Troy

I'm not exactly a prince fan myself. I'm more familiar with his older music, I have not purchased anything his has made in many years, but his concerts are really quite good. I do know that there are many Prince fans out there, hence the mention here. Go see a Prince concert when you can.

1890, deep. He lived through, as an adult, the entire depression, WWI, WWII and Jim Crow. I wonder if he was world weary? Despite all the nonsense we see today, America, the world even, seems to be a much better place for the generations that came after his; at least it seems that way... I'm gonna hold onto my dream of being able to control my destiny for a bit longer, otherwise what is the point?

ART OFFICIAL AGE, becomes available on September 30. I stumbled across this looking for something else. Whatever that something else was I've forgotten what is was as got detracted listening to cuts and reading comments about this upcoming release. I'm not exactly a rabid Prince fan, but he generally gives an excellent live performance. I've seen him twice but I know many who have seen him 10, 20, 30 times. I can't think of any artist I would go through the effort and expense of seeing that many times. At any rate it was interesting to read some people get on Prince for being irrelevant and autotuning to worshiping him believe he is the best thing since mobile access to Facebook. At any rate hopefully I'll make a few buck from people clcking the link: http://aalbc.it/artofficialage to buy Princes latest from iTunes. If sales of Prince's latest can help subsidize my efforts to share information about important books it is all good!

"land the free white man and home of the brave black nigger" Interesting quote what year was you dad born in Cynique? Sure the election of Obama proved the system is broken. However Obama was elected, in part, because Black people voted him in. In Ferguson, I've read voter turn out in the Black community is roughly 10%, not much than in Harlem during the midterms. Ferguson would have much better representation if they simply exercised their rights to vote. I would not call the election of Obama a revolution. The fight to get the right to vote was revolutionary, taking advantage of that right is not. The old system clearly worked much better; Gladwell's article illustrated a fine example. I'm afraid if we have to fight for the right to vote or to eat at a lunch counter we would be in sad shape. I don't even blame us for the situation. Perhaps if MLK and company where protesting in 2014 they would encounter the same issues. Our enemy is brilliant and they execute flawlessly.

Talib Kweli explains, during a interaction with Don Lemon, that Tweeting does not make a revolution. He does however point out that there are several organizations, on the ground, doing the work I did not think was getting done. I trust they get the people of Ferguson to vote, with their numerical majority they could at least get some Black folks in office who would be more inclined to support the Black residents there.

The other day I was thinking about Gil Scott Heron's Poem the Revolution Will Not be Televised. I was considering writing a updated version to the poem, tentatively called, "The Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted". Realizing there is nothing new understand sun, I decided to search the term, "The Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted," and I actually was surprised by the abundance of content on the subject and discovered other people had already written similar poems on the subject, so I abandoned the idea. The Brother's version below is better than what I would have done, though I think far too long. I also discovered a four-year-old article written by Malcolm Gladwell, entitled, "Why he Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted." While one can easily find a lot of criticism of the article, I find it to be on point. People tend to exaggerate the impact of social media: “It is time to get Twitter’s role in the events in Iran right,” Golnaz Esfandiari wrote, this past summer, in Foreign Policy. “Simply put: There was no Twitter Revolution inside Iran.” The cadre of prominent bloggers, like Andrew Sullivan, who championed the role of social media in Iran, Esfandiari continued, misunderstood the situation. “Western journalists who couldn’t reach—or didn’t bother reaching?—people on the ground in Iran simply scrolled through the English-language tweets post with tag #iranelection,” she wrote. “Through it all, no one seemed to wonder why people trying to coordinate protests in Iran would be writing in any language other than Farsi.” Social Media is not a substitute for organizations: The drawbacks of networks scarcely matter if the network isn’t interested in systemic change—if it just wants to frighten or humiliate or make a splash—or if it doesn’t need to think strategically. But if you’re taking on a powerful and organized establishment you have to be a hierarchy. The Montgomery bus boycott required the participation of tens of thousands of people who depended on public transit to get to and from work each day. It lasted a year. In order to persuade those people to stay true to the cause, the boycott’s organizers tasked each local black church with maintaining morale, and put together a free alternative private carpool service, with forty-eight dispatchers and forty-two pickup stations. Even the White Citizens Council, King later said, conceded that the carpool system moved with “military precision.” By the time King came to Birmingham, for the climactic showdown with Police Commissioner Eugene (Bull) Connor, he had a budget of a million dollars, and a hundred full-time staff members on the ground, divided into operational units. The operation itself was divided into steadily escalating phases, mapped out in advance. Support was maintained through consecutive mass meetings rotating from church to church around the city. The article sums up the situation perfectly. and in my mind explains why we are so ineffective today: "...it is simply a form of organizing which favors the weak-tie connections that give us access to information over the strong-tie connections that help us persevere in the face of danger. It shifts our energies from organizations that promote strategic and disciplined activity and toward those which promote resilience and adaptability. It makes it easier for activists to express themselves, and harder for that expression to have any impact. The instruments of social media are well suited to making the existing social order more efficient. They are not a natural enemy of the status quo. If you are of the opinion that all the world needs is a little buffing around the edges, this should not trouble you. But if you think that there are still lunch counters out there that need integrating it ought to give you pause." The full article is 4.4K words worth reading.

