Docs of the Decade (2000-2009)
From this last decade there are three documentaries that are not to be missed, as they are not only produced in a mildly entertaining fashion, but they convey extremely important American problems and potential solutions that are still extremely important to address for this current decade. For each documentary I also include related current events of 2010 that are not included in the documentaries themselves.
First Documentary
This movie does a wonderful job at presenting the lack of ethics of the current food industry, and the monopolies that are currently unfairly, and potentially unlawfully existing. Monsanto’s story on how they can patent life is also told. (Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas used to be a lawyer for Monsanto, who just happened to pass this EXTREMELY controversial case) I personally believe that all genetically modified food should have to have warning labels. And while any intelectual has known that there has not been nearly enough testing on genetically modified food to allow it for mass consumption, which it is, there is new evidence showing that GMF is unhealthy. Thanks to my friend for sending me the link to this article:
Quoted from: http://www.biolsci.org/v05p0706.htm
We present for the first time a comparative analysis of blood and organ system data from trials with rats fed three main commercialized genetically modified (GM) maize (NK 603, MON 810, MON 863), which are present in food and feed in the world. NK 603 has been modified to be tolerant to the broad spectrum herbicide Roundup and thus contains residues of this formulation. MON 810 and MON 863 are engineered to synthesize two different Bt toxins used as insecticides. Approximately 60 different biochemical parameters were classified per organ and measured in serum and urine after 5 and 14 weeks of feeding. GM maize-fed rats were compared first to their respective isogenic or parental non-GM equivalent control groups. This was followed by comparison to six reference groups, which had consumed various other non-GM maize varieties. We applied nonparametric methods, including multiple pairwise comparisons with a False Discovery Rate approach. Principal Component Analysis allowed the investigation of scattering of different factors (sex, weeks of feeding, diet, dose and group). Our analysis clearly reveals for the 3 GMOs new side effects linked with GM maize consumption, which were sex- and often dose-dependent. Effects were mostly associated with the kidney and liver, the dietary detoxifying organs, although different between the 3 GMOs. Other effects were also noticed in the heart, adrenal glands, spleen and haematopoietic system. We conclude that these data highlight signs of hepatorenal toxicity, possibly due to the new pesticides specific to each GM corn. In addition, unintended direct or indirect metabolic consequences of the genetic modification cannot be excluded.
Second Documentary
Most academics agree that electric cars are the most efficient, to my understanding. More efficient than gasoline (which is shipped to us by the other side of the planet), more efficient than Hydrogen (which besides being less efficient, you also have to build a completely new infrastructures for distributing the hydrogen), and it’s also more efficient than ethanol (which takes more energy to make than it emites in your engine.) While it’s true that most of our electricity comes from coal, this is still better than having to rely on gasoline, and is overall more cost and environmentally friendly. So if electric cars are so great, why do we not have many on the market today? Watch the movie to find out.
New since the Movie
There is a company called Tesla whom currently makes an electric sports car that goes 0-60 in just 3.9 seconds, that’s faster than most Ferraris! But what is even more exciting is that Tesla is currently developing the “Model S”, which is a family sedan electric car with the range of 300 miles per charge, and a 0-60 speed of under 6 seconds (Still fast!) Check out more about Tesla at their website: http://www.teslamotors.com/ To bad GMC got bailed out, all the money they our government is putting into an already failed company could have been going into getting the “Model S” into mass production! Also, the “Model S” is expected to just cost around $50,000, and I expect even more affordable models to come out after the success of the “Model S”
Third Documentary
A must see documentary about how America and debt are related to each other. The movie starts by giving a good history of our debt, and how it relates to us today. Bill Clinton was the last president whom actually put an effort to decreasing American debt. Bush and Obama administrations have let it grown almost exponentially due to extremely poor economic policies. I hope the next administration can be as mindful as Clinton was to the deficit. Peter Schiff is a great economist whom is trying to make the jump to senator. He actually predicted the current economic recession years before it happened, due to the poor economic policies that were in place. Check out Schiff’s website here.
Gattaca Now: Pre-implantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD)
Earlier this year I wrote a short blog post about the movie Gattaca, which you can read here. Gattaca does a wonderful job conveying the moral ambiguities of using genetic technology to choose and design a child before conception. The movie does this all while maintaining the plot of a suspenseful romance story.
Recently PGD has been making the headlines, and CNN put a seemingly well balanced piece together with Dr. Gupta.
