Indy Telecom & Industrial Media

Today, I attended a rather excellent talk by Noam Chomsky and Amy Goodman on the Obama Administration & The U.S. Foreign Policy hosted by the HEIRC. The event was recorded by PBS, and the video is supposed to be made available to the public. As Chomsky’s talks go, it was dry but good — albeit a little short.

Of course, my little take-aways were a couple of signed copies by perhaps the greatest living intellectual of our time.

ABC News has a rather interesting study on the impact of race on politics, particularly given the candidacy of Barack Obama.

One of the interesting measures is “racial sensitivity” of white voters between Obama and McCain.

A similar graph amongst Blacks would have been useful; however, blacks have traditionally been a pro-democratic group, with 90% supporting Obama. What’s more interesting is that this has little to do with a black candidate – John Kerry had 88% black support in 2004, and 90% voted for Al Gore in 2000.

Similarly, the racial impact graph shows how blacks and whites perceive Obama’s candidacy’s impact on race relations.

I am also curious to see correlations between this, and traditional right-wing/conservative voters, and see how that scores. This would be unique because according to the study, Obama’s standing amongst whites is about the same as any Democratic candidate, but with a much wider range than usual.

Either way, interesting nuances to watch out for.

Yesterday, out of the blue, I popped a CD that had a collection of songs by Joan Baez and Bob Dylan.

Simply listening to their voices and their lyrics drove a shiver down my spine. I could literally feel myself standing there and it was beautiful, and quite moving.

In a way, they defined an era when artists actually cared for the world around them, and a culture where they stood for what they believed in. Baez’s voice is gorgeous, deep and her lyrics are from a time when people like her were willing to drive home their point at whatever cost. Dylan was no different, and he was a poet first, a poet who sang for the soul of the world.

When the CD got done, I turned on radio, where songs ranged from some meaningless rap (on women, booze and assorted nonsense) to unadulterated junk. I turned to some news channel that talked about the importance of Christians to be aggressive, while another one was saying how poor Britney Spears needed help for her idiocy.

In a way, it is an unfortunate turn of events. We’ve moved away from artists who cared about the world, such as Baez, Dylan and Lennon, to people like Spears who don’t give a damn about anything other than their own tantrums and fame.

I cannot see Britney Spears protesting against the War in Iraq, or joining the Olympic protests against China. Instead, I see her doing unbelievably immature things for the sake of attention. I see the death of an era of responsible global citizens and the emergence of immature, childish fame-hogs who care for nothing other than themselves, and sometimes, not even that.

But for the moment, listen to the song that beautifully captured a time that I’d have been proud to have been a part of.

Here are some interesting links from this week. Expect more Friday/weekend link-fests in the days to come.

• What does Goldman know that we don’t? — An interesting take on how Goldman Sachs escaped the subprime crunch that’s affected just about every other Wall Street major firm out there. (via Paul Kedrosky)

• CEO of the Princeton Economics Department? Goldman Sachs? It’s all the same to me! — Democrat Budget Committee Member Doesn’t Know the Difference between Treasury Secretary and Federal Reserve Chairman.

• You know you’re in a recession when they tell you to just take the clothes — Funny clip of Erin Burnett on Conan O’Brien’s show. (via DealBreaker)