A Cow Tipping for the Engineers

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is one of the best, if not the best, engineering schools in America. I'm sure that kids at Cooper Union, CalTech, Rensselaer, Stevens, Hopkins, and Georgia Tech will disagree with just cause. But, MIT is pretty widely considered as the GOAT of engineering schools. Not by this guy, but by others. In addition to being dope at engineering, MIT is the home of famed leftist rabble rouser Linguistics Professor Noam Chomsky.

Even with all of these accomplishments, a crime was committed that threatens to strip MIT of all of that intellectual street cred. Hell, it might even set back the whole city of Cambridge, location of MIT and that other bastion of over-hyped intellectualism Harvard University. The story revolves around former Business professor John J. Donovan, Sr. While involved in a custody battle for his kids, Donovan was shot in a parking lot. When investigators came to look at the situation, they heard the following story. From the AP:

What the former MIT professor and wealthy businessman told police sounded like a scene from a bad spy novel: He was shot by two masked men with Russian accents, and saved only because two of the bullets bounced off his belt buckle.

Seeing as cops, while they may commit questionable actions like sodomizing immigrants with plungers and letting off shots of a dude reaching for his wallet, aren't stupid, it became clear that Donovan was the culprit here. Donovan sticks by his story, but anyone with half a mind knows that he did this shit to himself.

On top of that, if he didn't do this to himself, there were more than enough people to get at him. His kids are a good starting point. One of his kids is claiming molestation and all of them are claiming getting stiffed.

Now, while I'm sure that he probably had this coming to him whether he asked for it or not, Donovan can't even find anyone who will cosign for him. That's how few friends he has. Anyway, I want to offer him a couple friendly tips as someone who hasn't been shot but could come up with a better explanation for the cops.

The following is a freestyle discussion about getting shot with the fuzz:

Cops: Sir, what happened?
Shot Guy: I was walking back to my car. I looked around as I normally do while walking in the dark.
Cops: What happened next?
SG: I thought I was hearing things so I progressed onwards. As I began to get into my car, I heard my name get called out. I looked around, the next thing I know, I'm being shot at. I searched for cover, but it was too late. I had been hit on my side. They weren't super good aims. They hit me around my hip, maybe around my belt buckle. But, it wasn't anything too bad.
Cops: Do you know who did this to you?
SG: I have no idea. They sounded like they had accents. I'm not sure, and I didn't get a clear look at their faces because it was dark.
Cops: Do you need to go to the hospital?
SG: Yea, they got me pretty good.

See, this is a much better made-up fake story than the one this guy has going. Russian guys with masks? Are you serious? I wouldn't believe that story. Hell, I barely believe the story I just wrote. But, I believe it more than a businessman getting hijacked by Russian hitmen. That's just unfathomable. Sounds like something out of a Tom Clancy novel (where's Harrison Ford?). And, in poor form and in disregard of his Miranda rights, Donovan gave up way too much of the ghost upfront talking about his kids having it out for him and money. Donovan clearly lost his head and should have stayed cool. You think, as a businessman, he would know about sealing the deal. Also, if you paid dudes to shoot you, you should throw out the list of supplies that you had in your jacket pocket for that shooting. I mean, he might have needed to buy a rifle and some shells and cheese, but that's highly unlikely as his ass got shot. Plus, he's rich. This clearly means, especially as a man, that he probably doesn't cook. He could be ABLE to cook, but it's unlikely that he does. That's called self-incrimination there, chief.

Donovan could stand to watch an episode or two of Cops to learn how to not commit a bad crime. I mean, once he gets out of jail for getting pinned on this one.

As I Knew Would Happen

Dumbass Roy Pearson has not stopped with his efforts to get that $54 million for the people of Washington, D.C. because his pants got messed up by his dry cleaners. Pearson prodded the judge who made the decision to reconsider. Being sane and knowing that this is a frivolous lawsuit, she completely declined. Judge Judith Bartnoff, who made the decision, should get a Presidential Medal of Freedom. She really is one of America's true heroes, keeping our courts clear of dumb lawsuits.

White Kids and Gang Signs

I have talked a lot about hip-hop on this blog over the last month or so, as it has been a pretty hot button issue in American culture. Today, I came across an article from The Boston Globe via Feministing about the relationship between white kids, the "ghetto", and rap culture.

The crux of the argument revolves around a premise that many have been arguing for a long time, which is that the music has become a representation, fairly or unfairly, for all Black people. Because so many of the consumers of hip-hop have no experience with the ideas presented in most hip-hop, these white suburbanites have fetishized and exoticized ideas of living in the ghetto. Unfortunately, such fetishizing has led to negative images for all Black people regardless of our actual connection to hip-hop culture and rap music. This idea is a fairly similar one that happened back in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries called minstrelsy when white people dressed up as if they were black, covering their faces in burnt cork and shucking and jiving like "authentic negroes" did in those times.

