However, buried in one of the articles on Morris’s capture was a little segment that made me worried.

According to the St. Pete Times,

Meanwhile, in the sprawling Kenneth Court apartment complex that Morris used to frequent, the police remained a constant presence through Friday.

“We all feel like prisoners, like we are being held hostage,” said Sherell Mitchell, 24. Seven months pregnant, she was seething about the hours she spent Wednesday afternoon with her two young children, locked out by a police barricade. “They said, ‘No one’s getting in and no one’s getting out.’ ”

Told of residents’ complaints, McElroy said, “it’s certainly not our intention to inconvenience or harass the people of this neighborhood.”

Notice there was no actual reporting there. Just claims. I’m not sure if the St. Pete Times actually did any investigation or merely put the quotes in to raise eyebrows. But the fact remains, did the cops inconvenience people as they searched for Morris? Personally, I don’t know. I don’t live in that part of town, nor was I anywhere near during the situation.

If these claims are true, it does open up the possibility of worsening public relations between the people of Morris’s community and the Tampa Police Department. There was no doubt Morris needed to be caught. He was public enemy number one. But I hope following the investigation, there was some motion to assuage relations between his community and the authorities.

Something tells me this wasn’t and isn’t the case.

The picture in this post is from an organization named the Black Peoples Advancement and Defense Organization (BPADO). According to their web site, BPADO’s mission is:

The mission of the Black Peoples Advancement & Defense Organization is to: protect and defend poor people, in Hillsborough County and the City Of Tampa, from every aggression of The State, great or small, intentional or accidental, by any means necessary, and educate, organize and mobilize people, in Hillsborough County and the City Of Tampa, in a way that will enable us to control our tax dollars, as well as the government officials responsible for those dollars, and make them work for our greater good, instead of our oppression.

I know Tampa has struggled in the issue of race. Few southern cities haven’t. In the four years I have lived in the area, I have noticed the city celebrates it’s pseudo-pirate culture and it’s legitimate Spanish culture far more than it does any other. It seems the African-American community has struggled here as much as they have in many other places in the south. The Wikipedia article on Tampa Riots, for example, is full of stories of people lashing out against authority, to include a 1987 riot after the police who arrested then-New York  Met pitcher Dwight Gooden were cleared of racist charges.

Has there been overreaction by African-American community leaders nationwide to perceived incidences of racism? I would say so. Jesse Jackson’s involvement in the LeBron James saga is a perfect example.

Have there been incidences where public movements have been essential to garner the fair treatment of people? Absolutely. That is the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr..

Although Dontae Morris is innocent until he gets his day in court, he didn’t come from the best part of town. His neck of the woods was where drugs and crime are higher than average in Tampa. However, security through citizen manipulation is not the answer, nor can it be allowed to be the perception. My hope is that somewhere between extreme action (or the perception thereof) and extreme reaction (or the threat thereof) there are people in the different communities of Tampa who can work with each other and build bridges of cooperation.

If not, we will continue to see reactive organizations such as BPADO emerge.

Quick summary: The article summarizes the recent research on wormholes and black holes and how matter may never reach a supreme condensed density as Einstein predicted.

(Longtime readers should know I am a huge Einstein fan. It’s been a while, but I tried my hand at talking physics at my old site, compared Einstein’s theories to The Dark Knight, and read an 800 page bio on the man. He is, in my opinion, one of the smartest men to ever live, and one of the few I think smarter than I could ever be. Him, Stephen Hawking, and Miles Davis.)

To quote the Nat Geo article:

According to the new equations, the matter black holes absorb and seemingly destroy is actually expelled and becomes the building blocks for galaxies, stars, and planets in another reality.

That means the basic building blocks of matter as we know it may live forever. Although it may get tossed and turned and flipped and bounced like a sock in a series of connected driers, it will never cease to exist. And since, of course, Einstein proved that mass=energy then neither mass nor energy can be created nor destroyed (law of the conservation of energy, yo). Something will be somewhere forever.

Another subject I have seen a little bit about in regards to my odd fascination with Einstein is any Discovery, Science, or Nature Channel show on string theory, that super micro particles, billionths and billionths of a centimeter in size exist along gravitational planes called “strings”. Most of this stuff is over my head, but apparently these strings containing micro particles vibrate, causing the molecules to move. According to the almighty Wikipedia,

On distance scales larger than the string radius, each oscillation mode behaves as a different species of particle, with its mass, spin and charge determined by the string’s dynamics. Splitting and recombination of strings correspond to particle emission and absorption, giving rise to the interactions between particles.

