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Curtis Mayfield remembered

On August 13th 1990, Curtis Mayfield became paralyzed from the neck down, after stage lighting equipment fell on him at an outdoor concert at Wingate Field in Flatbush. This incident brought on his slow and harrowing demise which he endured with the dignity and the forbearance that we are accustomed to from CM. It’s a shame that…

La Fin du Monde

Given that these days it seems the world is going to hell in a handbasket, here’s an appropriately named beer to help ease the pain. I’m not a great fan of wheat beer (though I quite like the dark German variations) this trappist style brew from Quebec is a great all rounder balance-wise and is quite possibly…

Experience and its Modes: Reissued

It’s been brought to my attention that Experience and its Modes has been reissued with a preface by Paul Franco — see below. E+M is one of the most influential books across all genres to my thinking not to mention being one of the most entertaining. Dreadful new cover though . . . If you…

The people’s guitarist

Lovely article on the backdrop to Rory Gallagher’s legendary Irish Tour ’74. I have a sense that there has been a recent resurgence in Rory. Rory was at pains to point out he wasn’t active in any sense politically. But he felt very strongly that he should be allowed to play in Northern Ireland and the Republic…

Cigar packaging idiocy

City Cigar reports (with source document) on the Canadian Government’s white paper “Potential measures for regulating the appearance, shape and size of tobacco packages and of tobacco products.” (Can you imagine a box of Behike 52s in plain wrapping? — it’s absolute fucking nonsense). While I’m no fan of ubiquitous marketing and branding tripe, these proposed…

Luck and Learning to Make the Most of It

Here is Vernon Smith on Fortuna. Vernon very kindly wrote the preface to Propriety and Prosperity: New Studies on the Philosophy of Adam Smith. Some call it luck, others call it Providence, and that points to the mystery of the forces that shape us and that we shape—forces well beyond our comprehension.   Adam SmithBehavioral economicsEconomicsfortunaLuckProvidencesituated cognitionTheory…

Walker Percy Wednesday 96

Take Christians. I am surrounded by Christians. They are generally speaking a pleasant and agreeable lot, not noticeably different from other people—even though they, the Christians of the South, the U.S.A., the Western world have killed off more people in recent centuries than all other people put together. Yet I cannot be sure they don’t…