So Much For Promises & Bailouts

well...i definitely failed on the updating the horus set blog more often. i suppose that i could say i was taking black history month off to reflect, but i've really just been busy teaching babies how to talk, count, recognize words + colors, walk on stairs, eat with utensis, & fight the system by sharing!)

everyone everywhere is still talking about the economy which has been a frequent subject of the the light & the dark blog here, but i was really impressed by Thomas Geoghegan's take on what's been going on for decades & ultimately culminated in the current catastrophe. below is the tuesday march 24th episode of democracy now which features an interview with Mr. Geoghegan about 16 minutes into the show.
feel free to skip ahead, but there's some really interesting news in the headlines (especially for those of you that eat red meat).
there's also a really insightful interview with Riki Ott, a community activist, marine toxicologist, former commercial salmon fisherma’am and author of two books on the Exxon Valdez oil spill. she helps shed light on the seldom discussed topic of how corporations got the same rights as individual people despite it being in complete contradiction to the bill of rights & u.s. constitution.
the Riki Ott interview starts about 40 minutes into the broadcast & is very deserving of your time.

Transport von Colani

hopefully this is not your first exposure to the sumptuous & brilliant designs of Luigi Colani. his flamboyant biodynamic style is an extreme re-definition of form following function. it seems impossible to not fall in love with the voluptuous organic shapes that inhabit most of Colani's work. here i thought that it would be interesting to showcase some of Colani's vision for the future of mass transit. the designs scream elegance & efficiency by sampling the bodies shapes of some of earth slickest wildilfe...you gotta love the dolphin, whale, & dragonfly inspired aircrafts!

just a little inspiration for those that are tired of the lip service about change for the future.

post script...
if you're interested in more of mr. eccentricity's work check both of the links in this post as they lead to different websites

whatever happened to intergrity???

it seems like somewhere along the way everyone forgot about having integrity. didn't dignity used to be en vogue??? today money is everyone's supreme motivation & it leads them down a host of awfully shameful pathways. the thing about money is that its supposed to give people power when they have enough of it, but nowadays rich people act like they're wealthy & waste all of their doe buying shiny things to impress the other idiots.
in our modern world there's a lot of coons that will do anything for money, but when they finally get it they don't use they're power for anything.

imagine if jordan, lebron, or kobe ever said or did anything that made a difference. i'm not talking about throwing money @ non profits & charities that only serve as band-aides over the bullet wounds of society's ills. truly utilizing power would be more in the range of talking to the media about the merits of universal single payer healthcare, or using their stardom to open a dialog about raising the minimum wage to something that not insulting.

katt williams says something interesting about his experience hosting the not so surprisingly racist roast of flavor flav on comedy central. katt talks about how flav's kids were so embarrassed by the way their father was treated that they left in tears before it was over. after the show flav told katt that he didn't care about what the comedians said about him because no matter what comedy central had to pay him. flavor flav is not uplifting his family (or any other black folks for that matter) by allowing moderately humorous white people disgrace him in front of the world.

how did we allow money to become the thing that has the highest value in our world? back in the day when black entertainers absolutely had to coon to get booked in paying venues its more than understandable that they did it. old school jazz cats like cab calloway broke all the barriers & kicked in all of the doors specifically so there would be no need (or excuse for) a motherfucker like t-pain to essentially perform in black face in 2009. they say that everyone has a price, but didn't people also used to say that there's a line that you simply do not cross??? in fact i contend that cats like the ying-yang twins are so successful that they make it impossible for more thoughtful musicians to become popular. by no means am i saying that everyone isn't entitled to unlimited freedom of expression. however, when the people holding the purse straps see how easy it is to make money on the backs of individuals without a grain of integrity its easy to understand why youngsters frequently emulate what they've always seen as being acceptable behavior (that supposedly ends in them getting big money).

i guess my chances of becoming another one of those pop-tart musicians with deep pockets is waning because everyday the list of things i'm not willing to compromise (for any reason, let alone the false promises of money) gets longer.

the NiN9

greetings from the jungle!

instead of feeding into the pre-2012 tensions that i'm sure many of us have somewhere in the back of our minds i've decided to take this opportunity to discuss the (i believe) serious possibility that peace will break out all over the world & what we thought of as utopia for so many generations will only be a shadow of the infinitely inclusive & delectable possibilities of our new reality.
it seems like earth is tired of us being so clueless. & those of us with even half an idea of where the keyhole is know that finding the key (shared prosperity) is inevitable. so with 3 years & 11+ months before the world as we know it changes i wholeheartedly encourage everyone to be the change you wish to see...& keep in mind that the world we know is terribly flawed & impossibly difficult for most of our brothers & sisters to deal with day to day.
hope, love, peace, & shared prosperity to us all in the new year whether its 5769, 4706, or 2009.

