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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Phoenix Still Rising: Egypt After The Revolution

in Current Affairs, Film, Politics, Video - Politics/Society | May 3rd, 2011

Much has been said, tweet­ed and writ­ten about the 2011 Egypt­ian Rev­o­lu­tion, glo­ri­fy­ing it as one of the most land­mark tri­umphs of free­dom in recent his­to­ry. Yet the West­ern media has deliv­ered sur­pris­ing­ly lit­tle on its after­math, leav­ing the lived post-rev­o­lu­tion real­i­ty of the Egypt­ian peo­ple a near-mys­tery.

This beau­ti­ful short film by British film stu­dio Scat­tered Images offers a rare glimpse of a phoenix still strug­gling to rise from the ash­es of oppres­sion. With incred­i­ble visu­al elo­quence, the film peels away at the now-worn media iconog­ra­phy of the rev­o­lu­tion itself, reveal­ing how life after it has actu­al­ly changed — or has­n’t — as Egypt remains a nation in tran­si­tion, with a future yet to be decid­ed.

Polit­i­cal­ly, there is a vac­u­um. The rev­o­lu­tion demand­ed a gov­ern­ment account­able to the peo­ple and ruled by trans­par­ent insti­tu­tions. But now, the only ruler is uncer­tain­ty.

Maria Popo­va is the founder and edi­tor in chief of Brain Pick­ings, a curat­ed inven­to­ry of cross-dis­ci­pli­nary inter­est­ing­ness. She writes for Wired UK, The Atlantic and Desig­nOb­serv­er, and spends a great deal of time on Twit­ter.

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Oil’d, by Chris Harmon

in Current Affairs, Video - Politics/Society | May 2nd, 2011

We’re often obsessed with oil. A year ago, the issue was off­shore drilling. The Deep­wa­ter Hori­zon rig had explod­ed, and crude oil was spilling into the Gulf of Mex­i­co at a rate of 53,000 bar­rels a day. We all watched help­less­ly as BP threw every­thing but the kitchen sink at the prob­lem. (Remem­ber the golf balls?) Three months passed and 4.9 mil­lion bar­rels ripped into the ecosys­tem before the well was final­ly capped. Time to talk about it? Hard­ly. Now the dis­cus­sion has moved on to sky­rock­et­ing oil prices and the issues sur­round­ing them, like the caus­es (con­flict in the Mid­dle East, ris­ing con­sump­tion in Chi­na and India, com­mod­i­ty spec­u­la­tion at home…) and the polit­i­cal impli­ca­tions for the 2012 U.S. pres­i­den­tial elec­tion if gas prices stay high. Weighty issues, to be sure. But before we allow the Deep­wa­ter Hori­zon oil spill of 2010 to fade into our col­lec­tive amne­sia, Chris Har­mon, a Brook­lyn-based design­er, ani­ma­tor and writer, has cre­at­ed a work of ani­mat­ed typog­ra­phy to put some of the stag­ger­ing facts into per­spec­tive.

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Obama Announces Death of Osama bin Laden (Video)

in Current Affairs, History | May 1st, 2011

It’s news and it’s instant his­tor­i­cal footage. Tonight, Pres­i­dent Oba­ma announced that Osama bin Laden, the mas­ter­mind behind the 9/11 attacks, was killed Sun­day by US forces in Pak­istan, right out­side of Islam­abad (and, in a for­ti­fied man­sion, no less). The US began search­ing for bin Laden back in 1998, fol­low­ing the bomb­ing of the US embassies in Kenya and Tan­za­nia. 13 years lat­er, the pur­suit of Al Qaeda’s leader is over…

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A Very Brief History of Royal Weddings

in Current Affairs, History | April 28th, 2011

I can’t say that we’ll be watch­ing the roy­al wed­ding. But we should at least put a thin veneer of intel­li­gence on top of the shal­low spec­ta­cle. That’s our job. In two very quick min­utes, Emory his­to­ri­an Patrick Allitt sketch­es out the his­to­ry of roy­al wed­dings, and tells you why this “Roy­al Willd­ing” stands out…

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