc/lqqv7
That is what is up! I would like to bake a cake for whoever's idea that was.
This is very useful! Lately most of my blog is reports of my daily writing, and I always have to look at previous "report" posts to make sure that I don't forget an element or a tag. It'd be nice to have at least the tags already taken care of for those.
As a novice to blogging, I would add that I am very excited about these additions. I am especially fond of the idea that I will be able to request feedback prior to publishing a blog. Thanks wordpress
No matter how many times I re-read through a post I often don't notice a typo. My husband calls it a 'blind spot'. He says I have the post so firmly in my head that I often read out a missing word and don't even notice it to be missing.
So the feedback feature will be great for me!! *Off to bed with a smiley face now*
Awesome, that will help. But it makes me worry about having a 'cookie-cutter' post rather than unique and individualistic.
Fantastic edition, especially since I have a few blog series going on!
Je ne peux plus poser une post (commentaire) chez mes amis. Pourquoi?
Réponse en français svp. Merci Scott
This is FANTASTIC. I am one of those that repeats the same type of post, and I was literally just wishing for something like this last week. (I apparently purchased the extra-powerful wishes last time.)
Question – Can you copy unpublished posts? So could I set up a template without the specific data, but the generic html/tags/etc? or does it have to be a published post? Don't know why I'm asking, I guess I'll just go try it and see…
And thanks!
Awesome – I've been waiting for a peer review feature.
What would be even more useful would be a "reviewers list" that could be kept so that we don't have to enter email addresses each time.
Loving the 'request feedback' feature!! Next thing you know we'll be sharing screens and editing each other's posts in real-time…. Oops- did I just make a suggestion? Maybe too bleeding-edge? Nevermind. Thanks ;)!
Amazing! I saw the boxes show up earlier today (Ironically when I opened a previously pubbed post up to painstakingly copying all the tags and format I had used) and wondered what they were. Request Feedback will also be used by me. The computer I do most of my work at lacks email (long story), and jumping over to the other computer, and pulling all my stuff back up is a pain whenever I want to share my soon-to-be-latest post with someone I'm chatting with or whatever.
Good, good stuff. Thank you.
I don't know if I the copy will be a benefit but the feedback surely will.
Thanks for the innovative ideas!
Cool beans
Very interesting, thanks
I challenge you to count. I bet there are fewer than half as many gadgets on that ridiculously overpacked swiss army knife than there are options, boxes, menus, icons, dropdown menus , sub-menus, tickboxes and other features on the Edit a Post page.
I greatly appreciate WordPress' efforts to try to make blogging easier, but WordPress is getting perilously close to having so many bells and whistles that it becomes harder to understand and use the interface to begin with. I know my co-blogger is already overwhelmed by all the bells and whistles you already have.
Most people aren't so tech saavy and Elephants dont need earrings.
This is a great tool. I hope it's very useful.
I would humbly, in the spirit of constructive criticism, suggest that WordPress move some manpower away from developing new features and devote more manpower to addressing problems and flaws in the features, not to mention themes, you already have. The forums are so filled with requests to address flaws that people stop bothering to post them because they know their requests will go unanswered.
How about setting up a directory (call it the Bounce Board?) in the feedback feature where bloggers/interested parties can be available to offer feedback on post drafts? They could be grouped by topics of interest, expertise on specialist subjects or listed as proof-readers only etc. Anyone with a bit of spare time (ha ha) could opt in to the pool of available readers.
Wait a minute, isn't that what publishing your post is for? Damn…
Been waiting for "copy a post"! YAY!


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The Alice Lloyd College fishing team, the ALC Anglers, have been catching a lot of attention back home. Michael Watts and Caleb Baker, both from Letcher County, Ky., have beaten the odds, slowly rising through the ranks to land tiny Alice Lloyd College in the top 35 schools in the country in collegiate fishing. The two-man team currently sits at #34, ahead of much larger schools like Virginia Tech, Texas A&M, and the University of Florida.
Their success and tenacity have attracted the eye of the local news media. Local CBS-affiliate, WYMT News, in nearby Hazard, Ky., recently paid the team a visit at Carr Fork Lake. Check out the story here as reported by WYMT's Lauren Cash.
The ALC Anglers have taken their talents to the national stage as they compete this week in the Collegiate Bass Fishing Championship at Pickwick Lake in Florence, Alabama. Results and news from the event can be followed here.


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Photos courtesy of Anthony Karen
Whether it's humility, patience, diligence or daring, New York-based photographer Anthony Karen has a personality that's ideally suited to a photojournalist — because somehow he infiltrates enclaves and subcultures that are notoriously closed off, among them the Ku Klux Klan, shantytowns in Haiti and one of the few surviving leaders of Cambodia's murderous Khmer Rouge regime.
After listening to a recent NPR interview with Karen, we were curious to know more about his start, his style and his process.
Interview by babydiscarted and discarted.
Why do you take photos?
I used to take photographs because I wanted to; now I also take them because I need to. I have to express myself in some creative way to feel alive — photojournalism allows me to do so many things. It fills my soul to experience the gift of being allowed into someone's most private moments and the trust they give me to try and capture what's going on the best that I can. It's the beauty of creation, going home and seeing what I've captured on film. It's not always a great image, but it's a moment of time that I'll always have access to. I can make that experience last forever. And I like to make people "feel" — hopefully it's not a feeling to blog [about] me and say my images suck, but photography is so subjective. So what can ya do!
What would you like to achieve by showing people your work?
I would hope the same things as anyone who does something creatively — I mostly do it for me, but it's also important to me to make people feel. Whether it's anger, happiness or simply a view into something they'd never get to see otherwise. I hope to gain definition in my life; I hope to continue to learn and grow within my craft and as a person. I want new opportunities in which I'd be able to do more of what I love and additional exposure. Always to grow…. I'd love for someone to take a chance on me and to [be able to] shoot for more humanitarian causes internationally. That is my biggest goal at the moment.
How were you able to get your first assignments?
I started out with two long-term personal projects; those allowed me some credibility in my field. I was approached by several publications that wanted a story they wouldn't be able to get otherwise. It was a win-win situation for everybody.
Did you find the assignments yourself and build up a portfolio?
I finally decided to stop worrying about not being in Africa and shooting famine or in Iraq documenting the war. As badly as I wanted to go, it dawned on me to take advantage of my situation and shoot one or two stories and do them well. It's better to shoot one thing well than five things half-assed, in my opinion anyway. But yeah, if I had the chance, I'd be doing some half-assed shooting in those places…hahaha.
I looked for my own projects and I chose two strong stories and stuck with them. I stayed low-key until I had something to approach an agency with. I was still growing and wasn't ready to go all out until earlier this year, when I submitted my book proposal to powerHouse Books in New York City. One of my biggest issues was editing, and it took this book to learn about saying goodbye to the ones I loved in trade for the best image for the story. I'm still working on that; that's the hardest aspect for me. I'm not at 100% with my portfolio yet. I need to go back and finish several smaller stories, and then I have two more coming up. After that, I should be where I need to be…hopefully within another year or two.
What sort of training do you have, or is it all self-taught?
I'm self-taught, with a lot of mistakes along the way. I remember getting into my first gallery and they told me to bring in my framed work for a show. Nobody told me that I had to use a specific matte or certain frames. [When I showed up] they said I couldn't use them and I was out some money. It can be a snobbish scene, but I learned a lot. I also learned that photojournalism is about passion and my passion doesn't have time for self-centered people. I moved on from that particular gallery.
