Author: jbenton

Crabwalk.com hero Dana Milbank does a good job defending the mainstream media — a cause with which I heartily agree.

An unreserved crabwalk.com rave to Naturally, the new disc from Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings. Sure, it’s backward-looking and proudly retro, but damn is this some fine-ass soul music. Sounds like the best outtakes from an early ’70s Ike & Tina session; the Dap-Kings are tight and Sharon’s got a pleasant dominatrix vibe to her voice.
Certain songs (“My Man is a Mean Man”) really make me wish I was into recreational drugs, because I’m sure the trance-inducing qualities of the walking bassline would be quite swell under chemical influence.
Put this album on at your next party and I guarantee you people will start having red-hot monkey sex, right there on your Ikea coffee table. Anyway, you should buy it.
(This is in keeping with my recent fascination with all forms of black music circa 1972, which I’m starting to believe may be the peak of human cultural achievement. As the liner notes posit: “Somewhere between banging on logs and the invention of MIDI technology we have made a terrible wrong turn. We must have ridden right past our stop. We should have stepped down off the train at that moment when rhythm and harmony and technology all culminated to a single Otis Redding whine.” This was previously explored as part of my Madlib fixation of late.)
(Update: MP3 samples here, although “Mean Man” sadly cuts out just when it’s entering the stratosphere.)

A BitTorrent of the Decemberists’ new Model U.N.-themed video for “16 Military Wives.” Sort of Wes Anderson meets Noam Chomsky.

For those of you who couldn’t make it to SXSW, the fabtabulous Kevin Lawver has gathered summary notes for fost of the panel discussions.
Aside: If you see more strange typos here than usual, it’s because I got a new keyboard at work. My Home/End/Delete/Insert/PgUp/PgDn keys have all moved around (a la Greywolf here). So random letters may end up missing during an adjustment period. Consider yourself forewarned.

One man’s life, as told through late-period R.E.M. releases.
All right-thinking Dallasites will be at the Clem Snide concert tonight.

Just got back from SXSW. A lovely experience, as always. Seemed a bit more muted in some ways, but that’s probably just my arteries hardening and my youth disappearing.
For those interested: DallasNews.com has assembled all the stories that won the National Awards for Education Reporting. In case you (somehow!) missed all those links the first time around on crabwalk.com.
A Century of Candy Bars: An Analysis of Wrapper Design: Proof that master’s theses need not address issues of global import.

For those who followed my stories about AIDS’ impact on Zambia‘s educational system: This story from Tanzania.
“HIV/AIDS is also a major cause of absenteeism and has affected the provision of education in various ways. First, experienced teachers are dying in droves. Tanzania’s Education Minister Joseph Mungai recently announced that more than 140,000 teachers had died of AIDS-related diseases in the past two decades…
“This attrition and absenteeism due to illness has increased workloads on the other teachers. ‘I am teaching Kiswahili and mathematics and I have 16 periods a week,’ a female, Grade A teacher in Ludewa urban district said. ‘In the classes that I teach, there are between 120 and 150 pupils. This is a very unsatisfactory situation.'”