Al Jazeera: The Top 1% in America

in Business, Current Affairs, Economics | August 3rd, 2011

Al Jazeera forced many West­erns view­ers to take their report­ing seri­ous­ly dur­ing the Egypt­ian upris­ing this spring, and now the Qatar-based news net­work has released a time­ly reportage (Aug. 2) on the fault lines in Amer­i­ca — on the gap between rich and poor that only grew wider this week. Alex­is de Toc­queville they’re not. There’s no sub­tle soci­ol­o­gy here. But, at the same time, I sus­pect that this for­eign per­spec­tive on the U.S. won’t appear unfa­mil­iar to many Amer­i­cans. The pro­gram runs 24 min­utes, and oth­er shows in the Fault Lines series can be viewed on YouTube here. H/T @courosa

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Animated: Stephen Fry & Ann Widdecombe Debate the Catholic Church

in Animation, Current Affairs, Religion | August 2nd, 2011

Intel­li­gence Squared (iTunes – Feed – Web Site) brings Oxford-style debat­ing to Amer­i­ca. Each debate fea­tures one motion, one mod­er­a­tor, and three pan­elists argu­ing for a motion, and three argu­ing against. Should Air­ports Use Racial and Reli­gious Pro­fil­ing? Is Islam A Reli­gion Of Peace? Is The Two-Par­ty Sys­tem Mak­ing the U.S. Ungovern­able? These are some of the recent top­ics that have been tack­led.

Now, tak­ing a page out of the RSA play­book, Intel­li­gence Squared has pro­duced a short ani­mat­ed video that gives artis­tic life to a debate held in Octo­ber 2009. The motion — “The Catholic Church is a force for good in the world” — was sup­port­ed by Ann Noreen Wid­de­combe, a for­mer British Con­ser­v­a­tive Par­ty politi­cian turned nov­el­ist. And tak­ing the con­trary posi­tion was pop­u­lar British actor and writer Stephen Fry.

You can watch the ani­mat­ed ver­sion above, and the full debate (which also fea­tured Christo­pher Hitchens) here. More iq2 videos can be found at their Youtube Chan­nel, which oth­er­wise appears in our col­lec­tion of Intel­li­gent YouTube Chan­nels. H/T @joabaldwin

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stephen Fry on Phi­los­o­phy and Unbe­lief

Stephen Fry: What I Wish I Had Known When I Was 18

Stephen Fry Gets Ani­mat­ed about Lan­guage

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Doonesbury Confronts Creationism in the Classroom

in Comedy, Current Affairs, Education | July 11th, 2011

Gar­ry Trudeau has tak­en on cre­ation­ism before. He’s doing it again, this time com­ment­ing on the oxy­moron­ic “Louisiana Sci­ence Edu­ca­tion Act,” which allows the teach­ing of cre­ation­ism in the pub­lic class­room. You can view Trudeau’s car­toon in full, and in high res here.

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Renata Salecl: The Paradox of Choice

in Current Affairs, Psychology | June 22nd, 2011

With free­dom come choic­es. Every choice is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to select the best pos­si­ble out­come, the one that would make us hap­pi­est. More choic­es lead to more hap­pi­ness, right? Of course we find the oppo­site to be true. As choic­es increase, so does anx­i­ety. In the lat­est install­ment of the RSA ani­mat­ed lec­ture series, Sloven­ian social and legal the­o­rist Rena­ta Sale­cl argues that this anx­i­ety, cou­pled with the cap­i­tal­ist ide­al of the self-made per­son, leads to a kind of social paral­y­sis. “Today’s ide­ol­o­gy of choice,” says Sale­cl, “actu­al­ly paci­fies peo­ple and makes us con­stant­ly turn crit­i­cism to our­selves instead of orga­niz­ing our­selves and mak­ing a cri­tique of the soci­ety we live in.” The ani­mat­ed fea­ture was adapt­ed from a lec­ture Sale­cl gave last sum­mer in Lon­don. (You can watch the entire lec­ture here.) It draws on ideas pre­sent­ed in her book, Choice.

Oth­er RSA Videos:

Sir Ken Robin­son: A Cre­ative Edu­ca­tion

Good Cap­i­tal­ist Kar­ma: Zizek Ani­mat­ed

Smile or Die: The Per­ils of Pos­i­tive Psy­chol­o­gy

Steven Pinker: How Innu­en­do Makes Things Work

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My Water’s On Fire Tonight: The Fracking Song

in Current Affairs, Video - Science | June 16th, 2011

In 2005, Vice Pres­i­dent Dick Cheney per­son­al­ly engi­neered a loop­hole in the U.S. ener­gy bill exempt­ing com­pa­nies that use an oil- and gas-drilling pro­ce­dure known as hydraulic frac­tur­ing, or “frack­ing,” from reg­u­la­tion under the Safe Drink­ing Water Act. As a result, tons of diesel fuel and assort­ed chemicals–some of them tox­ic, like benzyne–are inject­ed at high pres­sure into the earth at the sole dis­cre­tion of the com­pa­nies doing the inject­ing. One of the chief ben­e­fi­cia­ries of Cheney’s string-pulling is the com­pa­ny that invent­ed the pro­ce­dure, Hal­libur­ton, which employed Cheney as chair­man and CEO just pri­or to his becom­ing vice pres­i­dent. (A coin­ci­dence?)