& on the post script tip i just wanted to say that i have been adding posts to the blog in december, but i just haven't finished editing them because of my new gig as a preschool teacher [which gobbles up an ungodly amount of my time for far less money than i deserve for being such a stupendous teacher...but i digress] & i will be posting them in the next few days. in order to avoid this problem in the future i'm also considering revamping the horus set & turning it into a video blog so that digging into the nuances of modern life becomes just a bit easier................peace in palesrael!

blacks vs. gays...fact or fiction

the silly wedge issue of gay marriage has added a new equally silly nuance since the election. apparently the lazy corporate media has framed a debate between black folks & homosexual
s. this morning i heard a brother named Kai Wright breakdown all of the smoke & mirrors surrounding this hot button issue on fair. org's weekly show counterspi
n. he also wrote a great piece for the root. com & here's a little of it in the hopes of understanding how the media really pushes a lot of disinformation & how key critical thinking & analysis are when dealing with the corporately sponsored news channels:

Why white gays and black homophobes both need a reality check.
Nov. 12, 2008-
Somebody forgot to tell gay people that race wars are no longer in vogue. While the rest of the country has spent the last week reveling in the afterglow of Grant Park, gay America has devolved into a Sarah Palin rally.


The issue is a particularly nasty California ballot initiative, Proposition 8, which passed last Tuesday with just over half the vote. Prop 8 repealed a historic state Supreme Court ruling that gave gays the right to wed—and it appears to have won massive black support. That's a fact that ought to shame black folks everywhere.


But it also ought to finally convince the white-led gay rights movement to take people of color seriously, a case black gay activists have been trying to make for the better part of the past 30 years. Addressing the destructive reactions of too many of my white gay compatriots in recent days would be a good place to begin.


It started when a CNN exit poll declared that 70 percent of black voters supported the initiative. That finding led many in Cali's white gay community to conclude they lost their rights because of black homophobia. Things went downhill fast from there. Much of the ensuing outcry has been nasty, even hateful. As one college student wrote to the black gay blog Rod 2.0 in describing a Los Angeles protest, "It was like being at a Klan rally, except the Klansmen were wearing Abercrombie Polos and Birkenstocks.
"

I wish his remark could be easily dismissed as hyperbole. The comment sections of blogs ranging from progressive standard-bearer Daily Kos to black lesbian rabble rouser Jasmyne Cannick have been swarmed with racist rants and reports of slurs hurled at African Americans. Big-name gay scribes have piled on. By 10 a.m. the day after the election, popular columnist Dan Savage had shot off at the mouth, declaring himself "done pretending" that "the huge numbers of homophobic African Americans" aren't a bigger threat to gays than racist gays are to blacks. Whatever that means.


There is no question that homophobia runs deep in black America—or that it wreaks far more acute damage than denying marriage rights, frankly. Just ask the families of Sakia Gunn or Rashawn Brazell or any one of the scores of black queers whose murders have been met with a collective shrug in black communities. Or all the families destroyed by a raging AIDS epidemic we go on ignoring, in large part because of our uneasiness with sexuality of any sort, let alone the homo and bi and transgender kind. It's long past time black people have a conversation about this ugly reality.

But first, as with all things involving race and sex, there's a whole mess of facts about the California marriage fight that must be straightened out.

Not least of these is the shaky assertion that black voters made the difference. DailyKos diarist Shanikka has gained small celebrity for her post debunking it. The fact that blacks are densely clumped in just nine out of 58 California counties makes any race-based claim in CNN's geographically random sample muddy at best. Further, the poll excludes all of the state's 3 million early votes and counts blacks as 10 percent of voters when they're less than 7 percent of the population.

Of course, you don't have to get into such devilish details to notice something weird about this blame-the-blacks narrative. Even if 70 percent truly did support the marriage ban, why single them out? So did six out of 10 people over 65. Ditto white Protestants and people with children under 18. Look at the electorate through any of these lenses and you identify a far larger share of the vote than when viewing it by race.

