Song of the Day (12/30/08)

Redemption Song (Ben Tan Cover)

Old pirates, yes, they rob i;
Sold I to the merchant ships,
Minutes after they took i
From the bottomless pit.
But my hand was made strong
By the and of the almighty.
We forward in this generation
Triumphantly.
Wont you help to sing
These songs of freedom? -
cause all I ever have:
Redemption songs;
Redemption songs.

Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery;
None but ourselves can free our minds.
Have no fear for atomic energy,
cause none of them can stop the time.
How long shall they kill our prophets,
While we stand aside and look? ooh!
Some say its just a part of it:
Weve got to fulfil de book.

Wont you help to sing
These songs of freedom? -
cause all I ever have:
Redemption songs;
Redemption songs;
Redemption songs.
---
/guitar break/
---
Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery;
None but ourselves can free our mind.
Wo! have no fear for atomic energy,
cause none of them-a can-a stop-a the time.
How long shall they kill our prophets,
While we stand aside and look?
Yes, some say its just a part of it:
Weve got to fulfil de book.
Wont you help to sing
Dese songs of freedom? -
cause all I ever had:
Redemption songs -
All I ever had:
Redemption songs:
These songs of freedom,
Songs of freedom.

Ben Tan = Best DJ In Boston

Étudiant co-founder is the very best radio DJ in all of Boston. He's filling in on 88.9. Tonight, he was DJing the Secret Spot, a slowjamz/r&b program which features shout-outs. Yeah, he gave a few out to Wakefield people. Awesomeness. This proves the already established theory that Ben Tan is, in fact, everywhere.

A Visit from the Co-Founder

Twas the night before Christmas
And all through the site
Étudiants' laziness
Had reached its height.
Two news posts, then YouTube?
A mention of me?
Nothing on President
Bob Mugabe?

It's called newsmap, buddy.
I sent you the link.
Refer to it
So your website won't stink.
But slow days on this blog
Aren't anything new.
Tonight everybody
Has something to do.

But since I'm a nice guy
I came back tonight
To bring back some quality
To my old site.
No one in my basement
But me and some mouses
So I'll kill some time
By going to some houses.

Already had dinner,
Can't unwrap 'til twelve
So into your psyches
This poem will delve.
Acting like Santa,
Put in Chris's sock
The mic that Bill Hicks used
To suck Satan's cock.

As for my friend Fallon,
I went to his place
And dropped off a fancy new
Electric bass.
To reach Hurton's place
I traveled through fog
To drop off some leashes
That fit on a dog.

He's a dog sitter
So give him your cash.
I can't do it.
Dogs give me a rash.
I gave Ryan Suh
A new tennis racket
That surely would get him
Into the top bracket.

Did you know Liz
Has a dog named Bichon?
I gave her a scooper
For poop on the lawn,
The living room, bed,
Kitchen, yard, and basement...
Liz just wonders
Where her bass guitar went.

And as we all know,
Glen cannot get laid
So I gave my friend
An inflatable maid.
I went down his chimney
And sneezed from the dust.
Too bad for me
That this trip was a bust!

Glen had been sleeping,
But woke up, said, "Hey!
Completely forgot
A new song of the day!"

So he went to the hallway,
Noticed something queer.
Saw me, asked
"What the hell you doing here?"

"Just dropping a gift off,"
I said with a smile.
Then he says,
"You haven't posted for a while.
You need to come back, Ben!
The site has sucked wind
Ever since you went
And left it behind!"

"I can't come back, Glen.
That would be so lame.
I'm in college, 'Wakefield'
Is in the site's name!
I live there no longer.
The city's my home.
I can't keep on writing
For a high school tome."

Glen replied to me,
"Yet you have the gall
To come to my house
With a big blow-up doll."
And I said, "Come on man,
You guys don't need me."
"That's not what you said
Back in stanza three!"

"Okay, so I lie,
But it's friendly advice!
All so you won't make the
Same mistake twice.
I know you have ideas to
Make this site great!"
Then remembered 2.0
And said "Oh, wait."

Then I told Glen,
"Look on the bright side for once.
Your numbers are decent,
God knows you're no dunce.
You and the others
Can get what you want
And make '09 the year
Of the Étudiant!