An analogy for strings’ modes of vibration is a guitar string’s production of multiple but distinct musical notes. In the analogy, different notes correspond to different particles. The only difference is the guitar is only 2-dimensional; you can strum it up, and down. In actuality the guitar strings would be every dimension, and the strings could vibrate in any direction, meaning that the particles could move through not only our dimension, but other dimensions as well.

So there many very well be a natural rhythm to each subatomic particle. Which means, going up in the matter scale, there may be a natural rhythm to each atomic particle, molecule, cell, and other building block of things. Maybe Obi Wan Kenobi was right when he said there was “an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us, penetrates us, and binds the galaxy together.” Maybe the Force is rhythm.

A few years ago, I read an article in Scientific American on the “natural ambient sounds” of animals and how human life and technological advancement has altered and even threatened how animals communicate with each other. According to the article, birds, reptiles, insects, and many other land dwelling creatures have had to change their bioacoustics and outshout, outbuzz, or outsing cars, airplanes, chainsaws, cannons, and other human inventions to get their mates’ attention.

Could these bioacoustics be caused by the mass amalgamation of the frequencies of each and every subatomic particle in a living thing? Could all these vibrating strings be in any way related to how we communicate or what frequencies we acknowledge as good or bad?

At the top of this post I uploaded a picture of a bunch of kids dancing at a Rays game a few weeks ago. Ever watch a toddler dance? I am always fascinated by watching my two-year old nephew jump, bounce, and boogie to whatever catches his fancy. He dances to everything from “The Ants Go Marching” and other kids songs to John Lee Hooker’s “Boom Boom” to the soothing sounds of cartoon death metal band Dethklok. He doesn’t discriminate.

From what I have seen, most other kids are the same way. They don’t care if it’s country or rap or swing or Bulgarian wedding music. If they can dance to it, they will. And they don’t care about steps or the number of beats, they just move. Although I have never done it, I would guess that trying to predict a toddler’s next dance step or movement is about as difficult as trying to create a unified field theory for the actions of subatomic particles. Which is what frustrated Einstein for most of his life and eventually lead scientists to the creation of string theory.

Which makes me think there maybe a natural rhythm for human beings. After all, every culture has created its own music in some way shape or form. In many cultures it natural for music to be part of religious ceremonies and a way to touch or feel the supernatural and the holy. Maybe babies are more “tuned in” to this natural human rhythm and are less corrupted by the everyday sounds of everything we grown-ups have resonating in our world. Maybe for children the ignorance of the different beeps, tones, whistles, bells, horns, alarms, shouts, screams, buzzes, hums, rattles, and yells is a good thing. They have the ability to “feel” music better than we can.

Perhaps the hippies and beatniks of the 1960s were on to something when they said “turn on, tune in, and drop out“. Maybe all that LSD Timothy Leary was pushing was getting people to feel rhythms the way children feel them. Or maybe they were on a whole other rhythm. Maybe there are multiple frequencies we can force onto our brain cells just as many cosmologists think there are multiple universes. Maybe an LSD trip is nothing more than tapping into a frequency of an alternate universe, one that the person taking LSD has no prior experience in. Maybe there are universes that are more hostile to our thought process than others. Maybe some are more peaceful.

Maybe this explains heaven and hell.

Wow, it’s getting deep in here. And my head is starting to hurt.

Before I go, I have a joke. A few years ago, one of my friends had a gay roommate who was aspiring to do stand-up comedy. He said the first thing he was going to do was go on stage and flamboyantly say “Hi, my name is Rhythm and I’m a dancer. (Pause) My parents knew.”

I thought it was funny.

Since its inception in the late 1970s, hip-hop has gone through many of the same cultural changes as rock ‘n’ roll. Both started as dance/party music (think Sugarhill Gang for hip-hop and Chubby Checker for rock) then went into their rebellious phases (Public Enemy, followed by much of the conscious rap scene of the early 90s/Bob Dylan and a lot of the folk/hippie rock of the late 60s).  Following their rebellious phases, both were homogenized by the mainstream and migrated into popular and commercial culture. As they moved to the center and towards popular acceptance, the messages in both rock and hip-hop changed drastically. For rock, this started with the 80s hair metal scene and it’s wildly excessive party scene. For hip-hop, it began with with the business-like sophistication of Jay-Z and optimistic feel-good raps of Kayne West and Lupe Fiasco.

