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POPSRIP Joel Dorn Dorn probably wasn't as well known as he should have been--he produced and recorded LOADS of great records, including some by Les McCann, Eddie Harris, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Max Roach, Freddie Hubbard, Herbie Mann, Keith Jarrett, Yusef Lateef, Jimmy Scott, Fathead Newman, Hank Crawford, Ray Bryant, Oscar Brown Jr, & Mongo Santamaria. He was a huge force at Atlantic Records and founded 32 Jazz, Label M and Hyena. He also produced classic records by Leon Redbone and Roberta Flack. And he wasn't one of those bean counter producers: he loved great music, and he helped to make it happen. He spent an hour with us here at the station and did a couple of excellent pledge drive drops for us--all the while dispensing advice on music and programming and letting us know that great music mattered. He was a cool cat, and he cut his teeth in Philly, so he was my boy and I'm real sorry to see him go. You can find a good interview with him here: http://www.allaboutjazz.com/iviews/joeldorn
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POPSDan Morgenstern When I worked at Rutgers, I had occasion (or made the excuse) to call and bother Mr. Morgenstern on a few occasions with questions about jazz, or Pee Wee Russell's paintings or whatever. He is a gracious and incredibly knowledgeable man. Read on!
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POPSWhat torture reaps This story is the story of how stupid our law enforcemnet people are and will continue to be.. the story of 9/11 is a story of the failure of our intelligence and law enforcement apparatus. The myth is that they failed because they didn't have enough power. The sorry and scary fact is that they failed because the system is riddled with stupidity and incompetence. The stupidity is BOTH structural and individual. Giving these stupid people within a stupid system more power doesn't solve problems, it causes more problems.
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POPSPinker Thinks Some Stuff Pinker, if you asked me, is an intellectual mediocrity of the first order--in other words of the worst kind. He's good looking, popular, glib, and not really capable of understanding the big topics he likes to write about. One day he'll go out of fashion I suppose, but I probably won't be around to enjoy vindication. Oh well.
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POPSFollowing in our footsteps, yet again! I really wish these folks at npr would stop monitoring our website and find their own stuff to do! But at least you can get a listen to LWIII through the link here. At least I guess.
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POPSWeekly World News to Close I have always loved this paper and the William Kotzwinkle novel about it (Midnight Examiner). The end of this fine journalistic publication will certainly be a sad day in the life of supermarket queuers everywhere. Remember "Bigfoot, Celestial Traveler?"
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POPSCooking the intelligence, again The administration's insistence on equating Al Qaida in Iraq with the 9/11 perpetrators has always struck me as equivalent with a failure to distinguish between Elvis and the Elvis imitators.
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POPSStalin's Ghost I've always been a fan of Smith's writing, but, for better or for worse, this series is running down--the appearance of the adopted child is the "jump the shark" moment in more than one series, and a lot of this book deals with Renko's strained relationship with a stray he's picked up. BUT this one is still worthwhile, and there are plenty more in the series to check out if you haven't yet. Good, complex hero; interesting social and psychological observations; all played out amongst one of the greatest social collapses of our time. --eric
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POPSThe Evils of compression This is a good little explanation of "compression." Which is squeezing music so that the loudest and softest portions are closer. Typically all sounds are made maximally loud. Compression isn't utterly and completely evil--sometimes it does make things sound better. Nearly all radio stations use some compression on their audio (some purist classical stations don't), and many use WAY too much. Unfortunately, a lot of record producers use way too much as well. Here at WNMC we use just the right amount of compression, and we've had that verified by Goldilocks.
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POPSCanine Eugenics Gene Expression is a pretty interesting place to discuss genetics (blogger Razib works molecular bio in the lab, I believe) and (oddly enough) religion. Razib's politics are sometimes a bit loopy, imo, but the blog is still enlightening.
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