history: January 2007 Archives

I received many of these photos of daily life in Tehran in an email last fall.

Whatever our political-economic competition, I resist the path to war. Religious difference is an excuse, a justification, mere rationalization cloaked in moral self-righteousness. To alter the apparent inevitability of another war, we - as "a people" - must begin to create new bases for the global economy. It is up to us to shift the PPF from guns to butter.

The Production Possibility Frontier is a graph of the most efficient way an economy can produce goods and provide services. In a recent college classroom, the basic benchline diagram (at the macroecnomic level, such as global and national economies) is plotted between military expenditures ("guns") and domestic expenditures ("butter"). Interestingly, the links I'm finding with a general google search for "production possibility frontier" on the Internet give the example of two domestic products. What a subtle convenience! Let's just pretend that only the domestic matters! This is what drives consumerism - if we spend, the economy will grow. However, this is only half the equation, or - more realistically - less than half. "Wine" and "bread" is the (everyday living domestic) part that is currently dependent on the other, on the "guns" and bombs and armored uniforms and tanks and military expenditures generated ad nauseum when the US goes to war.

There are more roads to peace than there are to war. We must find the will to choose them.

One pitcher of beer at the Moan and Dove, coming up!

I can't say I'm sad the Patriots lost to the Colts. The Broncos have always been my team, the other teams that have piqued my interest tend to be newer franchises and random underdogs.

The Colts will get my support in the Super Bowl against the Chicago Bears. Maybe I'll even watch.

Watched The Last King of Scotland last night. Strong Minor Bridge thought it was a mild depiction of the horrors Idi Amin wrought on his country in a mere nine years, enough to rank him with Stalin, Lenin, and Pol Pot as the worst dictators of all time. As a character study, I wondered about the historicity of the role of the Doctor as the foil for showing Amin's volatile and manipulative nature. The character of Dr. Nicholas Garrigan in the film is a fiction, however there was a real "white rat" (as opposed to the "white monkey" Garrigan is labeled in the film), Bob Astles.

While there is no doubt that Forest Whitaker is brilliant as Amin (absolutely creepy), I was intrigued by the portrayal by James McAvoy of a young, naive, and very "white" Dr. Garrigan. What is that element in human character that is so prone to worship, so heedless of cautionary warnings, so bent on idealistic vision that hard evidence fails to convey meaning? How frightening to be pulled so far "in" as to be unable to escape, yet how consequential. The lines concerning racism in the film are compelling: all of them point to the power of "whiteness" as an unconscious (in Garrigan) and deliberative (as experienced through the lens of "blackness" or "Africanness") force.

Coming in March to a PBS station near you:

Quoted in full from an email by the Justice for All moderator and passed along...thanks!

PBS Documentary Explores 200 Years of Deaf Life in America

"Through Deaf Eyes," a two-hour PBS documentary exploring nearly
200 years of Deaf life in America, will air early next year. The
film was inspired by the exhibition, "History Through Deaf Eyes,"
curated by Jack R. Gannon of Gallaudet University.

The documentary will air nationally on PBS on Wednesday, March 21
at 9 p.m. ET (check local listings).

The film presents the shared experiences of American history
family life, education, work, and community connections - from the
perspective of deaf citizens. Interviews include community
leaders, historians, and deaf Americans with diverse views on
language use, technology and identity.

Bringing a Deaf cinematic lens to the film are six artistic works
by Deaf media artists and filmmakers: Wayne Betts, Renee Visco,
Tracey Salaway, Kimby Caplan, Arthur Luhn, and Adrean Mangiardi.

Poignant, sometimes humorous, these films draw on the media
artists' own lives and are woven throughout the documentary. But
the core of the film remains the larger story of Deaf life in
America -- a story of conflicts, prejudice and affirmation that
reaches the heart of what it means to be human.

Major funding for "Through Deaf Eyes" is provided by the National
Endowment for the Humanities, Corporation for Public Broadcasting,
PBS, The Annenberg Foundation and the National Endowment for the
Arts. Private individuals have also contributed to the funding of
this project. The extensive outreach campaign is funded in part
by Sign Language Associates. Outreach partners are the National
Association for the Deaf, Gallaudet University, the National
Technical Institute for the Deaf at Rochester Institute of
Technology, and California State University-Northridge. As part
of the outreach campaign, numerous local organizations, some in
association with their public television stations, will mount
events and discussions exploring the issues raised in the film.

A comprehensive Web site, found at http://www.pbs.org,
accompanies the film. The site includes interviews with the deaf
filmmakers whose work is featured in the documentary, while also
inviting viewers to submit their own stories, photographs, and
films. These will become part of the archival collection of
Gallaudet University. A companion book is being published by
Gallaudet University Press.

Source: PBS
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/soundandfury/culture/deafhistory.html

Bob Woodward (of Watergate fame) interviewed the late President Gerald Ford back in 2004. I remember Ford for pardoning Nixon, an act which incensed my father. My introduction to politics was seeing the movie, All the President's Men, when I was thirteen. I don't think I had seen too many movies yet, as I recall feeling quite grown up on the way to the theatre. :-)

Ah, did you know that the identity of "Deep Throat" was made public last May? FBI agent W. Mark Felt. Slate argues that there's a movie, Dick, that got the Watergate story more "right" by depicting the "essential banality" of Felt's association with Woodward.

Returning to Ford, it is interesting that he says he would not have gone to war with Iraq, and also that he criticizes his own former staffers, Rumsfeld and Cheney. I'm most intrigued, however, by his admission of "an act of cowardice" in dropping Nelson A. Rockefeller as his Vice-Presidential running mate in his 1976 re-election campaign.

What is the difference between politics and counterintelligence?

Politics (2 selections): "social relations involving authority or power" (PrincetonWordnet) and/or "Politics is the process and method of making decisions for groups. Although it is generally applied to governments, politics is also observed in all human group interactions including corporate, academic, and religious" (wikipedia).

Counterintelligence (one selection): "intelligence activities concerned with identifying and counteracting the threat to security posed by hostile intelligence organizations or by individuals engaged in espionage or sabotage or subversion or terrorism" (answers.com).

My correlation? Counterintelligence is the work of political figures to ensure the security of their own power.

Gosh - those eastern Europeans are just getting in everywhere!

Romania and Bulgaria celebrate EU membership

This adds a new wrinkle to potential research I might get to do there . . . again . . . someday . . . perhaps . . . one hopes! I'll raise my glass, and also hope language is one of the factors that keeps uniformity at bay.