Syria: the horror of Homs, a city at war
A 10 minute newscast showing the people of Syria fighting for their freedom against a murderous government. Absolutely gripping.
Inside Job
“The film is about the systemic corruption of the United States by the financial services industry” – Charles Ferguson, director
Winner of 2011 Oscar for Best Documentary
President Obama on Political Discourse
President Obama speaking today at the University of Michigan’s commencement ceremony. See this article in the New York Times for more information.
If you have 30 minutes I highly recommend listening to the whole thing, it is quite remarkable.
A Little Inspiration
The following inspirational message comes from this site.
I stumbled upon the picture yesterday on Reddit, one of my favorite websites as of recent. It is a decent source for news as well as that very special randomness generated by the great provider of the modern era, Ye Olde Internets.
All silliness aside, I do think it is good to keep on dreaming.
(As does Gary Spivey)
Our Next President
As promised here are a few more pictures I took of Barack Obama in Missoula, Montana on April 5th.
Describing what is was like being there is a difficult task. The energy there was like a concert, Obama was a rock-star as he stood up on stage surrounded by eight-thousand cheering fans. He spoke for an hour or so on a variety of topics such as energy, education, and foreign policy. He spoke about the change that our country needs desperately and immediately after the eight year political train-wreck that has been the Bush administration.
After he finished talking he spent about twenty minutes interacting with the crowd, shaking hands and holding no less than three babies (I don’t know what compels people to hand famous people their babies.) before waving a last goodbye.
You left feeling good about the world and good about politics, which was a nice change. I felt inspired to try to bring about a small part of the change that this man is obviously working so hard to impart on our great country.
I’m including a video of a short part of his speech, someone has segmented it into topics and uploaded it onto Youtube.
Saw Obama in Missoula
My friend Hilary and I saw Barack Obama speak for about an hour on Saturday in Missoula, Montana. He is an excellent speaker and it was one of the more powerful events I’ve been to in a long time.
More thoughts and pictures to come.
See This Movie
I just finished watching Why We Fight, an hour and a half long documentary on the Military Industrial Complex. I must say that I highly recommend it to anyone who is looking to quench their thirst with a tall glass of truthiness.
This film is quite eye opening about just what drives us to spend close to a trillion dollars, in a single year, to police the world.
Good Times
This is from the Onion and I thought the headline and illustrative picture were pretty funny. Hard to imagine we’ve had 6 years of this dolt being our president.
Bush Refuses To Set Timetable For Withdrawal Of Head From White House Banister
On “Retouching” Photos
Editing pictures certainly seems to have come up a lot recently. I have a few things to say.
- Technically, if you want to know the truth, most of my photos are “retouched”. Picasa by Google has a button called “I’m feeling lucky” that does some good things to colors and contrast and I usually will hit this before I post a picture.
- What is a picture anyways? Its certainly not “reality”. I mean we don’t even ever experience technical reality. Our eyes and all their complicated mechanisms and our brain always process “reality” before we are able to perceive it.
- Since a picture is not “reality”, but rather something close, at what gradation of “closeness” does it actually cease to respresent what we would consider “reality”?
- If I take a picture does it make it any less realistic if I tweak a few things? How about if I change a lot of things?
When I get some time I’ll post some side-by-side images of before and after to give you a better idea of what I’m talking about.
On a separate note, I saw a good talk last night by Robert Jensen, professor of journalism at the University of Texas, Austin on white privledge and institutionalized racism. I particularly enjoyed him saying
“George Bush is the poster child for unearned white privledge in America”
The great thing about that quote is that it is true wholly separate of his policy, so it’s something everyone can agree on! Yeah!
Allright, now I have to finish getting ready to teach in 35 minutes.
