Dream Refuge

The House I Live In - 2012 film

2012-02-02T14:30:00.000+09:00

The House I Live In (2012)
Directed and written by Eugene Jarecki

2012 Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize: Documentary

Documentary tracks the history of the U.S. War on Drugs. After 44 million arrests, sales of illegal drugs are still on the rise. the documentary argues that America's War on Drugs needs a drastic rethinking.

Sundance Film Festival 2012: Grand Jury Prizewinner Eugene Jarecki on Drug War Doc, 'The House I Live In'
Hollywood Reporter
January 29, 2012

"The House I Live In": New Documentary Exposes Economic, Moral Failure of U.S. War on Drugs
Democracy Now!
January 31, 2012

The House I Live In is also the name of a 1945 ten-minute short film starring Frank Sinatra. It was made to oppose anti-Semitism and racial prejudice at the end of World War II and received an Honorary Academy Award and a special Golden Globe award in 1946. In 2007, this film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

2012-02-02T14:22:00.000+09:00

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
By Michelle Alexander (2010)

Book that argues that the War on Drugs and policies that deny convicted felons equal access to employment, housing, education and public benefits create a permanent under-caste based largely on race.

NPR: Book Excerpt

Legal Scholar: Jim Crow Still Exists In America
NPR Fresh Air
January 16, 2012

Frontline: Nuclear Aftershocks

2012-01-19T13:29:00.002+09:00

Frontline: Nuclear Aftershocks
January 17, 2012

Watch Nuclear Aftershocks on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

Aretha Franklin: Amazing Grace

2012-01-09T14:28:00.001+09:00

Amazing Grace is a 1972 album by Aretha Franklin. It ultimately sold over two million copies in the United States alone, earning a Double Platinum certification. As of 2011 it is still the biggest selling disc of Aretha's entire fifty year recording career. The double album was recorded 'Live' at the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Los Angeles during January 1972. It won the 1972 Grammy Award for Best Soul Gospel Performance and also stands as the biggest selling Gospel album in history. A film documenting the making of the album was set to be released in 1972, but was shelved by Warner Bros.

NPR WBUR: On Point With Tom Ashbrook

Aretha Franklin’s ‘Amazing Grace’

"When Aretha went back to gospel. “Queen of Soul” Aretha Franklin and her epic 1972 album, “Amazing Grace.”

January 13th, 1972. Watts. Los Angeles. The New Temple Missionary Baptist Church was in a swivet. Aretha Franklin was in the house. The preacher’s daughter who had taken the pop world by storm, who had gone platinum secular superstar, had become the “Queen of Soul,” had come home to gospel.

Never mind “Chain of Fools” and “Respect” and “I never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You). Tonight it was “Precious Lord”. Tonight it was “Amazing Grace.”

This hour, On Point: the Queen of Soul’s greatest recording.

-Tom Ashbrook"

The Warmth of Other Suns

2011-12-01T15:44:00.001+09:00

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration
By Isabel Wilkerson

NPR Fresh Air: Great Migration: The African-American Exodus North
September 13, 2010

"Between 1915 and 1970, more than 6 million African-Americans moved out of the South to cities across the Northeast, Midwest and West.

This relocation — called the Great Migration — resulted in massive demographic shifts across the United States. Between 1910 and 1930, cities such as New York, Chicago, Detroit and Cleveland saw their African-American populations grow by about 40 percent, and the number of African-Americans employed in industrial jobs nearly doubled."

NPR Books: 'Other Suns': When African-Americans Fled North
September 16, 2010

"Wilkerson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for the New York Times, has taken what many would consider an indigestible chunk of history — long and sometimes famously written about by earlier historians and sociologists — and given us an extraordinarily palatable narrative."

Isabel Wilkerson

Race Against the Machine

2011-11-10T14:05:00.001+09:00

Race Against the Machine: How the Digital Revolution is Accelerating Innovation Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy
By Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee

NPR’s On Point with Tom Ashbrook (WBUR, Boston)
"When Machines do the Work”
November 2, 2011

Fora.tv: Compass Summit 2011

Race Against the Machine from Compass Summit on FORA.tv

Knocking on Heaven's Door - Lisa Randall

2011-11-08T11:58:00.000+09:00

Knocking on Heaven's Doorr: How Physics and Scientific Thinking Illuminate the Universe and the Modern World
By Lisa Randall

Physicist Lisa Randall On Cosmology And The LHC
NPR Talk of the Nation, Science Friday
September 30, 2011

Harvard physicist Lisa Randall talks about her new book, Knocking On Heaven's Door, an examination of the latest findings in cosmology and the history of scientific thought, and discusses a report that suggests neutrinos can travel faster than the speed of light.

NOVA: Fabric of the Cosmos

2011-11-08T11:33:00.005+09:00

The Fabric of the Cosmos

Acclaimed physicist Brian Greene reveals the reality beneath the surface of our everyday world.
Airing 11/2, 11/9, 11/16 and 11/23, at 9pm on PBS

Watch Online

Episode 1: What is Space?
Episode 2: The Illusion of Time
Episode 3: Quantum Leap
Episode 4: Universe or Multiverse

Brian Greene Explains 'The Fabric Of The Cosmos'
NPR Talk of the Nation, Science Friday
October 28, 2011

Prohibition by Ken Burns

2011-10-05T13:02:00.000+09:00

"PROHIBITION is a three-part, five-and-a-half-hour documentary film series directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick that tells the story of the rise, rule, and fall of the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the entire era it encompassed.

Prohibition was intended to improve, even to ennoble, the lives of all Americans, to protect individuals, families, and society at large from the devastating effects of alcohol abuse. But the enshrining of a faith-driven moral code in the Constitution paradoxically caused millions of Americans to rethink their definition of morality.

Prohibition turned law-abiding citizens into criminals, made a mockery of the justice system, caused illicit drinking to seem glamorous and fun, encouraged neighborhood gangs to become national crime syndicates, permitted government officials to bend and sometimes even break the law, and fostered cynicism and hypocrisy that corroded the social contract all across the country."

Episodes:

Part 1 "A Nation of Drunkards" describes how immigration, alcoholism, women's suffrage and the temperance movements led up to the passing of the 18th Amendment, Prohibition.
Part 2 "A Nation of Scofflaws" addresses how the enforcement of Prohibition was inconsistent and caused unintended consequences, including making criminals of a large portion of the population.
Part 3 "A Nation of Hypocrites" follows the gradual swing towards repeal of Prohibition as the Great Depression focuses attention on other priorities.

Watch the full episode. See more Ken Burns.

NOVA: Surviving the Tsunami, A film by NHK

2011-09-30T14:46:00.002+09:00

Aired September 28, 2011 on PBS

"The earthquake that hit the northern coast of Japan on March 11, 2011 was recorded at magnitude 9.0. It generated an unprecedented tsunami, obliterating coastal villages and towns in a matter of minutes. In some areas, the tsunami climbed over 100 feet in height and traveled miles inland. Amazingly, amateur and professional photographers captured it all on video, including remarkable tales of human survival, as ordinary citizens became heroes in a drama they never could have imagined.