2D Printers are Retro
Great video talking about the possibility and practicality of having three dimensional printers becoming a norm in the near future.
Evolution of Storage
Storage is continuing to change quickly, soon the idea of any moving parts for having to read media will be archaic.
Article explaining the orders of magnitude in relation to data
Prefixes for bit and byte multiples
Decimal Value SI 1000 k kilo 10002 M mega 10003 G giga 10004 T tera 10005 P peta 10006 E exa 10007 Z zetta 10008 Y yotta
Binary Value IEC JEDEC 1024 Ki kibi K kilo 10242 Mi mebi M mega 10243 Gi gibi G giga 10244 Ti tebi 10245 Pi pebi 10246 Ei exbi 10247 Zi zebi 10248 Yi yobi
This is a link to the original flickr photo
Beers with Vermeer, an interview by Hobby
David Hobby is a strobist/photographer, with a well known photography blog. (A strobist is someone whom specializes in flash photography)
In David’s latest blog post he interviews Vermeer, the famous influential painter whom was born in the year 1632, about the various lighting techniques that he uses in his paintings. Vermeer has been the most cited source of inspiration when it comes to referencing lighting used in photography and cinematography. It’s an entertaining interview, and educational as well.
Spike Jonze interview with NPR
Spike Jonze directed the movie “Where the Wild Things Are”, the new movie based off of Maurice Sendak’s popular book. This movie is supposed to be quite visually stunning with having a focus on character instead of revolving around just the visual effects. In this interview Jonze talks about his influences and the various processes of having to produce this film. According to Jonze in the interview, since the film was character driven, they decided not to do visual effects until after the live action production ended, thus creating a overall process that is twice as long than what it would have taken if they overlapped visual effects production with live action. Hear more about the interview by either going to this link, or by listening via this embeded
(1984) Why is the White House administration picking fights with media?
I don’t like the idea of a President trying to dictate what stories a media organization can run and not run. Just about every political pundit agrees that this is not Presidential and comes across as petty and amateurish. I feel that Obama is trying to avoid the fate of George W. Bush, as the media strongly turned on him when he was once uber popular. The polls show that Obama is currently on the same polls declination that Bush was on, so I imagine that he is making a risky move by drawing a line in the metaphorical sand and making people choose sides. But that’s just where the problem lies, nobody in the media should be taking sides, and, most importantly, the President should not be encouraging people to take sides! I find this one of the most disturbing events of the year. I read most of my news via google news, and I’ll post to a few quotes from various articles.
“It’s a very risky strategy. It’s not one that I would advocate,” Gergen said on CNN. “If you’re going to get very personal against the media, you’re going to find that the animosities are just going to deepen. And you’re going to find that you sort of almost draw viewers and readers to the people you’re attacking. You build them up in some ways, you give them stature.”
He added: “The press always has the last barrel of ink.”
As for Dunn’s complaint about Fox News’ coverage of the Obama campaign, a study by the Pew Research Center showed that 40 percent of Fox News stories on Obama in the last six weeks of the campaign were negative. Similarly, 40 percent of Fox News’ stories on Obama’s Republican opponent, Sen. John McCain, were negative.
On CNN, by contrast, there was a 22-point disparity in the percentage of negative stories on Obama (39 percent) and McCain (61 percent). The disparity was even greater at MSNBC, according to Pew, where just 14 percent of Obama stories were negative, compared to a whopping 73 percent of McCain stories — a spread of 59 points.
Although Dunn accused Fox News of being a “wing of the Republican Party,” she said the network does not champion conservatism.“It’s not ideological,” she acknowledged. “I mean, obviously, there are many commentators who are conservative, liberal, centrist — and everybody understands that.”
Referring to Ms. Dunn, the Fox News correspondent James Rosen reported, “One of her own aides formally notified Fox News that none of the news programs that had requested interviews with the president, including ‘America’s Newsroom with Bill Hemmer and Megyn Kelly,’ ‘Special Report with Bret Baier,’ or ‘Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace’ would receive one anytime this year.
Fox News senior vice president Michael Clemente said the president is not distinguishing between the network’s opinion programs and its actual news content.
“The average news consumer can certainly distinguish between the A-section of the newspaper and the editorial page, which is what our programming represents,” he said in a statement.
The New York Times report says David Axelrod, senior adviser to Obama, and Roger Ailes, chairman of Fox News, met last month to discuss the hostilities.
Sunday’s latest volley suggests that the cease-fire – if ever their was one – is over.