Perhaps Mexicans will be the "New Black." The upper class could/would dispense with Black folks, including our beatified president, tomorrow if it were feasible. It really does not matter to them as long as there is an underclass to perform the low level tasks and manual labor. Indeed white folks use other white people when they have to But again, I don't believe this is about race. It is about those with the most financial resources and power increasing it; in America virtually all of these folks happen to be white but that is incidental not the cause. . Since these folks happen to be white, Black folks have had the misfortune of being easily targeted. Our best strategy would be to combine our resources, but this simply is not happening. The activism, organization and institutions of the civil rights era are a distant memory...

Here is just a few more exmaples

Playing devils advocate for a second Cynique: When I encounter a situation that requires me to determine what a person's (or any entity's) motivations are I just look at what they do--because I can't know what they are thinking, indeed it does not matter. If a man says he loves you but is constantly treating you poorly; clearly, he does not love you (no psychic necessary). If, for example, the US Government actually disliked Black people, would they need to behave differently? Could we do a better job at locking our Brothers up? Could we mis-educate Black people any better? Could we have pumped any more drugs and guns into the community? This all without mentioning a few hundred years of enslavement and Jim Crow... Would it really be a leap to believe in ethnic cleansing. To compound things, birth rates are down for Black people. Black people are no longer the largest minority in the US (or won;t be very shortly). But most importantly, there is essentially no "Black community" this might sound odd coming from me. But we are essentially a conglomeration of competitive factions separated by class, income, and education, whose most successful members strive to separate themselves from the so-called Black community. Given our population this is an astonishing thing to say but I believe it is largely true. I would be happy for someone to prove me wrong. If you disagree ask yourself the following; What percentage of communities in the US are majority Black and not poor (what is the largest one and where is it)? What percentage of job offers are given by a Black person to another Black person (a decent paying job with the potential for career growth)? What percentage of Black people, who are murdered, are murdered by a Black assailant? What percentage of Black income is spent with a Black owned business? I could go on for days with examples. Some of the answers to the questions above are available, some not as no one has bothered to look, or ask. But at the end of the day, none of the answers, to the questions above, would point to any semblance of what one would call a "community."

Yes what I mean by Psychic too someone that could basically lay out what is going to happen in plainly--not like some Nostradamus-like quatrains which calls for interpretations. I suspect if there was anyone who could actually see the future they'd be on wall street or some government facility not some side-show attraction. Yeah I'm pretty much and on the surface kind of guy. But I'll tell you straight up I'm vulnerable and need help. It is rough out here in the book world, which is really part of a much bigger cultural war--and I'm on the losing side... Sexual edginess, do you have access to my web browsing history

Cynique what have you sensed from me on this board? Over the years we've been communicating I've gone through a ton of changes, challenges and transitions on so many levels (as perhaps we all have), I'd be curious to read your impressions. Del feel free to chime in. In general I'm open to the ideal of psychics, in fact I think it would be really cool. But I have not had an experience with a psychic such that I would say with a high level of confidence that they are indeed psychic. I have encountered many people who have, but I have not. But I also know I don't readily accept the things that most people accept so easily and seemingly without question.