As the waves rush in, a daughter struggles to help her elderly mother ascend their rooftop to safety; a man climbs onto an overpass just as the wave overtakes his car. These never-before-seen stories are captured in video and retold after-the-fact by the survivors who reveal what they were thinking as they made their life-saving decisions. Their stories provide lessons on how we should all act in the face of life-threatening disasters. This unique program was originally produced and broadcast in Japan by NHK, Japan's public broadcaster."

Watch the full episode. See more NOVA.

BBC: First Life with David Attenborough

2011-08-30T21:59:00.000+09:00

From the fog bound coastline of Newfoundland to the deserts of North Africa and the rainforests of Queensland, in BBC's First Life David Attenborough finds evidence in fossils and living animals of an extraordinary period in Earth’s history, half a billion years ago, when animals first appeared in the oceans. From the first eyes that saw, to the first predators that killed and the first legs that walked on land, these were creatures that evolved the traits and tools that allow all animals, including us, to survive to this day.

This is a story that can only be told now because in the last few years, stunning fossil finds at sites across the world have transformed our understanding of the first life forms, and the latest technology allows us to recreate the first animals and their environments with photo-realistic CGI.

David Attenborough's First Life from Atlantic Productions on Vimeo.

Frontline: The Pot Republic

2011-07-27T14:22:00.000+09:00

Frontline: The Pot Republic

A timely report from the frontlines of marijuana legalization in California. The bulk of the marijuana consumed in the United States used to come across the border from Mexico, Canada and elsewhere. Now, more than half of it is believed to be home grown in California, where an enormous black market has emerged under the cover of the state's medical marijuana law. With more than a third of all states now experimenting with some form of legalization and decriminalization -- and several California counties attempting to openly regulate pot production -- FRONTLINE and the Center for Investigative Reporting team up to investigate the country's oldest, largest and most wide-open marijuana market. Is the federal government now moving to shut it down?

Watch the full episode. See more FRONTLINE.

Frontline: The Atomic Artists

2011-07-27T13:54:00.000+09:00

Frontline: The Atomic Artists
July 26, 2011

How one group of artists is challenging Japan's unusually strong faith in nuclear power

FRONTLINE journeys with Marco Werman of PRI's The World as he meets Chim-Pom, a provocative group of young artists making headlines as they use art to challenge the status quo in Japan.

"Japanese youth had generally been very apolitical and apathetic" before the March 2011 disaster, says The Atomic Artists producer Emily Taguchi. But things have changed dramatically since then. We talked with Taguchi about this shift, and how one group, the art collective Chim-Pom, is challenging the status quo with their controversial installations.

Watch the full episode. See more FRONTLINE.

Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet

2011-07-12T16:16:00.001+09:00

Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet
Bill McKibben 2010

Twenty years ago, with The End of Nature, Bill McKibben offered one of the earliest warnings about global warming. Those warnings went mostly unheeded; now, he insists, we need to acknowledge that we've waited too long, and that massive change is not only unavoidable but already under way. Our old familiar globe is suddenly melting, drying, acidifying, flooding, and burning in ways that no human has ever seen. We've created, in very short order, a new planet, still recognizable but fundamentally different. We may as well call it Eaarth.

Scientific America Interviews (2 parts):
Scientific American Part 1 April 21, 2010
Scientific American Part 2 April 22, 2010

Dominican University Speech (Youtube):

Bill McKibben Speaks at The New School on Climate Change

Very Large Telescope (VLT) array - Atacama Desert, Chile

2011-06-18T23:45:00.000+09:00

The Very Large Telescope (VLT) is made up of four separate optical telescopes organized in an array formation, built and operated by the European Southern Observatory on Cerro Paranal, a 2,635 meter high mountain in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile.

Each telescope has an 8.2 m aperture. The array is complemented by four movable Auxiliary Telescopes of 1.8 meter aperture. Working together in interferometric mode, the telescopes can achieve an angular resolution of around 1 milliarcsecond, meaning it could distinguish the gap between the headlights of a car located on the Moon.

The video below was shot there. I knew we can't see our Milky Way galaxy from here in the North, still surprised. Would be worth the trip south to see such a true starlit night.

American Experience - We Shall Remain

2011-06-06T15:55:00.000+09:00

WE SHALL REMAIN is a groundbreaking mini-series and provocative multi-media project that establishes Native history as an essential part of American history. Five 90-minute documentaries spanning three hundred years tell the story of pivotal moments in U.S. history from the Native American perspective.

At the heart of the project is a five-part television series that shows how Native peoples valiantly resisted expulsion from their lands and fought the extinction of their culture -- from the Wampanoags of New England in the 1600s who used their alliance with the English to weaken rival tribes, to the bold new leaders of the 1970s who harnessed the momentum of the civil rights movement to forge a pan-Indian identity.

Episode 1 After the Mayflower: The First Thanksgiving
Episode 2 Tecumseh's Vision: Here we Shall Remain
Episode 3 Trail of Tears: A Civilized Life
Episode 4 Geronimo: Surround by Enemies
Episode 5 Wounded Knee: The Takeover

American Experience - Freedom Riders

2011-06-06T13:17:00.000+09:00

The story behind a courageous band of civil rights activists called the Freedom Riders who in 1961 creatively challenged segregation in the American South. Running time: 1:53:00

FREEDOM RIDERS is the powerful harrowing and ultimately inspirational story of six months in 1961 that changed America forever. From May until November 1961, more than 400 black and white Americans risked their lives—and many endured savage beatings and imprisonment—for simply traveling together on buses and trains as they journeyed through the Deep South. Deliberately violating Jim Crow laws, the Freedom Riders met with bitter racism and mob violence along the way, sorely testing their belief in nonviolent activism.

Watch the full episode. See more American Experience.

Frontline: WikiSecrets

2011-05-25T10:13:00.000+09:00

WikiSecrets: The inside story of Bradley Manning, Julian Assange and the largest intelligence breach in U.S. history.

Watch the full episode. See more FRONTLINE.

Nikki Rosa (It is Well)

2011-05-11T23:14:00.000+09:00

Nikki Rosa (It is Well)
By Nikki Giovanni
Truth is on Its Way

childhood remembrances are always a drag if you’re Black
you always remember things like living in Woodlawn with no inside toilet
and if you become famous or something they never talk about how happy you were to have your mother all to yourself
and how good the water felt when you got your bath from one of those big tubs that folk in chicago barbecue in
and somehow when you talk about home it never gets across how much you understood their feelings as the whole family attended meetings about Hollydale
and even though you remember your biographers never understand your father’s pain as he sells his stock and another dream goes
And though you’re poor it isn’t poverty that concerns you and though they fought a lot it isn’t your father’s drinking that makes any difference
but only that everybody is together and you and your sister have happy birthdays and very good Christmases
and I really hope no white person ever has cause to write about me because they never understand Black love is Black wealth
and they’ll probably talk about my hard childhood and never understand that all the while I was quite happy

Black in Latin America

2011-04-19T17:46:00.006+09:00

Watch the full episode. See more Black in Latin America.