[From there] I made a list of questions and asked a professional friend of mine to answer them. I also took a one-day private workshop, but the person was more about showing off than teaching me. I went back to practicing everyday and taking advantage of CVS one-hour prints. I'd write the f-stops and aperture info on the back and study them. I'd also look at photographers I admired and mark all the images that I liked and think to myself why. I tried to learn the craft of telling a story. I'm still learning, but the repetitiveness of shooting a long-term project is the best method for me to go back and fill the voids.
What equipment do you use? Do you prefer film or digital? If so, what film stock do you prefer? What length lenses do you typically use? Is there a typical aperture setting you generally use? Do you shoot with multiple cameras?
I'm a Nikon guy, it's all about the glass — however, I suffered many years without having the low-light capabilities of the Canon products. The new D3 has finally allowed me to start making better images. I felt the D2X had saturation issues and it didn't work well at above 400 ISO; the D200 was a great backup, but it tended to be soft for my needs. I had a few software issues with the D3, but I'm loving life now.
I mainly stay with a 17-35mm 2.8 lens or the 70-200mm 2.8. I prefer the F 3.4 to 6.3 range when doing photojournalism — it really depends on the situation. I have a backup camera, but I keep it in my bag or car. I freak out when my gear bangs into something.
What has been your most difficult project to work on in regards to emotional fatigue?
By far the Canadian seal harvest, although when I was shooting, I was in my own little world. And I [also] had a few visits with handicapped orphans in Haiti… anything to do with suffering breaks my heart.
Do you ever feel unmotivated or too drained to photograph your subjects? How do you force yourself to keep going when you would rather not take photos?
Only recently. I did a one-hour audio interview with a magazine and I felt they produced a poorly edited version of one of my projects. I lost my faith in responsible journalism at that point and I wanted to cease shooting one of my stories because of it. I put those feelings aside once my camera met my eye during another event I had to shoot.
What was it like working on the slaughterhouse project shown on lightstalkers.com? Was this an assignment or a personal endeavor? How did you gain access? Did this project change the way you feel about buying meat in the grocery store? Change your opinion of the meat industry?
That was a personal project. I wanted something to photograph and thought it would be interesting. I was looking for things out of the scope of my two long-term projects, and since I love Vermont so much, I decided to start looking into it. I support local farming and one of the farmers I use gave me a few numbers. I documented a story on honeybees in Vermont that received a lot of play due to the decline of the honeybee population last year. I suppose that gave my intentions more validation.
I remember someone in the slaughterhouse saying the two things you don't want to see in a slaughterhouse is a human hair on the table or a camera. It didn't really change my views on the meat industry because it was a small, organic slaughterhouse and the cattle were free-roaming, grass-fed. Im sure standard large-scale slaughtering methods would disturb me immensely.
How do you get access to groups that are by nature very insular? Do you generally bring your camera with you the first time and begin taking photos immediately, or do you spend some time with them, gaining their trust?
I make contact and only go if I'm welcomed. I try to go a day early and leave a day later. I leave my camera in the car and introduce myself around. I try to get to know them and for them to know me. It's all about the connection; without it, you're only getting half the vision. You need a project like this to be natural. You're supposed to be a fly on the wall and capture things in a way to define the situation. It's not meant for shock value per se, but you need a balance of images to reflect the event.
I'm not trying to gain trust really, I'm just being human and when that moment comes to take a picture, I take it. I also ask everyone if it's okay before I document a sketchy subject. Sometimes you don't have that opportunity and you go by the visual acceptance of your subject. It's a talent most photojournalists have; some, on the other hand, don't respect that permission and take the shot anyway. In reference to my two major projects, I respect people's space.
What kind of trouble have you had, if any, with your subjects, and how did you deal with it (i.e., resistance, aggression, violence even)?
One time some skinheads had gotten pretty intoxicated during a concert. It didn't help that they didn't speak English. I'm pretty big and one skinhead decided he wanted to start pushing me, not really moshing (a skinhead dance), but like a test of strength. I blew it off until he went near my camera and I told him if he did, it was going to the next level real fast – kinda talking in tongues since he didn't speak English. But anyway, everybody else came right away and put him in his place. It was really nothing, to be honest. I've worked in the personal protection industry since I was 17 years old, plus I do plenty of crazy things as I'm an adventure junkie. Being polite and knowing how to talk to people in a rational manner works 95% of the time.There was also a time when I was in Cite Soleil. Haiti was having a lot of unrest during that period and I remember being in the back of a pickup truck driving around with several gang members while being shot at from a distance. Two members sitting next to me had to be 15 or 16 years old. There were some situations with loaded weapons, and I had to actually take rifles away from these kids and show them how to hold them properly so I didn't get shot by an accidental discharge. That's where some Marine training came in handy.
How much time do you typically spend with your subjects, like with the KKK project?
I go early and I stay late; I need to see and feel the situations in order to capture and define the time on film. If they had an event and I could afford to go, I did. I think I know more about the Klan then most — I understand that there are many different groups. Most people in the Klan stick to their geographical location. I've shot different groups in almost every state, so I have a broader knowledge, allowing me to produce a better-rounded summation of what they're about, generally speaking that is. I got to the point where I had enough material to produce a book on the Klan, so I went back as much as possible to polish to the final product.
When you throw yourself into an assignment that you do just for yourself, how are you able to make ends meet?
I try to save money whenever possible and credit cards are indispensable.
Do you feel like the route to a photojournalism career is to travel overseas and bring back a body of foreign work to get noticed by galleries, publications and photo editors? What advice do you have for documentary photographers?
I used to think that way. As I mentioned above, it was tearing me apart not to be in Iraq or the latest catastrophe abroad. It still does, to be honest. But you can find good stories close to home if you look. Try and find something powerful that you can shoot as much as possible — learn it, know it, breathe it, and constantly look back and reassess your vision. Try new angles, take chances. You can always go back and shoot it again. Turn it into a long-term project and watch how your vision changes over the year. You're sure to grow.
If you get some disposable cash, find something interesting and go a few times a year. It's a way of life if it's truly a passion; it's not about competition or being the best. It's being humble and learning about people. I know that's all true when it comes to everybody else, but when I'm depressed, it's all a bunch of crap…hahaha.A body of work is only a body of work; it's got to be good or at least different. I started out with it being different. Over the years I think I've reached good — well, with the Klan project anyway. The total body of work will be published in April by powerHouse Books. I hope –- okay, I pray — it receives positive reviews by my peers.
What's your next project? How are you finding new subjects? Are organizations/outlets approaching you, or are you approaching them with project ideas?
I'm going to document the God Hates Fags Church in detail this July, and I'm always sending out emails and trying to make something happen. I'm currently doing a long-term project on dying with hospice and I hope to connect with more humanitarian organizations. I still have more stuff to do in Haiti, now that my gear is in order, and I'll continue to document skinheads until I can produce another book. Other then that, I have to keep some secrets for myself….
NPR interview.
Anthony Karen's site.
Anthony Karen's lightstalkers.com page.


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Add the New Yorker blog "Rational Irrationality" to the lineup of news organizations and outlets that have invoked Watergate's most famous made-up line — "follow the money" — as if it were genuine.
As if the Washington Post's stealthy "Deep Throat" source really spoke the line "follow the money" as guidance to unraveling the Watergate scandal.
Which he didn't.
The "Rational Irrationality" blog the other day joined the likes of the Financial Times, Fox News, the Huffington Post, Minnesota Public Radio, the Providence Journal, media critic Eric Alterman, the Hindu newspaper in India, among others, in invoking the line as if it had been advice earnestly offered by "Deep Throat."
"Rational Irrationality" referred to the line as "immortal advice," stating:
"There are two ways to figure out what is really happening in Washington politics. One is to interview Administration officials, congressmen, Capitol Hill staffers, think-tank wonks, and so on, and write down what they say. The other journalistic technique is to heed Deep Throat's immortal advice to Bob Woodward and follow the money trail. When it comes to budgets and the deficit, the Deep Throat methodology is usually the more informative."
