"This isn't the way counterterrorism is supposed to work, but it's…
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Bruce Schneier, coiner of the phrase "security theater," writes that we've "opened up a new front on the war on terror. It's an attack on the unique, the unorthodox, the unexpected; it's a war on different. If you act different, you might find yourself investigated, questioned, and even arrested -- even if you did nothing wrong, and had no intention of doing anything wrong. The problem is a combination of citizen informants and a CYA attitude among police that results in a knee-jerk escalation of reported threats.
Honest Jons' Son Cubano NYC is a compilation of very hot tracks released by mostly obscure artists during one wonderful decade of music, 1972-1982. It is an outstanding collection, and I hope you'll seek it out. The liner notes alone are worth the price of admission. Before going into harder language and larger claims, the notes begin with quiet strength: "Salsa is the sound of Cuba in exile."
I had no idea there was such a rift between advocates of salsa and others who simply wanted to preserve the traditional sounds of Cuba. Why should a rift even exist? It's not an…
Music Matters Jazz, a new audiophile label, starts up this month, reissuing classic Blue Note albums on 180-gram virgin-vinyl LPs pressed at 45 rpm. The test pressings I’ve heard sound extremely promising. The people involved in the company certainly know what they’re doing (Joe Harley of AudioQuest, Steve Hoffman and Kevin Gray of AcousTech, Michael Cuscuna of Mosaic Records, who is more familiar with the Blue Note vaults than anybody).
But here’s an irreverent thought: Rudy Van Gelder wasn’t the only great jazz recording engineer of the 1950s and ‘60s. Here’s another: He wasn’t the…
Jay Allen Sanford describes his horrifying descent into crack addiction and homelessness. It's not a pretty story, except that he did make it back.
"I guess I should be glad I was so bad at being a crackhead."
Jeremy Paxman argues that the last lines of "Dulce et Decorum Est" were not meant cynically.
That's certainly how I'd always read them.