BrainMunchie.com

I read this article over at eurweb.com about the record setting pace of African American men being jailed. Here is an excerpt from the whole article published here:

Blacks and Hispanics are the primary people being jailed. Currently, Black men, who are roughly 6 and a-half percent of the nation’s total population, represented 37 percent of those behind bars.

African American males have an incarceration arte of 4.8 percent compared to 1.9 percent for Hispanics and 0.7 percent for whites. Amazingly, 11 percent of all Black males between 25 and 34 are in prison.

The primary culprits are the so-called war on drugs and tougher (some critics argue extreme) sentencing laws. The U.S. has more of its citizens in prison than any other nation in the world.

Communist-led China, for example, has a population nearly four times larger than that of the U.S. but has fewer people in prison. Some critics, such as the Drug War Chronicle - from Drug War Chronicle, Issue #492, 6/29/07 - are now blaming a “prison-industrial complex” which benefits and profits from the growing incarcerations..

Remember when the US was considered a model for countries all over the world? When are those days coming back?

Most people know that I love gadgets and tech stuff, but only when it’s a sensible idea. As for now, I’ve yet to be able to understand the hype around Apple new’s iPhone (by the way, the pic was jacked from apple.com). Is this phone truly the innovative technical phenomenon that everyone thinks it is? Or is the extreme interest in the phone due mostly to an aggressive advertising campaign that makes you feel like crap if you don’t have the latest and greatest multi-tasking phone? Well, a lot of everything in this world is merely just ad agencies doing what they do best… using psychology and sociology to beat you in the head and create the unnecessary desire have a bunch of crap we really don’t need.

I think the phone is overpriced hype mainly because none of the features are new, they’re just attractively packaged (with a extra $200-$300 price tag). In a world where the Treo already has a touch screen, the Blackberry is the standard of business communications because of its unparalleled email capabilities, micro-storage cards are getting bigger and more prevalent, and Motorola and LG have a huge stash of camera phones that play and download all kinds of music, video, internet sites and images, I just don’t see why the iPhone is as important a gadget as it is. I was watching 11Alive news this evening and the Consumer Reports segment gave the following information:

• The parts on the phone cost Apple about $265 to make.
• This includes a $15 chip board and $27 display
• On the price of a $600 phone, thats $335 profit.

This shows that over half of each sale goes to Apple. All I can say is that I’m extremely happy with my Blackberry Pearl (much cheaper and extremely efficient). I’m not knockin’ the hustle, but at the same time I’m not going to be hustled just to be cool. If you are interested in the phone, I suggest waiting until the price goes down and all the bugs are fixed. Just my thoughts on the whole situation.

I don’t know if you guys remember me speaking about it, but the water situation over seas is crazy. When AFAR was preparing for our Africa Tour, the first thing everyone would say is “Don’t drink the water!”. We even heard that from people that had been no further than the East Point / College Park border, much less out of the country (I know that was a cheap shot, lol, please forgive me…). Most of the hotels we stayed in had some kind of issue with drinking and bath water being unclean or not sufficiently sanitized.

The organization Blue Planet Run (a race across the world to bring awareness to the state of the world’s drinking water) teamed up with AFAR to create the soundtrack for the run. AFAR keyboardist DoronJazz is a part of the relay team as well. Check out the video below and tell me what you think.

Genarlow Wilson is still in Jail

Scooter Libby never went.

What’s the difference?  Can someone explain that to me?