On the BL tomorrow: a Spanish lesson from politician, sometime filmmaker, and all around impresario Nelson Dennis.

How much Spanish do you know? Can you understand the following words and phrases?

abogado

cocina

no se apoye contra la puerta

si ves algo, de algo

empleados tienen que lavarse las manos antes de regresar al trabajo

mojito

¿qué usted piensas? Diga nos!

feedback on mashups:

As a musician I angry when every idiot with a record gets called a DJ. But I have to say, Go Home Productions actually changed my mind with the 'Girl Wants to Say Goodbye to Rock and Roll".
-ML

This is an old technique and style used by street hip hop DJ's known as "blending" by DJS such as Grand Master Vic.
-917

This morning’s discussion on the subway problems just scraped the surface of another urban issue. Homelessness emerged as a topic in various news outlets and blogs in the wake of the fire at the downtown C-line station.

Listener comments are pasted below and here’s what the New York Times wrote in today's editorial (reg required):

The subway is also no place for the homeless, and it's a sign of the system's shaky state that hundreds of people have been allowed to live in its grapevine of tunnels and passageways. It is not safe for them and, as Sunday's fire makes clear, it is not safe for the millions who ride through those tunnels every single day. The city's police and homeless outreach programs need to be mobilized right away.

BL Show regular, Jeff Jarvis also weighs in today:

Rudy Guliani was the first politician in New York to have the guts to deal with this issue; other cities (I'm thinking of you, San Francisco) haven't.
And the real issue isn't homelessness. It's insanity. The laws in this country make it impossible to commit and help even the obvioulsy and often the dangerously insane.
I say that One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is as much at fault as any politician, for it made the institution frightening and the people who run it bad guys.

Here are some listener comments. What do you think?

View image
Councilman Kendall Stewart

Today listeners called in to respond to David Brooks' recent op-ed column about whether it wouldn't better for women to have children before focusing on their careers instead of having to take time off in the middle and perhaps miss out on having children entirely. And whether our social policies shouldn't work to make the children-first option more feasible. What do you think?

Here are some of the responses we received during the show:

It is important that women establish their independence economically early in life. It grants them options in who they marry, why them marry, how they share power in their relationships and what their options are if life throws them a curve. Knowing that you are capable of managing your own career and finances is more powerful for both you and your spouse. It also gives you the opportunity to prepare financially to be home with the family you want to raise. As for the remark that men could never consider this in their twenties...the gentleman was 100% correct about that. Corporate America shows no mercy for men who prioritize family first... A. C.

Clearly David Brooks has never dated a 'man' in his 20's! I can't imagine trying to marry and have children with one! -Patty in Manhattan

Nowadays, people don't work for one company or even in one profession for a lifetime. I know many people who work in one profession for 5-10 years and then switch to something else (sometimes something completely different). Perhaps women who are interested in more than one profession can have children between two of their "careers" -- K.

Four years ago author Kevin Baker spent inauguration day out on the streets of Washington DC in protest. This year he chose to come to the much warmer confines of our studio to talk about the second inauguration of George W. Bush.

Here are some listener comments from our mail bag in reference to the Condoleezza Rice confrimation hearings.

chavez was elected. a referendum to remove him was defeated last year. the only thing the US government doesn't like about him is that he hasn't privatized the oil industry. D.B.

The problem ...

Martin Luther King, Jr.s 1967 speech "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence" inspired today's MLK Day commemorative call-in. Listeners were asked to call in with brief readings about other countries and responded with selections from Nelson Mandela to the I Ching, including Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish (read in Arabic). Here is the text of Dr. King's speech in its entirety, from the BRC-News website.

Speech delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on April 4, 1967, at a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside Church in New York City

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice. I join with you in this meeting because I am in deepest agreement with the aims and work of the organization which has brought us together: Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam. The recent statement of your executive committee are the sentiments of my own heart and I found myself in full accord when I read its opening lines: "A time comes when silence is betrayal." That time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.

James Taranto takes issue with Nicholas Kristof's conclusions about America's, Cuba's and China's comparative infant mortality rates--though not with Kristof's facts.

Taranto notes that the 2002 jump in American infant mortality followed nearly fifty years of declining rates, and that the jump may be attributable (in part) to the ...

As noted in the last entry, the "fact" that the United States is the only industrialized nation with "appreciable" poverty is harder to confirm, but appears to have some truth to it.

A correspondent notes that the 2004 CIA World factbook puts the USA at 12% living in poverty, ...

True or false?

a) Beijing has lower infant mortality than New York

b) The USA is the only industrialized country with "appreciable" poverty

These two "facts" came up in our open-source open phones today.

Fact (a) is pretty easily confirmed. Our dear caller most likely got the information from a ...

I have a friend in Albany who is a minister who is paying for his kids
education by writing porno novels. I found out while helping him with a
computer problem.
-BD

I think many of us share the same secret as the caller who uses marijuana. ...

While we knew the Independent Review Panel would issue their CBS report sometime soon, we were surprised to have it occur during our show. Lucky for us we in the midst of putting together a media segment for the show anyway. However the 60 Minutes story blew most of ...

Throughout our recently-concluded Recount Update series, we've been asking ourselves exactly what the purpose of re-examining the 2004 vote is.

On the one hand, there is widespread evidence of voting irrgularities in localities in Ohio and elsewhere, which are scarcely being covered by most media.

On the other hand, few ...

Today's installment of our Recount Update Series will hear from Green Party Presidential candidate, David Cobb.

In the meantime, read the relevant letters from Congressman John Conyers:

Dec 20 letter on Conyers’ request for support to object the Ohio electoral college (addressed to Senator Barbara Boxer)

Dec 2 letter

Dec 14 letter

All Congressional letters from the Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee

Email us your response

Read the letter Michael Moore entitled "Just One Senator" on his site today.

Hear past segments in the series.

By the way, today's temporary call-in number is 212-227-7606

January 6, 1855 is considered the "birthday" of one of the world's most famous literary detectives, Sherlock Holmes. Later this week, members of the invitation-only Baker Street Irregulars will converge on New York (a city Holmes never visited) to celebrate his birthday.

In a recent New Yorker article,

It's a question Colin Powell had to address on Meet the Press yesterday. Why had the American contribution to tsunami relief started at just $15 million and then leapt up to $350 million? Was the US really "stingy", a word the UN's Jan Egeland had used to ...

From one of our listners- Josh:

Colin Powell will start shilling for AT&T, allowing James Earl Jones to
pursue his true passion, foreign affairs;

Current SUV drivers will upgrade to 18-wheelers;

Arguing homesteader rights for recently abandoned property, Donald Trump
will assemble a team of ...