Black in Latin America is the third of a trilogy that began in 1999 with the broadcast of Professor Henry Louis Gates’s first series for public television, Wonders of the African World, an exploration of the relationship between Africa and the New World, a story he continued in 2004 with America Beyond the Color Line, a report on the lives of modern-day African Americans. Black In Latin America, premiering nationally Tuesdays; April 19, 26 and May 3, 10, 2011 at 8 p.m. (ET) on PBS, examines how Africa and Europe came together to create the rich cultures of Latin America and the Caribbean.

Haiti & The Dominican Republic: An Island Divided
In the Dominican Republic, Professor Gates explores how race has been socially constructed in a society whose people reflect centuries of inter-marriage, and how the country’s troubled history with Haiti informs notions about racial classification. In Haiti, Professor Gates tells the story of the birth of the first-ever black republic, and finds out how the slaves’s hard fought liberation over Napoleon Bonaparte’s French Empire became a double-edged sword.

Cuba: The Next Revolution
In Cuba Professor Gates finds out how the culture, religion, politics and music of this island are inextricably linked to the huge amount of slave labor imported to produce its enormously profitable 19th century sugar industry, and how race and racism have fared since Fidel Castro’s Communist revolution in 1959.

Brazil: A Racial Paradise?
In Brazil, Professor Gates delves behind the façade of Carnival to discover how this ‘rainbow nation’ is waking up to its legacy as the world’s largest slave economy.

Mexico & Peru: A Hidden Race
In Mexico and Peru Professor Gates explores the almost unknown history of the significant numbers of black people—the two countries together received far more slaves than did the United States —brought to these countries as early as the 16th and 17th centuries, and the worlds of culture that their descendants have created in Vera Cruz on the Gulf of Mexico, the Costa Chica region on the Pacific, and in and around Lima, Peru.

NPR Talk of the Nation
Series Explores Being 'Black In Latin America'
April 18, 2011

Excerpt from Transcript:

"Mr. GATES:

Oh, it was fundamental. Like many people - remember, I was raised in the '50s and '60s. I'm 60 years old. And like many people my age, I thought that slavery, race, the African experience in the New World, really was about us, about our ancestors here in the Continental United States.

But the most astonishing fact in this whole series, and the most astonishing fact which I think that the Transatlantic Slave Trade database has produced is the following: Between 1502 and 1867, 11.2 million Africans survived the Middle Passage and landed in the New World. And of that 11.2 million, as you said, only 450,000 came to the United States.

All the rest, Neal, went to places, as it were, south of Miami, south of our borders. The real African-American experience, as it were, just in terms of numbers alone, unfolded in the Caribbean and throughout Latin America.

And so I wanted to do a series bringing this lost or hidden black world to light, both to Americans and to many of the black descendents, the Afro descendents, throughout Latin America themselves."

Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database
http://slavevoyages.org/

The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database has information on almost 35,000 slaving voyages that forcibly embarked over 10 million Africans for transport to the Americas between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. It offers researchers, students and the general public a chance to rediscover the reality of one of the largest forced movements of peoples in world history.

Overview of Slave Trade 1500-1900

The Voyages website provides the most comprehensive source of data currently available on the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Forming its core is the Voyages Database, originally published as the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade: A Database -on CD-ROM by Cambridge University Press (1999), and this data-file is provided here in

an expanded and continually growing form. The Voyages Database contains records of nearly 35,000 separate slaving voyages between 1514 and 1866, gleaned from original documents and historical publications located in archives, libraries, and other institutions throughout the world. Data from these historical records were collected over many decades and will continue to be updated as new documents are discovered. Individuals will be able to contribute their own research to this collaborative resource. Each record in the Voyages Database offers information on a single slaving voyage; some of the details include the country of origin, the individual(s) who sponsored it, the voyage itself (its itinerary, dates of travel, and outcome), captains and crew members, slaves transported, and the sources providing this voyage information.

Volume and Direction of the Transatlantic Slave Trade
from All African to All American Regions

Artificial Leaves Produce Hydrogen Fuel from Water

2011-04-12T18:04:00.000+09:00

A Greener 'Artificial Leaf'
New device offers distinct advantages over previous attempts to improve upon natural photosynthesis.
MIT Technology Review
April 7, 2011

Growing The Technology For Artificial Leaves
NPR Talk of the Nation, Science Friday
April 8, 2011

"Researchers are developing practical, low-cost materials that can use energy from sunlight to break water into oxygen and hydrogen. Daniel Nocera of MIT explains the science of "artificial photosynthesis," and describes his plan to create distributed power generation systems in developing countries."

NOVA: Japan's Killer Quake

2011-04-01T16:12:00.000+09:00

NOVA: Japan's Killer Quake

An eyewitness account and investigation of the epic earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear crisis.
Aired March 30, 2011 on PBS

In its worst crisis since World War II, Japan faces disaster on an epic scale: a death toll likely in the tens of thousands, massive destruction of homes and businesses, shortages of water and power, and the specter of nuclear meltdown. With exclusive footage, NOVA captures the unfolding human drama and offers a clear-headed investigation of what triggered the earthquake, tsunami, and subsequent nuclear crisis. Can science and technology ever prevent devastation in the face of overwhelmingly powerful forces of nature?

Watch below 53:07 (only available online in the U.S., I had to access it via a U.S. proxy server to view it)

Watch the full episode. See more NOVA.

Tohoku earthquake and tsunami

2011-03-30T16:47:00.016+09:00

The 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunam was caused by a 9.0-magnitude earthquake off the coast of Japan that occurred at 14:46 JST on Friday, 11 March, 2011. The earthquake triggered extremely destructive tsunami waves of up to 30 m (98 ft) that struck Japan minutes after the quake, in some cases traveling up to 10 km (6 mi) inland, with smaller waves reaching many other countries after several hours.

Aftershocks

The nearest major city to the quake was Sendai, Honshu, Japan, 130 km (81 mi) away. The quake occurred 373 km (232 mi) from Tokyo. The main earthquake was preceded by a number of large foreshocks, and multiple aftershocks were reported afterwards. The first major foreshock was a 7.2 MW event on 9 March, approximately 40 km (25 mi) from the location of the 11 March quake, with another three on the same day in excess of 6.0 MW. Following the quake, a 7.0 MW aftershock was reported at 15:06 JST, followed by a 7.4 at 15:15 JST and a 7.2 at 15:26 JST. Over six hundred aftershocks of magnitude 4.5 or greater have occurred since the initial quake.

