Should President Obama use a second term to end the War on Drugs?
“If black America still considers racism a pressing issue, it is primarily because of the strained relationship between young black men and police forces. In my twelve years of writing on race and racism, I have seen that the police are the keystone of modern black alienation, to an extent rarely clear to outsiders. The massive number of black men in prison, ringingly decried in widely read books such as Michelle Alexander’s hit The New Jim Crow, stands as a resonant rebuke to all calls to “get past racism” or stress optimism. Persistence and hard work does work for many black men—but, against the background of these other systemic injustices, their achievements are often thought of as the products of luck (not least by themselves). The primary reason for this ongoing conflict between blacks and the police is the War on Drugs.
- John McWhorter “End the Drug War, Mr. President”
This article is part of a TNR symposium on Obama’s Second Term. Visit TNR.com for continued coverage this week.
Photo courtesy of Time
It’s okay to run screaming,
streaming away from everything
never forgotten or moved past,
allow yourself time to cry
and feel like dying before you
regain the strength to fly above
all of these blackened weights
holding you to the waterlogged
ground, bogged down by years
of empty, hopeless tears embedded
deeply in fears of feeling.
Run faster, past dreams of futures,
sure never to exist in existential
realities, fueled by fading fantasies.
what I like most about this outfit, are the pink socks! so awesome…
(Source: thomasfleming)
Margaret Bourke-White
Man Working Atop a 32 Foot High Replica of The Empire State Building, New York, 1939
It’s International Women’s Day. Happy ceiling-shattering.
Dinoflagellates are single-celled organisms that flash on contact and shine their brightest at night after a bright sunny day. A tablespoon of water from Mosquito Bay in Puerto Rico can contain as many as 2,000 cells of the dinoflagellate Pyrodinium bahamense, or “whirling fire creature of the Bahamas.”
Photo by Denis
Bulling Shoes
Every once in a while, I like to bull my shoes. Bulling refers to a shoe polishing technique that results in a high, glossy shine. In the States, they call it spit shining.
To bull shoes, start by stripping down the leather with Lexol leather cleaner. This will give you a clean, new surface to work on. Next, go through the regular routines for any polishing technique - apply leather conditioner, buff them out, let them sit for thirty minutes, and then apply cream polish before buffing them out again.
Now, to get the high shine, you need to use a bit of wax and water. I find Saphir Pate de Luxe Wax to be the most effective. Wrap a soft cotton cloth around your fingers, swipe it in the wax, and then dab it in some water (or, if you’re an old-school American, lightly spit on it). Lightly rub this on your shoes using small, circular motions. Keep doing this until you feel the paste starting to get dry, and then add a minimal amount of water again. After a while, you’ll find that a mirror shine will start to appear, and the leather will feel very glassy and smooth. The key here is to only use a minimum amount of polish and water. You don’t want too much of either. Do this to the toe caps, heel cup, and back quarters, but not to any areas where the leather bends. If you do, you’ll get unsightly cracks in the wax.
The whole process takes a long time. Three to five hours, depending on how well you work and how finely grained the leather is. This isn’t something you want to do if you just want smart looking shoes; you have to enjoy the process. I recommend putting on some music, sitting back, and just enjoying yourself.
Above are three photos. I shot the top one at night, right after I finished bulling my left shoe and before I started on my right. You can see the effect it has when these two are placed side by side. The other two photos I took in the morning, after I was done polishing both of them.