I guess that is similiar to what I did when I created a Facebook profile, photo wearing a hoodie, a viral activity that really had no impact. The same thing with all the photos you see now of people holding their hands up. Amazingly I have not seen a single video of a celebrity getting doused with water (perhaps because I spend very little time on Facebook), but I have heard about the acitivity and I have no interest in it. If it helps raise money for ALS that is great. I'm more interested in other things...

The Official NYC 80th Birthday Party for SONIA SANCHEZ! Friday, September 19, 2014 6 pm - 9 pm Performances by: Ursula Rucker, jessica Care moore Remarks by Haki Madhubuti of Third World Press, Music by DJ Reborn and more Bedford Hall 1177 Bedford Ave. Brooklyn NY, 11216 General Information: 718-804-8883 This year marks a milestone for our beloved and dear sister Sonia Sanchez. She turns 80 in September. Sister Sonia has a been a shining light in all of our lives, through her kind and inspirational spirit, her words of wisdom, and her love for all things that we do for the betterment of humankind. Would you like to contribute to this event? Please contact Maeshay k. Lewis at mlewis@mec.cuny.edu or at 718-804-8882 or make a contribution directly on Eventbrite.

This is the interview who were speaking about believe you are referring to this interview Dorothy had an incredible life, long and full. Getting married would have, changed everything for her. I suspect if she were a man she could have gotten married and accomplished everything she did--perhaps more. I wonder if Dorothy were a man would the interviewer have inquired about his marital status? Here is another good interview

Cynique Know thy enemy reminds me of the scorpion and the turtle folktale. The problem is all cops are not MF'ers, most are just trying to get through their day, without killing someone or being killed, and lasting long enough to collect their pension. But a sufficient number of officers are bad, that you would be safest to behave as if they were ALL were indeed MF'ers. I've been abused by some cops and have been treated fairly by others, but most of the times my encounters with the police have been bad, or financially very costly. In fact, I'd argue the the financial burden imposed upon people by our police state has just a high an impact on us as our hyper-incarceration rate. In NYC there are people losing cars over parking tickets! After two tickets you car will be booted and towed. If you have the money you simply pay the tickets. Once they have your car, you have to pay off all the tickets, plus the tow, storage and extra fees. This is just one example. People with money don't have to worry about paying parking tickets. Poorer people do. The system is stacked against poor. Everyone should try struggling financially for a few years, it would give you a completely different world view and maybe help them understand people who have done this for generations and live with virtually no hope for escape.

I gave up on this experiment after 37 days. I was just running into to much difficulty running AALBC.com avoiding the use of Facebook. Many writers, more than I anticipated, have very little content about themselves online other than what is on Facebook. When I logged into Facebook I was also surprised by the number of people who attempted to contact me on Facebook--despite what I thought was ample notice that I would not be using the platform--and these were people who actually know me and who have my email address. My friend Marcia posed this photo of me Facebook. it is one of those shots that did not know existed. I don't recall if it was a candid shot or if I was posing. In the good old days Marcia would have posted this shot on her website site (or mine), and sent me and anyone else she wanted to to see this photo and the other she took a link. Facebook would not be able to exert any control, or ownership of the content. I'm not even sure when or where the photo was taken, but Facebook knows because the information is digitally encoded in digital image that was uploaded.