Date/Time Magnitude

Warning Shock

3/9 11:45 M7.2

Major Quake

3/11 14:46 M9.0

Major Aftershocks

3/11 15:06 M7.4

3/11 15:15 M7.4

3/11 15:26 M7.5

3/11 16:29 M6.6

3/11 17:41 M5.8

3/11 20:37 M6.4

3/12 3:59 M6.7

3/12 4:32 M5.8

3/12 5:42 M5.3

3/12 22:15 M6.0

3/12 23:35 M4.4

3/13 8:25 M6.2

3/14 10:02 M6.2

3/15 22:31 M6.4

3/16 12:52 M6.0

3/19 18:56 M6.1

3/23 12:07 M6.0

3/23 7:36 M5.8

3/23 18:55 M4.7

3/24 8:56 M4.9

3/24 21:17 M6.1

3/28 7:24 M6.5

Tsunami

The actual height predicted varied, the greatest being for Miyagi at 10 m (33 ft) high. The tsunami inundated a total area of approximately 470 square kilometers in Japan. The earthquake took place at 14:46 JST around 67 km (42 mi) from the nearest point on Japan's coastline, and initial estimates indicated the tsunami would have taken 10 to 30 minutes to reach the areas first affected, and then areas further north and south based on the geography of the coastline. Just over an hour after the earthquake at 15:55 JST, a tsunami was observed flooding Sendai Airport, which is located near the coast of Miyagi Prefecture, with waves sweeping away cars and planes and flooding various buildings as they traveled inland. The impact of the tsunami in and around Sendai Airport was filmed by an NHK News helicopter, showing a number of vehicles on local roads trying to escape the approaching wave and being engulfed by it. A 4-meter (13 ft)-high tsunami hit Iwate Prefecture. Wakabayashi Ward in Sendai was also particularly hard hit.

Nuclear Crisis

The Fukushima I nuclear accidents are a series of ongoing equipment failures and releases of radioactive materials at the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant, following the earthquake and tsunami. The plant comprises six separate boiling water reactors maintained by the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO). Reactors 4, 5 and 6 had been shut down prior to the earthquake for planned maintenance. The remaining reactors were shut down automatically after the earthquake, but the subsequent 14 metres (46 ft) tsunami flooded the plant, knocking out emergency generators needed to run pumps which cool and control the reactors. The flooding and earthquake damage prevented assistance being brought from elsewhere.

Reactor Explosion

Evidence arose of partial core meltdown in reactors 1, 2, and 3; hydrogen explosions destroyed the upper cladding of the buildings housing reactors 1, 3, and 4; an explosion damaged the containment inside reactor 2; and multiple fires broke out at reactor 4. In addition, spent fuel rods stored in spent fuel pools of units 1–4 began to overheat as water levels in the pools dropped. Fears of radiation leaks led to a 20 kilometres (12 mi) radius evacuation around the plant. Workers at the plant suffered radiation exposure and were temporarily evacuated at various times. On 18 March, Japanese officials designated the magnitude of the danger at reactors 1, 2 and 3 at level 5 on the 7 point International Nuclear Event Scale (INES). Power was restored to parts of the plant from 20 March, but machinery damaged by floods, fires and explosions remained inoperable.

Exclusion Zone

Aftermath

The latest confirmed toll to date are over 10,000 deaths with 16,361 people missing across eighteen prefectures. These numbers are expected to increase, with casualties estimated to reach tens of thousands.
Prefectural officials and the Kyodo News Agency, quoting local officials, said that 9,500 people from Minamisanriku in Miyagi Prefecture—about a half of the town's population—were unaccounted for. NHK has reported that the death toll in Iwate Prefecture alone may reach 10,000. Save the Children reports that as many as 100,000 children have been uprooted from their homes, some of whom were separated from their families because the earthquake occurred during the school day. On 14 March, Kyodo News Agency reported that some 2,000 bodies were found on two shores in Miyagi Prefecture. It was reported that four passenger trains containing an unknown number of passengers disappeared in a coastal area during the tsunami.

The earthquake caused a large number of displaced people. The number of the evacuees has once passed 300,000. Some earthquake survivors died in the shelters or in the process of evacuation. Many shelters struggle to feed evacuees and are not medically sufficiently equipped. Fuel shortages hampered relief actions. In the first week after the earthquake, supplies of food, water, and medicine had been held up because of a fuel shortage and the weather condition. There is a need for temporary housing, as the Japanese government are trying to remove evacuees from large shelters, where there have been reports of poor sanitary conditions. As of late March, 8,800 temporary units were planned in Iwate, 10,000 in Miyagi, and 19,000 in Fukushima.

The nuclear crisis and recover continues unabated. The Japanese people remain otherwise calm and stoic about the ongoing situation, the disaster across of the Northeastern region of Tohoku, and the overall future of Japan.

This American Life: DIY

2011-03-01T00:40:00.004+09:00

This American Life: #282 DIY
Original Broadcast Feb 11, 2005

After four lawyers fail to get an innocent man out of prison, his friend takes on the case himself. He becomes a do-it-yourself investigator. He learns to read court records, he tracks down hard-to-find witnesses, he gets the real murderer to come forward with his story. In the end, he's able to accomplish all sorts of things the police and the professionals can't.

Frontline: Revolution in Cairo

2011-02-24T15:24:00.001+09:00

Watch the full episode. See more FRONTLINE.

A Change Is Gonna Come

2011-02-08T13:07:00.001+09:00

A Change Is Gonna Come
Sam Cooke
I was born by the river in a little tent
Oh and just like the river I've been running ever since
It's been a long, a long time coming
But I know a change gonna come, oh yes it will

It's been too hard living but I'm afraid to die
Cause I don't know what's up there beyond the sky
It's been a long, a long time coming
But I know a change gonna come, oh yes it will

I go to the movie and I go downtown
somebody keep telling me don't hang around
It's been a long, a long time coming
But I know a change gonna come, oh yes it will

Then I go to my brother
And I say brother help me please
But he winds up knockin' me
Back down on my knees

There been times that I thought I couldn't last for long
But now I think I'm able to carry on
It's been a long, a long time coming
But I know a change gonna come, oh yes it will

Frontline: The Battle for Haiti

2011-01-17T12:02:00.001+09:00

Frontline: Battle For Haiti

Can Haiti be rebuilt without the rule of law? A year after the earthquake, a powerful look at the violence threatenin the country's stability .. and future.

Watch the full episode. See more FRONTLINE.

On the night of the earthquake that devastated Haiti last January, something happened in Port au Prince, the capital city, which would threaten the effectiveness of international aid efforts and undermine the country's political stability: 4,500 of the country's most violent criminals escaped from Haiti's overcrowded National Penitentiary.

Now, on the one-year anniversary of the quake -- and in the aftermath of Haitian presidential elections that threatened further crisis -- FRONTLINE presents Battle for Haiti. FRONTLINE producer Dan Reed films with the beleaguered special police units tasked with apprehending the escaped gangsters. At the same time, Reed captures the daily lives of the despairing inhabitants of the slums and tent cities who are often terrorized by these gangsters.