The fact that the White house would make false accusations with out having the data to back up their theory is depressing and disturbing. The President should never play censorship with the media, or even try and meddle in the media’s affairs. Obama seems to be doing the exact opposite of what he said he would be doing. Needless to say, I hope that media can continue to be diverse in opinion and not be attacked by the White House. The government is whom should be protecting not attacking the media.
According to this logic, Obama should be sending thank you notes to the rest of the media outlets whom over praised his previous efforts. Obama did not even finish one senate term before becoming president, only the media could not bring this one little fact to light.
At the White House Correspondents Dinner in May, Obama even mocked the media for supporting him.
“Most of you covered me; all of you voted for me,” Obama said, spurring laughter and applause from the assembled journalists. “Apologies to the Fox table.”
I hope that this does not set a new precedent for future presidents, where they think they can actively meddle in the media, trying to get them to only cover the stories they think will make them win a re-election. And only trying to correct ‘lies’ that are biased to their favor, very unfitting for a president.
NPR interview with Dr. Ron Paul, TX congressman
This is an intelligent interview with Ron Paul on NPR’s program “All Things Considered.” Ron Paul addresses the potential problems with government intervention with health care, as well as what he calls ‘corporationism’, which is what he states is causing the current problems. As Ron Paul expresses in the interview:
Charity takes care of it, the churches take care of it. When government takes care of it, the bureaucrats get paid. And insurance companies become the lobbyists, the drug companies become the lobbyists, the management companies become the lobbyists, doctors get squeezed, the patients get squeezed. You can’t put all these corporations in between the doctors and the patients. You have a form of corporatism, which motivates the type of system that we have now, and it’s not any better. Some worry that Obama would give us socialized medicine, but he isn’t. He’s giving us a continuation of corporatism. He’s forcing people to buy insurance. The insurance companies love it! They love to see 20 or 30 million more people being forced into the system, and they will have more customers.
Listen to the full 8 minute interview online right here:
REBURBIA
I’m strongly opposed to the development of suburbs, and here are just a few of the reason:
- Creates an over dependence on the automobile, on a macro level
- Helps encourage a stagnant mono culture run by only major corporate franchises
- People are unable to walk to library or other community educational center
On of my friends, Aaron, was aware of these opinions of mine and sent me a website that is hosting a competition on how to re design the suburbs of America. Here are the finalist.
And here is the about page of REBURBIA:
Dwell Magazine and Inhabitat.com are pleased to announce the first ever Reburbia competition: a design competition dedicated to re-envisioning the suburbs.
With the current housing crisis, the sub-prime mortgage meltdown, and rising energy costs, the future of suburbia looks bleak. Suburban communities in central California, Arizona and Florida are desolate and decaying, with for sale and foreclosure signs dotting many lawns. According to the US Census, about 90% of all metropolitan growth occurred in suburban communities in the last ten years. Urbanites who loathe the freeways, big box stores and bland aesthetics stereotypical of suburbia may secretly root for the end of sprawl, but demographic trends indicate that exurban growth is still on the rise.
In a future where limited natural resources will force us to find better solutions for density and efficiency, what will become of the cul-de-sacs, cookie-cutter tract houses and generic strip malls that have long upheld the diffuse infrastructure of suburbia? How can we redirect these existing spaces to promote sustainability, walkability, and community? It’s a problem that demands a visionary design solution and we want you to create the vision!
Calling all future-forward architects, urban designers, renegade planners and imaginative engineers:
Show us how you would re-invent the suburbs! What would a McMansion become if it weren’t a single-family dwelling? How could a vacant big box store be retrofitted for agriculture? What sort of design solutions can you come up with to facilitate car-free mobility, ‘burb-grown food, and local, renewable energy generation? We want to see how you’d design future-proof spaces and systems using the suburban structures of the present, from small-scale retrofits to large-scale restoration—the wilder the better!
The scariest thing to me about the future of the suburbs is that the government will try and support the now outdated mode of living through some type of housing bill. Here is a link to a recent press release from my own senator, Johnny Isakson (R-GA). Isakson has made his fortune through the over development of Atlanta metro houses, and now wants to try and artificially sustain the housing market through various incentives. Why try and encourage people to become in debt if they are trying to save? This is one of the underlying reasons for the weakening of the American economy and one of the major causes of this recession in the first place.
And while I’m not totally opposed to all suburbs, I think they are proportionally out of balance with the other modes of living in America.