Michael Moore Tells Wisconsin Teachers “America Isn’t Broke”

in Current Affairs, Education, Film | March 6th, 2011

Jon Stew­art put it nice­ly. Now film­mak­er Michael Moore takes the gloves off. Vis­it­ing Madi­son, Wis­con­sin this Sat­ur­day, he told the crowd “Amer­i­ca isn’t broke.” Rather, the mon­ey that used to run the coun­try sim­ply got siphoned out of the sys­tem and put into unpro­duc­tive Wall Street accounts. Strong words, but if you con­sid­er that most US cor­po­ra­tions pay no US tax­es, that bil­lion­aire hedge fund man­agers pay far low­er tax­es than the rest of you, that we’re pre­serv­ing the unsus­tain­able Bush tax breaks that over­whelm­ing­ly ben­e­fit the extreme­ly wealthy, then you start to think about our nation­al deficits and Wis­con­sin’s bat­tles with teach­ers in a dif­fer­ent light.

Make no mis­take about it. The deficits are a real prob­lem. And any tru­ly exces­sive perks for pub­lic work­ers should be cut. But the mid­dle class should­n’t bear the sole brunt of the nation­al sac­ri­fice. And, so far, that’s all we see. Main Street took the hit in 2008 while Wall Street walked. And that’s what’s hap­pen­ing again…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jon Stew­art: The Teach­ers Have it Too Good (Wink)

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Jon Stewart: Teachers Have it Too Good (Wink)

in Comedy, Current Affairs, Economics | March 4th, 2011

Jon Stew­art had to do it. He had to con­nect the dots. We’re going after the pub­lic ser­vants try­ing to do some good. But how about the non-con­tribut­ing bankers who kept their per­son­al gravy train rolling at tax­pay­er expense? Or the hedge fund man­agers who pay dra­mat­i­cal­ly low­er tax­es than almost any­one read­ing this site? 15%?? And let’s not for­get that some of our our largest cor­po­ra­tions – includ­ing GE and Exxon — have recent­ly paid no US income tax? Ulti­mate­ly, this all gets down to who funds your next elec­tion. Banks and cor­po­ra­tions do. Kids and pub­lic ser­vants don’t. David Brooks makes that point rather well. I’m all for sac­ri­fice, but let’s make it fair and shared. Or is that idea too “social­ist” (or what we quaint­ly used to call “demo­c­ra­t­ic”)?

Relat­ed Note:

Michael Moore Tells Wis­con­sin Teach­ers “Amer­i­ca is NOT Broke”

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Spelling Counts…

in Comedy, English Language | March 4th, 2011

Today is Nation­al Gram­mar Day, and maybe it’s a stretch to lump spelling under gram­mar, but it’s casu­al Fri­day here on OC. So we leave you with this. Have a great week­end..

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Great Cultural Icons Talk Civil Rights: James Baldwin, Marlon Brando, Harry Belafonte & Sidney Poitier (1963)

in History, Video - Politics/Society | March 4th, 2011

On the day of the his­toric “March on Wash­ing­ton for Jobs and Free­dom” (August 28, 1963), known today as The Great March on Wash­ing­ton (watch it on YouTube in three parts), CBS aired a 30-minute round­table dis­cus­sion fea­tur­ing James Bald­win, Mar­lon Bran­do, Har­ry Bela­fonte, Charl­ton Hes­ton, Joseph L. Mankiewicz and Sid­ney Poiti­er.

The whole seg­ment is fas­ci­nat­ing, even and per­haps espe­cial­ly because the speak­ers pur­sue their some­times diver­gent agen­das (Hes­ton speaks opti­misti­cal­ly about peace­ful dis­sent, Bran­do hopes the Civ­il Rights move­ment may lead to repa­ra­tions for Native Amer­i­cans, while Bela­fonte warns omi­nous­ly that the Unit­ed States has now reached a “point of no return”). But it may be Joseph Mankiewicz, the sharp-wit­ted writer/director of All About Eve, who pro­vides one of the dis­cus­sion’s pithi­est lines: “Free­dom, true free­dom,” he says, “is not giv­en by gov­ern­ments; it is tak­en by the peo­ple.”

For a very dif­fer­ent take on the events of the day, you can lis­ten to audio of the famous speech Mal­colm X deliv­ered a few months lat­er, “A Mes­sage to the Grass Roots,” in which he calls the march a “cir­cus,” and its black lead­ers “[Uncle] Toms.”

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North Korea’s Cinema of Dreams

in Film, Video - Arts & Culture | March 4th, 2011

Kim Jong-Il, North Kore­a’s leader, is revered as a genius of cin­e­ma by his own peo­ple. Or so the North Kore­an pro­pa­gan­dists would have you believe. In this fas­ci­nat­ing video from Al Jazeera, we fol­low two reporters (Lynn Lee and James Leong) as they gain unprece­dent­ed access to Pyongyang’s Uni­ver­si­ty of Cin­e­mat­ic and Dra­mat­ic Arts, where young actors are picked to serve the mas­sive pro­pa­gan­da machine. Along the way, Lee and Leong encounter two young film stu­dents – Kim Un Bom and Ri Yun Mi – as they rehearse, take music and dance lessons, and call atten­tion to their priv­i­leged lives.

