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coming up for air
Feb. 23rd, 2005 08:53 pmIt feels a bit odd not spending ungodly amounts of time online, but my lack of desire to be online (or on the computer at all) has continued on from the weekend. It doesn't help that I got my amazon japan box in and have been devouring its contents, but I've been busy doing other stuff. I definitely want to rant about my new goodies, but that'll have to be done on another day since I have other things I want to write about now...
Last night I went to a talk by the currently extremely controversial Ward Churchill, a professor at the University of Colorado, who is known (if you listen to mainstream media only) as the guy who called the 9-11 victims "little Eichmanns." When I heard the news coverage, I had been quite disgusted that once again the media was pouncing on the controversial sound bite without giving any kind of context. I hadn't bothered to find out exactly what he did say, but my friend sent some links because he was going to speak at the University of Hawaii. Well, since all I had to do was click, I read first an interview he had with the Boulder Weekly where he was allowed to actually explain and clarify his statements, as well as the original article that is at the center of the furor and his response to his critics. While I don't necessarily agree with all he has to say, he made some interesting arguments and certainly made me think. And since the whole movement to get him fired, as well as the death threats and name calling ("traitor," "un-American," "terrorist"), also really really pissed me off--isn't this attempt to silence him un-American? Aren't we supposed to be the "land of the free" and all that? Anyone heard of the First Amendment?
In any case, I was interested and wanted to show my support for freedom of speech, so I went. Well, the event was terribly managed. When I arrived, the auditorium was already completely packed and there were several hundred people milling about outside. The time for his talk came and went, and no one bothered to make any kind of announcement. People basically stood around until finally, half an hour into the talk they manage to bring out some speakers so that we could hear what he was saying.
O_o Well...he is certainly...um....tactless... ^_^; But he is also very amusing (oh, the insults he threw at various people and groups...). I think he is probably a wonderfully entertaining lecturer--no wonder he is popular at his school. He reiterated a lot of the same things I'd already read, but he's good enough a speaker that I more or less enjoyed listening to him. He also added some new things that gave me more food for thought. I wish the media would actually use his controversial ideas as basis for discourse, so that the nation could start thinking instead of being the mindless cheerleaders that I feel like it's become.
The other night a program called Project X was playing, and I watched bits and pieces of it as I was reading. This show features the development of various goods and innovations by Japanese people and/or companies. Last night was about the cassette tape. I didn't pay attention to the actual development, but I did catch the part where they decided to market the tape in the US first. They came up with the name TDK...I didn't know it was a Japanese company, or that it stood for anything. :D But what stood out was that it was used by NASA to record the Apollo 11 mission (So that famous line by Neil Armstrong was recorded on a cassette tape).
Of course, that show wasn't as interesting as the one about cup noodles I saw a while back (which is why I didn't pay attention to most of it). It was really hard to flash freeze the noodles and the other stuff that went into the cup noodles. They tried freezing every single type of shrimp until they found the one that froze with nice color and texture...talk about the amount of work for something we all take for granted. ^_^
Last night I went to a talk by the currently extremely controversial Ward Churchill, a professor at the University of Colorado, who is known (if you listen to mainstream media only) as the guy who called the 9-11 victims "little Eichmanns." When I heard the news coverage, I had been quite disgusted that once again the media was pouncing on the controversial sound bite without giving any kind of context. I hadn't bothered to find out exactly what he did say, but my friend sent some links because he was going to speak at the University of Hawaii. Well, since all I had to do was click, I read first an interview he had with the Boulder Weekly where he was allowed to actually explain and clarify his statements, as well as the original article that is at the center of the furor and his response to his critics. While I don't necessarily agree with all he has to say, he made some interesting arguments and certainly made me think. And since the whole movement to get him fired, as well as the death threats and name calling ("traitor," "un-American," "terrorist"), also really really pissed me off--isn't this attempt to silence him un-American? Aren't we supposed to be the "land of the free" and all that? Anyone heard of the First Amendment?
In any case, I was interested and wanted to show my support for freedom of speech, so I went. Well, the event was terribly managed. When I arrived, the auditorium was already completely packed and there were several hundred people milling about outside. The time for his talk came and went, and no one bothered to make any kind of announcement. People basically stood around until finally, half an hour into the talk they manage to bring out some speakers so that we could hear what he was saying.
O_o Well...he is certainly...um....tactless... ^_^; But he is also very amusing (oh, the insults he threw at various people and groups...). I think he is probably a wonderfully entertaining lecturer--no wonder he is popular at his school. He reiterated a lot of the same things I'd already read, but he's good enough a speaker that I more or less enjoyed listening to him. He also added some new things that gave me more food for thought. I wish the media would actually use his controversial ideas as basis for discourse, so that the nation could start thinking instead of being the mindless cheerleaders that I feel like it's become.
The other night a program called Project X was playing, and I watched bits and pieces of it as I was reading. This show features the development of various goods and innovations by Japanese people and/or companies. Last night was about the cassette tape. I didn't pay attention to the actual development, but I did catch the part where they decided to market the tape in the US first. They came up with the name TDK...I didn't know it was a Japanese company, or that it stood for anything. :D But what stood out was that it was used by NASA to record the Apollo 11 mission (So that famous line by Neil Armstrong was recorded on a cassette tape).
Of course, that show wasn't as interesting as the one about cup noodles I saw a while back (which is why I didn't pay attention to most of it). It was really hard to flash freeze the noodles and the other stuff that went into the cup noodles. They tried freezing every single type of shrimp until they found the one that froze with nice color and texture...talk about the amount of work for something we all take for granted. ^_^