Troy

Guest (Nelson), most educated people know the stories in the Bible, the resurrection, the flood, etc did not originate in the Bible. I don't know about 10,000 years BC, but Gilgamesh predates the Bible by 2,000 years... Also don't conflate Santa Claus, Christmas Tree, secular festivities with the Christian religious observations. They are two completely different things. So while I appreciate that you may have issue with both, don't mix them up. Your argument here addresses the religious aspects. But I presume what prompted you message me on Twitter was the Santa hat on my cartoon avatar. Also most of my audience, not all, but a majority are African American. Most of us, along with most of the Black people throughout the diaspora, including many in Africa--had EVERY cultural aspect taken away through the transatlantic slave trade or through imperialism. Again, most people already know this. You are fluent in English, why is that? Look I'm not about to give anyone grief for celebrating a holiday they that they have been celebrating for generations, any more than I would get on them for speaking English. You wrote, "Black people are celebrating a culture that was created after their own culture was destroyed." But the culture you are criticizing us of celebrating IS OUR culture. We were robbed of our culture and have created a brand new one; it is the culture that birthed Jazz and Hip-hop, it is the culture that took scraps of food and made a cuisine. For some of us that culture includes Santa and/or Kwanzaa. Our Santa will be Black and it has nothing to do with worshiping europeans. We are adapting, and all thing considered I think we are adapting exceeding well in a very hostile environment. Sure the food we eat is garbage, but again we live in an environment run by corporations that will poison us it with was profitable.... I gotta run.

It looks like the source of the story was a cocofab, one of those gossipy celebrity sites for women. The story is a year old and there appears to be no follow up. Are you sure it is true? THE OFFICIAL "MUST BE THE MUSIC" MOVIE TRAILER from Qpeezy on Vimeo.

Some asked me to explain this on Twitter. Rather than go back and forth on Twitter. I invited the brother to debate me here. Who knows maybe he will say something to change my thinking on the matter.

Interesting, but a Nairobi man pretty much pretty much summed up the impact; "Seven days is nothing, I can wait a year." I think the only people to be hurt in this campaign will be sex workers--assuming they decide to join the effort. Otherwise it will be a windfall for them. In all seriousness, this is a rather sexist ploy as if men are the only ones who want to have sex. Plus Hannah and her 5 sisters never say no

Apparently this works on a principle called "cognitive load." Solving math problems in your head increases cognitive load, causing to respond more predictably. So, when asked to give a response answers are what people tend to say on average. When you’re not under cognitive load your mind can wander and you are more likely to say something completely different. When I took the task I was by myself, watching the youtube video on my TV and followed the instructions closely. Later I had my wife and kids do the test in the room with me together one came up with a different answer and the other two hadn't even come up with a response. So the conditions you take the test seem to matter.

I watched this video followed the instructions as was absolutely floored by the results. Not many things impress me but this thing did. Give it a try and see if you get the same reaction it only takes a minute.

Oh with the Popcorn I'm sure we hit $90 too, but my oldest brought the popcorn so I don'y know what she spent but I'm sure it was close to 2 bucks. Man I wanted to escape too and was open to shutting of my brain to enjoy a bit of escapist entertainment, but it ust did not work for me. It seemed like the film was created for children, not adults. The new characters are uninteresting to me and I felt zero nostalgia seeing Luke Sky Walker again. I stark contrast I thoroughly enjoyed the Star Trek reboot film. Maybe because the characters were more familiar, maybe because the story line and execution was superior, maybe the actors were better. Which JJ Abrams film did you like more, the last Star Trek or the last Star Wars? The film I'm excited about is the Star Trek film.

Nowadays I don't a lot of free cash laying around. But I'm more than willing to make a sacrifice and splurge on something for myself or someone else. So I decided to buy tickets for myself, and my daugthers, to checkout the latest installment of the Star Wars saga on IMAX 3D. I never would have imaged that going to the movies would be considered splurging, but at $72 for three tickets I consider it splurging. The crazy thing is that finding tickets was not easy. I brought them online and our favorite Imax theater was sold out until after Christmas! So I had to drive way out of my way just to see the film. Given the box office (more than a 1/4 of a billion dollars when I last checked), the overwhelmingly favorable critical reviews, the 60 Minutes coverage, I figured the movie had to be decent. Now I'm old enough to manage my expectations when it comes to over-hyped movies. Despite that I was looking forward to really enjoying the film. I would give the film a 2 on a scale of 5 (★★☆☆☆). It gets a 2 because of the production and effects, but overall it was a relatively weak movie. The 2 hour plus movie felt long. I was waiting for something exciting to happen. Spaceships flying around shooting at each other does it do it for me. I've seen that movie a bazillion times. I needed something more. I needed some character development. An interesting plot would have definitely helped too. Even seeing the aging Luke Sky Walker and Princess Leia was interesting, but Luke did not saying anything and I can see what The actress playing Leia is not a household. I'm not even going to describe the film, it is not worth the energy. I can't recommend spending $24 bucks to see this film in the theater, but it would probably be less enjoyable on without the IMAX and 3D. But if I could get my money back and wait for it to be available for viewing at home I would. I know this opinion goes counter to everything else that you might read about this film, which is the main reason I felt compelled to express it. I really like a bunch of guys got into a room a decided how they were going to make a billion dollars on a movie. I feel manipulated and ripped off seeing this movie... and I'm a BIG fan of science fiction.