The line certainly may be timeless. Even "immortal." But "Deep Throat" never told Woodward, he of the Washington Post, to "follow the money."
That line appears nowhere in All the President's Men, the book Woodward wrote with Post colleague Carl Bernstein about their Watergate reporting — reporting that did not, as I discuss in my latest work, Getting It Wrong, bring down Nixon's corrupt presidency.
Moreover, "follow the money" appeared in no Watergate-related article or editorial published in the Post before 1981 — which was years after Nixon quit the presidency in disgrace.
"Follow the money" was a line made for the movies: It was written into the screenplay of the cinematic version of All the President's Men.
The line was memorably uttered not by the real-life "Deep Throat" — who in 2005 was self-revealed to have been W. Mark Felt, formerly a top official at the FBI — but by Hal Holbrook, the actor who played "Deep Throat" in the movie.
Holbrook turned in an outstanding performance as a conflicted, tormented "Deep Throat."
And he delivered his "follow the money" lines with such grave assurance and certainty that it seemed to offer a way to understand the intricacies of the Watergate scandal.
But as I've noted at Media Myth Alert, even if Woodward had been counseled to "follow the money," the advice would have taken him only so far.
It wouldn't have led him to Nixon.
What forced Nixon from office in 1974 was not the misuse of campaign funds but the president's active role in attempting to obstruct justice by covering up the signal crime of the Watergate scandal, the break-in at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in June 1972.
Rolling up the scandal of Watergate's complexity and dimension was scarcely as straightforward as pursuing misused campaign contributions.
As I write in Getting It Wrong, unraveling Watergate required "the collective if not always the coordinated forces of special prosecutors, federal judges, both houses of Congress, the Supreme Court, as well as the Justice Department and the FBI.
"Even then," I argue, "Nixon likely would have served out his term if not for the audiotape recordings he secretly made of most conversations in the Oval Office of the White House.
"Only when compelled by the Supreme Court did Nixon surrender those recordings, which captured him plotting the cover-up" that cost him the presidency.
Many thanks to Instapundit
Glenn Reynolds for linking to this post
Recent and related:
- Historian dismisses as 'self-promotion' the heroic-journalist interpretation of Watergate
- 'Deep Throat' didn't say 'follow the money'; nor was he vital in Watergate
- India high court invokes phony Watergate line
- Jon Krakauer rolls back claim about WaPo 'source' in Jessica Lynch case
- The Fin Times and the 'mantra' of Watergate
- Joe McGinniss, 'Deep Throat,' and anonymous sources
- A 'follow the money' hat trick
- Fact-checking Watergate advice that 'worked'
- 'A debunker's work is never done'
- Every good historian a mythbuster
- Getting It Wrong goes Majic


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Truth behind Allen West, Patrick Murphy attack ads
War record, teenage arrest under attack by candidates
U.S. Rep. Allen West's campaign fired off the first shot in this latest round of increasingly nasty political advertisements.
The congressman's ad states: "2003: Patrick Murphy is thrown out of a club for fighting, covered in alcohol and unable to stand. Murphy then confronts and verbally assaults a police officer."
According to a Miami Beach police report from 2003, Murphy and a co-defendant were escorted out of a club, "covered in alcohol" and did "continue to get within several inches" of the officer's face and swore at the officer.
"It was a mistake. It was a youthful mistake," said Murphy. "I was a teenager and I got in trouble for underage drinking on a fake ID. It was a learning experience, and I think its important that we all learn from mistakes and don't repeat them."
The case was ultimately dismissed.
But Murphy said since West opened the door to 2003, he decided to put out his own version.
In his ad, the narrator claims: "West was criminally charged with violating the uniform code of military justice, found guilty of three counts of aggravated assault and relieved of his command. West performed illegal acts, merited court martial, faced 11 years in prison."
Those charges refer to West firing a gun near an Iraqi prisoner's head during an interrogation in 2003. According to the Army attorney who represented him at the time, West was charged with violating the uniform code of military justice, but because of mitigating circumstances, specifically the "stresses of combat" and West's record, those charges were later dismissed.
The attorney also said West was never found guilty. He was relieved of his command, which his lawyer said was standard procedure, and retired with a $5,000 fine.
In a statement, West said in part, "I paid a small fine for breaking rules in an effort to save the lives of my men. I still have my honorable discharge certificate as a lieutenant colonel and I voluntarily submitted my retirement paperwork upon redeploying from Iraq."


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Today we celebrate Memorial Day, a holiday which commemorates U.S. men and women who died while in the military service. We know us dachshunds have a bit of a tangled past in the United States, and even the UK, in regard to our German ancestry during times of great world wars, most notably World War One. Today though, we are going to look at how a 6-year-old Dachshund Lover spoke up to Henry Morgenthau, Jr., the Secretary of the Treasury, about how Dachshund imagery was being used to sell war bonds during World War Two. This article is via The New York Times, April 5, 1943:
Calms Boy Protesting Use With Hitler's Face on It
SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., April 4
A war bond advertisement caricaturing a dachshund with Hitler's face so enraged John Anson, a 6-year-old dachshund fancier, that he wrote to Secretary Morgenthau saying that "you ought to be ashamed of yourself."
Today the San Francisco boy had a reply bearing the great seal of the Secretary of the Treasury and apologizing to dachshunds in general.
"I asked him (Mr. Morgenthau) not to make fun of dachshunds or to make them unhappy by drawing Hitler's face on them," John said. "I told him I had two dachshunds and that they were nice little dogs and I loved them and that they were good Americans."
John felt better about it today after his mother read to him this reply, dated March 27, from Mr. Morgenthau's secretary:
Dear John:
The Secretary read your letter with a great deal of interest and he asked me to thank you for writing him.
He was sorry that you thought he was making fun of dachshunds, for Mrs. Morgenthau and he have a dachshund themselves and both are very fond of this breed of dog.
Of course, those pictures are made to catch the eye of people who read their papers hurriedly, and so the artist must try to express just one idea in a simple way with each picture.
Will you please tell your dachshund that there was no intention to insult them or the other members of their breed?
We're not sure if the above Dachshund imagery was used to sell war bonds, but it depicts the head of Hitler, as discussed in this post.
Dachshund Lover Henry Morgenthau, Jr., the 52nd United States Secretary of the Treasury.
Woof! Have a great day, and don't miss some amazing stories of dachshunds and the military from the archives:
Veterans Day and Dachshunds
Dachshunds in Pop Culture: Fritz and the "Jane" Cartoon Series
Dachshunds in History: The Saga of Sgt. Wally D. Hund
Dachshunds Reunited with their Dads in the News
Dachshunds and Veterans Day
Dachshunds Teleconferencing with their Dads in Iraq in the News
Dachshunds in History: Mimi, A Most Unpopular Dog During WW2
Memorial Day Dachshund: Meet Gus
Dachshund News Roundup! - story on Vietnam War Veteran Jim Quick and his dachshund
Dachshund News Roundup! - story on Iraq War Veteran Scott MacKenzie and his new rescue boy
Dachshunds in History: Hark! Hark! The Dogs Do Bark!
Dachshunds in History: Dogs of War


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Every Guns N' Roses Song Ranked Worst to Best
With just four full-length albums of original material, Guns N' Roses have become one of rock and roll's most legendary bands. They came from L.A.'s Sunset Strip, but they easily transcended that scene and even made it obsolete.