"The reason why people are so fascinated with the 70 percent number is Obama and this kumbaya moment that we were having," says Ron Buckmire, a leader in L.A.'s Barbara Jordan/Bayard Rustin Coalition, a black gay group. "To discover that not everyone was in the same place was really shocking and surprising for some people."

It should have been a no-brainer. The Mormon-funded, anti-gay side aggressively targeted every racial and ethnic group in California—often dishonestly. Anti-gay operatives launched a robo-call scheme directed at black voters that falsely claimed Barack Obama supported their initiative. Obama does not support gay marriage, but neither did he support Prop 8. (Not that Obama did a hell of a lot to counter the lie.) The underfunded, pro-gay side responded with too little, too late.

These shenanigans explain why many black voters supported the marriage ban. Still, that's no excuse. "I am far less concerned with a white gay backlash than I am with the need for us to have a dialogue within the African-American community about what it means to have equality," says H. Alexander Robinson, who heads the National Black Justice Coalition, a black gay rights group.

Here, here.

Let's be clear, these hateful repudiations of gay relationships hurt black people. According to the U.S. Census, 10.5 percent of same-sex households are black, and they are at least twice as likely to be raising kids as their white counterparts. Denying these families access to civil marriage bars them from hundreds of rights and responsibilities.

Many black folks wince when they hear gay rights compared to the black civil rights movement. And when it comes from white gays whose only interest in black people is appropriating our history, I do too. But here's what Coretta Scott King had to say, in an address to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. "Homophobia is as morally wrong and as unacceptable as racism," she declared. "We ought to extend to gay and lesbian people the same respect and dignity we claim for ourselves. Every person is a child of God, and every human being is entitled to full human rights."

The whole community faces consequences when those human rights are denied. Look no further than AIDS for proof. Black people were overrepresented from the epidemic's outset, but fear and hate of the gay men who bore its first burn paralyzed the community as the virus spread. Now black people account for half of all new infections.

At some point, we all must ask difficult, self-critical questions. No, as black people, we're not any more or less homophobic than anybody else. And yes, the white gay community needs to look at its own failures before casting blame on others.

But so what? Too many of us are homophobes, and we need to talk about it. Last Tuesday's vote should remove any doubt about the urgency of the discussion.

for the entire article go to http://www. theroot. com/id/48845

dear mr. president...

we will protest you & your neo-liberal agenda whenever it goes against the greater good.

many obama supporters seem to believe that our soon to be president is only adding so many clinton era neo-liberals to his staff because it will give him more credibility when he implements the radical policy changes that everyone swears he will bring. history shows us that revisionist history & unrealized wide-eyed optimism never work out for the people of the united states. obama promises to listen to dissenting views to develop more inclusive policies, but surrounding himself with the warmongering cronies that set up all of the circumstances that are playing themselves out as global calamities today is not a progressive step toward a peaceful & prosperous future.

check out democracy now from tuesday november 25th to get some more insightful commentary on how obama may already be fucking up...........

more tips & questions for the new u.s. president

as usual i have an opinion about our new president's dealings, but in lieu of ranting myself i will again differ to some folks that have much more experience in researching & speaking truth to power...here's some transcript from democracy now's tuesday november 25th episode featuring some very interesting commentary...

AMY GOODMAN: Michael Hudson, at least when he is talking about infrastructure, is he talking about mass transportation?

MICHAEL HUDSON: Largely that.

AMY GOODMAN: I mean, as opposed to highways and roads, and actually mass transit?

MICHAEL HUDSON: That is certainly the key. Mass-transit and almost every country creates an increase in real estate values along the routes that could actually rental that is increased by this could actually finance the entire transport system. In London when they built the tube extension to their financial district of the loop, they created 13 billion pounds worth of increased in real estate value. The tube itself cost only $8 billion. They left this $13 billion real estate value in the hands of the private landlords. Same thing in Chicago in the US. It can be a very heavy investment in mass transportation here. This is going to create enormous real-estate values. The tax system, leaves these in private hands. I think all of the tax proposals that Mr. Obama have spoken about, have to do with income tax primarily. The rich people prefer not to earn income. They prefer to make capital gains. So the intention of the economic gain that Mr. Obama brought in is really to create a huge capital gains economy. Even more disparity of wealth while leaving in place the one thing that should address in the last year and that is the enormous debt overhead. Nothing is happening on that. He is adding to debt, not reducing it.

