http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_N1L3YwbLK0&feature=player_embedded
]]>a collaborative project to remix the entirety of Daft Punk's Human After All album. The project is entitled, Remix After All
]]>In this image-filled talk, Yann Arthus-Bertrand displays his three most recent projects on humanity and our habitat -- stunning aerial photographs in his series "The Earth From Above," personal interviews from around the globe featured in his web project "6 billion Others," and his soon-to-be-released movie, "Home," which documents human impact on the environment through breathtaking video.
http://www.ted.com/talks/yann_arthus_bertrand_captures_fragile_earth_in_wide_angle.html
]]>http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=57024788
]]>So the new film seems to be a cross between old Terminator, Transformers (with respect to the technology) and the reworked Battlestar Galactica. If you don't believe me, take a look for yourselves.
http://movies.yahoo.com/feature/terminator-salvation.html?showVideo=1
]]>http://videos.onsmash.com/v/EYxa6Zg9gTDtAyyI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRlzM4a1ll0
i love music
]]>"PLEASE, DON’T STIGMATIZE THE “VOICELESS!”
On February 5, 2009 ABC Nightline ran a segment on infant mortality in Sierra Leone . The show provided illuminating information about that problem in the small West African country, which has seen its share of calamities that emanated mostly from the recent eleven-year civil war. It went on to show actress Salma Hayek, in an almost Hollywood-style production, breastfeeding a Sierra Leonean infant while the cameras rolled and a woman, who I assume is the baby’s mother, looked on passively. Cynthia McFadden, the show’s co-anchor, explained that “breastfeeding in Sierra Leone is a STIGMA, as men pressure women to stop breastfeeding so that they could resume sexual intercourse.” In its Nightline program of February 11, ABC did a follow-up to the story, pointing out that over a million people around the world had downloaded the video clip of Hayek breastfeeding an African child. McFadden emphasized that “MOST” of the feedback they had received on that story was positive, and she went on to read a few reactions, like that of the woman who said she was happy to see women helping each other. She did not cite any of the few negative ones. McFadden and her Nightline crew continued this celebration on Good Morning America on February 12, 2009 . For some of us there is nothing to celebrate about misrepresenting aspects of a people’s history and culture, even as attempts are being made to highlight legitimately serious problems.
The blanket statement that breastfeeding in Sierra Leone is “A STIGMA” is ERRONEOUS! On the contrary, breastfeeding is celebrated. As a Sierra Leonean American, I spent a good part of my formative years in that country and know firsthand the significance (not stigma) attached to breastfeeding. Yes, in that country, it is widely believed that women breastfeeding must not engage in sexual intercourse, because the child would end up with physical and mental abnormalities. Yes, as in other societies around the world, patriarchy continues to be an insidious element in Sierra Leone and manifests itself in many exploitative ways, including the attempt by some men to interfere with breastfeeding. But women, and I mean Sierra Leonean women, have fought back. Although ABC’s lopsided portrayal of breastfeeding in Sierra Leone did not show this, there have always been women who choose how long they want to breastfeed their children. Traditionally, since pre-colonial times, rites of passage for young women have served, among other things, as forums for imparting knowledge on and skills for motherhood, including the value of breastfeeding. While I agree that some women, as is typical with battered women anywhere, do give in to the men’s demands and wean their babies, in general, long-term breastfeeding is more prevalent. It is common to see one and two-year olds helping themselves to their mothers’ breasts, while the women engage in a variety of economic activities, from farming to market trading to breaking stones for construction. Talk about multi-tasking! This is the Sierra Leone that I grew up in and saw when I visited a few months ago.
