Wonderland or Not » Money

Talk About Financial Jesus

cooper — Fri, 28 May 2010 04:27:52 +0000

A new movement called The All That Know Him Movement, otherwise known as how to make money with Jesus – 101, has begun. The beneficiary of this first round of their love and someone else’s money will be Stephen Baldwin.

All Who Know Him was conceived with the idea that the internet and social networks could be used as a platform to attract and inspire very large numbers of Christians to give very small gifts to single worthy cause

Focusing on Christian individuals who have suffered monetary loss and became news stories because of their Christian convictions. The first challenge was to construct a website to allow for fast an efficient electronic online gifting using Credit Cards and PayPal.

Mr. Baldwin is broke, according to some, because he is an extremely vocal Born Again Christian, and because of this can’t get work in the entertainment industry.

This might be old news to some, but I just saw this and it kind of blew me away, in a you gotta be kidding kind of way.

genius really

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Money Changes Everything On Old School Friday?

cooper — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 23:12:36 +0000

The theme this Old School Friday is “It’s All About the Money”. The “money” song bag is full of good songs. Here’s my angle.

Technically not about money Mockingbird went through many manifestations. To the best of my knowledge the authorship to the original lyrics is unknown. I didn’t discover designated original lyrics in my search, but that they morphed is not in doubt. Often listed as traditional folk, The Library of Congress has the sheet music to the song, the basic melody we hear today, copyrighted to Ruby and John Lomax in 1941. In this case it is listed always under lullabies, children’s songs.

This is the earliest recording I can find. From, The John and Ruby Lomax 1939 Southern States Recording Trip. Sung by Ray Wood, from a “Room under ramp of storage garage, Houston, Harris County, Texas”.

here

Performed by Haynes, Bernice from “Cummins State Farm, Women’s Camp, near Varner, Lincoln County, Arkansas”.

here

source: From the American Folklife Center, Library of Congress

The song burst on the pop scene, re-written and recorded, in 1963 by Inez and Charlie Foxx. It’s been sung by folk, R&B, and Jazz greats, from Aretha and Fitzgerald, to The Cake and Joan Baez. Subsequently, the generation who listened to this as a pop song brought their kids up accordingly. ;)

Hush little baby, don’t say a word
Pappas gonna buy you a mockingbird

If that mockingbird don’t sing
Pappa’s gonna buy you a diamond ring

I choose the standard pop Taylor/ Simon video.

Hear me now and understand
He’s gonna find me some piece of mind
And if that piece of mind won’t stay
I’m gonna find myself a better way

Yup, because like Cindy Lauper sang, in this Tom Gray song (from her 1983 debut album, She’s So Unusual), “Money Changes Everything”.

This version is from her her 2006 album The Body Acoustic, with guest artist Adam Lazzara. The lyrics are more easily understood here.

Choosing between old an and new Cindy Lauper performance was a task more daunting than my last does of public speaking. Because of this, I did what I hate to do. I crowded up the joint.

I also wanted to wax philosophical and say that, as shown by these two songs, time changes everything too. And it changes nothing.

Have a great weekend.

OSF sponsored by Conversations With Marva and Mrs Grapevine

The players:

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Nothing From Nothing Leaves Nothing, or There is No Such Thing As A Free Ride

cooper — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 04:04:49 +0000

Real journalism. I love it. I read it. I want more of it.

Most of the readers here know this topic is one of my chain pullers. Pundits are not journalists, nor are most bloggers. Huff-Po (for the sake of brevity the only example, of many potential examples, I will use), at least up until now, had no real investigative journalists. What they had was a group of people, some with a certain expertise, some not so much, willing to give their opinion based on the facts as they see them. For god sake Bill Maher?

Opinion is good, I love giving mine. This post is tagged opinion. It’s my favorite tag. I love a few of Huff-Po’s columnists too, but what about the real investigative journalism? The kind that makes us sit back and think, not run to the nearest opinion blog to see what others think. What about finding out the answers to larger societal and political quandaries? For all the rambling on the new way of news, there is no new way of real investigative journalism. We are already a world of editorials, thanks to cable television. When the journalism, or the source of the news, goes to hell, the editorials are worth less than they would be otherwise, and that’s unnerving, considering how editorials go.

I came across the posts listed in the following paragraphs and thought I’d put them out there for you to read, as a prelude to the NYT magazine Strained by Katrina, a Hospital Faced Deadly Choices . The piece — by Sheri Fink, an M.D., a staff reporter at ProPublica, and senior fellow at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative — is a spectacular must read (will be in the NYT Magazine this weekend), and an example of what we may be missing in the future. It is a piece that needs digesting, and we will discuss the piece itself another time, save to say that this is real investigative journalism, done by people who know what they are doing, and care about the subject matter. It takes time, and it is expensive to produce.

This post is merely a link to posts asking the questions we have to ask. Good reads for what might be a rainy weekend in many places throughout this country.
Cost of the NYT Magazine NOLA Story Broken Down
The Price of Truth

My question for the weekend is, if we are unwilling to pay for things like real investigate journalism, why? Is it because we really don’t want to know the truth? Are we are too wrapped up in our own problems, significant or not, to see any worth in the larger ethical, social, or political questions we should be asking. Or is it some kind of calculated evolution? Will journalism go the way of the clothing we wear, made in third world countries, sometimes from factories with questionable labor practices, and often of lesser quality.

What say you?

What of the future of journalism? What of the future of the truth.

Check out the preceding post, Old School Friday, if you missed it.

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