National Geographic - Population 7 Billion

2011-01-17T09:59:00.000+09:00

"Before the 20th century, no human had lived through a doubling of the human population, but there are people alive today who have seen it triple. Sometime in late 2011, according to the UN Population Division, there will be seven billion of us.

With the population still growing by about 80 million each year, it’s hard not to be alarmed. Right now on Earth, water tables are falling, soil is eroding, glaciers are melting, and fish stocks are vanishing. Close to a billion people go hungry each day. Decades from now, there will likely be two billion more mouths to feed, mostly in poor countries. There will be billions more people wanting and deserving to boost themselves out of poverty. If they follow the path blazed by wealthy countries—clearing forests, burning coal and oil, freely scattering fertilizers and pesticides—they too will be stepping hard on the planet’s natural resources. How exactly is this going to work?"

BBC - How Earth Made Us

2011-01-14T13:23:00.001+09:00

How Earth Made Us
Presented by Professor Iain Stewart describing untold stories of history. Our planet has amazing power, and yet that's rarely mentioned in our history books. This series tells the story of how the Earth has influenced human history, from the dawn of civilization to the modern industrial age. It reveals for the first time on television how geology, geography and climate have been a far more powerful influence on the human story than has previously been acknowledged. A combination of epic story telling, visually stunning camera work, extraordinary locations and passionate presenting combine to form a highly original version of human history.

Discover why societies have succeeded or failed, and how the environment has influenced every aspect of our history from art to industry, religion to war, world domination or collapse. Visiting some of the most iconic places on Earth, How Earth Made Us overturns preconceptions about our civilizations and our cultures to offer a new perspective on who we are today.

1. Deep Earth
2. Water
3. Wind
4. Fire
5. Human Planet

BBC - Earth The Power of the Planet

2011-01-14T13:22:00.000+09:00

BBC Earth The Power of the Planet

Dr Iain Stewart tells the story of how Earth works and how, over the course of 4.6 billion years, it came to be the remarkable place it is today.

1. Volcano

2. Atmosphere

3. Ice

4. Oceans

5. Rare Earth

BBC - The Story of India with Michael Wood

2011-01-14T13:17:00.000+09:00

The Story of India is a BBC TV documentary series, written and presented by historian Michael Wood, about the 10,000-year history of the Indian subcontinent in six episodes.

Episode 1 - "Beginnings"

Travels through the subcontinent, tracing the richness and diversity of its peoples, cultures and landscapes. Through ancient manuscripts and oral tales Wood charts the first human migrations out of Africa. He travels from the tropical backwaters of South India through lost ancient cities in Pakistan to the vibrant landscapes of the Ganges plain, also attempts to re-create soma, an ancient drink recorded in the Rig Veda.

Episode 2 - "The Power of Ideas"

Episode moves on to the revolutionary years after 500BC - the Age of the Buddha and Mahavira. Travelling by rail to the ancient cities of the Ganges plain, by army convoy through Northern Iraq, and down Pakistan's Khyber Pass, how Alexander the Great’s invasion of India inspired its first major empire in the form of the Maurya kingdom.

Episode 3 - "Spice Routes and Silk Roads"

Episode traces India in the days of the Roman Empire. In Kerala the spice trade opened India to the world, whilst gold and silk bazaars in the ancient city of Madurai were a delight for visiting Greek traders. The Kushan Empire of Northern India that opened up the Silk Route and at Peshawar built a lost Wonder of the World.

Episode 4 - "Ages of Gold"

The achievements of the country’s golden age, including how India discovered zero, calculated the circumference of the Earth and wrote the world’s first sex guide, the Kama Sutra. In the south, the giant temple of Tanjore built by emperor Rajaraja Chola and traditional bronze casters, working as their ancestors did 1,000 years ago are shown. Michael Wood calls Tamil Nadu, "The only surviving 'Classical Civilization' in the world that’s the last living classical Indian language older than any modern European language.

Episode 5 - "The Meeting of Two Oceans"

Charts the coming of Islam to the subcontinent and one of the greatest ages of world civilisation: visits Sufi shrines in Old Delhi, desert fortresses in Rajasthan and the cities of Lahore and Agra, theory on the design of the Taj Mahal.

Episode 6 - "Freedom and Liberation"

South India a global corporation came to control much of the subcontinent, and explores the magical culture of Lucknow, discovering the enigmatic Briton who helped found the freedom movement. He traces the Amritsar massacre, the rise of Gandhi and Nehru, and the events that led to the Partition of India in 1947.

John Adams - Book, Miniseries, National Park

2011-01-14T06:44:00.001+09:00

John Adams by David McCullough

John Adams is a 2001 biography of Founding Father and second U.S. President John Adams written by popular historian David McCullough. It won a 2002 Pulitzer Prize (for "Biography or Autobiography").

Pulitzer.org: "Much about John Adams's life will come as a surprise to many readers. His courageous voyage on the frigate Boston in the winter of 1778 and his later trek over the Pyrenees are exploits that few would have dared and that few readers will ever forget.

It is a life encompassing a huge arc -- Adams lived longer than any president. The story ranges from the Boston Massacre to Philadelphia in 1776 to the Versailles of Louis XVI, from Spain to Amsterdam, from the Court of St. James's, where Adams was the first American to stand before King George III as a representative of the new nation, to the raw, half-finished Capital by the Potomac, where Adams was the first President to occupy the White House."

John Adams Mini Series

John Adams is a 2008 American television miniseries chronicling most of President John Adams's political life and his role in the founding of the United States. Paul Giamatti portrays John Adams. Kirk Ellis wrote the screenplay based on the book John Adams by David McCullough. The biopic of John Adams and the story of the first fifty years of the United States was broadcast in seven parts by HBO. As of 2009, the show has won more Emmy awards than any other miniseries, and four Golden Globe awards.

Adams National Historical Park, Quincy Massachusetts

"Adams National Historical Park was the home of two American presidents and subsequent generations of their descendants from 1720 to 1927. The family's experience represented, shaped, and mirrored significant events in the social, cultural, political, and intellectual history of the nation. The purpose of the park is to preserve and protect the grounds, homes, and personal property of four generations of the Adams family and to use these resources to interpret the history they represent and to educate and inspire current and future generations.

John Adams, 1735-1826, Second President of the United States
Called the Atlas of Independence, Adams was a force that led us toward the Declaration of Independence in 1776. As a diplomat, Adams made peace with Great Britain and established the foundations of our foreign relations; as first vice-president, Adams helped forge the fledgling government; as second President, Adams kept us out of war and ensured the tradition of a peaceful transfer of power from one administration to the next; as a respected lawyer, he crafted the Massachusetts Constitution, the longest-lived constitution in continuous use in the world today, and a model for the federal Constitution. As a person, Adams displayed a passion for learning and the outdoors, a love of family, and an enduring sense of humor.

Abigail Adams, 1744-1818
Abigail Adams brought more intellect and ability to the position of United States First Lady than any other woman. President Harry Truman once noted that Abigail Adams "would have been a better President than her husband."