Breastfeeding as a virtue is conspicuously represented in the culture. For example, the bond between a mother and her child is often articulated using breastfeeding as a metaphor. When one visits her/his mother, no matter how old that person is, a common remark is that she/he has gone for some breastfeeding. Sierra Leoneans are constantly reminded that one of the most despicable things a person can do is disrespect her/his mother who breastfed them. A culture that invokes breastfeeding in such positive ways must not see that practice as “a stigma.” ABC Nightline’s blanket statement presents the problem simplistically. Since we are on the subject of breasts, let me suggest an analogy: the same kind of misleading impression will emerge from concluding that because in the United States some men like big boobs and pressure women to enlarge their breasts, implants are the norm! We know this is not the case. Similarly, weaning babies off breast milk to have sex is not the norm in Sierra Leone .
I applaud ABC’s decision to draw attention to infant mortality in Sierra Leone . The Nightline show did identify crucial economic and infrastructural disadvantages that prevent women from gaining access to some of the most basic types of healthcare for their children and themselves. Salma Hayek’s generosity and resolve to contribute positively to humanity should be acknowledged. And I agree that women should help each other and work together. We have so many causes to tackle EVERYWHERE in the world, among which are women’s reproductive health and reproductive justice. But when we work together, we must not detract from the agency of those we work with. We must let their voices come out loudly, clearly, and ACCURATELY. "
Violet M. Showers Johnson, Ph.D.
Professor, Department of History
Interim Director, Women’s Global Leadership Center
Agnes Scott College
(The World for Women)
141 East College Avenue
Decatur, GA 30030
Until lions have their own historians, tales of hunting will always glorify the hunter.
]]>And so to my latest discovery, which made me chuckle. Good to see T-Pain not taking himself seriously.
have a giggle:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7yfISlGLNU&eurl=http://theplaylist.blogspot.com/&feature=player_embedded
and i also came across a rapper by the name of Theophilus London and found this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7plSwMlINg&eurl=http://2dopeboyz.com/&feature=player_embedded
i thought it was great, have always wanted to hear a speeded up version of that song. He also has a mixtape out which I am downloading as i write.
]]>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGRxjcsUOro
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHfsz9YTTPo
I am really missing the DnB and feening for some old skool jungle.
]]>Chocolate:
Crank II
http://www.crankhighvoltage.com/
and if you have not seen the first one, then get on your netflix or head down to blockbusters (if it still exists where you live) and watch it.
Completely over the top, just like Shoot Em Up was. Wonderful entertainment.
]]>For those interested, here are some pictures from the park. Looks pretty nice.
Here:
]]>http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article2848055.ece
]]>By Seth Kugel - GlobalPost
January 8, 2009 16:21 ET
Colorblind melting pot or racially divided society? Either way, Afro-Brazilian leaders welcome Obama.
MARAGOJIPE, Brazil — Walking through this colonial-era fishing town of 44,000 across the Bay of All Saints from the city of Salvador, your average U.S. resident would come to a quick demographic conclusion: Most people here are black.
The townspeople, however, beg to differ. Only 13 percent of the population declared themselves “negro,” or black, in the 2000 census. Another 62 percent said they were “pardo,” a response that translates as “brown” or “dark,” but which some black leaders in Bahia — generally considered the most culturally African state of Brazil — interpret as “Who, me? Black? No way.” Still others whom Americans might consider black declare themselves “white.”
If that sounds complicated, welcome to Brazil, which is either a) the color-blind melting pot where blacks have been equal under the law far longer than they have been in the United States, or b) the last country to outlaw slavery, where Afro-Brazilians make up nearly half the population and are devastatingly impoverished, poorly educated and have only the sparsest presence in the elite ranks of CEOs, television news announcers and high-level politicians. And, of course, there has never been a black president.
Black leaders hope that Barack Obama’s election in a country many Brazilians consider more racist than their own will force a hard self-examination.
“The United States has always served as a model for the world,” said Marcelino Gomes de Jesus, who runs a nonprofit cultural center in the nearby town of Cachoeira. “I don’t think that whites will change their image of blacks in Brazil now. But what will change is blacks’ image of themselves.”
Here in Maragojipe, it took until 2004 for the town to elect a black mayor, Silvio Jose Santana Santos, a broad-shouldered 37-year-old with a penchant for red clothing, the color of his Workers Party. And even then, his campaign slogan, “A star is shining” was turned against him by an opponent, who in a speech noted that, “Black stars don’t shine.”
