There is an article on MSNBC about this report that came out naming the most stressed cities, which might as well be called "where is the hood".. Well.. coming up in the Medium-sized cities division is... MY HOMETOWN!!! (see if you can guess/remember which it is - as if someone who didn't know where I'm from is even reading this)... The bottom and top ten lists are here.. First of all.. I didn't know my hometown was a medium-sized city.. On top of that, I always felt we grew up on the verge of the middle class, and maybe even scraped into it for a few years.. My father was a business "owner", but I guess it's true.. someone has to run the gas stations in the hood (which is what my pops did for about 20 years).. it doesn't make it the case that I came up rough, but I can now, with certainty say I came from "the hood" (actually, I can't.. was my city one of the most stressed in the 80's? Was it even medium-sized in the 80s?).. And on third thought, my guess is that part of the reason why might be the number of households where none of the residents over 13 speak english.. My city and those neighboring it have seen steady increases in Latinos since I can remember. What's crazy is that while I was in Tijuana this summer, standing in line to cross back into the US, I saw that some of the bus companies offering rides to destinations in the States (think the "Chinatown bus" that runs between Philadelphia and New York) one of the destinations of suburbs besides East Los Angeles and Santa Ana was my city -- I was surprised, even though it made sense..
I have spruced up my MySpace page with 80's-esque diagonal background (not much unlike the one on this page) and video entertainment, and come out of anonymity, using my real name.. A friend (perhaps the sole reader of this blog) alerted me that all of a sudden most of her friends were on myspace around the same time I found out that my brother's music group finally got a myspace page (I think it has to do with them getting a new manager). So.. all the aforementioned profile-adjustment was due to these new developments. To my surprise, I ended up finding some relatives to make my "myspace friends", so I was pretty stoked..
Well.. that's pretty much it.. There will be a version of the Apprentice in Britain showing on the BBC (website here). The contestants as a group seem older and more serious than their American counterparts, and the bloke in "the Donald's" role (his name is actually Sir Sugar, I believe) looks simply serious and mean as opposed to goofily pompous like Mr. Trump. I have yet to watch the video clip previewing the show..
This site is off the hook.. The Baby Name Wizard's Name Voyager graphs the popularity of baby names over the decades. We were banking on Olivia (if we have a girl -- don't freak out - no one's pregnant.. yet), but that is like the 5th most popular name of 2003!! The author of the book that this site is a very good advertisement for (though, now that we have the java web app, who needs the book?) also has a baby name wizard book blog.. One critique of the web app is that it doesn't aggregate similar names -- (Steven and Stephen, Caitlin and Caytlin are all separated)..
Webneveshteha the blog of an Iranian cleric (story here). Is it strange/ironic/simply balanced that the same day this story runs, we get word of an publicly announced alliance between Syria and Iran (story here)?
So much stuffs (intro)
Wow.. there has been so much to write about -- There are so many cool things I've found over the internets over the past week or so that I have decided to run several entries to cover them all.. (I played with the "time posted " on all of these to make them seem orderly on the menu.. not that it matters - it reflects when I wrote them, not when I thought to post them)
Black Ambassador of Architecture
The New Yorker this week has a piece on Black Los Angeles architect Paul Williams. He designed several rooms in the Ambassador hotel, which is potentially slated for demolition. Check it out if you have the chance. These links may also be useful:
The article is pretty good and I should repeat that it is definitely worth tracking down. Among the things that strikes me about the man is this quote (found online, not in the article), one I should try to keep in mind as a motto as I surely have fallen short of its advice:
"If I allow the fact that I am a Negro to checkmate my will to do, now, I will inevitably form the habit of being defeated"
Check out this quote.. it's pretty scary..
Two years ago, an unnamed Bush aide told Suskind, "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors ... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
- From The Propoganda President" by Jack Shafer
