9. March 2008 by Emmett.

Whooooo…this made my day. An uncut (’cept for the ads) recording of DJ Red Alert’s radio show from NYC’s KISS FM, circa August ‘89.

I’m a little too young to legitimately reminisce about hip hop from the late 80’s, but it’s still a nice change to hear rhymes not about selling metric tons of blow, or how many karats can be worn on one’s teeth. Plus, the celebrity shoutouts are dope. Mike Tyson!

You can stream this over at Good Records NYC, or download the tracks as a .zip file here. Respect to those guys for digging this up and getting it online.

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9. March 2008 by Emmett.

…since there’s so much online already, but I came across a speech he gave at a church, and it became clear to me that this man really needs to be president.

I spent  5 years in the US, a few of which I spent enrolled in an incredibly relgious private school. The experience did not convert me, but gave me an appreciation for how that section of society lived, which I would have otherwise not really seen. Much has been made of the role religion plays in US politics, and as a Canadian, I am still struck by the way it can dominate the political discourse. But in Canada, though secularism is much more common, the conflicts are often similar.

Please watch from at least the 6:30 mark, to about the 22:00 mark, as Obama lays out his beliefs about politics and religion, and gives advice to progressives seeking to bring about change in the US (and, as I would like to suggest, Canada).

“In fact, because I do not believe that religious people have a monopoly on morality, I would rather have someone who is grounded in morality and ethics, and who is also secular, affirm their morality, and their ethics, and their values, without pretending that they’re something they’re not. They don’t need to do that. None of us need to do that.”  This was met with sustained applause- in a church.

http://www.barackobama.com

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9. March 2008 by Emmett.

I just put up a couple dozen of my favourite pictures from my time here in Berlin. You can check out the gallery here.

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9. March 2008 by Emmett.

Ooof…now recovered from a brief-but-nasty bout of the flu, which left me with nothing to do but lie in bed and read political bloggers expound on Hillary Clinton (personally, I think she’s throwing her party under the bus, and I hope the superdelegates remember this week at a later point).

Actually, I did manage to come across a handful of other interesting things in my bored/queasy state, some of which are cited here:

• Kevin Dolgin’s travel guide on McSweeney’s. A thoroughly interesting collection of writings, covering this guy’s extensive time in Europe & elsewhere. If you haven’t checked out the rest of the McSweeney’s website, do that too.
• On Ebay’s German website (ebay.de), lots of the listings for Fred Perry shirts and sweaters are tagged with the word “skinhead”. Seriously. I mean, they make a good polo, but I’d think twice before rocking one in Berlin now.
• On DailyKos: A long but fascinating look at how spam-sending hijacked PC’s, 9/11, and a shady Russian enterprise might make you a terrorist.
• A new video from The Roots, sounding agitated but on-point:

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