How are films dif­fer­ent in cap­i­tal­ist coun­tries vs. North Korea? Leave it to Ri Yun Mi, the film stu­dent, to explain (3:27 in the video):

“Films made in cap­i­tal­ist coun­tries are com­mer­cial prod­ucts. Movies in our coun­try bring out the ide­ol­o­gy of the peo­ple. We could say we are rep­re­sen­ta­tives of our [Com­mu­nist] Par­ty.”

The young reporters go on to explain the chal­lenges they faced in cre­at­ing this film. They were repeat­ed­ly denied per­mis­sion to film at the Uni­ver­si­ty, and fre­quent­ly told to delete footage when it did­n’t con­form to North Kore­a’s stan­dards. All in all, this film does a good job illu­mi­nat­ing anoth­er hid­den part of North Kore­an life: the cin­e­ma of dreams.

Eugene Buchko is a blog­ger and pho­tog­ra­ph­er liv­ing in Atlanta, GA. He main­tains a pho­to­blog, Eru­dite Expres­sions, and writes about what he reads on his read­ing blog.

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New David Foster Wallace Story Appears in The New Yorker

in Books, Literature | March 3rd, 2011

A quick heads up: The March 7 edi­tion of The New York­er mag­a­zine fea­tures a pre­vi­ous­ly unpub­lished sto­ry by David Fos­ter Wal­lace, the cel­e­brat­ed Amer­i­can author who com­mit­ted sui­cide back in 2008. The sto­ry, “Back­bone,” begins:

Every whole per­son has ambi­tions, objec­tives, ini­tia­tives, goals. This one par­tic­u­lar boy’s goal was to be able to press his lips to every square inch of his own body.

His arms to the shoul­ders and most of his legs beneath the knee were child’s play. After these areas of his body, how­ev­er, the dif­fi­cul­ty increased with the abrupt­ness of a coastal shelf. The boy came to under­stand that unimag­in­able chal­lenges lay ahead of him. He was six.

The full sto­ry appears on The New York­er web­site. And per­haps it will whet your appetite for a big­ger lit­er­ary event. On April 15th, Wal­lace’s final (and still not quite com­plete) nov­el, ‘The Pale King’, will be pub­lished. You can already reserve your copy on Ama­zon here. Thanks to @sheerly for the tip…

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Jay‑Z: The Evolution of My Style

in Music, Video - Arts & Culture | March 3rd, 2011

Shawn Carter – the MC, entre­pre­neur, and recent best-sell­ing author who is known to every­one but his moth­er as Jay‑Z  – proved with the 2010 pub­li­ca­tion of his mem­oir Decod­ed that he is not only one of hip-hop’s top artists, but also one of its top inter­preters.

In Decod­ed, Jay‑Z offers lit­tle in the way of new per­son­al details. He’s been telling that sto­ry in his raps for twen­ty years now – from his father­less child­hood in the projects, to his years deal­ing crack cocaine, to his star­dom, and final­ly to his cur­rent suc­cess as a busi­ness­man and cul­tur­al icon. And what­ev­er the 41-year-old has­n’t divulged yet, he may well have been advised by a lawyer to keep to him­self. Instead of auto­bi­og­ra­phy, Decod­ed pro­vides some­thing much more valu­able, a thought­ful analy­sis of his own lyrics and the his­to­ry of his cho­sen art form. Jay‑Z  helps us under­stand that he and hip-hop are rough­ly the same age, and that their sto­ries are almost inter­change­able: When young Shawn Carter first fell in love with the sound of rhymes over beats in Brook­lyn in 1978, he was dis­cov­er­ing the new music just as the new music was dis­cov­er­ing itself.

Ran­dom House has just released an iPad appli­ca­tion of Decod­ed, adding about thir­ty min­utes of mul­ti-media con­tent, includ­ing the video above. You might also want to check out Jay-Z’s appear­ance on Char­lie Rose (on Youtube in 5 parts) and his recent inter­view on Fresh Air.

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Visualizing WiFi Signals with Light

in Science, Technology, Video - Arts & Culture | March 3rd, 2011

Have you ever won­dered what the WiFi sig­nal looks like around your office, school, or local café? In this video, Timo Arnall, Jørn Knut­sen, and Einar Sneve Mar­t­i­nussen show you the invis­i­ble. And they pulled this off by build­ing a WiFi mea­sur­ing rod, mea­sur­ing four meters in length, that can visu­al­ize WiFi sig­nals around Oslo, Nor­way with the help of long expo­sure pho­tog­ra­phy.

What’s fas­ci­nat­ing to see is how the WiFi sig­nals vary across the city. Away from res­i­den­tial build­ings, the drop-off in WiFi strength is steep. On the oth­er hand, the WiFi sig­nal is dense around com­mer­cial and aca­d­e­m­ic build­ings. The amaz­ing visu­al­iza­tion gives us a glimpse into the com­plex rela­tion­ships between WiFi net­works and the phys­i­cal envi­ron­ments under­pin­ning them. For a deep­er read about this project, see this blog post.

Eugene Buchko is a blog­ger and pho­tog­ra­ph­er liv­ing in Atlanta, GA. He main­tains a pho­to­blog, Eru­dite Expres­sions, and writes about what he reads on his read­ing blog.

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.