Saradipity, please create an account so that I don't have to manually approve your comments. We had a racist spam the discussion forums recently so I have to be more restrictive with allowing access--I hope I did not make it impossible for new people to register (I've noticed others posting without creating accounts). The conversation definitely benefits from voices like yours, so I don't want to put up any restrictions. I'm not sure why this has to be an either or situation. If you look at say, popular rap music, I think anyone could reasonably argue that it has more an influence on the culture than being a reflection of it. Alternatively Hip-hop music is a was a reaction to oppressive conditions in the inner city, not the cause of those conditions People can be influenced by music and music can influence people. Indeed a people and their music go hand in hand. Music can motivate people into action and people create the music. They are inextricably linked.

The actual thank you message is article on my blog that I sent to my mailing list. @Cynique the photo above is from our annual Black Pack Party (20013). We take a group photo every year. If all goes well, it will be held in Chicago this spring. Hopefully you can make it (shoot, hopefully I can make it).

Hey Chris obviously you are right about getting people to subscribe. I'll let you know how the call to action works out. I think informative channels can do well with subscribers it they have really high production quality and/or have unique content. Also I only subscribe to informative channels off the top of my head here are two informative channels I subscribe to that have millions of subscribers: Veritasium (3M+ subscribers), Vsauce (9M+ subscribers), 60 Symbols (500K+ subscribers) I have not watched all of the videos these guys have, but I don't think that I've watched a single Veritasium or 60 Symbols video that i did not enjoy. In fact I have shared a couple of Vertitasium video here that had to do with facebook fraud. I noticed a few things about these guys. Vsauce, with the most subscriber always ends their video with a request to subscribe. They collaborate with each other and have appeared on each other channels Two of the guys running these channels have met with Obama at the Whitehouse--basically they are acknowledged, embraced, and recognized by the broader community. These are wildly successful channels I make about $30 a month from my yoututbe channel and I have almost 900K views. Vsauce at over 900M views probably makes $30K per month minimum--from just youtube alone, not counting all the collateral revenue streams that are possible with that kind of platform. I worked with a group The Book Look for a couple of years. They were focused on producing videos that covered Black authors, publishing professionals and events in a fun light hearted way. Sadly the channel was not successful enough to justify the efforts of the principals behind it. I put a lot of effort in promoting the videos too. I guess there is simply not enough demand for content surrounding Black literature. This sound crazy, when you consider that a dude (60 Symbols) with a single camera and basic editing can make a living shooting video of professors at one school (University of Nottingham).

I bet if you continued the analysis to include the most recent 30 years the trend would continue, more likely accelerate. Del I don't have the magazine in front of me, and I don't have time to check the website right now, but I would have bet money the article included a regression model, and almost certainly projected the impact out to at least 2050 (could be wrong). I would not be surprised to see a positive correlation between population and C02 emissions. Though I don't the mere presence of more humans is causing the problem, it is their activity that is problematic.

I actually do not like this time of year, not enough sun light for me. It is only 4:40 p.m. here and the sun set about 10 minutes ago, with the overcast skies it is already dark here. I'm looking forward to a break, next week, in FL, where the sun sets more than an hour later and the temperatures are ideal (this time of year). The only saving grace is that the days do start to get longer after tonight. You know I've been behind this computer all day. It was dark when I started, it is dark now. I'm taking a break in a few to go to the grocery store to pick up some food for dinner. Then I'll probably work a few more hours, down a couple of glasses of red wine (did you know that is equivalent to going to the gym for two hours), and do the same ting tomorrow. This is not unusual since I started the website upgrade, but this behavior can't be good for you physically. Well there is my holiday season in a nutshell

Hey Harry you are absolutely right. I started buying Christmas trees once I had kids. This year's tree is not as inspired as Christmases in the past, but it is not too shabby. I'm not sure how much longer my kids will be living with me--this could be their last year. I know I won't be dragging trees into the house once they are gone. I know folks that do multiple trees, in there homes, each year--God bless 'em. But as you said Harry, the best present is not under the tree -- or even the tree itself, it is the love of family and friends. Peace and Love!

Well, in the last three weeks, I added 151 new subscribers, which is a just under 40% of my goal. I still need another 239 to get to my goal of 1,000. Basically I fell short because the people I were appealing to do not subscribe to youtube channels, so what seemed like a trivial task to me required a bit more effort by others. I'm now going to appeal to people already on youtube, where the effort to subscribe is indeed minimal. I'm adding subscriber buttons to all of my most popular videos and will do so to each new video I add. I have a bunch of unedited videos to publish, so I hope to reach my goal by March. Thanks again to all that subscribed

"The best thoughts and discussions take you to places that you may not have imagined." This is so very true.

