This album can have you shedding a tear from laughing so hard one song and listening with a straight face the next. Songs like “Fake I.D.” and “Planet Grolic” show AOK’s repulsion towards people who dress or act like gangsters when they are nothing close to it.
Then there are songs like “Freedom Is A State Of Mind” which talks about his belief that you control your emotions and freedom depending on how you think. CONTINUE READING>>
(Wake Your Daughter Up blog Q&A) New Artist Spotlight: A.O.K.
What do you get when you cross a Muslim from a small town on the Canadian Prairies with the hip hop culture? You get this week’s artist in our New Artist Spotlight, A.O.K. The well rounded MC brings a lot to the table, and not just in the musical sense. He is a writer, done screenplays and written books. That well roundness is also well displayed on his debut album, If You Don’t Buy This, The Terrorists Win. The music reminds me of something found out of the Living Legends camp in terms of music and subjects. The album contains straight up goofiness in the space alien invasion tale found on “Tales From The Planet Grolic”. Then he might jump into a serious track, questioning the rolls of religion and not relying on it as a crutch. Some might call it unfocused, I’d like to say it’s well rounded. Even from the first time he contacted me, I could tell this was a cat that I could vibe with on a personal level. As some of you that might have emailed me in the past will know, depending on my mood (and how many “pops” I’ve had), I can be a little on the goofy side. Dude never missed a step in dealing with me. I can dig that. So when it was time to do the interview for the spotlight, I anticipated a witty banter between the two of us. He held up his end of the bargain well, I on the other hand was kind of flat. Eh, oh well. Take time to check the interview, listen to the tracks. An open mind is a well fed mind…. CONTINUE READING >>
Months in the making, Vue Weekly unleashed their first ever (hopefully not the last) Bullshit issue. Complete with a Mad magazine-esque fold-together cryptic cover, it was an entire issue dedicated to exposing bullshit in politics, science, film, music, business, food and everything else.
I’m proud to say that I contributed four articles of anti-bullshit content.
Making a living of bullshit detecting
Perhaps no program has been more successful in popularizing scientific skepticism the way SGU has. Novella hosts SGU with his panel of comical skeptic “rogues,” which include his brothers Jay and Bob, Even Bernstein and Rebecca Watson—who also operates skepchick.org and has become the Lucy Lawless of science geek circles. SGU consistently sits in iTunes’ top 10 science podcasts and enjoys a weekly listenership of about 40 000.
We’ve all been hustled. Whether it was buying an oregano-filled joint or the time Tommy bet you a nickel he would kiss Mary-Sue, only to learn that Mary-Sue was in on it too. But while these small-timers destroy an evening at most, some scam artists have destroyed entire families’ lives. There are far too many faith healers, spirit mediums, pyramid schemers and snake oil salespeople waiting to pounce on your pockets, but here’s a short primer on five of the most infamous and dangerous swindlers out there.
Ironically, Tremblay’s article works against the very environmental and humanitarian causes he advocates. By absolving humans of fault, they are no longer accountable for the destruction of their planet. It becomes an issue that is out of their hands, so why try changing it? We apparently live in a video game like the slapped-around-hookers of Grand Theft Auto. We (Stelmach and Syncrude included) are on autopilot.
But Larry King is not a movie critic, he’s a talk show host—or, at the very least, a caricature. His quotes are not attributed to any TV program, print or radio show, only his name. For all we know, his comments could have been overheard from a bathroom stall.
This week I topped the charts on CFBX, Kamloops campus radio. Thanks to all the DJs and callers who took me to the top of their hip-hop charts.
You probably know very little about Kamloops. Here’s some trivia about this city:
The journalists and anchors knew exactly what would happen when they immersed themselves in this radicalists’ rally. Watch as he purposely puts himself in the traffic to give the appearance of chaos. What did you think would happen if he stood still among hundreds of marchers? They would all stop to chat? Oh, and given how they trust Fox News so much, they would just love to have a conversation during their protest.
Fox tries to staple this to the Democrats by the fact that this was occurring outside the DNC. Crazy, young protesters with bandits masks = democrats.
Nevertheless, it is very funny. I was sort of wishing someone would knock him in the teeth, but this would have to do.
See what they didn’t show: Fox Attacked! The Backstory!