AMY GOODMAN: Barack Obama throughout the campaign continually said that well the people should be taxed, after the Bush tax cuts, but now owing to yesterday’s address, he seemed to back off, saying well, he would let them expire perhaps, that’s a possibility, in that I think it was 2011. Your thoughts?

MICHAEL HUDSON: The kicker is when he is talking about, Obama is talking about tax, he is talking about income tax. Most wealth, is not taxed, because most wealth, takes the form of return capital gain, most wealth does not pay, if I see a wage if not others, so what Obama is talking about, well, is taxation at the margin. He is not talking about kind of wealth, and the kind of returns that Wall Street gets, which are not subject to taxation at all, in fact, the give aways, that the treasury put in to the bank available, says that because the banks are bought, affiliates that have cash, they are not even going to be subject of the income taxation. So the whole issue of the devils of detail of the small print and Mr. Obama, thanks to his appointing Summers in this aim, is going to leave it there. The Russian cryptnocrats didn’t have to tax on income, as the phrase went, only the little people pay taxes, I am afraid that’s going to be the case under Mr. Obama also.

...i will try to leave a lil more original commentary on the subject of making our soon to be new president an honest man that serves the common good tomorrow.

How to Keep Obama Honest

as some of you may have noticed i'm not a fan of the new u.s. president or the line of thinking that goes anyone is better than bush. unfortunately president obama has already backed off of many of the progressive ideals that galvanized the country behind him & with each passing day the man with the plan surrounds himself with more & more advisers from the clinton era that do not have the best interests of the proletariat at heart.
but perhaps my outsider perspective doesn't have enough credibility for your erudite tastes...don't listen to me, watch wednesday november 19th's democracy now & allow my brother from another mother dr. cornell west from princeton break down the ways we need to organize to keep president obama honest.

UI Evolved

g-speak overview 1828121108 from john underkoffler on Vimeo.

imagine the possibilities...

things blackdaylight likes

i like releasing new music as often as possible. so far this year i've dropped 4 solo projects the latest of which is called attack of the extravagant minimalist released on stigaemusic.com on friday november 7th as a post u.s. election gift to the world.
as an artist i feel obligated to share my talent with as many people as possible & also because its a great esteem booster to get messages from people all over the world about how much they enjoy indulging in the blackdaylight experience. its also really cool to have strangers tell me that they like songs that lost their magic sparkle to me weeks after i made them [aka months or years before they're released].
but i don't want to be completely self indulgent. i'd like to take this opportunity to plug some of the new music that i've recently discovered & become infatuated with:
1st off let me point you to the lovely & talented Chelsea Wolfe & Sister Crayon. i've always been a huge fan of female singers & i've worked with more than my fair share of incredibly talented vocalists in the past but there's something about Chelsea's painfully honest & hauntingly beautiful voice that has quickly propelled her onto my collaboration wish list & into my top friends list on myspace [although i must admit it would probably be more of an honor if i was more popular myself, but i digress]. Sister Crayon has a similar vibe, but i love the rhythmic sensibilities & the trip hop flutters that run throughout the songs on her myspace page...which i listen to repeated online & on my mp3 player. i'm particularly fond of i'm still the same person & lavender liars by Sister C & i have literally listened to Miss Wolfe's Gold & the way we used to a half dozen times back to back catching flashback of hearing jeff buckley for the 1st time when i was 12 or 13...i sincerely hope that one or both of these sisters gives me the honor of writing to a blackdaylight song some day soon.Comfort Fit is a cat from germany that i stumbled across on lastfm that has been rocking my musical world very thoroughly for the past few weeks with an abstract hip hop sound that's reminiscent of my former audio hero prefuse 73, but with an infinitely more accessible & groovy sound.keeping it electronic & instrumental hip hop based but moving across europe to the u.k. there's another cat i found on lastfm while listening to music that allegedly sounds like mine, his name is Lukid & his sound is tight. its a lil denser & more meandering & esoteric than Comfort Fit but still more than appropriately fresh.of course the other i still bump Muhsinah's Daybreak & Lokua's Trails nonstop in the young mp3 player, but i just wanted to shine a lil light on some newer finds that i haven't already gushed about being unbelievably dope yet...so if you're in need something new or to quote Homer Simpson just "something much more else" to listen to in the closing days of 2008 be sure to click the links & explore the sonic gems that i'm trying to hip the world to.......