The Blessings & Burdens of Being the First

An excerpt from The Washington Post -

Being first is never easy. Living with the label can be just as hard.

By William Wan April 22, 2016

When the United States elected its first black president in 2008, it felt like a turning point — a cultural milestone for our country, a moment of grace in its fraught history of race relations, the fulfillment of an equality long promised by our founding fathers.

Seven years later, a new turning point awaits: What next?

No one knows. By their very nature, such “firsts” thrust us into uncharted territory.

But ask other black pioneers about their experiences, and they agree on this: Being first is never easy, but life afterward can be just as hard — both for the person who broke the barrier and the country at large.

Like Obama, they endured the challenge and scrutiny of breaking barriers, and they emerged with victories of their own: the first black governor. The first black billionaire. The first black Ivy League president.

If becoming a first requires determination and sacrifice, they say, then life after that first takes an equal amount of patience and perspective.

The label, they say, is something you contend with for the rest of your life — questioning it, probing for what it means, striving to preserve an identity outside of it and, if you’re lucky, learning to harness its power in a way that helps others.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/obama-legacy/first-black-heroes.html?hpid=hp_hp-more-top-stories_olp-afterthefirst-906pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

Passing the Test, or Not

An excerpt from Salon -

Failing the “DuVernay Test”: 6 signs your on-screen black character is a tired stereotype 

Exhibit A: Eddie Murphy's new film "Mr. Church," which has been dubbed a "spiritual sequel" to "Driving Miss Daisy"

2. Does your character exist to serve white people or aid them in a quest for fulfillment?

In a 2001 speech, director Spike Lee coined the phrase “Magical Negro” to describe the phenomenon of black characters whose only job in life is to the servants, mentors, and spiritual guides for white people. The most famous example is the jolly, apple-cheeked “Uncle Remus” from Disney’s “Song of the South,” who reads the stories of Brer Rabbit to a group of white children. The TV Tropes website sums up the awfulness of Disney’s Remus in its entry on this trope: “Even the horrors of Jim Crow can’t dampen his determination to be a cheerful mentor for the children.” 

Lee, however, called attention to movies like “The Legend of Bagger Vance,” “What Dreams May Come,” and “The Green Mile,” which respectively cast Will Smith, Cuba Gooding Jr., and Michael Clarke Duncan as Christ figures that come to earth to teach white people about forgiveness and redemption. If they are not literally God, like Morgan Freeman in “Bruce Almighty,” they act as his messengers or stand-ins. In “Dreams,” Gooding Jr. plays Albert, a guide tasked with helping the film’s Dante character, Chris Nielsen (Robin Williams), find his Beatrice in the afterlife. Albert doesn’t have depth, flaws, or conflicts because he’s a ghost; ghosts don’t need character development.

http://www.salon.com/2016/04/29/failing_the_duvernay_test_6_signs_your_on_screen_black_character_is_a_tired_trope/?source=newsletter

Not Making Out Like Bandits

An excerpt from The Atlantic -

The Divorce Gap

There’s a common perception that women siphon off the wealth of their exes and go on to live in comfort. It’s wrong.

Despite the common perception that women make out better than men in divorce proceedings, women who worked before, during, or after their marriages see a 20 percent decline in income when their marriages end, according to Stephen Jenkins, a professor at the London School of Economics. His research found that men, meanwhile, tend to see their incomes rise more than 30 percent post-divorce. Meanwhile, the poverty rate for separated women is 27 percent, nearly triple the figure for separated men.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/04/the-divorce-gap/480333/?utm_source=nl-atlantic-daily-042916

Honoring His Mom

This video clip was sent to me by a dear friend.  It is in English with Arabic subtitles.  I hope that this won't be a distraction of the powerful message being presented.

Fire Stick on Sale

Amazon Fire Stick is on sale for $34.99.

It's the best thing since sliced bread.