1. Sure it is less likely for a straight man to contract HIV from a female partner, than a gay man to get it from a another man. 2. I'm not sure where HIV came from, but your theory would certainly explain the apparently inexplicable difference in infection rates when white and Black male homosexuals. 3. It funny you should say that. Not that white folks are becoming addicted to heroin and the scourge is impacting white communities the cops are now being trained to help addicts. In fact cops are being given medications to stop addict who are in the process of over dosing. When it was Black and brown people in the 'hood, cops just locked folks up, busted heads or let them die. I guess since HIV effected many white people early on, we now have medications that allow people to live with HIV--it is no longer a death sentence. Black people benefit from this.

I've completed 33 days of my 99 days without Facebook. To date the have only been 33,683 people who have joined the experiment. This is less than the number of people who visited this website during the same people. Again out of the Billion plus Facebook users, 33K is nothing...nothing. The goal of the experiment was to get 99,000 participants, but even 99 thousand participants is nothing, relatively speaking. I just filled out a survey which asked me if I was happier, or less happy, after 33 days of not using Facebook. Using Facebook has had no impact on my life one way or the other. If Facebook disappeared tomorrow, the only reason I would care is that I would probably see an increase in website traffic. Otherwise I would miss Facebook about as much as I miss...MySpace. I am concerned about the impact of social media, in general, on our society and culture, and Facebook figures prominently in that. But still there are many more things I'm concerned about that take more precedence. I was also asked what my friends thought of my participation in this 99 day abstinence from Facebook. I wrote they largely do not care. My friends who are active on Facebook showed no interest in participating and have not inquired about my experience and my friends who are not on Facebook damn sure don't care.

No Richard I do not own that site. I just asked the person who does to share the information here, to let folks know there are still alternatives to Facebook for networking for Black owned businesses.

"fiscally content blacks," sadly, are often part of the problem. If I had more time I'd really get into it. But I believe that unless we get this group of "fiscally content blacks," involved in creating solutions, rather than striving for the acceptance and approval of the one percent, nothing will change. In the short term, I'd be happy if we could get the "fiscally content blacks," to just give a damn about the majority of the other Back folks.

Hey Richard I made the URL bold faced and enabled the hyper link in the original message.

"Once it was understood that a man could be unemployed, on drugs, and routinely beat and call women bitches.....and still get all the sex he wants....it was a wrap." Ain't that the truth.

Now a Map of the available stores:

Titus Joseph uses mirror image symmetry to explain existence ‘Our Curious World of Mirror Images’ combines science seamlessly with philosophy to propose new concept ATLANTA — In his new book, “Our Curious World of Mirror Images: Reflections on how Symmetry Frames our Universe, Empowers the Creative Process and Provides Context to Shape our Lives” (published by Balboa Press), philosopher Titus Joseph draws on concepts from ancient philosophy, science and even religion to unveil a new model of the universe that explains how all things come into existence. “Today, with all the advances in science, including cosmology, quantum mechanics and relativity,” Joseph says, “I am prepared to demonstrate using advanced science and philosophy, a new theory that explains how things come into existence through the curious symmetries found everywhere in nature.” The central concept of “Our Curious World of Mirror Images” is called positional symmetry (requisite mirror image). The book begins by introducing readers to the beauty and universality of symmetry, and the paradox of duality. Joseph outlines ancient holistic philosophies, past ideas about space and time, new concepts from Einstein’s theory of relativity, and recent discoveries from the science of cosmology. After providing a broad overview of the universe and a brief background in quantum theory, “Our Curious World of Mirror Images” explains the new concept using illustrations and examples from everyday life. The new paradigm serves as a lens to conceive how things come into being and illustrates a new holistic model of the universe, all in an accessible manner for most anyone to read. The end result reconciles many polarized views and brings considerable amounts of added meaning to life. “Our Curious World of Mirror Images” By Titus Joseph Hardcover | 6 x 9 in | 136 pages | ISBN 9781452584799 Softcover | 6 x 9 in | 136 pages | ISBN 9781452584775 E-Book | ISBN 9781452584782 Available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble

Yeah Fela got married to 27 women at the same time--and I believe he was already married at the time. They apparently fought for his attention...