The mayor, who goes by the political name Silvio Ataliba, distinguished the history of Jim Crow laws in the United States from race relations in Brazil. “They say racism doesn’t exist,” he said. “But here’s what happened: we traded slave quarters for favelas (slums).
“Racism is camouflaged. People call you ‘neguinho’ [a diminutive of ‘negro’] and they think they’re being affectionate. They call you ‘black with a white soul.’ We still haven’t accomplished in our society what black Americans have in theirs, and I’m not just talking about Obama’s election,” Ataliba said.
Though black leaders in Brazil often looked to figures like Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks as models, the movement in Brazil was dampened from the mid-1960s to mid-1980s by the military dictatorship. But there has been progress since, the mayor noted. Among the signs in the last decade: increasing roles for black actors and controversial racial quotas for admission to Brazil’s prestigious public universities. He notes that he has heard — but is not sure — that Obama was a beneficiary of quotas in the United States.
On a recent evening in Cachoeira, Gomes de Jesus, older and more skeptical than Ataliba, was watching a news report on Obama in his run-down but invitingly warm center, the Casa Paulo Dias Adorno. He is a priest of Candomble, the religion of African origin influential in this part of the country.
“Blacks in the United States had the opportunity to grow socially, culturally, and politically,” Gomes de Jesus said. “So much so that today white Americans elected a black man president. That indicates that whites in the United States came to the conclusion that if you’re capable, you can have power, whether you’re white or not.”
Most Brazilian whites, he believes, do not feel the same way. He suspects that “white Brazilians find it absurd that a black man is president of the United States.”
Meanwhile, de Jesus said, Afro-Brazilians are also to blame. “Blacks here are afraid of asserting their blackness,” he said. “They’ll say that they don’t have any racial problems at all, because they don’t consider themselves black.”
Down the river and across the bay is Salvador, the city of nearly three million famous for its carnival and usually considered the epicenter of Afro-Brazilian culture. There, business leader Clarindo Silva, a slender 63-year-old man with a snowy-white goatee, was so excited about the American election that he had bilingual “Obama - The dream of Luther King and all of us” T-shirts made up for sale at Cantina da Lua, his restaurant in the city’s historic Pelourinho neighborhood.
“I think the election of Obama is a very strong message for the world,” Silva said. “What changes there, changes here. It’s a great example for humanity.”
]]>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYOmWQiVCFQ
]]>Good to see that Nathan Fillion has found a way to keep busy after the amazing Firefly was canceled.
]]>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-P-rBQnKHk
You notice my extra special Sarah Palin spelling at the top, followed by an even better Sarah Palin wink. I already feel that I am connecting with the people. If only I had known it was so simple.
McCain, we all know which one, was involved in a scandal a while back, a scandal i have only come to know of today due to my previous lack of interest in US politics. However, it is one that is rather relevant as we watch the turmoil in the stock markets, as AIG, Fanny and Freddie and various other financial institutions continue to fail. I am not going to explain it, since I have still processing all the information in my tiny brain, but i will provide a link to the video which does, and though it is long for our attention deficit MTV generation, I urge you to watch this because it really will have an impact in the way you feel about the man.
http://www.keatingeconomics.com/
If McCain had come out at the end understanding that regulation was vital in the financial sector then I would hold my hands up and say: "well played, good job old chap". Yet after all the issues that the American people had to go through, he still calls for more deregulation. That is not progress. That is not learning. That is definitely not presidential material.
We have to remember as well that this guy has 5.. 7... 12, oh i can't remember how many houses and is married to a rather wealthy lady. I think that they could afford to get their own tickets to the bahamas (yes even the babysitter).
Regulation and bureaucracy are different things, in the same area but different. Regulation is important because it helps people to behave. People who for the most part only care about making vast amounts of money any way possible. Regulation we need. Bureacracy on the other hand can go to hell.
]]>