Shining Bright

From The Huffington Post - 

100 Percent Of Seniors At Chicago School Admitted To College For 7th Year In A Row

These young men at Urban Prep Charter Academy are what black excellence looks like.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/100-percent-of-seniors-at-chicago-school-admitted-to-college-for-7th-year-in-a-row_us_5722273ee4b0b49df6aa5aaa?utm_hp_ref=black-voices

Quote 2

"Don't let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do."


~John Wooden

SNOWDEN - Official Trailer

Quote

From The New York Times -

John Boehner on Ted Cruz:

“I have Democrat friends and Republican friends,” Mr. Boehner told David Kennedy, an emeritus history professor, at the event. “I get along with almost everyone, but I have never worked with a more miserable son of a bitch in my life.”

http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2016/04/28/john-boehner-ted-cruz/

Undercover Lyft with Richard Sherman

Southside with You Official Trailer #1 (2016) - Parker Sawyers, Tika Sum...

A Helping Hand

An excerpt from Upworthy - 

We did this sweet lady's lawn today. She is 93, the neighbors told us that she been out their trying to cut her own lawn 😳. Have no fear, raising men lawn care is going to make sure her lawn is done every two weeks ! Making a difference in our community ! Terrence Stroy

Smith is the founder of Raising Men Lawn Care Service, a group that's lending a hugely helpful hand to neighbors in need.

Smith, a student at Alabama A&M University in Huntsville, launched his organization so elderly folks, single parents, and people with disabilities — those who may not "have the time, resources and/or money to manicure their yards" — could still have well-kept lawns free of charge. 

"The typical response is tears of joy," he told Upworthy of his group's impact.

http://www.upworthy.com/why-a-photo-of-this-93-year-old-and-her-lawn-mowers-is-going-viral?c=upw1

Brothas on Blast

An excerpt from Very Smart Brothas -

WHERE “BECKY” COMES FROM, AND WHY IT’S NOT RACIST, EXPLAINED

What is Lemonade?

Remember when you were a kid, and your grandma left you alone in the kitchen, and said “don’t take any cookies from the cookie jar,” but there were like 17 cookies in the jar, so you took one thinking she wouldn’t notice, but when she came back in the kitchen you started acting all guilty like you know she knows you took a cookie? Well, if you’re a man in a relationship with a woman, both Lemonade the album and the short film are that cookie jar. The only other thing that’s ever made this many men this self-conscious is Lexington Steele.

It’s that bad, huh?

Let’s just say that 60% of the men in America are spending this week vacillating between feeling bad for Jay Z and being mad at Jay Z for doing whatever he did with Becky With The Good Hair and putting the spotlight on all of us. It’s one thing to do some fuckshit when you have 600 million to fall back on. You might be forgiven. You’ll be memed. But forgiven. It’s another thing if your girl is paying your wifi bill. And your Netflix bill. And your electric bill. You have much less of a rope. You’re practically ropeless. And there are A LOT of ropeless niggas out there, and I’d imagine they’re all very mad at Jay Z.

http://verysmartbrothas.com/where-becky-comes-from-and-why-its-not-racist-explained/

Nature vs. Nuture

An excerpt from The New Yorker -

Same but Different

How epigenetics can blur the line between nature and nurture.

BY SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE

Why are identical twins alike? In the late nineteen-seventies, a team of scientists in Minnesota set out to determine how much these similarities arose from genes, rather than environments—from “nature,” rather than “nurture.” Scouring thousands of adoption records and news clips, the researchers gleaned a rare cohort of fifty-six identical twins who had been separated at birth. Reared in different families and different cities, often in vastly dissimilar circumstances, these twins shared only their genomes. Yet on tests designed to measure personality, attitudes, temperaments, and anxieties, they converged astonishingly. Social and political attitudes were powerfully correlated: liberals clustered with liberals, and orthodoxy was twinned with orthodoxy. The same went for religiosity (or its absence), even for the ability to be transported by an aesthetic experience. Two brothers, separated by geographic and economic continents, might be brought to tears by the same Chopin nocturne, as if responding to some subtle, common chord struck by their genomes.