John Quincy Adams, 1767-1848, Sixth President of the United States
No American who ever entered the presidency was better prepared to fill that office than John Quincy Adams. Born on July 11, 1767 in Braintree, Massachusetts, he was the son of two fervent revolutionary patriots, John and Abigail Adams, whose ancestors had lived in New England for five generations. Adams died thinking his career a failure, but it was only so by the impossibly high standards that he set for himself.

Access by Public Transportation To the Visitor Center via the MBTA Subway:

From Boston: Take the Red Line train to the Quincy Center Station. Turn right upon exiting the train and at the top of the stairs, turn left and exit the station to Hancock Street. Walk across Hancock Street to 1250 Hancock Street. The National Park Service Visitor Center is located in the Galleria at President's place.

PBS Napoleon

2011-01-13T22:29:00.000+09:00

NAPOLEON premiered on PBS in November 2000, narrated by David Mccullough.

1. To Destiny

Episode I recounts the story of Napoleon's extraordinary rise from Corsican obscurity to the victories in Italy that made him a hero to the French people and convinced him that he was destined for greatness. It also tells of his love for Josephine Beauharnais, a woman of extravagant habits and tastes, who did not at first return his passionate affection.

2. Mastering Luck

Episode II charts Napoleon's ascent to absolute power, from victorious General to first Consul to Emperor of France. It describes his extraordinary achievements – from the Napoleonic Code and the Bank of France, to bridges, roads, and canals – as well as the tyrannical nature of his rule and the violent opposition of most of Europe.

3. The Summit of Ambition

Episode III witnesses Napoleon conquer most of Europe in a series of brilliant triumphs, including his legendary victory at the Battle of Austerlitz. To sustain his rule, he must keep fighting. But when he invades Spain, he has begun to reach too far.

4. The End

Episode IV describes Napoleon's downfall, including the invasion and subsequent retreat from Russia, and his final battles, in which all of Europe is arrayed against him. Exiled to Elba, he returns to France after just ten months, only to be defeated for the last time at Waterloo. Napoleon spends his final days exiled on an island far out in the Atlantic, where he writes his memoirs and reinvents his legend.

Bill Bryson - At Home: A Short History of Private Life

2011-01-12T11:57:00.000+09:00

AT HOME: A Short History of Private Life

Random House

[Houses aren't refuges from history. They are where history ends up.]

"Bill Bryson and his family live in a Victorian parsonage in a part of England where nothing of any great significance has happened since the Romans decamped. Yet one day, he began to consider how very little he knew about the ordinary things of life as he found it in that comfortable home. To remedy this, he formed the idea of journeying about his house from room to room to "write a history of the world without leaving home." The bathroom provides the occasion for a history of hygiene; the bedroom, sex, death, and sleep; the kitchen, nutrition and the spice trade; and so on, as Bryson shows how each has figured in the evolution of private life. Whatever happens in the world, he demonstrates, ends up in our house, in the paint and the pipes and the pillows and every item of furniture."

At Bryson's House, 'Home' Is Where The History Is
NPR Morning Edition, October 5, 2010

The Sandman - Vertigo Comics

2011-01-10T15:30:00.001+09:00

The Sandman is a comic book series written by Neil Gaiman and published by DC Comics. Beginning with issue #47, it was placed under the imprint Vertigo. It chronicles the adventures of Dream of The Endless, who rules over the world of dreams, in 75 issues. It was published from 1989 until 1996. Gaiman's contract stipulated that the series would end when he left it.

The Sandman was one of Vertigo's flagship titles, and is available as a series of ten trade paperbacks. It has also been reprinted in a recolored four-volume Absolute hardcover edition with slipcase. Critically acclaimed, The Sandman was the only comic to ever win the World Fantasy Award, and is one of the few comic books ever to be on the New York Times Best Seller list, along with Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns. It was one of five comics to make Entertainment Weekly's "100 best reads from 1983 to 2008", ranking at 46. Norman Mailer described the series as "a comic book for intellectuals."

The Sandman's main character is Dream, the Lord of Dreams, who is essentially the anthropomorphic personification of dreams. The storylines primarily take place in the Dreaming, Morpheus's realm, and the waking world, with occasional visits to other domains, such as Hell, Faerie, Asgard, and the domains of the other Endless.

The Sandman was initially published as a monthly serial, in 32-page comic books (with some exceptions to this pattern). As the series quickly increased in popularity, DC Comics began to reprint them in hardcover and paperback editions, each representing either a complete novel or a collection of related short stories.

DC first published "The Doll's House" storyline in a collection called simply The Sandman. Shortly thereafter, the first three volumes were published and named independently and also collected in an eponymous boxed set.

Seasons of Mists

The issues in the collection first appeared in 1990 and 1991. The collection first appeared in paperback and hardback in 1992. The title is the opening phrase of John Keats' "Ode to Autumn".

It introduces Endless siblings Destiny and Delirium, and features Thor, Odin and Loki from Norse mythology; Anubis and Bast from Egyptian mythology; Susanoo-no-mikoto from Japanese mythology; Lucifer and the Angels Duma and Remiel from Christianity; Shivering Jemmy, a Lord of Chaos with the body of a child and the mind of a monster; Kilderkin, a Lord of Order who takes the form of a cardboard box, and the fairies Cluracan and Nuala, who will play important roles in later stories. Season of Mists marks the introduction of the Norse gods for the first time in the series.

Season of Mists is the first appearance of one of the central themes of the series, that of rules and responsibilities and whether we can lay them down. The gathering of the Endless family which opens the book makes the second reference to the "prodigal", an Endless sibling who abandoned his realm and responsibilities. The family gathering leads to Dream deciding that he must return to the underworld to right a wrong he committed, an event which triggers a major plot arc throughout the series.

Morpheus leaves his realm to travel to the underworld, where he imprisoned his former lover Nada, to release her. Having previously departed the realm with it very angry with him (in the first collection, Preludes and Nocturnes), Morpheus is apprehensive about the task. He sets about it, wanting to do what is right, but prepared for a confrontation which he knows he may lose.

Vertigo - DC Comics

Vertigo is an imprint of the American comic-book publisher DC Comics. Its books are marketed to a late-teen and adult audience, and may contain graphic violence, substance abuse, frank (but not explicit) depictions of sexuality, profanity, and controversial subjects. Although many of its releases are in the horror and fantasy genres, it also publishes works dealing with crime, social satire, speculative fiction, and biography. Each issue's cover carries the advisory label "Suggested for mature readers" (regardless of a specific issue's content). As of 2010, Karen Berger is the executive editor of the imprint, and has overseen it since its inception in 1993.

Vertigo comics series have won the comics industry's Eisner Award, including the Best Continuing Series of various years (Sandman, Preacher, 100 Bullets and Fables). Several of its publications have been adapted to film, including Hellblazer, A History of Violence, Stardust, and V for Vendetta.

