Uncategorized
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Weeding Out Justice
The Buzz gets no satisfaction player hating those who regularly spark the leaf. But we’re in favor of a just application of the law when it comes to marijuana. As Stanton Peele writes in today’s Wall Street Journal, “Arrest Michael Phelps!”—unless the kid glove, superstar treatment is going to be applied equally to African Americans…
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Like $500,000 Is A Real Salary Cap!?
This morning’s lead story in The New York Times addresses President Obama’s efforts to change corporate culture by caping executive salaries to $500,000. Now, as much as The Buzz loves the Big O, we can’t help but say, “Whatchu talkin’ bout, Bama?” They’re even astounded Down Under, where the online newspaper The Australian makes note…
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Blacks and Advanced Placement Exams
New York Times Tamar Lewin authored an interesting piece yesterday on black high-schoolers and their unwillingness to take the Advanced Placement [AP] exam. As we know the AP program allows students to take university-level courses and if they pass the final AP exam they can earn college credit. Lewin’s article points out that while Americans…
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Still Shooting At Us
It’s an odd sort of memorial we arrive at today: Looking back on a 10-year-old police execution of an unarmed black man. It feels terribly incongruent with the political high we’re now on, more like a bad memory than a resonant reminder of the challenges we face as a nation. But here we are. It…
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Motown 2.0
R&B albums rarely combine the multiple musical legacies of one given city and catch the zeitgeist of its time as masterfully as PPP’s sophomore disc, Abundance (Ubiquity). As the title suggests, producer Waajeed and multi-instrumentalist Saadiq—the group’s two brainiacs—pack so much historical reference, so much modern perspective, so much deft musicality, so much lyrical ingenuity,…
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Deamonte’s Toothache
Two black boys died in the span of a week in 2007 because their mothers didn’t have health insurance. Deamonte Driver, 12, died of a toothache because his mother couldn’t afford to pay $80 to have a tooth extracted; the tooth abscessed and bacteria spread to his brain. After two surgeries and six weeks in…
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Francophone Funk
“You may not think I’m French, but I am,” said a latte-colored man with frizzy hair over a loud speaker hidden in a sculpture garden on the Mall in Washington, D.C. At the performance last fall, there were no signs leading to the concert where French harmonica player Frédéric Yonnet performed. The only giveaway was…
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Are Those Really Your Kids?
Sometimes people are well-intentioned but need to think before they speak. Comparing children they’re standing right in front of you (“the older one is really cute! her sister must be at that awkward age”), questioning their ancestry (“are they mixed?”), commenting on their hue or hair (see “are they mixed”?), asking if they’re a blended…
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Weird Science
Modern medicine never ceases to amaze The Buzz. The latest shocker? A recent kidney transplant, detailed by William Saletan in Slate’s “Human Nature” blog, in which a 48-year-old woman had the organ removed through her vagina. Yes, you read correctly! Vagina. And if BBC News reported the story, then you know that it’s more than the setup for a…