Some Fun Links for a Fun Girl

The guide to electronic music:

http://www.di.fm/edmguide/edmguide.html

MIT Hacks:

http://hacks.mit.edu/Hacks/

I have rarely been this incensed before. The City of New London Connecticut, that of the landmark Kelo vs. City of New London eminent domain case, has decided to add insult to injury against the property holders who fought the seizure of their land. The city is now claiming that the property holders lived on city land for the duration of the lawsuit and owe the city back rent. I cannot even begin to describe the absolute loathing and revulsion I feel towards the town managers, the people who elected them, and the deep-pocketed corporations who put them up to this. Gentle reader, I know not if you are a single voice, but I urge you to communicate this to every last person you can think of.

Allah Made Me Funny. Although I wonder about such specialization in comedy, still enjoyed hearing a piece on NPR today about the Muslim comedy group Allah Made Me Funny. I enjoyed hearing a bit of their show where they poke fun both at themselves and non-muslim Americans. One of the performers opens the show by saying "Salaam, alaikum. And for those of you who don't speak Arabic, that means 'We're going to kill you now.' " I hope such smart Muslims continue to be recognized and help pull Islam out of the demonized place it currently holds in our society.

Journey back to faith. I have struggled since my divorce to understand the role faith has in my life. I have always believed in God, even when my life was at its lowest point. I have also always believed in the teachings of Jesus Christ. I have not been one for going to church very much. I have believed that a large part of serving God came from how I behaved in my day to day life - the more good I did for others, the more help I could be, the more I honored God. My good friend Justin has recently helped me reconsider my faith and how best to express it. He has really opened my mind about people of faith and I have been impressed by both his spirituality and his humanity. And much more recently a special someone has encouraged me to return to church for the first time in a long time, and I feel the better for it.

Ibrahim Ferrer passed away this past weekend. I have written about Ferrer before on this blog, mainly to register my disgust at the small minds who prevented Ferrer from attending the Grammy awards for when he was nominated for his Grammy this past year. I wish Ry Cooder could write my eulogy. Of Ferrer, Cooder said in an interview on NPR something along the lines of "when you strip away all the trappings of the music business, a singer at his best and most honest is a channel between the music and the audience, and Ferrer was one of the best." Cooder said of Johnny Cash after his passing "He was the best combination of Saturday night and Sunday morning."

For those who like to paint Islam as a religion that condones terrorism, the news that the Fiqh Council of North America issued a fatwa condemning terrorism must come as a surprise. For those who have a more enlightened view of Islam, it is no such surprise. While Islamic extremism gets more headlines these days, religious extremism from all camps is something that our world struggles with.

Jazz and the lack of swing Why does so much modern jazz seem to have absolutely no rhythmic or melodic center? If Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong are the epitome of jazz, then the postmodern atonal arrythmic jazz of today must only represent the complete polar opposite. Is the purpose of modern jazz, like so many other forms of modern art, intended to punish the listener? My musical tastes certainly don't run to the benign and facile, but even the most agressive antagonistic music in my collection has a recognizable time signature and key. I think the worst enemy of art is not the philistine but rather the academic who takes all the soul out of art in the name of experimentation.

Digging out of the hole My recent romantic experience definitely threw me a curve ball, but I finally seem to be digging myself out of my rut and back onto solid ground. I still probably don't do enough to stretch and challenge myself right now, and to a certain extent I am still in a wound-licking phase, but there appears to be brightness beckoning ever closer.

Footnoted Thanks to the wonderful people at Marketplace, I heard the tail end of an interview with Michelle Leder, who publishes a financial blog called Footnoted. The basic purpose of the blog is digging into various financial statements of publicly traded companies for the juicy bits that most financial journalists completely ignore. She decided to pursue this course of action after an investment went bad and she reviewed the company's quarterly statements. She came to the realization that if she had spent an hour reading the statements she could have saved herself $5000. Don't have time to read it right now - bookmarking for later, but I am sure I will be back.