Many thought we had passed this point in our society, where Black people were no longer being exoticized and used to amuse and entertain the white people in the country. Black music has produced many heroes for its own culture such as James Brown and George Clinton, but that has passed again with the rise of artists like 50 Cent and Lil' Jon who fill the minds of these impressionable American youth with images of Black people standing on the corner, drinking 40s, and slanging crack. This is bad enough within itself. But, as the article notes, this is made worse by the presence of "ghetto parties" based of these white kids' understanding of what it means to be ghetto as taught to them by outlets such as Flavor of Love (I already know) and the rappers that are being promoted by the white record executives who decided to hold up the principles of nihilism and excess capitalism. Although, to rap's defense, no rapper I know talks about dressing up in blackface, which the kids do at these offensive parties.

The parties are shocking, but this is the most shocking part of the entire article:

When [Professor] Price brought up the subject of ghetto parties in his Northeastern classroom, he says his white students reacted by saying, "So what? " They considered ghetto parties no more harmful than toga parties, says Price.

I think that this is fitting of why so many people of color have problems with white adoption of hip-hop culture. No one in hip-hop is saying that white kids can't be a part of it, but, if you are going to be a part of it, you have to understand it. Hip-hop has been political since Kool Herc started moving a record back and forth under a stylus. Rapping, breaking, graf writing, and scratching were the initial tools to make disenfranchised voices heard because they were so frequently silenced and are still silenced now. The fact that these kids don't understand that we have had to go through century upon century of having my fellow men and women stereotyped as lazy, lascivious, poor, morally bankrupt, violent, and content with being the literal footrest for the White population leaves me with seething anger throughout my body. It genuinely offends me that they cannot understand this most simple of concepts of the Black experience. It makes me wonder if anything that our schools have been trying to teach us about the struggles of Martin Luther King have stuck with these kids in any meaningful way.

If you are a white kid who is ignorant, negligent, stupid enough to think that it is a good idea to show up to a party in gold chains, wearing clothing four sizes too big, and in fucking blackface, I don't want you listening to my music. I don't want you to listen to the music that represents my people's struggle out of the hood. I don't want you even being connected to the culture because this display shows that you don't have a basic understanding of who hip-hop represents and what it means when it says that it is a global culture. Hell, I might punch you out, and I never raised a hand against others.

Waste of Cash

This dude is a straight up svengali. People only believe him because he went to Harvard.

I already hate college ball

Men's College Basketball is a sham as it stands. The first thing that it needs to do is shorten its shot clock to 30 seconds. 35 seconds encourages shitty play and overpassing instead of driving the lane to open up the game. But, this won't change since it took until the 80's to put in both a shot clock and eliminate Four Corners. Anyway, the NCAA has made some new rule changes in the hope to change the game. My favorite line in this article is this one about the charge-block line:

But the committee rejected adding the arch underneath the basket for charge-block calls, a line the NBA uses, in part because it believed there would be too many lines on the court.

Are you serious? There would be too many lines on the court? There aren't that many lines on a basketball court now. They should try watching a rugby. That pitch is covered in lines and is way more confusing to understand than basketball. Additionally, this is two lines. TWO! And they are arcs. How is this confusing?

This is one of the poorest pieces of reasoning I've ever heard. These are people running major centers of higher learning in America, and they couldn't make a better rationale than that it looks bad? This is why I don't like college basketball: people who have no idea of what's actually good for the game are making changes for the game.

This is What An Asshole Does

Lifetime TV Becomes Mouthpiece For Radical Feminist Lobbying Machine

Whether or not David R. Usher is correct (I think he's absolutely wrong, which I will explain later), how fucking nuts is that argument? I didn't know that the reruns of Frasier and Will and Grace during the day were causing seditious thought to rise within the housewife, young business executives, and other women in America. But, seriously, this guy is an asshole. It's Lifetime, television for women. What women only have three channels on television and one of them (WE: Women's Entertainment) is as irrelevant as BET. So, two channels they have. Is it really the end of the world if women make movies about other women that women may actually want to watch? Is that a crime? Do I need to write a letter to Ralph Nader telling him, hey, you need to tell Lifetime to stop being so friendly towards the female persuasion. They are making us men look bad? Usher really needs to fry some of the larger fish in his argument such as his suggestion that women have the right to be beaten as he suggests. This is ridiculous, and I'm slightly upset by the fact that I have acknowledged his argument by actually reading it.

Isn't this fitting?

Lou Perlman is the mastermind behind The Backstreet Boys and N'Sync, two bands that leave me feeling slightly dirty within but this is not about me. I always thought that Perlman was a bit of a swindler, but now I have proof. Old people should be smarter or at least read things before they sign away their money.

gwb43.com = Watergate?