Long-running titles

Hellblazer (274 issues to date)

Swamp Thing Vol.2 (171 issues)

100 Bullets (100 issues)

Fables (100 issues to date)

Animal Man (89 issues)

Doom Patrol Vol.2 (87 issues)

The Sandman (75 issues)

The Books of Magic (75 issues plus sequel series)

Lucifer (75 issues)

Sandman Mystery Theatre (70 issues)

Shade, the Changing Man (70 issues)

Preacher (66 issues plus tie-ins)

Transmetropolitan (60 issues)

The Dreaming (60 issues)

Y: The Last Man (60 issues)

DMZ (comics) (60 issues)

The Invisibles (59 issues over three volumes)

"I'm not blessed, or merciful. I'm just me. I've got a job to do, and I do it. Listen: even as we're talking, I'm there for old and young, innocent and guilty, those who die together and those who die alone. I'm in cars and boats and planes; in hospitals and forests and abbatoirs. For some folks death is a release, and for others death is an abomination, a terrible thing. But in the end, I'm there for all of them."
Death, talking about herself, in Dream Country.

Kanye West: Runaway [My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy]

2010-11-28T22:23:00.002+09:00

Kanye West
My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
Rolling Stone - 5 Stars

"My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is his most maniacally inspired music yet, coasting on heroic levels of dementia, pimping on top of Mount Olympus."

Runaway
Runaway is a 35-minute long, short film directed by Kanye West. It serves as the music video for the song of the same name. The film depicts a romantic relationship between a man and a half-woman, half-phoenix, and is set to music by Kanye West, most of which is from his album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.

It was filmed in Prague over the period of four days in the summer of 2010. West describes the video as an "overall representation of what he dreams and a parallel to his music career". According to model Selita Ebanks, who co-stars in the video, the moral is, "the world doesn't accept, or they try to change, what is different, instead of trying to understand it." On a personal note, I totally agree with that sentiment. Bill

The Pacific Century (1992)

2010-10-19T16:46:00.000+09:00

The Pacific Century was a 1992 PBS Emmy Award winning ten part documentary series narrated by Peter Coyote about the rise of the Pacific Rim economies. Alex Gibney was the writer for the series, and Frank Gibney, his father, wrote the companion volume, The Pacific Century: America and Asia in a Changing World. The series was a co-production of the Pacific Basin Institute and KCTS-TV in Seattle.

Episodes:

1. The Two Coasts of China: Asia and the Challenge of the West
2. The Meiji Revolution
3. From the Barrel of a Gun
4. Writers and Revolutionaries
5. Reinventing Japan
6. Inside Japan, Inc.
7. Big Business and the Ghost of Confucius
8. The Fight for Democracy
9. Sentimental Imperialists: America in Asia
10. The Pacific Century: The Future of the Pacific Basin

Frontline: God In America

2010-10-12T16:30:00.003+09:00

Frontline: God In America, 6 hours over 3 nights, Oct 11-13, 2010

Since the days when the Puritan "city on a hill" beckoned on the horizon of the New World, religious faith and belief have forged America's ideals, molded its identity and shaped its sense of mission at home and abroad.

For the first time on television, God in America explores the tumultuous 400-year history of the intersection of religion and public life in America, from the first European settlements to the 2008 presidential election. A co-production of AMERICAN EXPERIENCE and FRONTLINE, this six-hour series examines how religious dissidents helped shape the American concept of religious liberty and the controversial evolution of that ideal in the nation's courts and political arena; how religious freedom and waves of new immigrants and religious revivals fueled competition in the religious marketplace; how movements for social reform -- from abolition to civil rights -- galvanized men and women to put their faith into political action; and how religious faith influenced conflicts from the American Revolution to the Cold War.

Watch the full episode. See more FRONTLINE.

IMAX Cosmic Voyage

2010-10-12T16:27:00.000+09:00

From the IMAX Film Powers of Ten. This part seems inspired by the film Powers of Ten by Charles & Ray Eames.

BBC Planet Earth

2010-10-05T00:59:00.001+09:00

Planet Earth is a 2006 television series produced by the BBC Natural History Unit narrated by David Attenborough. Five years in the making, it was the most expensive nature documentary series by the BBC, and also the first to be filmed in high definition. The series was co-produced by the Discovery Channel and NHK in association with CBC, and was described by its makers as "the definitive look at the diversity of our planet".

Planet Earth was first broadcast in the United Kingdom on BBC One in March 2006, and premiered one year later in the USA on the Discovery Channel. By June 2007, it had been shown in 130 countries worldwide. For Discovery Sigourney Weaver's voiceover replaced Attenborough.

The series comprises eleven episodes, each of which features a global overview of a different habitat on Earth.

Episodes

1. From Pole to Pole

2. Mountains

3. Fresh Water

4. Caves

5. Deserts

6. Ice Worlds

7. Great Plains

8. Jungles

9. Shallow Seas

10. Seasonal Forests

11. Ocean Deep

BBC Yellowstone

2010-08-13T13:37:00.001+09:00

Yellowstone is a BBC nature documentary series broadcast from 15 March 2009. Narrated by Peter Firth, the series takes a look at a year in the life of Yellowstone National Park, examining how its wildlife adapts to living in one of the harshest wildernesses on Earth.

Episodes:

1. "Winter"

2. "Summer"

3. "Autumn"

Its been described the series as "amazingly shot" and a "work of art". The Times gave it five out of five, and TV Scoop described it as "majestic yet understated and consistently surprising". At the 2009 Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival, Yellowstone gained the Best Series Award, and "Winter" gained the Best Wildlife Habitat Program award. It was also a finalist in the Best Cinematography category. At the 2009 International Wildlife Film Festival Awards, the series won the Best Cinematography and Best Ecosystem awards, and gained Merit Awards for Editing and Sound Design.

Cosmos: Evolution

2010-08-13T13:23:00.002+09:00

Carl Sagan's Cosmos: Evolution

Carl Sagan 1934 - 1996

WGBH Forum Network: Origin and Evolution of Life on Earth I

2010-08-11T18:52:00.000+09:00

Origin and Evolution of Life on Earth I
WGBH Forum Network
October 5, 2005
Lynn Rothschild astrobiologist, NASA

video platform video management video solutions video player

Japanese Language: Kanji, Hiragana, Katakana

2010-08-11T16:00:00.002+09:00

The Japanese writing system uses three main types of characters, the Kanji, Hiragana and Katakana.

The Kanji: traditional symbolic characters that originated in China.

Kyōiku Kanji

The Kyōiku kanji ("education kanji") are 1006 characters that Japanese children learn in elementary school. The number was 881 until 1981.

Jōyō Kanji

The Jōyō kanji are 1,945 characters consisting of all the Kyōiku kanji, plus an additional 939 kanji taught in junior high and high school. The Jōyō kanji were introduced in 1981. They replaced an older list of 1,850 characters known as the General-use kanji (tōyō kanji) introduced in 1946.

The Kanas:

Each kana is either a vowel such as "a" (あ); a consonant followed by a vowel such as "ka" (か); or "n" (ん).

Hiragana: 46 phonetic syllables used for native Japanese words.

