On Tuesday morning, SportsCenter’s Twitter account asked for followers to submit questions that they would want answered by Giants and Patriots players during the Super Bowl’s media day. I replied with a insightfully silly question: Who is your favorite ninja turtle and why?

I wasn’t expecting an answer, let alone an acknowledgement, but it turns out the social media folks at SportsCenter and ESPN were listening dutifully to the social conversation. Within an hour and a half of my Tweet, my question was chosen, a reporter on the ground asked the question to Patriots running back BenJarvus Green-Ellis, and the answer was taped, put online, and Tweeted out to me and the general public.

Think about those dynamics for a moment. Through following a brand on Twitter, I was able to connect with a major athlete about to play in the Super Bowl about a show we both watched as children. Now that’s successful social engagement.

And it certainly didn’t hurt the answer was pretty good (though the right answer is Leonardo – sorry BenJarvus):

artifice as vé·ri·té

so

just say how to make it right and i swear ————————————————-

]revisions and gaps in history[

you…. you still have all the answers.

Coming of age in metropolitan Washington DC in the late 90′s, I was fortunate enough to be a participant in and observant of the high water mark of the electronica scene in the area. Ushered in by Buzz and Yoshitoshi, the Washington EDM scene was marked by high-profile appearances while cultivating local talent in distinct sub-genres from deep house to jungle to psytrance.

Needless to say, I would be considered a part of (relatively speaking) the old guard of the electronica subculture, distinct from the developments of the last 10 years — most notably the rise of dubstep. Some of the older clique have viewed the popularity of dubstep as diluting the rest of the electronic scene while rewarding a form that is seen as more produced than created. However, having no distinct opinion and having never been to a dubstep show, I jumped at the opportunity to see the world-renowned Nero presented by Beats by Dre.

Within the confines of a cozy store in SoHo, I was one of approximately 100 individuals to enjoy an hour long set by Nero. The audience trended younger but was comprised of obvious fans of the music, meaning the atmosphere as well as the music had a noticeable bounce. While I was unfamiliar with a majority of the Nero catalog, the ambiance and acoustics harkened me back to headier days spent in lilliputian outposts filled with young rave acolytes and the requisite sensory overload.

While I place no intrinsic value on the craft of production compared to mixing or creating, I was impressed (and on some level, taken aback) by the more traditional skills of both members of Nero. The transitions, particularly on Innocence as well as the loopback of Promises throughout the set showed both members were capable of more refined mixing techniques. Combined with the energy of the music and crowd, the Nero show was one of the better I have been to in quite some time.

Of course, no night would be complete without a slightly embarrassing photograph of yours truly with the performers… and so:

An after-show photo with Nero. Note: I do not have eyes or a soul.

There continues to be very real and pervasive elements of racism and classism in the American justice system. Though elements of the law seem colorblind and judicious, the practice of policing, identifying, and punishing ‘criminal’ behavior have taken very serious racial undertones.

Criminal profiling is the process of using known principles of psychology and criminology to create the profile of a potential offender. That’s usually what you see when all the detectives of Law & Order: Criminal Intent get together and start putting pictures, pins, and evidence up on a cork board. There is little evidence that this criminal profiling is actually effective, as it mostly relies on common sense justifications. It is, nonetheless, a tactic that is used in police stations across the country.

The ugly stepsister of criminal profiling is racial profiling. On the surface, it seems to make sense. If reported suspects include a 5’4 white woman and a 6’2 black man, why would the police search for anyone else? Unfortunately, eyewitnesses are often incorrect and influenced by outside factors, and racial profiling can have damaging effects on those innocent people who “fit the profile.”

One of the biggest stories to hit the press in recent years occurred in a vibrant college town in Virginia. For over six years, a serial rapist haunted the town of Charlottesville, home of the University of Virginia. From 1997 to 2003, the police were unable to catch the man who raped at least six women, and devised a plan to acquire the DNA of every person who met the suspects profile. Unfortunately, the information was extremely limited: police had a series of sketches depicting very different people, with the only common denominator being the suspect was a black male:

They asked residents to come forward with the names of those who fit the composite sketches. Around 690 “candidates” surfaced in the investigation, mostly by neighbors who thought the men acted strangely or fit the profile, and at least 75 were added to the list due to their criminal histories. Immediately, 400 people were eliminated due to incarceration at the time of the attacks, or because their DNA samples were already in the database. That left just under 200 men on the list to be tested.