Over at NPR.org, “the Pop Off team — Jay Smooth of illdoctrine.dom and pop music writer Maura Johnston of theawl.com” go in depth on the metamorphosis of hip-hop from media of the rebellion to theme song to Sex in the City 2. In introducing the broadcast, an NPR writer also brings up a god-awful, terrible, horrific, forehead-slapping commercial hip-hop based Toyota commercial (from a parody perspective though it is a lot like the vids I have seen from the Flight of the Concords guys).

Meanwhile, in other parts of the world, where the music and the message are still relevant, people are using break dancing in an attempt to motivate, unify, and encourage the youth of Uganda. Break dance sessions are bringing together kids whose lives have been absolutely destroyed by a continent at war. Using a music that by its roots was born in chants and hollers of the African tribes, break dancing and “b-boying” is giving Ugandan kids an outlet and promoting peace and cooperation through music.

BOUNCING CATS film trailer from nabil elderkin on Vimeo.

Maybe there will be a day when hip-hop in Uganda will be used to pitch mini-vans and sell movies about Manhattan socialites. Maybe that is the natural progression of popular music.

At least I’ll have the blues and death metal.

(By the way, while researching this post, I found Roger Ebert’s review of Sex in the City 2. Besides ripping off an absolutely classic introduction, he says there is more cleavage in the movie than at a pro wrestler’s wedding. I don’t get it.)

Well, not really the Bible Jesus, but the Second Coming, Seven Signs, Apocalypse, and all that. Real wrath of God-type stuff.

What if Jesus were to come back and just show up today?

First, if His arrival was universally accepted as the Second Coming of the Son of God it would be a miracle in and of itself. We have too many cynical, opinionated, so-called experts, analysts, and other media prognosticators out there whose only job in life is to disagree and sell that opinion to the masses. Disagreement sells and debating the Second Coming would definitely move products and sell ads.

“Tonight on FOX, O’Reilly talks about the Second Coming of Jesus with a bishop of the New York Diocese and Bishop Magic Don Juan! It’s can’t miss viewing!”

But even if all billion Christians agree on the New Jesus, there are still 5-6 billion other people on Earth. Let’s say Jesus comes with the Mahdi, and many of the 1.2 billion Muslims support the effort, that’s still barely a third of the world’s population and less than the populations of China and India combined.

Good luck breaking into that market.

Of course, if Jesus arrived in a third-world country, people of the first-world might dismiss Him as at best a heretic and at worst a kook. There is no way He could sway the global opinion of the first world within the first few years of preaching and proselytizing. There is too much competing for the attention of the people in Western culture for them to recognize a new Savior.

“Hey, there is a guy in Nigeria who has supposedly fed 3,000 people with just a basket of fish.”

“Oh really? Did you see American Idol last night?”

“Yeah.”

(Kinda like Gil Scott Heron’s Small Talk at 125th and Lennox.)

Needless to say, Jesus would need to make a splash. Although I don’t think that’s His style. I don’t think He is the kind of guy who would try to jump to the front and toot His own horn.

But what about His disciples? Would there be disciples for the Second Coming?

With all we know about everyone these days, how would Jesus select new disciples? I don’t think He would go the game show route. I doubt there would be an American Idol-style selection show to pick the people to hang with the Son of God.

Maybe He would peruse Facebook for people who meet His criteria.

Here is another question: Would His new disciples be a collection of all the world’s people? I can imagine someone complaining that Jesus’s new disciples don’t represent them.  Imagine the editorials if Jesus’s new posse didn’t contain someone from a major ethnic group. Would that infer they aren’t going to be saved or that they don’t have the favor of God?

As the old disciples were basically Jesus’s public relations team, I wonder what the roles of the New Disciples would be. Would they be Jesus’s hype people, like religious versions of Flavor Flav? Would they create a Facebook page? Would Twitter be the platform of the new Hadith? You gotta wonder if Jesus would select New Disciples not only based on their ethnicity, but also on what public relations, advertising, writing, and marketing skills they bring to the table.

If that’s the case, yo Yahweh, I can blog.

