Best Use of Metallica’s ‘One’ in a Public Radio Story


Photo by Daniella Zalcman under CC license.

“Chronically Homeless See New Woes in New Orleans”, by Joseph Shapiro.

I heard it this morning around 3:15 a.m. when I flipped over my Zune and tuned to NPR after being awoken by violent sounds from a movie playing too loud in the next room. These are the stories that actually play three times here on the West Coast, where morning edition begins at 2 a.m. and in some cases, runs — or rather loops — until 9. When I lived in Chicago I thought it was cool to hear the BBC after getting home on a late night, but now, in LA, we’ve got tomorrow’s news at 2 a.m.

(The unfortunate consequences for an NPR junkie like myself are that Renee Montagne’s voice begins to randomly say “good morning” while your sleep and, at times I find I secretly wish a lengthy spell of laryngitis on the likes of Steve Julian. Sorry Steve, you’re not as annoying as Larry Mantle, just speak a bit faster if you could.)

OK, I digress. The point of this post is to highlight this great clip from another excellent Morning Edition piece from New Orleans. NPR had the best coverage during the Katrina disaster and they continue to document the aftermath better than anyone — check their Katrina & Recovery page.

In this particular story, in spite of the vivid and blighted landscape I was aurally transported to at 3:15 a.m., it totally made my day to hear 38-year-old Benjamin Parnell, a blind New Orleanian, laughing and — longing for his guitar — belting out the ever-powerful machine-gun lyrical climax of Metallica’s “One” a capella:”Landmine has taken my sight/Taken my speech/Taken my hearing/Taken my arms/Taken my legs/Taken my soul/Left me with life in hell…

The kicker, NPR followed through in providing the gritty, heavy metal context. Kudos to reporter Joseph Shapiro and his producer(s). Listen to the excerpt below. You can read / listen to the entire piece here.

In Nevada, Obama Manages to Stay Ahead by ‘Losing’

obama wins delegates in  nevada but loses

After the past two presidential elections, the media should know better than to call a winner based purely on popular vote, especially in the national — electoral college scene and in states with weighted caucuses. According to both the Nation and the data at WaPo, Obama had 11 first place finished and 6 second place. The reverse for Clinton out of Nevada’s 16 counties and one independent city.

Will it matter in the end who gets 13 delegates and who gets 12? Most likely not, but apparently the delegates will not be officially tallied/ appropriated by the state democratic party until mid-April.

Either way, it appears Obama will remain a media underdog despite remaining in a statistical dead heat w/ Clinton.

Exciting.

(photo: Las Vegas Sun/Steve Marcus/Reuters)

Library of Congress Floods the Commons with Photos via Flickr

General view of one of the classification yards of the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad, Chicago, Ill. Dec. 1942
From Library of Congress’
Flickr. Jack Delano. General view of one of the classification yards of the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad, Chicago, Ill. 1942 Dec.

This is GREAT news, the Library of Congress today announced a pilot project with Flickr to populate an account with millions of images marked “No known copyright restrictions.” From the Library’s blog:

The project is beginning somewhat modestly, but we hope to learn a lot from it. Out of some 14 million prints, photographs and other visual materials at the Library of Congress, more than 3,000 photos from two of our most popular collections are being made available on our new Flickr page, to include only images for which no copyright restrictions are known to exist.

Visit the Flickr Commons project.

Kucinich: Short Man Out

dennis kucinich and wife no las vegas msnbcSeems unfair and silly to see NBC and the Nevada Supreme Court shut Dennis Kucinich out of tonight’s debate in Las Vegas, in a last-minute appeal, no less.

Kucinich always has good things to say and is a refreshing voice with (in many cases) a healthy, progressive perspective. But as the trend has been — super-hot wife or not — dude is too short.

Perhaps this is another reason why you need Perot- or Bloomberg-like billions to get the media establishment accept you as a third-party candidate.

If you’re like me and don’t have cable — click here to watch a live stream (no ads even) of MSNBC’s debate online, moderated by Brian Williams. So far, pretty interesting.