Their debut, Appetite for Destruction, which has sold over 18 million copies in the United States alone, is a classic, but it was a slow burner. When it was first released in July of 1987, it was met with some fanfare, gradually creeping up the charts until it eventually ascended to No. 1 on the Billboard 200 about a year later. For those vehemently opposed to glam, "Welcome to the Jungle" was a hardened, gritty song that grabbed the ears of the heavier-leaning rock crowd, while the glitzy "Paradise City" and the tender-hearted ballad "Sweet Child O' Mine" won over pop radio programmers and MTV.
They never topped Appetite (few albums in rock's canon can claim to be better), Guns N' Roses would go on to explore different styles of music. Use Your Illusion I and II each clocked in at over 70 minutes, showcasing piano-driven ballads, moodier and lengthier compositions, some saloon rock, leftovers from the Appetite sessions and some straight-ahead burners.
Things splintered from there as tensions really began to mount and the group bided their time by releasing The Spaghetti Incident?, a covers album of mostly punk rock tunes. With Axl Rose the last remaining founding member until Slash and Duff McKagan rejoined in 2015, the long-overdue Chinese Democracy stood as the only full-length effort to emerge after this.
We've taken it all into consideration and have ranked all of their songs (well, mostly — we didn't include all of the alternate versions from the new, extensive Appetite for Destruction box set, but we did include the previously unheard songs and covers) from worst to best in the gallery below.
Guns N' Roses Songs Ranked


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Eric Holder: Barring ex-felons from voting is unfair, counterproductive
US Attorney General Eric Holder called upon states to restore voting rights to ex-felons, saying not doing so disproportionately bars black Americans from the polls, and denies equal opportunity and equal justice.
Attorney General Eric Holder on Tuesday called upon states to repeal laws that bar ex-felons from voting after they complete their sentences, saying such laws are "unjust" and "counterproductive," as well as disproportionately excluding black Americans from the polls.
Mr. Holder can't force states that withhold voting rights from ex-felons to amend their laws, but his remarks, made at a criminal justice conference at Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, could help prompt reconsideration of such laws.
"Whenever we tell citizens who have paid their debts and rejoined their communities that they are not entitled to take part in the democratic process, we fall short of the bedrock promise – of equal opportunity and equal justice – that has always served as the foundation of our legal system," said Holder, in his speech.
Holder's comments join a chorus of calls from his Justice Department, human rights activists, and – in a reversal – some Republican lawmakers that the disenfranchisement of ex-felons disproportionally bars racial minorities from voting. Most such laws date from the late 1800s, when lawmakers across the US were pushing for legislation that would keep African-Americans, newly enfranchised, from voting nonetheless, Holder said.
"At worst, these laws, with their disparate impact on minority communities, echo policies enacted during a deeply troubled period in America's past – a time of post-Civil War discrimination," he said. "And they have their roots in centuries-old conceptions of justice that were too often based on exclusion, animus, and fear."
Eleven states restrict a felon's voting rights after prison and either probation or parole, Holder said, in his speech. Those states are Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, Tennessee, Virginia, and Wyoming.
In total, about 5.8 million people nationwide are barred from voting because of current or past convictions for serious crimes, according to The Sentencing Project, a prison reform advocacy group in Washington. Some 2.2 million of those people are black, or about 1 in 13 African-American adults nationwide, according to the group. In Florida, that ratio is much higher, with 1 in 5 black state residents banned from the polls, Holder said Tuesday.
It's unclear how an effort to restore voting rights to ex-felons and bring millions of additional people to the polls might be received in the states with such laws. Studies show that felons are more likely to vote for Democratic candidates than for Republicans: A 2002 report from two universities reported that the 2000 presidential election "would almost certainly have been reversed" had felons nationwide been allowed to vote, according to The New York Times.
Meanwhile, tea party-backed Sens. Rand Paul (R) of Kentucky and Mike Lee (R) of Utah, both of whom were at the conference, echoed Holder's call that felons be reenfranchised on the grounds that current laws unfairly affect black men. Senator Paul said he considered it a miscarriage of justice that 1 in 3 black men in his state, which has one of the harshest disenfranchisement policies, is banned from voting.
"People think conservative Republicans just want to put people in jail,'' he said, according to The Wall Street Journal. "There are Republicans on our side who will work with Democrats who will do the right thing on this."
Some GOP-controlled state governments recently reformed their voting laws to restore ex-felons' voting rights. Holden offered particular praise in his speech to former Virginia Gov. Robert McDonnell (R), who amended his state's policies last year to return voting rights to people with nonviolent felony convictions, although those convicted of violent felonies still lose the right to vote for life.
(Holder's encouraging shout-out to the ex-Virginia governor was somewhat curious, since Holder last month indicted Mr. McDonnell and his wife on federal corruption charges.)
Laws on disenfranchisement after conviction of a serious crime vary among states. In three states – Florida, Iowa, and Kentucky – ex-felons are disenfranchised for life, unless they receive clemency from the governor. Other states, including Arizona, Nevada, and Wyoming, restore voting rights to certain kinds of felons, but not to others.
Vermont and Maine are the only states that do not practice any kind of disenfranchisement of convicted criminals, letting felons vote by absentee ballot while incarcerated. Other states restore voting rights after completion of the prison sentence or after completion of probation or parole.
The US is not unique in the developed world in restricting voting rights of ex-felons: Finland bans felons from recouping their voting rights for seven years after their release.
Most developed countries, though, have either no restrictions or selective restrictions on felons voting while in prison, or allow felons to reclaim those rights upon completion of sentences.
Holder's calls for the repeal of disenfranchisement laws come amid his broader push for reforms of the US criminal justice system, including leading a fight to restore federal oversight of state voting laws, following a US Supreme Court decision last summer striking down a key section of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. He has also made pushing for ways to legally encode marriage equality for gays and lesbians a priority during his time in office.


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The 100 Best Songs of 2017
by delarue
This is a playlist. Click on each song title to stream it, click on the artist name for their webpage.
It was tempting to pick one of the segments of the Satoko Fujii Orchestra New York's new release, Fukushima, as the best song of the year. But the single most relevant and mesmerizing album of 2017 is best heard as a contiguous suite. Taking one of its five movements out of context would spoil the experience. And it's nowhere to be found online at the moment, anyway.
In lieu of that, the single best song of 2017, Kitten, by Dennis Davison, is still in the embryonic stage. It wasn't released by a record label, or even recorded in a studio. It reached this blog as a voice memo, just vocals and guitar in a practice space. The frontman of cult favorite psychedelic band the Jigsaw Seen has written a lot of great songs over the years, but this one is the most harrowing. On the surface, it's about a homeless guy who finds a kitten. He's in trouble: he lives by the exit sign. And this is not a sweet love-conquers-all narrative. It's a wish song – and a portrait of terminal depression as vivid and chilling as anything Phil Ochs or Ian Curtis ever wrote. And it's as catchy as it is depressed.
Rather than trying to rank the other 99 songs here, they're listed in rough chronological order of when they were either received or witnessed onstage. Rather than regurgitating the Best Albums of 2017 list, this one has a lot of songs that either haven't been officially released, or were just so amazing to see live over the past year that it wouldn't be fair to exclude them. Same rules as last year: one song per band or artist. Otherwise, half this list would be Ward White and Amir ElSaffar, and that would be counterproductive. You can go down the rabbit hole with any of the hundred artists on this list all by yourself without any further help from this blog.
Ward White – Coffee Maker
A pair of accomplices grow more desperate by the hour in this catchy yet characteristically enigmatic, Charming Disaster-esque post-murder narrative. The way White caps off his guitar solo is as cruel as it is priceless. From the even more inscrutable As Consolation, best rock album of 2017.
