The depictions and roles of women in hip-hop debate has raged on and off for several years now with varying degrees of depth. Most of the arguments posit that the relationship between women and hip-hop isn’t positive by using lyrical content and music videos by male artists as exhibits A and B. After the requisite freedom of speech assertions made during the rebuttal, the talk dies down again and the status quo remains. Often lacking......

This week ended with the launch of the seventh and final Harry Potter installation. But while the world was consumed with Pottermania, it's important to remember that there were more serious things going on in the world, too – two of them in -Ist cities. Sampaist was shocked when a passenger jet crashed into the center of Sao Paulo, killing at least 200 people. The airplane, an Airbus A320, skidded off the runway at the......

Good morning, Washington. And the rain, it continues, though today looks as if it will be better than yesterday. As Maryland State Highway Administration spokesman David Buck was quoted as saying in an AP article on cnn.com, "It's going to be a challenging week." Challenging indeed -- time to order some rain boots. WaPo tells us all about the rain, and though WJLA says crews are still pumping water out of Constitution Avenue, the traffic......

The weekly Ist wrap-up is written by Seattlest editor Dan Gonsiorowski. Gothamist posts on the capture of a NYC perv thanks to Little Brother and a camera phone. They also scour the city for vodka martinis and Shamrock shakes and spot the friend from the Wonder Years at a city law firm. New York police think that Littlejohn is their man. Houstonist is no stranger to megachurches or stripmalls or mega-strip-churchmalls. The children of Houston......

We have to give Montgomery County props -- they'll defend the First Amendment to the death, no matter how tasteless the reason. NBC 4 is reporting that county officials are ordering all security guards for the county's libraries to undergo further training on the First Amendment after a recent incident where they tried to stop a library patron from using the public computers to view some XXX-rated material. Apparently Montgomery County has no objection to......