In the wake of the Hal­libur­ton Loop­hole, as it has come to be known, there have been a grow­ing num­ber of water pol­lu­tion cas­es, from Penn­syl­va­nia to Col­orado, asso­ci­at­ed with frack­ing. Some of those cas­es were doc­u­ment­ed in last year’s Sun­dance Film Fes­ti­val award-win­ning doc­u­men­tary, Gasland, by Josh Fox, who said in a PBS inter­view, “I could take a car bat­tery and throw it in the water­shed and go to fed­er­al prison, but these guys can take the same chem­i­cals and inject it by the thou­sands of gal­lons, and they’re exempt. It makes no sense.”

It’s a seri­ous issue involv­ing two of Amer­i­ca’s vital interests–the need for ener­gy and the need for safe drink­ing water–but a group of jour­nal­ism stu­dents in New York Uni­ver­si­ty’s Stu­dio 20 mas­ter’s pro­gram, in asso­ci­a­tion with the pub­lic-inter­est jour­nal­ism group ProP­ub­li­ca, has tak­en a light-heart­ed approach, cre­at­ing a music video to raise aware­ness of frack­ing. It’s called “My Water’s on Fire Tonight (The Frack­ing Song).”  The pur­pose of the project, accord­ing to group leader David Holmes, is to encour­age peo­ple to read ProP­ub­li­ca’s report­ing on the issue. “We were con­cerned with build­ing a bet­ter entry­way into that inves­ti­ga­tion,” Holmes told Poynter.org, “and we fig­ured a song would be the per­fect way to do it–especially since it’s called frack­ing.”

via Explainer.net

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Don’t Dance at the Jefferson Memorial: A Quick PSA

in Current Affairs, Law | May 29th, 2011

Any­one know what law these dancers were vio­lat­ing, since the arrest­ing offi­cer appar­ent­ly does­n’t know (or won’t say)?

Update: This article/post gives you the back­sto­ry. It explains that the dancers were “there protest­ing a … court deci­sion [hand­ed down] ear­li­er this month that upheld a ban on danc­ing with­in the memo­r­i­al.” The mem­bers of the “civ­il danceobe­di­ence” were charged with demon­strat­ing with­out a per­mit, and then released a short time after. That’s the answer to the ques­tion, in short…

via Boing­Bo­ing

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Jon Stewart & Bill O’Reilly Debate Rapper’s Visit to the White House

in Current Affairs, Video - Arts & Culture, Video - Politics/Society | May 17th, 2011

The cul­ture wars wage on. Almost twen­ty years after the great Mur­phy Brown debate, we’re still going at it. But now, instead of debat­ing the pros and cons of sin­gle moth­er­hood, the focus has turned to whether Michelle Oba­ma erred in invit­ing the rap­per Com­mon to the White House Poet­ry Night last week. (See his actu­al per­for­mance here.) Crit­ics point to this 2007 YouTube video, A Let­ter to the Law, though they don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly lis­ten until the very end. And they also flag his sym­pa­thet­ic words direct­ed toward Joanne Ches­i­mard (aka Assa­ta Shakur), an ex-Black Pan­ther, con­vict­ed of killing a New Jer­sey police offi­cer in 1973. This all built up to the lat­est Jon Stew­art — Bill O’Reil­ly face­off, which drilled down to the ques­tion: Did the First Lady make a major gaffe? Or is this anoth­er case of selec­tive out­rage? Part 1 is above; Part II is here…

via @Frauenfelder

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Bob Dylan Answers China Charges

in Current Affairs, Music | May 14th, 2011

Just last month, Bob Dylan played his first con­cert in Chi­na at the Worker’s Gym­na­si­um in Bei­jing. It was­n’t exact­ly a big show. Rough­ly 2,000 peo­ple attend­ed, but it became a big affair at home when NYTimes colum­nist Mau­reen Dowd wrote a caus­tic op-ed, accus­ing Dylan of play­ing a cen­sored set stripped of his rev­o­lu­tion­ary anthems. In short, she declared, Dylan went to Chi­na and sold out his 60s soul:

Icon­ic songs of rev­o­lu­tion like “The Times They Are a‑Changin,’ ” and “Blowin’ in the Wind” wouldn’t have been an appro­pri­ate sound­track for the 2,000 Chi­nese appa­ratchiks in the audi­ence tak­ing a relax­ing break from repres­sion.

Spooked by the surge of democ­ra­cy sweep­ing the Mid­dle East, Chi­na is con­duct­ing the harsh­est crack­down on artists, lawyers, writ­ers and dis­si­dents in a decade. It is cen­sor­ing (or “har­mo­niz­ing,” as it euphem­izes) the Inter­net and dis­patch­ing the secret police to arrest willy-nil­ly, includ­ing Ai Wei­wei, the famous artist and archi­tect of the Bird’s Nest, Beijing’s Olympic sta­di­um.

Dylan said noth­ing about Weiwei’s deten­tion, didn’t offer a reprise of “Hur­ri­cane,” his song about “the man the author­i­ties came to blame for some­thing that he nev­er done.” He sang his cen­sored set, took his pile of Com­mu­nist cash and left.

Now, in a note to fans, Dylan took the rare step of respond­ing to these (and oth­er) accu­sa­tions in a short let­ter pub­lished yes­ter­day. He writes:

As far as cen­sor­ship goes, the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment had asked for the names of the songs that I would be play­ing. There’s no log­i­cal answer to that, so we sent them the set lists from the pre­vi­ous 3 months. If there were any songs, vers­es or lines cen­sored, nobody ever told me about it and we played all the songs that we intend­ed to play.

I’m guess­ing this response will only part­ly sat­is­fy Dowd. Per­haps Dylan did­n’t change his set to please the appa­ratchiks. But did he miss an oppor­tu­ni­ty to make the right state­ment? Just maybe. But no mat­ter, we’re putting this behind us and get­ting ready for Dylan’s 70th birth­day on May 24. We still love him, warts and all…

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