One pair of twins both suffered crippling migraines, owned dogs that they had named Toy, married women named Linda, and had sons named James Allan (although one spelled the middle name with a single “l”). Another pair—one brought up Jewish, in Trinidad, and the other Catholic, in Nazi Germany, where he joined the Hitler Youth—wore blue shirts with epaulets and four pockets, and shared peculiar obsessive behaviors, such as flushing the toilet before using it. Both had invented fake sneezes to diffuse tense moments. Two sisters—separated long before the development of language—had invented the same word to describe the way they scrunched up their noses: “squidging.” Another pair confessed that they had been haunted by nightmares of being suffocated by various metallic objects—doorknobs, fishhooks, and the like.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/05/02/breakthroughs-in-epigenetics?mbid=nl_TNY%20Template%20-%20With%20Photo%20(33)&CNDID=27124505&spMailingID=8841059&spUserID=MTE0MzE0NDEyNDUyS0&spJobID=902696804&spReportId=OTAyNjk2ODA0S0

He Lost His Way

This is the story of how Tiger Woods lost his father, and in turn, lost his way.

It's a sad story.

I often wonder why some people blossom and flourish in the face of adversity like divorce or death, and others flounder, never to recover.

Why is that?

From ESPN -

http://espn.go.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/15278522/how-tiger-woods-life-unraveled-years-father-earl-woods-death

Sh*t Still Hitting the Fan

Excerpts from The New York Times - H/T Ben

VW Presentation in ’06 Showed How to Foil Emissions Tests

A PowerPoint presentation was prepared by a top technology executive at Volkswagen in 2006, laying out in detail how the automaker could cheat on emissions tests in the United States.

The presentation has been discovered as part of the continuing investigations into Volkswagen, according to two people who have seen the document and who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the legal action against the company. It provides the most direct link yet to the genesis of the deception at Volkswagen, which admitted late last year that 11 million vehicles worldwide were equipped with software to cheat on tests that measured pollution in emissions.

~~~~~~~~~~

What is now clear is that the current crisis at Volkswagen traces back to the PowerPoint presentation a decade ago.

Volkswagen engineers at the company’s research and development complex in Wolfsburg realized that the emissions equipment in their newest diesel engine would wear out too quickly if it were calibrated to meet American pollution standards. The emissions rules in the United States are more stringent than those in Europe.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/27/business/international/vw-presentation-in-06-showed-how-to-foil-emissions-tests.html?smid=nytcore-iphone-share&smprod=nytcore-iphone&_r=0

GlowBowl - Motion Activated Night Light For Your Toilet

It's available now at Amazon.

Two Guys Met on a Road . . .

An Escape Route

From The Daily Good -

UK Bar Has Exit Strategy for Patrons Suffering Through Bad Tinder Dates

“Your safety and happiness is our highest priority,” reads a sign hanging in the women’s bathroom. “If anyone is bothering you or making you feel uncomfortable please tell us. We will discreetly move them away, and if necessary, ask them to leave.”

https://www.good.is/articles/bar-tinder-bad-date?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dailygood

Traffic News

An excerpt from Wired -

Widening Highways Never Fixes Traffic. But Darnit, It Did in Texas

The Texas Department of Transportation repaved the shoulders along both sides of a 6.3-mile stretch of State Highway 161 between Dallas and Fort Worth in September. Then it opened them up to traffic during the daily rush hour, keeping tow trucks on standby in case someone breaks down. Based on figures released this month, with the extra lanes in place, traffic “started sailing,” The Dallas Morning News reported this week.

It isn’t supposed to work that way. The rule of induced demand says widening highways does not ease congestion, and often makes it worse. Transportation officials could see this anomaly as a Texas-sized reason to build more highways—but shouldn’t.

http://www.wired.com/2016/04/widening-highways-never-fixes-traffic-darnit-texas/?mbid=nl_42516