Jack Grace – Get Out of Brooklyn
The baritone Americana crooner's somber, heartbreaking requiem for a pre-real estate bubble New York. "The place held its own ground, the rivers separated where you bothered to go – really used to try to get out of Brooklyn, now everybody's trying to get in." From the album Everything I Say Is a Lie.
The Dream Syndicate – Like Mary
The most harrowing track on Steve Wynn's recently regrouped, legendary 80s band's new album How Did I Find Myself Here is a catchy, tensely muted, grim portrait of a woman who may be a child killer…or just an Oxycontin casualty.
Amir ElSaffar's Rivers of Sound – Ya Ibni, Ya Ibni (My Son, My Son)
A vast, oceanic Iraqi-flavored lament from the paradigm-shifting trumpeter/multi-instrumentalist's Middle Eastern orchestral jazz group's latest album Not Two.
The Sadies – The Good Years
A brisk shuffle beat beneath hypnotically lingering guitars in this chilling Nashville gothic elegy for a disastrous marriage: "She couldn't wait to clean out the place he occupied." From the album Northern Passages.
Alice Lee – Your Blues
A savagely lyrical, spot-on soul anthem for the era of Ferguson and Eric Garner from the ex-New York singer/multi-instrumentalist's brilliant new album The Wheel.
Charming Disaster – What Remains
The New York noir supergroup– led by Jeff Morris of lavish, dark, latin-flavored rockers Kotorino and Ellia Bisker of parlor pop existentialists Sweet Soubrette – slink their way through this chillingly allusive post-murder narrative inspired by Flannery O'Connor's The River. From the album Cautionary Tales.
Los Wemblers – Sonido Amazonico
A brand-new version of the eerie, slinky national anthem of psychedelic cumbia, which the Peruvian band wrote and first recorded almost fifty years ago. This one's a lot longer and more psychedelic than any other version in existence, Chicha Libre's included. From their unlikely and amazing comeback album Ikaro Del Amor.
Sofia Talvik – Lullaby
Catchy, anthemic and resolutely optimistic on the surface: "Still you wish you were dead." When the Nordic Americana songwriter played this at the American Folk Art Museum this past spring, you could have heard a pin drop. From the album Big Sky Country.
Castle Black – Broken Bright Star
Guitarist Leigh Celent's evil, spare icepick intro kicks off this slowly marauding anthem that eventually explodes in a fireball of reverb. From the album Trapped Under All You Know.
Morricone Youth – Clunes Town
Del Shannon mashed up with Ennio Morricone – makes sense, right? – with distantly ghostly multitracked Karla Rose vocals. From the band's Mad Max soundtrack
Lusterlit – Ceremony
Frontwoman/drummer Susan Hwang gives this long, creepy, ineluctably crescendoing, chromatically-charged Cormac McCarthy-inspired anthem her most luridly Lynchian vocal ever. From the album List of Equipment.
Lorraine Leckie – America Weeping
Leonard Cohen died the day before the fateful 2016 Presidential election. This careening psychedelic riff-rocker is the eclectic bandleader's anguished response. Free download!
Son of Skooshny – Untold History
With Steve Refling's keening slide guitar, this is one of the band's harder-rocking numbers, Mark Breyer's chillingly autobiographical account of growing up amid all sorts of familial and social Cold War-era dysfunction. From the album Matchless Gifts.
Aimee Mann – Lies of Summer
Slow and lush, heavy like a thunderstorm, this mutedly depressed orchestral rock tale doesn't reveal whether the narrator is addressing a prisoner or a dead person until the very end. From the album Mental Illness.
Brian Carpenter & the Confessions – City on Fire
The Ghost Train Orchestra trumpeter/bandleader plays keys and guitar and lends his baritone voice to this brilliantly Lynchian band, duetting with chanteuse Jen Kenneally in this slinky, bolero-tinged smash. They managed to steal the spotlight from Big Lazy on a Friday night in the East Village last month, no joke.
Changing Modes – Dust
Awash in orchestral keys and troubled close harmonies from the band's two frontwomen, this slowly crescendoing apocalypse anthem makes an apt coda to the New York art-rock band's brilliant album Goodbye Theodora.
James Williamson and Deniz Tek – No Sense of Crime
The best and most death-obsessed track from the Stooges' immortal Kill City album, reinvented as lush, poignant, similarly opiated acoustic parlor rock. Giant Drag's Annie Hardy adds plaintive high harmonies, with violin from Petra Haden. From the killer, wryly titled ep Acoustic K.O.
Miramar – Sin Ti
A psychedelically Lynchian, allusively Middle Eastern-tinged bolero, the highlight of the Virginia group's show at Drom back in January.
Joshua Garcia – That's the Way You Drop a Bomb
Oldschool first-wave-style folk revival narrative as one of the crew of the Enola Gay might have heard it. Chililng beyond belief, and a staple of the New York songwriter's live show.
Greek Judas – Kontrabandistas
A drug-smuggling anthem from the 1930s Greek underworld reinvented as searing, menacing, twin guitar-fueled metal. From the band's brand-new debut album.
The New Pornographers – High Ticket Attractions
Motorik Pulp-style new wave satire of yuppie status-grubbing. Llittle do they know how much corporations are taking advantage of them. From the album Whiteout Conditions.
Kerem Guney – Sicak Bir Sevda
Is it fair to put a haunting Turkish psychedelic rock anthem from the late 70s – like the Doors with an electric saz – on a list of 2017 songs? It hasn't been released outside Turkey until the Uzelli Psychedelic Anadolu compilation came out earlier this year.
Meszecsinka – Hajnalban (At Dawn) – fifteen minutes of evil shamanic post-Velvets Balkan crash and wail from this phantasmagorical female-fronted Balkan group. Another band who killed it back in January at Drom.
Jaye Bartell – Swim Colleen
With his deadpan baritone and reverb-drenched, spare guitar hooks, nobody's better at allusive macabre narratives than this guy. From his album In a Time of Trouble, a Wild Exaltation.
Carol Lipnik – My Piano
Stately, graceful art-rock eco-disaster parable: after all, pianos are made from trees. Her vocal crescendo will give you goosebumps. She and pianist Matt Kanelos held the crowd rapt with this at Pangea back in January.
The Jigsaw Seen – My Name Is Tom
A rare successful mashup of dark Indian raga theme and American psychedelic rock, and one of the LA band's most iconic songs. They ripped the roof off with this at Bowery Electric back in March.. From their latest album For the Discriminating Completist.
Ran Blake & Dominique Eade – It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)
The iconic noir pianist and the brilliant jazz singer outdo Dylan's original. Eade's rapidfire articulation underscores the venom and bitterness in this exasperated capitalist treadmill tirade as Blake anchors it with his signature blend of eerie glimmer and murk. From their album Town & Country.
Rev. Billy & the Stop Shopping Choir – End of the World
The fearless environmental activist and his mighty, roughly sixty-member choir opened their towering Prospect Park Bandshell set this past summer with this ominous original gospel tune: "Only so many beautiful days on earth!"
The Robert Sabin Dectet – Ghost
A portrait of a house whose occupant has just died, a somber belltone pavane punctuated with artfully suspenseful use of space and moody horns. From the bassist's album Humanity Part II with his lushly cinematic large ensemble
Gacaltooyo Band – Ninkaan Ogayn (He Who Does Not Know)
Never before released outside of Somalia, this late 70s jam is a slow, haunting mashup of noir soul, Bollywood balladry, Ethiopiques and what sounds like J-pop – Somalian pentatonic scales come across as positively Asian in places here. From the compilation Sweet As Broken Dates: Lost Somali Tapes from the Horn of Africa
The Mehmet Polat Trio – Everything Is in You
Joined by kora and ney flute, the brilliant Turkish oudist shifts between otherworldly Middle Eastern modes, Asia and Africa in this pensive epic. From the album Ask Your Heart
Black Lesbian Fishermen – Ragged Ritual
This trippy, practically fifteen-minute drone-rock dirge has subtle Indian raga allusions, moody Middle Eastern ambience and a slow build to a darkly majestically macabre, resonant swirl of organ and guitar. From the album Ectopic Apiary.