(Image from the movie Jesus Christ: Vampire Hunter.)

Unfortunately, I have zero interest in living in DC, the hub of American international happenings. Absolutely none. It is way too crowded and there is no beach. And everything there is so political. No thanks.

So with that in mind, and being that no one here in Tampa is paying me for my opinions, I hope you don’t mind me dropping a few international analyses here. I’ll try and keep them readable and somewhat linked to something happening here in the states, in Florida, or local to Tampa.

For example, I’m sure you heard of the recent subway bombings in Moscow. Once again, like in London in 2004, terrorists struck at public transportation systems, this time killing over 30 and injuring dozens more.

Meanwhile, here in Florida, plans are well on their way for a statewide rail system that would reduce traffic and help connect Miami, Orlando, and Tampa. There are also efforts and information campaigns to reduce the urban sprawl that is destroying the natural habitats of the state.

According to a 2006 article in the Orlando Sentinel,

There are some people, however, who think growth can be smarter and more compact with a stronger separation among urban, suburban and rural terrain. Smart growth means better planning and more land preserved. It looks like condos and town houses mixed with single-family homes. Those homes are closer together, linked by walking paths that lead to stores, movie theaters and offices. There may be mass transit. Smart growth in Central Florida is Baldwin Park in Orlando and Celebration by Disney. Across the nation, it’s Boston and New York City.

The end state of both efforts is to have more people living amongst each other and traveling en masse.  Nearly everyone agrees this is a good thing – biologists, environmentalists, planners, and even politicians.

I bet you can include terrorists on that list.

Although we haven’t had many, if any serious attacks on public transportation systems here in the U.S. (yet), the odds of mass casualties will go up dramatically when we all migrate to urban areas and do a majority of our travel on monorails and people movers. We will drastically increase our chances of being a target and make it easier for terrorists to make a large impact with minimal effort.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not discouraging efforts to reduce urban sprawl. To be honest, I hate seeing Best Buys, malls, and housing developments built for no reason in the middle of natural Florida environments. It’s sickening.

I’m just saying I hope we prepare for the increased chances of possible terrorist attacks, either from international organizations or nutjob domestic groups. Keep in mind, this may require increased physical security and surveillance.

Is reducing urban sprawl and highway traffic worth the trade-off?

After reading Prelude, I started thinking about the transportation situation in Tampa. Like most of America, a large majority of the residents of Tampa prefer private automobile use over public transportation. Buses, although used, remain a secondary alternative, ridden primarily by those without cars or those looking to save money on gas.

I predict this is going to change in the very near future. I think we will soon see a major shift in transportation culture. A shift that will require change in the perception and utility of public transportation.

One of the most consistent news trends of the last few years has been reporting the dangerous relationship between communication devices and driving. Every few weeks it seems another story is written about an accident involving a phoning, texting, or tweeting victim. According to a recent Mashable.com post, “an estimated 6,000 people were killed and 500,000 were injured due to cell-phone related car accidents” in 2008.

There is no doubt people are having trouble pausing their desire to stay social. With the growth of the communication industry and ease of staying in touch, we are seeing a cultural shift from the importance of travel to the need for continuous communication. We value staying in touch more than we do those short moments in which our concentration is needed for driving.

So far, our society’s initial reaction has been to fight this cultural shift. Mashable, a blog dedicated to technology and social media, recommended “a combination of legislation, social awareness, and technological innovation to create a safe marriage between social media and driving“. CNN also recently reported on a product designed to disable cell phones from calling or texting while vehicles are in motion.

Unfortunately, the genie of communication and increased socialization cannot be put back in the bottle. On the contrary, we need to embrace our need to be social.

This is where public transportation must step up. They must take the lead in embracing this cultural shift. Instead of being seen as secondary, they need to rebrand, remarket, and refocus their message and be perceived as a safe alternative for those who want to stay in touch while they travel.

Here are some ideas how public transportation systems can promote themselves to those who are putting increased value on communications:

1) Engage their sense of adventure and participation – One of the major buzzphrases is the last year on the technology front has been “geolocation – the “the identification of the real-world geographic location of an Internet-connected computer, mobile device, website visitor or other“. Public transportation organizations should encourage riders to plug in and announce where they are. These organizations could promote “Tweet ‘N’ Ride” events, incorporate social applications such as Foursquare, or even do virtual treasure hunts or games of “I Spy“.

