RMWMTMBM Archive

Dear Memphis: You’ve Got To Love Them While They Live

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Memphis, Music, Pop Culture/Film/Literature, RMWMTMBM Archive 0 Comments

Yesterday, Memphis turned out in force at W.C. Handy Park and on Beale Street to bid its final farewell in a home-going celebration for one of our city’s musical legends, B.B. King, who passed away last week.  It was a dark and cloudy morning, which felt strangely appropriate, as Nature herself seemed unable to hold…

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30 Day Song Challenge 2015

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson 30 Day Song Challenge, 30 Day Song Challenge 2015, Dr. J's Lists, Music, Pop Culture/Film/Literature, RMWMTMBM Archive 0 Comments

Once again this June, I’ll be blogging the 30 Day Song Challenge, which I’ve done for the last few years. Since I began in 2011, the official list of Challenge prompts has changed several times, so this year I’ve tried to mashup the best parts of previous iterations into a new “2015” version of the…

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30 Day Song Challenge, Day 1: Your Favorite Song

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson 30 Day Song Challenge, 30 Day Song Challenge 2015, Music, RMWMTMBM Archive 0 Comments

Since I started doing this Challenge regularly each summer, I’ve learned to loosen my grip a bit on categories like “favorite” and “least favorite” when it comes to songs, if only to avoid simply reproducing the same picks every year.  That’s been a good lesson to learn, really.  Kind of like when you learn that…

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30 Day Song Challenge, Day 2: Your Least Favorite Song

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson 30 Day Song Challenge, 30 Day Song Challenge 2015, Music, RMWMTMBM Archive 0 Comments

The hardest thing about picking a “least favorite” song, in my view, is that the pick needs to be something that you actually hear on a semi-regular basis.  There are entire genres of music that I don’t like and don’t voluntarily listen to–experimental jazz, death metal, most jam-bandy stuff, any of that godforsaken Celtic noise that…

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Our Dirty War

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson #BlackLivesMatter, Democracy, Ethics, Philosophy, Politics, Public Philosophy, Race and Racism, RMWMTMBM Archive 0 Comments

The disappearance of citizens displays a perversely cruel and absolute sovereignty. —Ruti Teitel, Transitional Justice (2002) I should begin by noting that I started writing what follows last week, after the publication of the New York Times story on the “1.5 Million Missing Black Men in America” but before the popular uprising in Baltimore that began Monday as…

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How It Will Go, Episode 5: Teaching J.S. Mill

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson HIWG, Open Source Pedagogy, Philosophy, RMWMTMBM Archive, Teaching 0 Comments

This is the fifth installment of my series How It Will Go, documenting the regularity of students’ responses to certain figures/texts and, in the occasional rare instance that it happens, noting whatever variations I witness. Today’s episode: John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism Context in which I teach this figure text: Like Kant, I teach some variation of…

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The Thrill Lives On

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Memphis, Music, RMWMTMBM Archive 0 Comments

This has been a tough year for Memphis music.  We’ve lost a lot of greats, some better known than others, each an irreplaceable spiritual brick in the impregnable wall of sound that guards and protects and defines this city.  The fact that so many have been called home recently serves as a bittersweet reminder that…

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Our Dirty War

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson #BlackLivesMatter, Democracy, Ethics, Philosophy, Politics, Public Philosophy, Race and Racism, RMWMTMBM Archive 0 Comments

The disappearance of citizens displays a perversely cruel and absolute sovereignty. —Ruti Teitel, Transitional Justice (2002) I should begin by noting that I started writing what follows last week, after the publication of the New York Times story on the “1.5 Million Missing Black Men in America” but before the popular uprising in Baltimore that began Monday as…

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Our Dirty War

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson #BlackLivesMatter, Democracy, Ethics, Philosophy, Politics, Public Philosophy, Race and Racism, RMWMTMBM Archive 0 Comments

The disappearance of citizens displays a perversely cruel and absolute sovereignty. —Ruti Teitel, Transitional Justice (2002) I should begin by noting that I started writing what follows last week, after the publication of the New York Times story on the “1.5 Million Missing Black Men in America” but before the popular uprising in Baltimore that began Monday as…

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On Blurred Lines, Pop Music, Pirates/Thieves and Memphis’ Mustang Sally

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Digital Humanities, Ethics, Music, Philosophy, Politics, Pop Culture/Film, RMWMTMBM Archive 0 Comments

Yesterday, a Los Angeles federal jury awarded $7.4 million to the family of late, great R&B singer Marvin Gaye for copyright infringement by contemporary pop-icons Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams.  The jurors determined that Thicke’s 2013 chart-topper “Blurred Lines” copied elements of Gaye’s 1977 hit “Got to Give It Up.” Although they were instructed to consider only…

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