Hearing Things – Stalefish
A mashup of growling go-go funk, horror surf, Middle Eastern music and the Doors, it's a staple of Brooklyn's funnest band's live show.
NO ICE – Leave Her Alone
Musically, it's a bitter, fiery soul-rock anthem. Lyrically, it's one of the year's classiest numbers: cool guys don't harass women. From the Brooklyn band's amazingly multistylistic, fun debut full-length album Come On Feel the NO ICE.
Orkesta Mendoza – Contra La Marea
The briskly strutting noir centerpiece of the slinky psychedelic mambo/cumbia band's latest album ¡Vamos A Guarachar!, brooding baritone sax and clarinet alongside bandleader Sergio Mendoza's reverberating guitar multitracks.
The Trio Joubran – Laytaka
The gorgeously fluttering, understatedly elegaic intro to the oud-playing brothers' album and DVD A'Lombre Des Mots (In the Shadow of Words), their tribute to their longtime collaborator, iconic Palestinian poet and activist Mahmoud Darwish. They mesmerized the crowd with this at their Lincoln Center show this past June.
Doug Wieselman's Trio S – Dreambox
A cello drone and flickers from the drums underpin the bandleader's moody Balkan melismas. building to a ferocious, Macedonian-flavored dance – the high point of their new album Somewhere Glimmer.
Money Chicha – Tamborcita
The most epic number on the debut album by the Austin psychedelic cumbia monsters (a spinoff of the slightly less psychedelic Grupo Fantasma), simmering and swooshing with ominous chromatics, reverb guitar and dub tinges.
Ella Atlas – Leave Me in Blue
The most darkly lingering, epically sweeping track on 2017's best debut album, The Road to Now, the Lynchian first release by enigmatic singer Tarrah Maria and Lost Patrol guitarist Steven Masucci.
King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard – Open Water
A hash-smuggling Red Sea speedboat theme of sorts, it's got an energetic, hypnotically shuffling, qawwali-ish groove, icepick staccato guitar and all sorts of eerie chromatic hooks. From the album Flying Microtonal Banana.
Timatim Fitfit – Living in the City
A stabbing parlor pop tune, John Cale mashed up with the Handsome Family from the menacing, carnivalesque solo album The Sugar Man, a creepy side project by Orphan Jane accordionist Tim Cluff.
Omar Souleyman – Mawal
An uncharacteristically slow, hauntingly violin-driven refugee's lament from the gruff Syrian-born crooner's album To Syria With Love.
Clint Mansell – Wheatfield With Crows
With its shivery violins, lustrous long tones and darkly ambient washes, this is where the film composer's score to the Van Gogh movie Loving Vincent breaks into a scream.
What Cheer? Brigade – Black Cannon
Sort of a swaying Balkan brass Hawaii 5-0; the stampeding doublespeed bridge and the breathless charge on the way out are the high points of the East Coast's largest brass band's album You Can't See Inside of Me.
The Legendary Shack Shakers – White Devil
"White is the color of hipsters," frontman JD Wilkes snarls as this noir blues stomps along, flickering with out-of-tune piano and Rod Hamdallah's screaming distorted guitar. From the album After You've Gone.
Bobtown – Magilla Lee
New York's best folk noir band blend their charming voices for this blithely bouncy narrative about "true meditation through medication" with dire consequences. They slayed with this at this year's Brooklyn Americana Festival.
Nicole Atkins – I Love Living Here
A slow-simmering, crushingly sarcastic, angst-driven piano-and-horns anthem set in 2017 Brooklyn gentrifier hell. From the noir soul singer's latest album Goodnight Rhonda Lee.
Anbessa Orchestra – Nagatti Si Jedha
The Israeli-American Ethio-jazz band jam the hell out of this uneasily catchy, slinky, reverb guitar-driven anthem, a mashup of vintage soul and ancient African riffs, when they play it live. From their most recent ep.
Red Baraat – Gaadi of Truth
Fiery, chromatic horn-driven live bhangra with a little hip-hop flavor: like an Indian Slavic Soul Party. From the album Bhangra Pirates.
The Sirius Quartet – Spidey Falls!
This high-voltage microtonal string epic is part Big Lazy crime jazz, part Bernard Herrmann, part Piazzolla and part turbocharged tarantella.
Rahim AlHaj – Chant
The Iraqi-born oudist and his trio entertained the crowd at Lincoln Center this past spring with an intimate version of this uneasily bouncy, subtly sardonic theme inspired by his mom trying to keep her kids out of trouble. This video link above is the full orchestrated version
Dos Santos Anti-Beat Orquesta – Red
Slinky, luridly organ-driven psychedelic cumbia mixed up withChicano Batman-style psychedelic soul. From the album Fonografic.
Nina Diaz – Star
Towering, angst-fueled noir punk cabaret, like a mashup of Vera Beren and Nicole Atkins. From the Girl in a Coma's excellent debut album The Beat Is Dead.
Kalyani Singh – Ellis
An allusively grisly Ellis Island scenario set to a soaring Indian carnatic melody recast as gothic Americana – told from the point of view of a ghost. Or is she? You could have heard a pin drop when Singh sang this at the American Folk Art Museum last year.
The NYChillharmonic – Blumen
A lush, hypnotic, uneasily circling Radiohead-inflected epic from singer Sara McDonald's mighty 22-piece New York band, who mash up big band jazz and symphonic rock. They raised the roof with this at Joe's Pub last spring.
Dalava – The Bloody Wall
A murder victim haunts the crime scene over almost imperceptibly crescendoing art-rock in guitarist Aram Bajakian and singer Julia Ulehla's reinvention of this old Moravian folk tune from their latest album The Book of Transfigurations.
Electric Youth – It's Them
The Canadian duo's enveloping, slowly crescendoing take on a classic Lynch film theme – in this case, for a movie that never came out. From the album Breathing.
Mulatu Astatke – Yekatit
The godfather of Ethio-jazz, backed by an impressively tight pickup band including keyboardist Jason Lindner and trumpeter Adam O'Farrill, kept the uneasy, brassy groove going for almost fifteen minutes with this classic in Central Park back in August.
Los Crema Paraiso – Shine On You Crazy Diablo
The cinematic Venezuelan psychedelic trio have been playing their deadpan version of the Pink Floyd epic all the way through in concert. for more than a year now. They didn't extend it all the way through at Barbes back in July, but it was still amazing how they can recreate it while adding wry dub tinges. This is a similar, relatively brief eight-minute studio version.
Melissa & the Mannequins – Can't Let Go
The latest deliciously catchy, jangly single from New York's best new band of 2017; bittersweetly coy vocals, ringing guitars and a little vintage soul too.
Briga – Bela Sum
Mesmerizing singer Eva Salina and Balkan accordionist Sergiu Popa join the Quebecoise violinist on this broodingly gorgeous ballad from the album Femme.
Funkrust Brass Band – Dark City
The title track, and most distinctively chromatic, Balkan-flavored anthem from the debut album by New York's largest and most explosive brass band.
Sofia Rei – Arriba Quemando El Sol
The stark Violeta Parra peasant's lament reinvented as relentless, marching art-rock fueled by Marc Ribot's unhinged guitar. From the album El Gavilan.
Kelly Green – Culture Shock
A bustling, epic noir jazz theme that eventually descends into dissociative Sketches of Spain allusions, flutters loosely and then jumps back into the rat race again. Centerpiece of the album Life Rearranged.