For the last few months, there has been the unraveling controversy swirling around the Department of Justice firing eight seemingly loyal and extremely qualified US Attorneys. The Democrats, in their supervisory role as the legislative branch (yeah!!! checks and balances!!!), are trying to figure out what the hell exactly is going on. Unfortunately for them, the Bush White House is being unnecessarily obstructionist in their actions. Instead of turning over necessary documents and other such things, they are putting up a wall and being unhelpful instead of trying to get this out of the way.

For the uninitiated to this whole fiasco, you need to go to TPM Muckraker, who first picked up on this scandal through the firing of the first attorney out in California Carol Lam. There are so many detail things and legalese statements that it would literally take computer page after page to being to get to the underbelly of this whole thing. You would be confused, and I would have carpal tunnel.

So, from where we are now, there has been the realization that the Bush Administration is involved, not necessarily directly but definitely not indirectly. There has been impropriety, but no one knows where it is coming from. Bush tried to offer a compromise by offering both Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove and former White House Counsel and failed Supreme Court Candidate (due to her lack of qualifications) Harriet Miers to the Senate Judiciary Committee, but not under oath and with no transcript. Essentially, they could lie and totally cover their asses. With the Democrats soundly refusing this "deal," the Democrats have now asked for the email records of the persons who are most likely involved in this whole scandal. Unfortunately, those records have disappeared.

Yes, that's right! In the face of all logic and actual law, the White House has managed to "misplace" 5 MILLION e-mails from a two-year period between March 2003 and October 2005. I have emails from 2005. It's not that hard to keep them around. They are the Federal Government. If their email boxes were getting packed, they needed to sign up for some gmail accounts or something. Get some ads and learn how to actually run the country or meet some surrogate parents or something. Now, if I showed these facts to a tweener who cared more about Sanjaya's hair (which was actually quite good) than politics, she would know that this is fishy.

I will go a step further. This is Bush's albatross, his Watergate. He and his cronies attempted to be too slick, circumventing the standard White House services to use RNC provided ones. But, that tactic, along with being illegal, came back to bite them in the rear as they are not protected by the overused grail of presidential politics: the executive privilege. These emails are the new 18 minute gap (if you don't understand, read all the president's men, a great and quick read). Additionally, this is becoming the new 18 minute gap due to the ways in which the Administration is trying to be secretive about its action. If you don't believe me, read these comments from today's White House press conference.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales meets the firing squad in the coming weeks. I hope he has prepared thoroughly because there have been more questions raised than people offended by Imus's comments. There is more on this issue at Firedoglake. But, seriously, if you are interested in how your country has been destroyed by the Bush Administration (this is post-partisanship; this is about being an American who believes in Democracy), you need to start watching C-SPAN next week as the House and Senate both go back into session and this gains more traction.

It Must Be Hard to Be Rich

For those outside of the sports world, two football players, Adam "Pacman" Jones and Chris Henry, have been making quite a stir. Both have been arrested many times for their off-field antics. Most recently, Pacman started a fight in a strip club in Las Vegas after throwing 81,000 dollars in the air much to the displeasure of the other people in the club. This ended up with a security guard being permanently confined to a wheelchair. Henry has been arrested 4 times in the last 14 months, making him one of the 9 Bengals to be arrested in 9 months. Their actions have made their league look bad, and them look like children.

I have met and talked with football players (for my team, the Baltimore Ravens) and they are all stand-up guys. They know that they are paid to play a game. They take it seriously, but know that they are lucky and love what they do. Apparently, Jones and Henry didn't understand this. The NFL has helped them to realize that they are lucky by suspending Henry for eight games (the season's only 16) and Jones for the entire year.

I hope that this serves as a larger lesson for professional athletes. They should relish the fact that they are allowed to play a game for millions of dollars, and they should conduct themselves in the manner of a professional. You don't live on the street anymore (if you did at all). You're not a thug. You have no chip on your shoulder. The only focus you should have is being the best you can be at your profession. Additionally, you only work for 5-6 months out of the year! Someone, who is not me, looks up to them. They should grow up and act like they are professionals instead of spoiled children.

UPDATE: After watching some ESPN on this, this will be their last chance to salvage their careers. Also, my cousin went to school with these guys (they both went to West Virginia) and noted that they were pretty much like they have been portrayed in the media: irresponsible knuckleheads.

My Sole Comment on Don Imus

If you have been paying attention, Don Imus is in hot shit for calling the Rutgers Women's Basketball Team "nappy-headed hos." I'm not going to explain to you why this is a dumb comment. I'll leave that responsibility to one of the most talented Washington journalists in the game, and former Imus target, Gwen Ifill. This is the only thing I will say on this.