Simple dinners are best ....

Grill-roasted herb-buttered chicken breasts with roasted yams and Swiss Chard sauteed with garlic, red pepper flakes and crushed tomatoes. Served with Mia Prosecco ...

Do Androids Dream of Vengeance, Guilt and Remorse?

Interesting study from a Portuguese and Indonesian team of researchers: Robots can make ethical decisions ...

Canonizing St. Michael Jackson

In 1993 I did a summer internship with the Los Angeles Times. It was the cherry Metro desk gig and I learned a lot covering urban violence:

A group of gang-bangers out for a revenge hit fire-bombed a house. The wrong house. They killed a retired sanitation worker who was asleep in his bedroom. Later that summer a girl in her early 20s was found dead, her body stuffed in a green plastic garbage can that was filled with concrete. Another time a pregnant girl was hit by a stray bullet. Life in Los Angeles ...

I worked the Sunday through Thursday schedule. On weekends I would do my weekly pilgrimage to Golden Apple Comics on Melrose Avenue to get my weekly stash. One Saturday in August, not long before I had to return to school, I walked in to the comic store, through the metal detector and right into the surprised arms of Michael Jackson.

Black drain-pipe pants, red waist-coat jacket with gold epaulets, the black hat, aviator sunglasses and the eerily uncomfortable white surgical mask, he paused after we bumped chests, recoiled and said a quick, "sorry", his voice that faint baby's breath timber, otherworldly, but oddly recognizable.

I kept my cool. In Hollywood, you have to just accept that incredibly wealthy misanthropic legends walk among you. Legends who go to comic bookstores, surrounded by security. Security and about a half-dozen preteen-aged children, all boys. None were celebrities, at least none that I recognized. Macaulay Culkin was nowhere to be seen ...

He's been canonized a saint, but I think he was a sinner, a tragic figure.

The photographer David LaChapelle created this image of MJ and now it's been reproduced as a graffito poster on abandoned buildings and walls in Los Angeles. My brother Alan took this picture. It’s part of a gallery of images he’s captured on walks during his lunch break.

Morning Round-up

Google's work week ended on a sour note as the Justice Department urged the courts to curtail the search giant's publishing ambitions ...

But in its app war with Apple, Google appeared to gain the upper hand when it revealed documents that showed Apple felt Google's app could usurp the iPhone ...

Pakistan police raided a merc compound and confiscated weapons. The mercs were hired to protect U.S. embassy staff, but as the world wearies of American "adventurism" and its reliance on overpaid, yet unsupervised soldiers for hire, we will probably see more of this ...

Morning Round-up

America's missile shield about-face took a stranger note today with NATO asking Russia to link its missile systems with Europe and the U.S. ...

Stanley Crouch makes a great argument on the Daily Beast that Jimmy Carter's accusations of racism deflect from larger issues ...

Google's problems with publishers looks might get more difficult as the U.S. files its concerns with the federal courts ...

And Bill O'Reilly shocks the lefty blogosphere by seeming to endorse the public option in healthcare ...

Morning Round-up

Indonesia brings the pain to terrorists responsible for July's hotel bombing while the U.S. uses drones to bring the smackdown to Al Qaeda operatives in Pakistan ...

In a decision that should get Dick Cheney back on the air again, the WSJ reports that the U.S. is shelving its European missile shield plan ...

Sad, but probably most accurate analysis in recent days as to why Google can't save local journalism ...

And a fond farewell to Mary Travers of Peter, Paul and Mary. They had lots of hits, but my childhood echoes with the sound of Puff, the Magic Dragon ...

News Without Context ...

... great commentary on how credibility has taken a hit in recent years from Neiman Reports contributor Matt Thompson.

Morning Round-up

Venezuela wants to join the nuclear club. Following Hugo Chavez' recent arms deal with Russia, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warns of a South American arms race. It just keeps gettin' better down there ...

From the "No, duh!" department: Jimmy Carter says race an issue in the Right's opposition to Obama. Really? Nooooo ...!!!!

It will be interesting to see if the Treasury's new rules to help people restructure home loans will work ...

Facebook is to get voice chat. That's either brilliant, or one of the most annoying ideas ever ...

And Come Fly With Me takes on new meanings with the latest airline crew drug bust ...

Taming the beasts ...

Two cool concepts for tracking content have popped up at the TechCrunch50 conference: Insttant and Thoora.

Insttant is looking to let people track multiple Twitter and social networking feeds in real time, while Thoora is looking to "aggregate news stories from blogs, traditional media, and tweets, and groups them into "story clouds" ..."

Morning Round-Up

Because nothing is more comforting than knowing that two emerging nuclear powers are having border issues: Tension Over India-China Border from Al Jazeera English ...

LocalBacon launched a service for employers where candidates have to PAY to apply for a job. Interesting business model during a recession ...

As more and more countries begin to tax the wealthy in a more equitable fashion, the well-to-do whine because they've "lost untold billions."

And New York City's Muslims would like to see two of their major holidays recognized by the school district. This is an interesting story and sure to polarize ...

From the "'bout effin' time!" folder ...

Google announces revenue-sharing program with publishers ...

"They were all my friends, and they died" ... Jim Carroll R.I.P.

During the height of yuppie heroin chic hysteria in late-90s, I had the privilege of interviewing punk poet and rocker Jim Carroll while I was with People magazine.

Carroll by that time had become a kind of alternative culture man of letters, an East Village godfather of alienation, and he spoke at length of the awful joys of junkie life and his utter disdain of the speedball (a lethal mix of heroin and cocaine), like "putting apple sauce on a really good pork chop," he complained, quoting a line from one of his books, "Forced Entries".

Still, this was the guy who formed a band on Patty Smith's suggestion and put out two true classics, the brilliant coming of age novel, "The Basketball Diaries" and the classic New York punk album, Catholic Boy.

Carroll died of a heart attack in Sept. 11 ...

the lower-case war on terror continues

Two interesting stories today. One, a terrorist on the FBI's most wanted list gets killed in a raid attributed to the U.S. while "foreign troops", possibly French, raided a Somali stronghold. Both France and the U.S deny any involvement ...

Morning Round-Up

Russia loans Chavez billions for arms ...

William Cohan chronicles the meeting where Wall Street's BSD's could have stopped the economic meltdown ...

Gibson Zoot Suit SG is guitar porn at its best ...

.. special thanks to Guitarz, the guitar blog for bringing this to our attention. This SG looks like one of those giant multi-colored lollipops they sell in the candy stores on Main Street at Disneyland. And I mean that in a good way …

I also like the understated “natural” version …

{{{Sigh}}} … guitars are purty …

Morning Round-up

Wow, I guess this means far fewer man-made islands in the Gulf: Dubai Wealth Fund Under Stress reports Al Jazeera English ...

Also, numbers of the Teabagger convention in DC seemed to have been exaggerated. I'm shocked. Shocked, I tell you ...

The Obama Administration is going to do something shocking in the annals of international diplomacy: It's going to speak with Iran's leadership. Why, that's just crazy talk ...

... and a 12-year-old child-bride died while attempting to give birth. A concept on its face that is depressing, horrifying and just morally wrong.