2) Increase routes through college and young professional residential areas – In order to encourage usage, buses need to be seen in areas where communication-savvy people live. This means putting routes in the residential areas of people 18 to 35. These routes need to stop by places this demographic frequents, such as campuses, downtown areas, malls, entertainment complexes, and sports stadiums.

3) Ensure routes have good signal – Whenever possible, public transportation organizations should make sure there are few, if any deadzones along the routes. They could also make all bus stops Wi-Fi zones. If possible, these organizations should also put Wi-Fi on the buses.

4) Embrace social media – Although many transportation organizations already have twitter and facebook accounts, these organizations need to better utilize these platforms. Not only should the administration be engaging potential riders, but the buses should as well. However possible, each bus should have access to the tweeter feed and “automatically” tweet its location when it reaches stops along its route. This information could be broadcast not only to individuals through twitter, but also possibly to a small screen installed in each stop.

5) Target parents – In order to encourage teens and other members of the millennial generation that buses are a viable option, public transportation organizations should create advertising campaigns targeted to parents and other decision makers. Parents should be informed that they do not have to discourage their teen from communicating, and that options do exist for teens to travel and stay in touch.

In Prelude to a Super Airplane, the great culture battle between individual and mass aerial transportation culminates in 2012. If public transportation organizations can capitalize on the current growing cultural shift between transportation and communication, we may see the battle on land much sooner.

I’ve always been interested in how different areas put their own twists on sports. A game played by the same rules can be played in totally different ways and interpreted in a completely different manner by different cultures.

But why? What is it about certain cultures that drives changes in the game?

A few years ago I noticed several articles that discussed a style of basketball being played in the American southwest by young Native Americans. Dubbed “Rezball“, it was basketball played at an extremely fast pace. According to ESPN.com,

Rezball is a smashmouth game of speed, aggression and stamina. Full-court presses and man D are applied relentlessly, but the transition game is the game. Guards often start a break after receiving the inbounds pass; set plays are rare. Rezball makes the 2007 Suns look like the 1995 Knicks. Squads with three guys taller than 6’3″ are rare, so even the short guys know how to play big, and all five positions boast guardlike handles and shooting skills. Watching the best teams will rivet you to your seat—from the way players improvise at warp speed to their sheer endurance and the dialed-in-but-carefree way they ball.

For some reason, Native Americans decided to add an extreme element of speed to their game. Granted, height is not a usual trait in Native Americans, so few teams would have the option to slow down the game by throwing the ball to a lumbering big man underneath the basket. But from what I know about Rezball, it is faster than the Philippines Basketball Association, a league known to impose height requirements to give domestic players a chance.

So why did the Native Americans tweak basketball in that way? Is running or sprinting a typical habit of the people?

On the complete opposite side of the spectrum is the southern style of professional wrestling, known in some circles as “rasslin’”. According to Wikipedia,

Rasslin’ – refers to a southern style of professional wrestling which emphasizes kayfabe and stiffness, with fewer squash matches and generally longer feuds. It was synonymous with the NWA-affiliated promotions. Rasslin’ included TV tapings at smaller venues, as compared to the larger and more well-known arenas utilized by northern U.S. promotions such as the AWA and WWF/E. The term is derived from a phonetic spelling of how the word “wrestling” sounds when spoken with a heavy Southern accent. It is also commonly used in a derogatory manner by non-Southern wrestling fans to describe that style of wrestling.”

(To be honest, although the description is correct, I have never heard anyone in Florida refer to it as “rasslin’”. Actually, due to the mixed population in Florida, I’ve been told the state is a very difficult place to wrestle in, because transplanted fans from different parts of the country look for different things in their wrestling performances.)

I’ve been told that “southern” professional wrestling is generally slower than its northern counterparts. In the definition above, “emphasizing kayfabe” means characters and stories have more of a role in southern pro wrestling matches. In order to build those stories and develop those characters, the action must be slower. No rapid, high-flyin’, biff-bang-boom-wham-bam-slam matches. In southern wrestling, each match tells a story and it is the story that is emphasized more so than the athletic performance.

So why is wrestling different in the South? What is it about southern culture that favors deliberate storylines over fast-paced action?

Having lived in the South for over 20 years, I can attempt to answer this. For the same reason country music is generally slower, and southern accents are not as fast as northern dialects, Southerners prefer a more laid back lifestyle. People are more spread out in the south and aren’t ingrained with the urgency of northern city folks.