There's plenty of talent.
It hasn't been harnessed.
Guns haven't been slung yet.
Swords haven't been varnished."
Maganzini told me
"You suck at rhyming!"
"Hey, give me credit for
Rhythmic timing!"

As I headed home, heard,
"Will you post again?"
And then replied, "Only
Every now and then.
Étudiant's yours now.
Update it with care."
And then I left his house
And messed up my hair.

So let us look forward
To 2009
And end this poem,
Which has been so asinine.
Hope you all have
A fun-filled Christmas night.
Happy holidays, y'all,
And visit my new site!

Étudiant Election Special

Ben Tan's Radio Report on Drug War

Click here to listen: http://nesportsnews.com/drugwar.mp3 

Transcript:

Ben Tan: Government policies of the last decades has treated drug use as a crime. The office of national
drug control policy says in this year alone our government has spent more than $40
billion on the drug war. Every president since Nixon has declared support for punishing
drug users. Others, however, say that this persecution should end. Professor
Jeffrey Miron is Harvard University's senior economics lecturer and the author
of the 2004 book Drug War Crimes. Professor Miron says that the War on Drugs, for all
its good intentions, has actually lead to more malice.

Professor Miron: I think it's done enormous harm and very little good, if any. It contributes
to crime, it contributes to corruption, it costs substantial resources for prisons, police, and
prosecutors. It undermines civil liberties, it fosters terrorism and insurrection in other
countries and at best it has a modest impact on drug use. And further, it's not obvious
that reducing drug use is a necessarily always a good thing. Just as some people use
alcohol in ways that is perfectly fine for them and others, many people can use
drugs in ways that are harmless or even beneficial for themseleves without harming
others and so we shouldn't assume that reduced drug use is an appropriate goal.

Ben Tan: Professor Miron published his book in 2004 at a time when almost
1/2 million Americans were in prison for drug offensives. Randall Sheldon
is a professor of criminal justice at the University of Nevada in Los Vegas.
He sees the escalation of drug arrests since the 80s as a cause of jail
overcrowding.

Professor Sheldon: To explain either jail or prison overcrowding or both, you
first have to consider something very simple, very elementary: a jail or a
prison is overcrowded for one of two reasons. 1) Too many coming in the
front door and not enough leaving the back door. So what we've seen
since the early 1980s is roughly a five fold increase (500% increase) in
the nation's prisons and jails in terms of the rate of incarceration. For just
drug arrests alone, it is about 1100% increase in drug arrests. So we just
put two and two together. And most of these arrests are for small time
traffickers, possession. The biggest drug, of course, would be marijuana.
So without a doubt, this has been what is happening.

Tan: Opponents of the drug war say it has also caused a greater
issue: racial profiling. A government studied revealed that at the end of
2004, of the almost 250,000 drug offenders in state prisons, 45% were
black and 20% were hispanic. Professor Sheldon says this doesn't
reflect the amount of drug use among races.

Sheldon: Several organizations do surveys of people, both adults and
juveniles, on the incidence of their use of illegal drugs. And every one
of these surveys since they started doing them back in the 1980s
have shown that their is no significant difference between the races.
Some surveys show whites using these drugs more often than
either African Americans or Latinos. Police departments have
admitted that "yeah we've gone into these neighborhoods (meaning
African American or Hispanic) because they are easier to find. There
is easier to find drug use going on in there 'cause they are done
mostly out on the streets, in the alleys and so forth. Whereas in
the suburbs, they are being used behind clothes doors, in people's
backyards, and even businesses and college fraternaties and sororities
and dormitories. That's what we have.

Tan: Opponents of the drug war also cite the toll it takes on the
government's budget. Professor Miron explains how an end to drug
prohibition could benefit the nation's financial situation.

Miron: We currently spend something like $35, 40 billion dollars a year
on the arrest, prosecution, and incarceration of people on drug
related charges. So we would say that those are sources for other uses
if we were to legalize drugs. We also are not collecting tax revenues
(the taxes that would presumably be levied on legal drugs) and so that
means taxes on other things have to be higher for any given level of
goverment expenditure. So the budgetary situation for the U.S overall
would improve by somewhere between $50 and 70 billion dollars if
we were to legalize and tax...tax and regulate the currently illegal
drugs. It's not going to fundamentally change anything about the current
financial crisis or anything like that. It's not going to fundamentally change
the overall path of the U.S economy, but it's not trivial either. There are
many government programs which are far smaller than $50 billion or 70
billion dollars a year so it would make a noticable difference. In
addition to all these other consequences that don't show up in the
government budgets like reduced crime.

