Mr. Rogers Goes to Washington

in Current Affairs, Television | March 9th, 2011

We take you back to anoth­er era when fund­ing for pub­lic broad­cast­ing was in doubt – to 1969, when Richard Nixon planned to cut PBS’ fund­ing from $20 mil­lion to $10 mil­lion. Here Fred Rogers, the gen­tle cre­ator of Mis­ter Rogers’ Neigh­bor­hood, gets six short min­utes before Sen­a­tor John Pas­tore, the chair­man of the Sub­com­mit­tee on Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, and makes his pitch for pub­licly-fund­ed edu­ca­tion­al tele­vi­sion. In those 360 sec­onds, Rogers gets the gruff sen­a­tor to do a com­plete 180 – to end up say­ing “It looks like you just earned the 20 mil­lion dol­lars.” And, indeed, it turned out just that way. Those were the days…

via @webacion

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James Bond in Drag For International Women’s Day

in Current Affairs, Film | March 8th, 2011

We Are Equals pro­duced this 2‑minute video for the 100th anniver­sary of Inter­na­tion­al Wom­en’s Day. Daniel Craig and the great Dame Judi Dench reprise their roles from the last two James Bond films — with a twist. We’d say more, but the video speaks for itself. Enjoy!

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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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Revolutions in the Middle East: Head of Al Jazeera Speaks at TED

in Current Affairs, TED Talks | March 2nd, 2011

Where will the Mid­dle East go from here? Towards democ­ra­cy, as many hope? Towards a more theo­crat­ic mod­el, as some despair? Or, towards more of the same dis­il­lu­sion­ing autoc­ra­cy?

On the first day of the big TED con­fer­ence, Wadah Khan­far, the head of Al Jazeera, offered a supreme­ly opti­mistic take on the rev­o­lu­tions trans­form­ing Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and per­haps beyond. Through­out the past few weeks, many West­ern­ers have tuned into Al Jazeer­a’s live Eng­lish-lan­guage cov­er­age on the web and found them­selves pleas­ant­ly sur­prised by the bal­ance and depth of their report­ing. Now you get 17 upbeat min­utes with the leader of the Qatar-based news orga­ni­za­tion …

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“From Dictatorship to Democracy.” Open Text Changes Face of Egypt.

in Current Affairs, Politics | February 17th, 2011

There’s some­thing won­der­ful about this .… unless you’re a dic­ta­tor. Today, The New York Times shines a good light on Gene Sharp, a shy Amer­i­can intel­lec­tu­al who has spent decades writ­ing on the art of non-vio­lent rev­o­lu­tion. Back in 2002, Sharp pub­lished “From Dic­ta­tor­ship to Democ­ra­cy: A Con­cep­tu­al Frame­work for Lib­er­a­tion,” a 93-page guide to upend­ing auto­crats. Then, he had the text trans­lat­ed into 24 lan­guages and made freely avail­able online, with all copy­right restric­tions removed.  The man­u­al has since inspired dis­si­dents in Bur­ma, Bosnia and Esto­nia, while giv­ing strate­gic direc­tion to the protests in Egypt and Tunisia. Ideas have pow­er. But good ideas have more pow­er when they’re open. You can down­load Sharp’s man­u­al here (PDF), and learn more about his mis­sion through his non­prof­it, The Albert Ein­stein Insti­tu­tion.

Speak­ing of good ideas that are open, feel free to down­load 35o free online cours­es and teach your­self any­thing and every­thing.

via @philosophybites

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Christopher Hitchens Answers Reddit User Questions

in Current Affairs | February 17th, 2011

A lit­tle ways back, Christo­pher Hitchens field­ed ques­tions for 30 min­utes from Reddit.com users, answer­ing any and every ques­tion they threw his way. What his­tor­i­cal fig­ures, events or books have been under­em­pha­sized in Amer­i­can pub­lic edu­ca­tion? Has the Iraq War (some­thing Hitchens sup­port­ed) had a pos­i­tive or neg­a­tive impact on Islam­ic extrem­ism? What do social­ism and lib­er­tar­i­an­ism have in com­mon intel­lec­tu­al­ly, if any­thing? Oth­er fig­ures inter­viewed by Red­dit users include Richard Dawkins, Noam Chom­sky, and Ron Paul.

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Al Jazeera’s Live Stream of Egyptian Uprising

in Current Affairs, Politics | January 28th, 2011

A quick fyi: We may be wit­ness­ing a water­shed moment in the his­to­ry of Egypt and The Mid­dle East, with police bat­tling mas­sive protests across Cairo and oth­er Egypt­ian cities. These protests are being cov­ered on the ground by Al Jazeera in Eng­lish, and you can watch the live stream on the web right here, or down­load the free Al Jazeera iPhone app and watch the stream on the iPhone.

Note: If you’re look­ing for some resources that explain what’s hap­pen­ing in Egypt, you might want to vis­it these resources here and here. Both come at the rec­om­men­da­tion of Jad Abum­rad, the host of Radio Lab.

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