David Smooke & the Peabody Wind Ensemble – Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death
The epic, sixteen-minute title track to the toy pianist's new album is a real cinematic showstopper. Horrified tritone cadenzas, thunderous swells, unexpectedly dusky microtonal banjo, and then toy piano plinking and clicking mutedly under extreme duress.
Mike Neer's Steelonious – Off Minor
Smoking steel guitar, organ and a rhythm section take Thelonious Monk's classic to the next Lynchian level. From the band's debut album.
Vigen Hovsepyan – Gulo
The most haunting track on the powerful Armenian singer and multi-instrumentalist's new album Echoes: Revived Armenian Folk Music is this slowly swaying 6/8 piano ballad.
La Mar Enfortuna – Aman Minush
Elysian Fields guitarist Oren Bloedow and singer Jennifer Charles' Sephardic art-rock side project made entrancing psychedelic rock out this darkly bouncy old tune at their November show at the Jewish Museum
Noura Mint Seymali – Soub Hanak
A microtonal duskcore anthem, the most straight-up rock number from the fearless jamband leader's album Arbina.
Hilary Downes – Secrets of Birds
The art-rock songwriter's band take their deepest plunge into noir on the album's title track: "Save me from these thoughts, divebomb every part,"…yet, "I am not afraid of the darkness in my way."
Trina Basu & Arun Ramamurthy – Sindhu Bhairavi
Haunting, edgy, hypnoticallly dueling Indian violins – since this live recording from their amazing Noguchi Museum show in September is an audio-only clip, it's tantalizingly hard to figure out who's playing what.
The Hooten Hollers – Scrapper's Lament
An amusing, amped-up oldschool country ballad about the joys of scrounging for scrap metal – a perfect job in these new depression times. From the band's 2017 album.
Borbely Mihaly Polygon – 2/1
A bouncy, uneasy, staccato Hungarian bass clarinet/cimbalom/drums theme, one of the highlights of the trio's amazing show at Drom back in January.
Tomas Fujiwara's Triple Double – Love & Protest
Mournful, spacious blues trumpet over a twin-drum stampede spiced with burns and scrapes from guitarists Mary Halvorson and Brandon Seabrook: Wadada Leo Smith clarity and Amir ElSaffar majesty. From the group's debut album.
River Cult – Shadow Out of Time
Epic Daydream Nation-era Sonic Youth slides into galloping post-Sabbath in this careening live track from the heavy psych band's latest ep Live at WFMU.
Bridget Kibbey – Toccata in D
This is the famous J.S. Bach organ piece that's been used in a million horror movies…played solo, matter-of-factly and celestially, on the harp. It's as funny as it is subversive, but ultimately it's still arguably the creepiest piece of music ever written. A downtown crowd at the Times Arrow Festival earlier this year didn't know what to make of it.
Dawn Oberg – Nothing Rhymes With Orange
The most bleakly hilarious song of the year is this sharp, literary middle finger raised at "Putin's little bitch" in the Oval Office. Title track from the parlor pop pianist's latest ep.
Kacy & Clayton – A Certain Kind of Memory
A dead ringer for Jenifer Jackson in wounded dark country mode circa 2007, down to the slow, lingering, Richard Thompson-esque arrangement. From the album The Siren's Song.
Super Yamba Band – Control Per Capita (C.P.C.)
One of the Brooklyn psychedelic Afrobeat band's most lavish, funky jams. They got a packed house at Barbes boiling over with this last summer.
Chicano Batman – The Taker Story
A anti-imperialist broadside, part Isaac Hayes hot butter, part Gil Scott-Heron, with a hazy latin tint from the psychedelic latin soul stars' latest album Freedom Is Free.
Marcellus Hall – Still in Range
The ex-White Hassle frontman treated a Williamsburg crowd to an unexpectedly slashing take of this deviously allusive, pouncingly catchy, sardonic social media-era critique last spring. From the album Afterglow.
The Klezmatics – The Yoke
A crushingly bitter Catalan dirge told from a slave's point of view, the highlight of NYC's original klezmer punks' latest album Apikorsom/Heretics. They held a Central Park crowd rapt with this last summer.
Agnes Obel– Trojan Horses
Creepy horror-movie piano and dark low strings anchor the evil, whispery harmonies of this moody Nordic art-rock waltz from the album Citizen of Glass.
Pokey LaFarge – Silent Movies
An offhandedly stinging, sarcastically swinging oldschool soul anthem for an era of selfie overkill. He and his band motored through this at Bowery Ballroom back in July. From the album Manic Revelations.
Algiers – Cleveland
A fierce yet enigmatic anti-police violence anthem, part noir gospel, part postrock, part postapocalyptic film theme from the band's second album The Underside of Power.
Paris Combo – Bonne Nouvelle
Big bustling noir swing tune with a bitter undercurrent from a darker, more lyrically hilarious French counterpart to the Squirrel Nut Zippers. From the album Tako Tsubo.
Bridget Kearney – Living in a Cave
Orbison noir through the prism of 2017 new wave revival. From the Lake Street Dive bassist's excellent, catchy debut album Won't Let You Down.
Gold Dime – Disinterested
The side project by Talk Normal's Andrya Ambro punctuates this surreal drone-rock epic with all kinds of delicious, darkly explosive riffage. From the band's debut album Nerves.
The Dirty Bourbon River Show – Poor Boy, Rich Girl
A sly steamboat-soul slap upside the head of an easy target – but some targets deserve to be hit upside the head. From the album The Flying Musical Circus.
Meaghan Burke – Gowanus
A swirling, theatrical orchestrated rock lament from the charismatic cello rock songwriter's new album Creature Comforts.
The Ed Palermo Big Band – Open Up Said the World At the Door
A wry big band jazz cover of the haphazardly careening Jeff Lynne cult favorite from the Move's 1970 Looking On album that perfectly crystalizes the angst-fueled bustle the original was shooting for. From the album The Great Un-American Songbook Volumes 1 & 2.
Touched By Ghoul – Murder Circus
The title track from the darkly enigmatic, female-fronted Chicago punk/postrock band's debut album works artfully cynical variations on a familiar carnival theme.
Marta Sanchez – Scillar
The jazz pianist and her band artfully shift roles in this broodingly modal, looping, haunting elegy of sorts. From her new quintet album Danza Imposible.
Seun Kuti & Egypt 80 – African Dreams
"Conscious capitalism doesn't exist," the torchbearer of the original Nigerian Afrobeat legacy remarked at his Central Park show this past summer before launching into this pouncing, undulating cautionary tale for those who might want to play that game.
Ensemble Mik Nawooj – Gin & Juice
A deadpan, operatic orchestral cover of the Snoop Dogg driving-while-wasted classic. For real. They killed with this in Harlem back in March.
Nehedar – The Grudge
Broodingly punchy 60s psych pop with coy 80s new wave tinges and a deliciously vengeful lyric. "Wanna step on me so you can rise to a better pedigree?…Put the claws back in your kitty paws."
Ani Cordero – Culebra
Growling surf bass contrasts with spare Spanish guitar and ominously reverberating electric riffage in this kinetic number from the fearless protest song specialist. From the album Querido Mundo.
Maximo Park – Work and Then Wait
A defiant 99-percenter singalong anthem, sort of a cross between mid-90s Blur and an artsy dance act like the Cat Empire. From the album Risk to Exist.
The Porchistas – Mr. Chump
Which raises a middle finger to the American Boris Yeltsin. This orange-wigged creep is a "draft-dodging scum" who "beats on little girls and cheats on Monopoly." Then the girlie chorus chimes in: "Eats shit!" From the album Axis & Allies.