Man, that was almost exactly two years ago. Have a happy new year Brother man!

Tevin it is not really clear what you book is about. Of course it is not possible to provide feedback without buying it first. Consider posting a more detailed description of your novel and perhaps a sample chapter or two.

I'm out to demonstrate that the massive corporate social media sites are not a "necessary evil," just evil. Most days of the week I post information about a book on social media. I post on Twitter, Google+, and Facebook. Facebook brings the most traffic of the three with Twitter a distant second and virtually nothing from Google. Twitter is really a mobile platform, Instagram is absolutely a mobile application which is why I don't use it at all (I removed all social media aps from my cell phone). Facebook is pushing everyone to mobile. 50% of my Facebook traffic comes from mobile devices (smart phones). Google's problem is that no one really uses he platform... Corporations are PUSHING everyone to mobile. I'm even busting my butt to redesign the site to so that it is optimized for mobile, so that I'm not penalized by Google. Mobile aps provide an incredible about of information about our behavior, and this is extremely valuable to marketers. Mobile also means pictures and video with minimal, ideally no text. You can not relate anything substantive this way, but this is the direction where are being directed. One would think that laptop/desktop computers will become a thing of the past. Teachers better be prepared to teach calculus over a mobile device, with a video set to rap music. Talk about getting way off topic

The scientific community should be concerned. One person should not control all of the media we have access to--unless of course that person is me

I was sitting in an auto body repair shop yesterday, and noticed a few issues of National Geographic and read through an article on climate change. The article was brilliantly done, completely engaging with graphs, images, diagrams--so very informative, and completely accessible. National Geographic really explained a lot of the issues dealing with global warming and the resulting impact on the planet, issues that get muddled by the mainstream media. After reading the article I decided to subscribe, especially after looking at two other issues of the magazine that were just as brilliantly done. I also decided to try to ignore what politicians and mainstream media, have to say about this issue. They really make things unnecessarily confusing. One reason is that the media give WAY much attention to man made climate change deniers; which gives folks the false impression that the issue is up for debate, or a matter of opinion. Learn more at http://www.nationalgeographic.com/climate-change/special-issue/ NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE NOVEMBER 2015 (online at ngm.com, and on print newsstands Oct. 27, 2015) Cool it: The Climate Issue is a special, single-topic issue on the subject of climate change. The science is clear: Our planet is warming. Weather patterns are shifting. Ice caps are melting and sea levels are rising. And it affects all of us. Now more than ever, everyone needs to understand this critical subject.

I think to "get" Twitter you have to be the type of person whose smartphone is always on their person--if not in their hand. Every second of idle time, and even time when they should be focused on something more important, is consumed by scrolling through tweets. I think it is a complete waste of our collective intellect, because it gives the user the false impression that they are being informed, are taking part in activism and engaging in a meaningful way with others.

Marlon James' novel A Brief History of Seven Killings wins the 2015 Man Booker Prize!

A Perfect Gift! Go inside the mind of a master storyteller through his own words and art. Order now The Graphomaniac's Primer: A Semi-Surrealist Memoir is a chronicle about my journey on the page through drawings, thoughts and memories. I've always loved the blank page: from my first drawings to my first, lined, explorations of letters when I was small. Here I combine it all in the only way I know how to express that form, the memoir. -Walter Mosley This limited edition of 500 copies was printed by BCP Digital Printing and is only available from Black Classic Press. Once it is sold out, later editions will be priced higher. Order your collector's copy now!

Yeah I doubt Iyanla would post here too, perhaps for the same reasons many others don't post here. I wouldn't be surprised if Oprah has Iyanla hemmed up contractually such that she can post on another website. Imagine if an Iyanla did post here. That relatively trivial action on would provide great benefit for the website. But those things usually don't happen. I can't complain, because SmileyBooks, an imprint of Hay House, the publisher of Trust, is an advertiser. My understanding is that Iyanla's people made the request to promote the book here, on AALBC.com. I've also seen Iyanla do things for indie booksellers that she simply does not have to do. My opinion of her went way up when she did a presentation for Community Book Center in New Orleans. "Celebrity" authors are typically not very supportive of indie booksellers--Iyanla is an exception. You see The Community Book Center, a Black owned book store based in New Orleans used to be the official bookseller at the Essence Music Festival, in fact they pitched the idea and started the book pavillion for Essence Music Festival. A few years ago Essence dropped this book store in favor of another independent book store, which is not Black owned. I thought a magazine dedicated to black women would support a store owned by a Black woman, but then I considered the fact that Essence is not Black owned, so I had to cause to be surprised. Anywho, Iyanla took time off from her Essence commitments and went out her way to support the small Black owned store (shown in video clip below). None of the other celebrity authors did that. The media does not cover this side of us. We just get the nonsense.