Tan: Despite all the arguments against drug prohibiton, the cause of these
drug war opponents may seem lost in today's political climate. After all
how else can the government send the message that drugs are dangerous?
Professor Miron has a suggestion...

Miron: I think the best we can do with respect to drugs is to have them
be legal and then possibly, although not necessarily but possibly, have
relatively mild policies in a legal environment in an attempt to nudge
people against the most irresponsible uses of drugs. One example, which
is almost certainly desirable, would be analogous to drunk driving laws
would be driving under the influence of marijuana or heroin or anything
else. Another type of policy that most countries use in conjunction
with alcohol is minimum purchase ages. So that would certainly be
thinkable, defensable, plausible in the case of legalized drugs.

Tan: Such reform may seem radical next to the policies of the Republicans
and Democrats. Even the reform Question 2 on the Massachusetts
Ballot may bring is a far cry from a nation in which all drugs are legal.
In 2005, a goverment survery said that more than 100 million Americans
twelve and over have used an illicit substance at least once. The
dangerous consequences of drug use can not be denied. A 2000
American Medical Association study says that 17 million Americans
died from illicit drug use that year. How will America's future leader
address the problem? Republican Presidential candidate Senator
John McCain is a strong supporter of the war on drugs. On the other
hand, Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama supports
rehab rather than prison for first time non-violent offenders. This is
still a far cry from the libertarian view that all drug use should
be legal. So how should government approach the drug problem?
The writer H.L Mencken once said "For every complex problem
there is an easy answer and it is wrong." For You Are Here
this is Ben Tan.

Ben Tan's First Radio Report On China

The following is a ten minute newscast done by Étudiant co-founder Ben Tan for WERS 88.9, Emerson College's radio station. It aired on Sunday, October 5 at 7:00 AM.

Click here to listen.

Peace out

"Enough about me," I remarked on the first post of the Wakefield Étudiant as we know it. It's never been about me, up to my final post. It's about the many characters that have made my run here so enjoyable.
Before anyone else, there was Chris Morrill. Thank or blame him, because this news blog was his idea, after a particularly bad Spin issue. Me, I was just along for the ride.
For a while now, the driver of that vehicle has been another talented friend of mine, the amazing Glen Maganzini. He's been my closest collaborator on this project for almost two years, and despite our many differences, his contributions have been key to making the site the great thing it is. This blog was once a one man show, now an exciting collection of personalities.
Along the way, we picked up plenty more riders, among them a legend, a musical genius, a fan boy, a straight A student, a former spammer, and a talented web designer. I thank every one of them for giving this site something new. The one-man band thing won't always work, but everyone loves an all-star jam.
Believe me, this website is in good hands. It'll be a little different, a little less lo-fi, but still independent, informative, and entertaining. In short, I'm no longer needed, so my work here is done. Good night, good luck, and goodbye.

Ben's last Olympics update

The other night, NBC ran a cute piece toward the end of its prime-time broadcast—which means it probably aired somewhere around midnight—about how people are battling sleep deprivation thanks to how late we’re all staying up to watch the Olympics each night.

Don't wag your finger at me, evil corporation. I'm in bed by 1.

Ben's last Myanmar update

Aug. 21 (Bloomberg) -- The party of Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi is ``very concerned'' about her health after she failed to show up yesterday for a meeting with a United Nations envoy, said National League for Democracy spokesman Nyan Win.

Like any enemy of the Myanmar state, she apparently doesn't get much health care...

The junta stopped allowing her physician to visit her home for monthly medical checkups earlier this year, NLD member Soe Aung said by telephone today from Thailand.

``It's been quite a long time since her doctor visited her,'' said Soe Aung, who was elected as a lawmaker in 1990 elections that were rejected by the junta when the NLD won. ``She's not getting proper care.''

Ben's last Iraq update

That's what happened to Horatio Sanz!