There is also the notion that morals are more prevalent in the South. Whereas in the North, people are all jumbled together and no one knows which way is which, in the South, there are traditional codes of conduct – such as how a gentleman or lady should act. Pro wrestling storylines feed off of these ideas. Bad guys deliberately brake the codes of conduct and good guys get in the fans’ favor by giving these villains a helpin’ of fist-flyin’ justice.

Before I end, I would like to leave you with a few questions.

Questions: Could there have been at some point different nuances in baseball? Were there slight differences in baseball strategy when the game started its growth in America? Did southerners play a slower-paced game than northerners? Was the northern game the origin of homeruns and fastballs and the south the birthplace of off-speed pitches, setting up batters, and base-to-base offense? Could there have been a difference in regional pitching psychology? Also, was there a different style of game strategy in the Negro Leagues?

The best answers may win something from me, if I can think of a cool gift.

On his song “Exhibit C”, a song widely considered one of the best of 2009, Jay Electronica brings an old theme back into hip-hop, the thoughts and theories of the 5% Nation of Islam. Although I am not sure if Jay Electronica is an official 5%’er, throughout Exhibit C, Electronica mentions that he is supposed to “educate and 85′er”, “Allah through your monitor”, and that he is “bringing ancient mathematics back to modern man”. All of these phrases were the norm during what many call the “golden years of hip-hop”, the era between 1989 and 1995 when New York ruled the hip-hop scene and artists from Rakim to Nas to the Wu-Tang Clan ruled the airwaves.

In Islamic culture, the term ” Jahiliyya” is used to describe a state of ignorance, especially in regards to worship and acknowledgment of God. According to Islamic history, the people of Arabia were in a state of jahiliyya before they were presented with the Word of God. They drank, fought, had no higher belief, and lived generally directionless, God-less lives. Then, according to the Qur’an, Muhammad came with the Word of God and helped them shed their barbaric ways.

Like the ancient Arabians, hip-hop before the late 1980s was somewhat directionless. There were some established groups, such as Run DMC, and there were a lot of groups and rappers known throughout the urban underground music scenes, but hip-hop was struggling to make an impact on mainstream culture. Then came the Golden Age of Hip Hop.

Few would disagree that this era of NY hip-hop was influenced by the tenets of the 5% Nation of Islam (see this article: Islam in the Mix: Lessons of the 5%). The Supreme Mathematics and Supreme Alphabet of the 5% mantra provided a guide to many rappers, from solo artists such as Rakim to collective groups such as the Wu-Tang Clan and the Native Tongues (the Jungle Brothers, De La Soul, and a Tribe Called Quest). These rappers frequently made mention of “suns and earths”; “arm, leg, leg, arm, head” (ALLAH); and the “uneducated 85%”. For these rappers and their fans, rap was not the black CNN that Chuck D of Public Enemy famously said it was. It was the black Al Jazeera, a news network catering to a community with a specific religious lifestyle.

As the 90s drew to a close, hip-hop quickly became more mainstream. As it did, artists who did not use religious context grew more prominent. From 1995 to 2000, the religious doctrine of the 5%ers all but faded from the airwaves and mainstream hip-hop. In its place emerged more commercially friendly, less socially challenging tales of crime and violence, glitz and glamour propagated  by rappers such as Puff Daddy, Notorious B.I.G., Fat Joe, and Jay-Z.

Led by these secular rappers, hip-hop in late 1990s would grow into a billion-dollar business. Soon rap scenes throughout the country would stake their claim in the hip-hop landscape. Although the LA rap scene had always been strong, rappers were making names for themselves from cities such as Atlanta (Outkast), New Orleans (Master P), and St. Louis (Nelly). Much to the dismay of hip-hop nostalgists, this new wave of mainstream hip-hop (which continues to today) did not concern itself with the social consciousness and philosophic undertones of its predecessors. New hip-hop was either pop friendly or soaked in the idolation of materialism. Although the Wu-Tang Clan maintained prominence, they were one of the few, as a new era of jahiliyya descended onto hip-hop .

