This is making the rounds – but it is an entertaining mashup of Lord of the Rings and the World Cup. Watched a World Cup game this summer and wanted to get rid of the vuvuzela noise? Just bring in the Fellowship of the Vuvuzela.
Watch here.
Monthly Archives: June 2010
Stories for Afghanistan
Wired writes of a new Department of Defense program to develop “interactive stories” to find common ground with Afghan residents.
The “Negotiate Across Cultures” project will kick off with a two-day workshop… “participants will use a ‘Wizard of Oz’ approach to illustrate how each approach, if implemented, would operate on selected negotiation problems within specific socio-cultural environments. In the ‘Wizard of Oz’ approach, one or two human representatives of each participant team will listen to a problem description and manually act out the operation and structure of the tool using props they bring to the event.”
Graphing flight delays by airport and airline
The Infrastructurist displays a great graphic that summarizes flight delays at major US airports. A quick interpretation: be prepared to be behind when traveling to New York, San Francisco, and Philadelphia or when flying on Northwest, JetBlue, AirTran, and American.
Where Hitler is not reviled
Interesting AP story regarding a Bollywood film about Hitler titled Dear Friend Hitler. From the piece:
[In India], Hitler is not viewed as the personification of evil, but with an attitude of morally ambiguous fascination. He is seen as a management guru – akin to Machiavelli or Sun Tzu – by business students, and an object of wonder by people craving order amid the chaos of India.
A sociologist, Ashsish Nandy, gives several reasons for this:
For some readers, modern India is a country in chaos and, there is a “certain admiration” for Hitler and his extreme authoritarianism.
There is also India’s colonial inheritance when “every enemy of Britain was a friend of India and at least potentially a good person,” he says, adding that among today’s young readers “there is kind a vague sense that it’s about a person who gave a tough time to the Brits.”
Much of this is likely to look strange to Westerners where Hitler is often invoked as the “epitome of evil.” But the two reasons given by Nandy may have some merit. The British colonial legacy, often negative even more than six decades later, is still a strong cultural factor. Current “chaos” also invokes hope that any leader, in any form, might bring order.
Quick Review: Toy Story 3
Toy Story 3 is in its second week in theaters. Featuring the same band of characters, Woody, Buzz Lightyear, and friends, plus some new toys and humans, Pixar has served up another successful film. My thoughts:
1. Andy is off to college. An interesting plot device as the toys have to switch gears – but also seems connected to a Pixar interest in chronicling life changes. Up contrasted an old man and young boy. Cars looked at changes in a small town. These films are not just about a moment of time but they involve complicated contexts for the current story. These transitional periods, such as a move from childhood to college or from mourning and grumpiness to meaning and joy after the loss of a spouse, have much potential for exploration.
2. There does seem something a little strange about watching a movie about a kid playing with toys. Andy is depicted in his youth running around his house with his cast of toys – no shots of him sitting at a computer, in a movie theater, texting. Older Andy is tied more to his computer. Yet we are paying money to see a sentimental movie about a kid playing with his toys. Does a movie like this inspire kids to be more imaginative with their toys or simply encourage them to watch more movies?
3. Pixar is really good at invoking sentimentalism without being mawkish. Andy eventually reflects on what the toys mean to him – and it is a touching moment. The typical sweeping Hollywood soundtrack is not present (thankfully) and the characters are not overdramatic. Even though Pixar makes animated stories, the key to their success are engaging stories.
4. If you were curious, the door is left wide open at the end for another film with a new set of human characters.
The odd world of the NBA
With the greatest free agent class in history set free on July 1, the grading of the winners and losers in the NBA draft among various media outlets is interesting. The draft, as it is in all sports, is about potential and youth.
Two teams that are consistently showing up as winners: the Chicago Bulls and Miami Heat. These teams did little in the draft. In fact, their goal in recent months has been to get rid of players, rather than add them. Both teams have been very successful in limiting their rosters so they have more free agent money to spend. They were not interested in the youth and potential – and this is seen as a good thing.