Galanos – Feel Good
Echoey and surreal, this macabre, whispery, reverb-drenched noir theme slowly coalesces out of a Lynchian spoken word interlude laced with evil guitar flickers. From the album Deceiver Receiver.


text:
Long-Term Unemployed End Up Earning Less After They Get A Job
I'm Michel Martin, and this is TELL ME MORE from NPR News. Now we want to take a look at the economy, and we wanted to focus today on people who have been unemployed for a while. There are currently 3.6 million Americans who've been unemployed for more than six months. That's according to the latest numbers from the Bureau of Labor statistics.
And that's an improvement from, say, 2010 when some 6.4 million people were counted as long-term unemployed. But there's a dark cloud to this silver lining. Even if these workers do eventually find work, they will probably earn much less in the long run than people who were unemployed for a shorter period of time. We wanted to talk about this, so we've called, once again, Sudeep Reddy. He is an economics editor for the Wall Street Journal. Sudeep, welcome back. Thanks for joining us.
SUDEEP REDDY: Hi, Michel.
MARTIN: So when we say that long-term unemployed people end up earning less, how much are we talking about?
REDDY: We're talking about a fairly significant difference. People who obviously are continuously employed are doing the best off. Even if you're unemployed for a short period of time - let's say, less than six months - research has found that over the course of decades, your pay might be 10 percent lower than it would have been otherwise. That's significant. If you're long-term unemployed - six months or more - then over - it can take a couple of decades before you even narrow that gap. And even if you narrow the gap a bit, the studies that have been done show that it's as much as a third less as you would be making otherwise if you had been continuously employed.
MARTIN: Now why would that be? I mean, is there a theory about this? Is it people feel like if they've been long-term unemployed, they have less negotiating strength up front so people - employers are inclined to pay them less? You know, why would that be?
REDDY: It's two problems. One is the negotiating ability. If you've been unemployed for six months or more, you're going to be really almost desperate to get a job. And you're going to take whatever you can get, at that point. In some cases, people are taking jobs below their skill set. And so they automatically drop down from where they would have been earning anyway just to make sure they get a job of some kind. And so that's a notch down already. The bigger problem people who are long-term unemployed are finding is that they just can't even get a job at all. Employers are looking at stacks and stacks of resumes these days and applications, and they have a lot of people to choose from. They're less likely to choose from people who have been unemployed for a long time. There have been attempts to deal with this, but not really successful attempts to deal with this problem.
MARTIN: What are some of those attempts? That's what I was going to ask you next. I understand that there are certain administration officials who have started jawboning this issue, you know, as it were, suggesting to employers that they should not discriminate - and I'm putting, you know, air quotes here because I don't know that they're really using the word discriminate - against workers who are long-term unemployed. So talk a little bit about what some of those strategies are, even if they haven't worked...
REDDY: You...
MARTIN: ...Up to this point.
REDDY: You actually heard this from President Obama. In the latest State of the Union address, he announced an initiative to encourage employers to not discriminate - to use that word again - against people who are long-term unemployed. It's really - that is just a voluntary pledge from major employers to say, we're going to judge people based on their credentials and their qualifications. That's - it's unenforceable.
MARTIN: So what's he doing? Is he calling them up and saying - you know, what exactly does that mean?
REDDY: The companies have signed a pledge saying that they would not discriminate because it is in their policies already to judge people based on qualifications. But if you are a hiring manager, if you're somebody who's sitting there trying to judge between a few different applicants, you're probably going to choose somebody who had a job more recently rather than somebody who might've been out of work for a longer time. The reason long-term unemployment matters so much is because skills can be degraded so easily.
If you're out of touch with an office environment, if you're out of touch with your normal skills, then you tend to withdraw a little bit. You tend to be just a step behind other people. That's why it's so important to have skills training while people are unemployed, and that's why it's so important to at least attempt to stay active in whatever your career field is.
MARTIN: The White House says that more than 300 companies have signed pledges to undertake, quote, "best practices for hiring the long-term unemployed," unquote. And the president is also planning, we understand, to sign a presidential memorandum on Friday directing the federal government to follow these rules with its own hiring practices. But what about - are there any strategies, Sudeep, that individuals can employ to try to overcome this, you know, whatever it is - this kind of mindset or barrier or whatever it is?
REDDY: The most important thing is to make sure that you're keeping your skills up to date. And people - I've talked to people who've been unemployed for a year or two because their industry has been hit hard, and so they wait a long time. You spend a lot of time looking for work instead of trying to figure out how to make sure your skills are up to date. And a lot of things can happen in the economy. You can see in any industry, over the course of a year or two, major changes can happen. And that's what employers are looking for to make sure they're going to have a worker who's always staying up to date on these kinds of things.
MARTIN: So, you know, the conventional wisdom has been that if you are unemployed, you need to address job hunting as a full-time job. I mean, does your reporting suggest that that might not be the best strategy, that skills - maintaining skills and other things like that might actually be more to your advantage than continuing to look for work in the same field or something of that sort?
REDDY: If you're going to end up as somebody who is unemployed for a long time, then that's something you really have to take into consideration. What we've found is people who are unemployed for a short period of time - weeks or months - are usually not at a huge disadvantage in something like that because they might take some bit of a pay hit, but they're not going to take some devastating drop in pay as a result of it. And those are the cases where you do OK. If you're out for an even longer period, you kind of have to start reevaluating what you're doing, whether your job search is even going to pursue on the same course. A lot of people go back to school. That's one way to do it, to make sure you get through the spell of unemployment.
The problem here is of course when you're unemployed, you need money. And what we're seeing in the social support system, the government is pulling back - the federal government is pulling back on how much support you're going to get if you're unemployed for a long period of time. The debate we've been having for the last few months about unemployment benefits for people who have been out of work for six months or more, that's all playing a part into this, where eventually if you're stuck in this kind of situation, you force yourself to just make a decision and get a job - any job you can get.
MARTIN: Just briefly, let me just mention that the president has already signed that memorandum that he suggested - that you mentioned - that he first talked about in the State of the Union. And he's obviously gone ahead and signed that. So finally, you've done a deep dive into this back in 2011. Has anything changed that you want to tell us about?
REDDY: Unfortunately, not much has changed for the people who are still stuck out there. You have more people who have gone on to disability benefits. You have more people who ultimately decided that they are going to take a lower-paying job. And this has consequences all the way down the ladder. If you're a higher-skilled worker and you take a lower-paying job, you're displacing somebody who might have lower skills, and they can't find a job as a result. And these are conditions that can, as we said, play out for decades. And that's the real long-term trauma of an unemployment spell like we've had.
MARTIN: And it also ends up in your retirement account later on, you know.
REDDY: Indeed.
MARTIN: That was Wall Street Journal economics editor Sudeep Reddy with us once again in Washington. Thanks so much for joining us once again.
REDDY: Thanks, Michel. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.


text:
Sometimes my life resembles
a Jackson Pollock painting,
infused with many hues
splashed onto a canvas
on the floor.
Dripping with wild emotions
in an unlocked cage.
My emotions exploding
in a color riot.
Blue is the predominant color
born out of storms
and robin nests.
Yellow fights to soak through,
wanting me to notice the sun,
to consider the light.
Red sits along the edges
winking at me
in all its vibrance.
We share pleasures remembered.
Falling in love, into silk sheets,
not one regret.
White peaks through,
the ghost of all I have lost.
A dove suggest peace.
Black reminds me
that depression is a dim light
always flickering nearby.
Whispering doubt.
Sometimes my life resembles
a Jackson Pollock painting.
Living years poured
over a canvas of petals.
Chaos becomes beauty
when dripping paint.
-Tosha Michelle