Iraq and the U.S. pushed close to a deal Thursday setting a course for American combat troops to pull out of major Iraqi cities by next June, with a broader withdrawal from the long and costly war by 2011.

Celebrate good times...in three years!

Conventions don't give candidates bounce

Washington – The bunting’s hung. The podiums are almost finished. As the two big parties that govern America ready for their quadrennial conventions, the question on the minds of many political pros is … well, OK, it’s who the vice presidential picks will be. But they’re also wondering something else: What’s happened to the bounce?

Forget the bounce. Where's the beef? I don't care if my burger has big buns, I like meat!

Ben's last Darfur update

Dongola, Sudan - Ask Abbas Adam Ibrahim whether he is Arab or African, and he does not quite know how to respond. "Both," the Sudanese man says, after slight hesitation.

Mr. Adam comes from the Fur tribe, of Darfur – commonly understood to be an African tribe, under persecution by Sudan's Arab-dominated government.

Last month, the International Criminal Court's chief prosecutor indicted Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir for genocide and crimes against humanity in Darfur, saying "evidence shows that al-Bashir masterminded and implemented a plan to destroy in substantial part the Fur, Masalit, and Zaghawa groups, on account of their ethnicity."

But for Sudanese Arabs and Africans coexisting peacefully outside Darfur, these racial distinctions are not so clear.

I never saw Darfur as simply racial conflict. For several reasons, the Sudanese government would rather wipe out a region than help it.

Obama: McCain "just doesn't get it"

Sen. Barack Obama says his Republican rival Sen. John McCain is out of touch and "just doesn't get it."

Obama's argument sprang from comments made by McCain Wednesday during an interview with Politico's Jonathan Martin and Mike Allen in which the Arizona senator said he wasn't sure of how many houses he and his wife, Cindy, own.

"I think -- I'll have my staff get to you," McCain said.

"It's condominiums where -- I'll have them get to you," he added.

Obama, whom McCain has tried to portray as an arugula-nibbling, fancy-berry-tea-quaffing elitist, used the gaffe to further his argument that McCain is out of touch with average Americans.

"If you don't know how many houses you have, then it's not surprising that you might think the economy is fundamentally strong," Obama shot back during a campaign event at John Tyler Community College in Virginia.

"But if you're like me and you've got one house," he continued, "or you're like the millions of people who are struggling right now to keep up with their mortgage so that they don't lose their home, you might have a different perspective."

The Obama campaign thinks the gaffe may mark a "metaphorical moment" in the campaign -- on par with notorious presidential election gaffes like in 1992 when it was widely reported, perhaps unfairly, that President George H.W. Bush didn't know what a grocery scanner was or in this past year when former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards was busted for getting a pair of $400 haircuts.

"They think it's going to have that kind of power," ABC News chief Washington correspondent George Stephanopoulos said on "World News With Charles Gibson." "The McCain team says, 'No way.'"

Way.

Wakefield may receive less aid

WAKEFIELD — It appears that state revenues for the current fiscal year may be even less than originally expected, according reports town officials are getting from Beacon Hill and that could mean less aid for Wakefield.
The Tri-Board met for an hour last night at Town Hall and discussed the worsening financial outlook.

Like I said last night, things always get worse before they get better...right?

Ben and Glen Talk About É2.0

Part One



Part Two

August 20 News

Bolt breaks record

And now, a success story.

BEIJING -- There will always be another. This is the eternal lesson of track and field. On a sweltering August night 12 years ago, Michael Johnson lashed the 200-meter world record to his back and seemed to drag it deep into the future. He ran 19.32 seconds, so fast that young men accepted that they would not see the record broken again in their lifetimes.

Usain Bolt was 9 years old on that night, growing up tall and skinny -- "I was tall when I was little,'' says Bolt -- in Trelawny Parish on the north shore of Jamaica, an hour's drive from the vacation resorts of Montego Bay and Ocho Rios. He loved to play cricket with his friends, and if he was talented, he was also a little lazy.

But one afternoon two years later, he ran too fast at a school field day and found himself on the track team, because Jamaica will compel a sprinter to sprint. Somewhere a clock began ticking, counting down the life of Johnson's record, unseen and unknown, but inexorable.