Of course it is a good thing if LeBron James or Dwayne Wade or the other big names sign with their teams. A reminder: these roster moves are all for free agent possibilities. One wonders what might happen if a team got their roster down to 3-5 players and then no big name free agents wanted to come. What kind of roster could one have by season’s start in November? Chicago and Miami are not in danger of this…but it would be a horrible, horrible letdown.
Update 11:25 AM 6/25/10: Yahoo Sports is reporting that notorious fixer Worldwide Wes is telling people Lebron and Chris Bosh are headed to Chicago:
To listen to World Wide Wes, LeBron will never look back on Cleveland. “He’s up out of there,” is the way he tells it to people, but LeBron’s Akron crew has to tsk-tsk such public talk because they all live in Northeast Ohio, and maybe always will. “We’re going to Chicago,” William Wesley tells people, “and Chris Bosh is coming, too.”
Combining stop and yield signs
A venture capitalist is seeking a new road sign: a combination of the stop and yield signs. His reasoning: there are times when no one else is at the intersection and a driver should not have to completely stop. These combination signs would save much time and money and would function best when a minor road intersects a major road. Read about it here (and also get a lesson in when stop and yield signs were developed in America).
Sign here, and here, and here…
You probably don’t thoroughly read contracts you are asked to sign (or click through). But lest you think that lawyers read through things they are asked to sign in everyday life, Above the Law is reporting that even the legendary Judge Richard Posner [bio] didn’t read his home equity loan contract, much to the amusement of the audience at the panel where he made his confession.
I suppose Posner should be grateful that his bank didn’t take his soul as part of the deal? (Don’t laugh–it happened to 7,500 customers of a British computer game retailer earlier this year.)
As amusing as such stories may be from a news perspective, they clearly raise troubling questions about the sacrosanct role of contracts within our society.
Starbucks to expand far beyond coffee
Starbucks, one of the best symbols of globalization through the spread of its stores and its use of the international coffee commodity chain, is looking to branch out. At about a dozen stores around the world, Starbucks has been testing the sale of wine, beer, and more food. These stores have been informally named “Olive Way.”
This comes in face of competition from retailers like McDonald’s and also in the interest of expanding Starbuck’s reach to customers beyond 11 AM.
Quick review: The History of White People
Just finished reading The History of White People by Nell Irvin Painter and released in March 2010. Some quick thoughts and pieces I took from the book:
1. The book is an overview of defining “white” from the 1700s to the 1960s in the United States. This requires tracking back to a number of European thinkers. The book provides historical background to “whiteness studies.”
2. There is a long-running link between being “Anglo-Saxon” and “white” in the US. Defining who exactly is Anglo-Saxon has been problematic; groups like the Irish and Scots were originally excluded (1700s-1800s) but came to be a part of the group when America experienced more immigration from Southern Europe/Eastern Europe. The Irish and Italians had to fight for decades to eventually be included in the white group.
3. There were a number of thinkers who tried to classify all humans into a small number of races. The most commonly known categories: Caucasoid, Mongoloid, Negroid. But others developed more and different categories. Another common set of categories had “Nordic” people (Germans, others) as superior. These differences between categories, often based on geography but also based on the “scientific” study of head shape, were said to result in hereditary differences in intelligence and temperament, among other traits. Of course, these immutable categories could change based on circumstances. Once World War I started, the “Nordic” category lost much of its standing.
4. Some “great Americans,” such as Henry David Thoreau and Teddy Roosevelt, were quite steeped in white superiority ideology. Both Thoreau and Roosevelt were quite explicit about this in their writings though this is not widely known today.
5. There is a long history of American residents of the Northeast seeing Southern whites as inferior. In the 1800s, Southern whites and the Irish were seen as sitting at the bottom of the racial heap.
6. Intelligence tests, developed by scholars in the early 1900s, were used to “prove” the superiority or inferiority of certain races.
7. As a general background to the ideology of whiteness, this is a decent book. As for explaining how this ideology, particularly among great thinkers or politicians, translated into public policy and general sentiment among the American population, the book is lacking. What is clear is that defining who was white and establishing whites’ superiority over other races was an important area of thought.
Legally Sociable 