UPDATE: We’ve revised this post to replace disputed Rush comments with confirmed-by-video ones. After all, we want to be fair. And balanced. ________________ Rush Limbaugh wants to be an NFL owner. Or […]
Tournament of Rock – Legends: the Tom Petty pod
Results: The last pod produced very little drama, as Fillmore region #9 seed Peter Gabriel led wire-to-wire. The numbers: Peter Gabriel 44%; The Steve Miller Band 17%; Buffalo Springfield 17%; The Black […]
Les Paul: the man who changed everything
by Wufnik In thinking about technological change, and our relative inability to often recognize the transformational technologies at the time they come along, consider the electric guitar. Particularly the solid-body electric guitar […]
Columbine and the power of symbols

Part three of a series. In the days following the murders at Columbine High School I visited the school and the grounds of Clement Park. Those walks produced this piece, which was […]
I'll take a good atrocity over slavery any day

Got a hot atrocity? Bring it on and I’ll try to wrap my mind around it. For example, I read four books on the Rwanda massacres starting with We Wish To Inform […]
Review: This Republic of Suffering by Drew Gilpin Faust

“War means fightin’, and fightin’ means killin’,” Confederate cavalry commander Nathan Bedford Forrest once said. While that might seem like a statement of the obvious in the context of the American Civil […]
"Clean" coal's dirtiest secret: Part II

Mountaintop removal coal mining at Kayford Mountain, Boone County, W. Va. Photo: Vivian Stockman, courtesy of SouthWings Air Part II: Almost Heaven Level: The Mechanics of Moving Mountains In the heart of […]
America's Negro Cracker Problem: none of us are free
Part two in a series. There’s a rising tide on the rivers of blood But if the answer isn’t violence, neither is your silence – Pop Will Eat Itself, “Ich Bin Ein […]
America's Negro Cracker Problem: Ich bin ein Auslander
Part one in a series. Listen to the victim, abused by the system The basis is racist, you know that we must face this In 1991 Pop Will Eat Itself produced one […]
Don't mourn Jesse's death – mourn that his legacy lives
On his outstanding Prodigal Son CD, North Carolina folk and blugrass legend Mike Cross presents us with a high-stepping little ditty called “Bill is in His Grave.” Bill, it turns out, was […]