At the age of 12, Bolt ran 52 seconds flat for 400 meters on a grass track in Manchester, Jamaica. He won the world junior 400-meter title at age 16, beating athletes who were four years older. He was impossibly precocious. "We knew what was coming,'' said Bert Cameron, a Jamaican national coach who was also the 400-meter world champion in 1983.

On Wednesday night in the Olympic Stadium called the Bird's Nest, Bolt ran 19.30 seconds to take down Johnson's world record.

MLB players to go to Olympics?

MINNEAPOLIS -- If the quality of play in Olympic baseball competition was consistently more suited to a beer league than to Beijing, if the value of an entire sport depended solely on the names in that day's lineup, if someone was trying to pass off the worst-of-the-worst as the best-of-the-best, then dropping baseball beginning with the 2012 London Games might make some sense.

But Minnesota Twins manager Ron Gardenhire doesn't buy that as a reason the International Olympic Committee might have for eliminating his favorite sport.

"Why is that their concern? What does that have to do with it?'' Gardenhire asked before his team's game against the Oakland Athletics at the Metrodome. "Olympics are about competing against each other and the joy of sports. It's about countries getting away from everything else. Why does it have to be `the best?' I liked it when it was all college kids. I liked all sports when they were college kids. The best moment we've had, with our hockey team: College kids. They beat the Russians [at Lake Placid in 1980]. To me, to say that, that's a weak excuse.''

A Miracle On Ice trumps a Dream Team, as far as Gardenhire is concerned. He admits, however, that he is biased toward baseball as an international sport. He manages a team with five players on the active roster who have participated on national teams. The Twins organization sent 15 players to the World Baseball Classic in 2006, and Gardenhire, who has a German birth certificate, occasionally jokes about coaching Deutscheland in international competition.

"What's sad is, as it's gaining as a world game, we're taking baseball out,'' Gardenhire said. "A lot of countries are picking baseball up and playing. We've got our people going around the world and teaching and helping them start programs. So now when it's finally growing and being accepted by other countries, it's being shut down.''

The IOC, in voting in 2005 to drop baseball and softball after the Beijing Games, also cited the costs of constructing ballparks at Olympic sites and the limited interest in the sports in Europe, Africa and other nations. The topic is scheduled to be revisited in fall 2009, with an eye on the 2016 Games.

"I really find it hard to believe that we can't have baseball but we can have BMX bicycle riding,'' said Twins shortstop Adam Everett, a member of the U.S. squad that took gold at the 2000 Games in Sydney. "Especially going to the Olympics, winning a gold medal and seeing that the stadium was full, I mean, in Australia. That was every game we played, and they're not known that well for baseball.

"It's disappointing. It's America's pastime, but you look and it's becoming global, with Japan and China. The Latin countries, that's their main sport. We've got the World Baseball Classic and that's similar to the Olympics -- but it's not the Olympics. You're talking about representing your country with all the other athletes, and wearing red, white and blue, and maybe getting a chance to win a medal? That's cool, and for people to not have that opportunity, that kind of stinks.''

Everett and his teammates captured gold thanks to Milwaukee pitcher Ben Sheets' three-hit shutout of Cuba. Three years later, current Twins Joe Mauer, Jesse Crain and Mike Lamb were among the U.S. group that failed to qualify in Panama for the 2004 Athens Games. Justin Morneau, the 2006 American League MVP, played for Canada's national teams in 2001 qualifying and in the 2006 World Baseball Classic. Now, they all click on the Beijing blog of Twins farmhand Brian Duensing, on loan to Team USA from Rochester (AAA).

"Baseball is one of the most popular sports in the world -- on our side of the ocean, at least,'' said Crain, who pitched for Morneau's Canadian team in '06 (he was born in Toronto in 1981 while his American parents were there for business). "From what it sounds like, it just doesn't seem like it's that popular in London and London is where the next Olympics is, right? Any time you play a sport, you wish it was recognized at the Olympics. But there's not much we can do about it, other than promote it and try to get it back in there for 2016.''

Sending major league players, somehow, some way, would give the IOC the glamour and gate attractions it might crave to reinstate baseball as an official event.

I say forget about Olympic Baseball, and make Olympic Wushu a reality!

Ben does "Something" again

Rest in peace, LeRoi Moore