Offers tracked down 197 men and asked for a swab of their DNA, all but ten of them agreed. While everyone in the community wanted the serial rapist caught, not many Charlottesville and surrounding residents found the police methods to be effective, fair, or constitutional.

One of the ten people to refuse was a 27-year-old UVA graduate named Steven Turner who told the Washington Post, “The suspect is a black man, and he needs to be caught. But the way the police are conducting this investigation, [just] because the suspect is a black man, every black man is a suspect.”

While cases such as this aren’t commonplace, it still begs the question: does policing and criminology go too far? When viewing side-by-side images of the composite picture and the pictures of the potential suspects, many of them look nothing alike. In fact, in this particular case, the offender turned out to be a middle-aged, married man with a family who was not anything like the suspect envisioned by police and witnesses. Young Steven Turner had one thing in common with the offender: the color of his skin.

It cannot be understated that intentions of officers and lawmakers in these cases are generally pure, but there is too much room for subjectivity and violation of privacy that these methods of racial profiling typically go too far. In an area of the country still working to solve racial divides, these methods are especially unwise.

While Criminology in college classes often focuses on the statistics, the real-life practices are generally less objective. It is not clear where the discrepancy lies. The modal crimes include robberies and homicides, but the crimes that affect the livelihoods of the most people generally tend to be white-collar crimes, which are typically orchestrated by rich, white men.

Some specialists believe that there is a very serious case of systematic racism in the United States Judicial System. Bill Quigley provides a list of fourteen examples, the most serious being:

11. The US Bureau of Justice Statistics concludes that the chance of a black male born in 2001 of going to jail is 32% or 1 in three. Latino males have a 17% chance and white males have a 6% chance. Thus black boys are five times and Latino boys nearly three times as likely as white boys to go to jail.

12. So, while African American juvenile youth is but 16% of the population, they are 28% of juvenile arrests, 37% of the youth in juvenile jails and 58% of the youth sent to adult prisons. 2009 Criminal Justice Primer, The Sentencing Project.

Perhaps a widespread reformation of the entire judicial system is required to rid it of racial profiling and subsequently, disproportionate crime and punishment results. While things always work out in the end on a television show, the practices of the American justice system aren’t nearly as effective in real life.

It’s been a while since I’ve done something like this. Back when ProseBeforeHos got started in 2005, it existed as an outlet for personal musings without a direction or purpose. Up until 2008, we were lucky to get 100 hits a day.

With a little perseverance and a lot of internet addiction, ProseBeforeHos developed into 5 different sites that would form the PBH Network. By April 2010, we hit a new marker of over 2 million visitors in a month. This April, we surpassed 4 million visitors a month.

Needless to say, I never imagined this happening, as I had always thought that PBH would be a hobby-horse as I meandered through life. Now, PBH has become a full-time commitment, not only for me, but a couple of other people. Truth be told, it’s really intimidating and isolating, and I still haven’t found a way to explain what we do to others (what do you do when the most serious website you run is called ProseBeforeHos?).

I want to say thanks especially to Kit — the intrepid PBH co-founder, contributor, and all around tech wizard — for his help in this transformation, our fans and visitors for enjoying our content, and everyone else that’s been along for the ride. We have some really exciting things going on with PBH that we hope will improve the experience of using our sites and increase the community and caliber of the PBH Network. Thanks again everyone.

Always,
Alec

a soliloquy from the men behind the curtains to the collective:

sometimes you find the one, sometimes you give it up
sometimes you do get broke, sometimes you be on need
sometimes its whats up, sometimes you play the fool
so now we’re getting all this money
so now we’re getting all this love
so now we’re living with no regrets
as we get over our vain scenesteresses

You reap what you sow. Mostly with Scumbag Steve.

ill come back again
ill get money again
ill get funny again
and you’ll want me back again

finito mussolini

I wish I would have a real tragic love affair and get so bummed out that I’d just quit my job and become a bum for a few years, because I was thinking about doing that anyway.