This reminds me of why NY Times writers are hired: They report but don’t resort to boring, fact-by-fact journalism, they inflect style and voice, and are taking it back to the colorful journalism of the 19th century. One could say that this is bias, in favor of evolution, but those same people can be accused of being bias in favor of magic. I mean, you would never accuse someone of having a gravity-bias, would you?
A Teacher on the Front Line as Faith and Science Clash
by Amy Harmon
ORANGE PARK, Fla. — David Campbell switched on the overhead projector and wrote “Evolution” in the rectangle of light on the screen.
He scanned the faces of the sophomores in his Biology I class. Many of them, he knew from years of teaching high school in this Jacksonville suburb, had been raised to take the biblical creation story as fact. His gaze rested for a moment on Bryce Haas, a football player who attended the 6 a.m. prayer meetings of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes in the school gymnasium.
“If I do this wrong,” Mr. Campbell remembers thinking on that humid spring morning, “I’ll lose him.”
I doubt this will suffocate Truthers flimsy claims that 9/11 was an inside job, but hey, they demanded a full-scale investigation and they got it. The response from 9/11 Truth rep. Mike Berger: “Their explanation simply isn’t sufficient. We’re being lied to.”
No surprise because like he, Truthers minds are usually already made up. They have a conclusion, and they work backwards from there, dismissing anything that conflicts with their theories.
9/11 conspiracy claims debunked
By DEVLIN BARRETT – Associated Press Writer
GAITHERSBURG, Md. (AP) — Federal investigators said Thursday they have solved a mystery of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks: the collapse of World Trade Center building 7, a source of long-running conspiracy theories.
The 47-story trapezoid-shaped building sat north of the World Trade Center towers, across Vesey Street in lower Manhattan in New York. On Sept. 11, it was set on fire by falling debris from the burning towers, but skeptics long have argued that fire and debris alone should not have brought down such a big steel-and-concrete structure.
Scientists with the National Institute of Standards and Technology say their three-year investigation of the collapse determined the demise of WTC 7 was actually the first time in the world a fire caused the total failure of a modern skyscraper. READ MORE…
Despite the uncohesiveness between tracks and spotty production, rapper(?) A.O.K.’s solo debut is pretty decent. It’s like one long joke that, at times, isn’t funny—yet you can’t help but listen. It all begins to make sense when you realize A.O.K. is from Canada. And you have to give the guy credit; he’s definitely on to something with the album title— If You Don’t Buy This CD the Terrorists Will Win. It’s marketing genius. Who really wants terrorists to win at anything (save for the terrorists themselves)? In that spirit you should go out right now and buy the album. If not for him, at least for your country.
Rating: 3/5
- Jason Parham, Format Magazine
Recently Random House axed the publication of The Jewel of Medina by Sherry Jones, a historical fiction novel about A’isha, Muhammad’s youngest wife.
As expected, the backlash from the Muslim communities that claim to represent the Muslim community, as well with other self-censoring non-Muslims, pressured Random House in their decision. They believed that a book, which none of them had read, that characterizes Muhammad and the umma (Muslims) of yesterday would be insensitive, disrespectful and dangerous.
Judge for yourself. Although the book may never see the light of day, Sherry Jones published the prologue on the blog Smart Bitches, Trashy Books.
From what I read, The Jewel of Medina, is just the opposite: It is sensitive; it is respectful. However, it is definitely dangerous, as any art about Islam that isn’t a simple praising of all things Islamic will be. But the more we are reluctant to tread on that ground, the more dangerous any Muslim-issues that are not picked right from the Qu’ran will be. Whether or not you are offended by this book, the Muhammad cartoon or any other fictional medium from Islamic history, artistic interpretation of Islam is necessary for the discourse of humanity, to inspire debates and rebuttals and talking points and essays and interest.
Islam is now the biggest religion in the world. It cannot be protected like a baby in the front yard anymore. It has to be treated the way every other religion and philosophy is treated. It has to be treated fairly. And in art, everything is fair, so long as it comes from the heart of the artist.
Props to Urban DNA for inviting me to do a show Saturday with Deezus, Sweatshop Union, and what is probably going to be my “new shit”, Art of Fresh.
Check these dudes out. They are making hip-hop you’ve never heard before (or at least, they’re doing it in a way you haven’t heard before). They brought solid, creative energy and had the hands thrown up like an IED just blew off limbs. (Insensitive analogy? Sorry troops). Check dudes out at myspace.com/artoffresh. Their debut album, Back to the Earth, drops September 2.