There is no question the 5% dogma had an impact on late 80s-early 90s hip-hop. The question of what happened next, however, is the age-old “chicken or the egg” dilemma.  Did commercialism, complete with the simplicity and ignorance of catering to the lowest common denominator, kill off hip-hop’s religious references? Did money make it more advantageous to quote movies such as The King of New York than to cite religious doctrine?

Or did the hip-hop community merely run out of philosophical-minded rappers? Was their message not as influential as they believed? Did 5% Nation of Islam membership decline as the national economy grew and America prospered? Was all that needed to be said said between 1989 and 1995?

If the latter, could a dogma once again influence hip-hop enough to make a genre-wide difference? Or would political correctness allow the bog of corporate materialism to suffocate hip-hop? Could there be a reluctance to embrace philosophical lyrics in mainstream rap, especially those mentioning Allah? Could the continued lyrical jahiliyya be the combined result of a paranoid post-9/11 buying public, the formulaic processing of corporate America, and collective community disinterest?

There is no doubt mainstream hip-hop has been mired in lyrical jahiliyya for over a decade.  According to Adisa Banjoko, in his book Lyrical Swords: Hip Hop and Politics in the Mix, “Unless we rid Hip Hop of all its Jahiliyya elements, we can only expect more sharp minded but misguided youth to perish over territorialism, materialism, and the pursuit of the sensual path.“

Perhaps Jay Electronica is the beginning of a new trend. A new social and lyrical awakening. Perhaps he is the one who will bring insight, knowledge, and thought out of the underground and back into mainstream hip-hop.

If only he would release an official album.

(Do other schools send their valued, cherish, and celebrated alumni a library of magazines and newsletters? I think it is awesome.)

As part of the write-up on the FSU cybercrime program, there was a side story (sorry, I forgot the official name of these mini-articles) on a super password finder hacker program the university has created. According to the article, the FSU password cracker is nearly twice as good at deciphering passwords than popular open-source programs.

What makes the FSU password cracker different and more effective is that it uses culture, patterns, and probabilities to calculate solutions. According to the article,

Basically, what sets Aggarwal’s program apart from all other password crackers is that its algorithms are based on what people actually do when they create a password, rather than what they could do-namely, create a password that is genuinely unique and thereby almost impossible to break.

Aggarwal’s team was able to determine the grammatical patterns and a variety of other user habits (e.g. adding a “1,” a “2″ or a “3″ at the end of a four-letter name) that they gleaned from analyzing over 100,000 old passwords amassed from a number of sources. One of the biggest batches they got their hands on was a list of 67,000 passwords that hackers stole from MySpace.com, for example.

I think this is fascinating – using our everyday culture in the algorithms used to predict the codes of criminals. To be honest, I don’t think I have ever created a password that didn’t follow some sort of grammatical convention.

Hopefully, this technology doesn’t fall into the wrong hands, I’d be screwed.

Last week, after buying lunch at a local fast food drive-thru, I wondered if anyone actually gives in to the suggestion of the drive-thru order-taker-person. You know, those people who ask you if you would like to try a new value meal or a chicken sandwich or any other deal of the day. How effective do you think their suggestions really are? Personally, I think I am of the habit of turning them down, even if moments later I order exactly what they suggest. Rejecting their sale pitch  is second nature.

Anthropologist Grant McCracken touches on this phenomenon in a post entitled, “Culturematics, Choice, and Identity Construction Now“. McCracken states that, “By our choices, consumer, spiritual, political, shall you know us.  It is the way we find, fashion, express and constantly tune selfhood. A good deal of our ideology of selfhood is tied up in the possession of preference and the exercise of choice.”

We don’t want to accept that someone behind a microphone at a drive-thru might know what we want. We want to come to our own choices independently.

(Interestingly, McCracken makes these comments in response to the business practices of another restaurant. Accordingly to McCracken, there was Japanese cafe that “serves you what the last patron ordered“. McCracken analysizes what such randomness does to the idea of choice and identity.)

But what if there was a financial incentive to listen to suggestions? What if you received a significant discount if you said “yes” to the offer of the drive-thru attendant? What if they offered 50% off the meal they suggested? If you only wanted a cup of coffee and they suggested a triple deluxe bacon cheeseburger, of course you might not be interested, but what if your choice was relatively close? Would you sacrifice your choice for theirs?

To make the notion even more interesting, what if the drive-thru attendant asked you if you would like the exact order of the person who drove through prior to you? At what discount would you be willing to conform to the tastes of a total stranger?