Katakana: 46 phonetic syllables used for foreign words.

The Devil's Dictionary

2010-07-13T01:26:00.005+09:00

The Devil's Dictionary, by Ambrose Bierce, is a satirical book published in 1911. It offers reinterpretations of terms in the English language.

My favorite examples:

AMBITION, n. An overmastering desire to be vilified by enemies while living and made ridiculous by friends when dead.

AMNESTY, n. The state's magnanimity to those offenders whom it would be too expensive to punish.

BEAUTY, n. The power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband.

BORE, n. A person who talks when you wish him to listen.

LOVE, n. A temporary insanity curable by marriage or by removal of the patient from the influences under which he incurred the disorder.

MISFORTUNE, n. The kind of fortune that never misses.

MONEY, n. A blessing that is of no advantage to us excepting when we part with it.

Gall–Peters projection

2010-07-04T01:04:00.002+09:00

The Gall–Peters Projection shows countries in proportion to their relative sizes . It is based upon Arno Peter's decimal grid which divides the surface of the earth into 100 longitudinal fields of equal width and 1000 laditudinal fields of equal height. It treats rectangles around the equator as squares and builds the other rectangles onto these in proportion to the areas they represent. The zero meridian on this system is combined with a proposed new international date line.

The traditional maps distorts the world to the advantage of The North, in actual fact is only half as large as The South, and on Mercator maps to be much larger. On the Mercator Map Europe appears larger than South America, and shows Alaska three times larger than Mexico even though Mexico is much larger. Russia appears twice as large as Africa, even though Africa is much larger. Greenland appears larger than China, even though China is four times as large. Scandanavia appears larger than India even though India is three times as large.

Miniature City 2 - Tokyo

2010-05-19T10:51:00.002+09:00

miniature city 2 - featuring vividblaze - from mockmoon on Vimeo.

MLK: A Call to Conscience

2010-03-31T12:04:00.009+09:00

Tavis Smiley Reports MLK: A Call to Conscience (view online)

Tavis Smiley Reports examines Martin Luther King, Jr.'s stand against the Vietnam War and the influence of his legacy today. Tavis speaks with scholars and friends of King, including Cornel West, Vincent Harding and Susannah Heschel.

Full Beyond Vietnam Speech Text
New York City Riverside Church
April 4, 1967

Interviews:

Talk of the Nation: The Story Of King's 'Beyond Vietnam' Speech
March 30, 2010

Democracy Now: As Obama Visits Afghanistan, Tavis Smiley on Rev. Martin Luther King and His Opposition to the Vietnam War
March 29, 2010

"An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind"

Mahatma Gandhi

FRONTLINE: The Quake

2010-03-23T16:37:00.005+09:00

The Quake

On air and online Tuesday, March 30, 2010 at 9:00pm (check local listings)

Watch the full episode. See more FRONTLINE.

On January 12, 2010, one of the most devastating earthquakes in recorded history leveled Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Those responsible for handling the catastrophe, including the Haitian government and the United Nations, were amongst the victims and struggled to respond. FRONTLINE correspondent Martin Smith bears witness to the scale of the disaster and examines the ill-coordinated relief efforts. Drawing on interviews with key officials and humanitarian experts from Port-au-Prince to Washington, The Quake asks whether the world can do better. And how?

PBS: Faces of America with Henry Louis Gates Jr.

2010-03-05T11:34:00.002+09:00

PBS: Faces of America

With Henry Louis Gates Jr.

What made America? What makes us? These two questions are at the heart of the new PBS series Faces of America with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. The Harvard scholar turns to the latest tools of genealogy and genetics to explore the family histories of 12 renowned Americans — professor and poet Elizabeth Alexander, chef Mario Batali, comedian Stephen Colbert, novelist Louise Erdrich, journalist Malcolm Gladwell, actress Eva Longoria, musician Yo-Yo Ma, director Mike Nichols, Her Majesty Queen Noor, television host/heart surgeon Dr. Mehmet Oz, actress Meryl Streep, and figure skater Kristi Yamaguchi.

Episode One, Our American Stories

Episode Two, Becoming American

Episode Three, Making America

Episode Four, Know Thyself

NPR

Henry Louis Gates Uncovers 'Faces Of America'

NPR: Henry Louis Gates Uncovers 'Faces of America'

WGBH Forum Network

Using genetics to explore family history

WGBH Forum Network: Using genetics to explore family history

Faces of America with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. executive producer William R. Grant and producer Stephen Ives discuss the series with Dr. David Altshuler, a clinical endocrinologist and human geneticist from the Broad Institute. In the Harvard professor’s latest production, Gates uses genealogy and genetics to explore family histories of 12 renowned Americans and their immigrant pasts.

All In Love Is Fair

2010-02-25T11:02:00.001+09:00

All is fair in love
Love's a crazy game
Two people vow to stay
In love as one they say
But all is changed with time
The future no one can see
The road you leave behind
Ahead lies mystery
But all is fair in love
I had to go away
A writer takes his pen
To write the words again
That all in love is fair

All of fate's a chance
It's either good or bad
I tossed my coin to say
In love with me you'd stay
But all in war is so cold
You either win or lose
When all is put away
The loosing side I'll play
But all is fair in love

Stevie Wonder
"All In Love Is Fair"

A People's History of the United States

2010-01-29T01:52:00.005+09:00

A People's History of the United States is a 1980 non-fiction book by American historian and political scientist Howard Zinn. In the book, Zinn seeks to present American history through the eyes of those rarely heard in mainstream histories. A People's History has become a major success and was a runner-up in 1980 for the National Book Award. It has been adopted for reading in some high schools and colleges across the United States and has been frequently revised, with the most recent edition covering events through 2003. In 2003, Zinn was awarded the Prix des Amis du Monde Diplomatique for the French version of this book, Une histoire populaire des Etats-Unis. Over one million copies have been sold.

Howard Zinn 1922-2010

FRONTLINE: digital nation - life on the virtual frontier

2010-01-26T19:28:00.007+09:00

Digital Nation

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Watch the full episode. See more FRONTLINE.

Over a single generation, the Web and digital media have remade nearly every aspect of modern culture, transforming the way we work, learn and connect in ways that we’re only beginning to understand. FRONTLINE producer Rachel Dretzin (Growing Up Online) teams up with one of the leading thinkers of the digital age, Douglas Rushkoff (The Persuaders, Merchants of Cool), to continue to explore life on the virtual frontier. The film is the product of a unique collaboration with visitors to the Digital Nation Web site, who for the past year have been able to react to the work in progress and post their own stories online. Dretzin and her team report from the front lines of digital culture -- from love affairs blossoming in virtual worlds, to the thoroughly wired classrooms of the future, to military bases where the Air Force is fighting a new form of digital warfare. Along the way, they begin to map the critical ways that technology is transforming us -- and what we may be learning about ourselves in the process.

New Technologies in a Sustainable Energy Economy

2010-01-10T05:02:00.002+09:00

MIT World
The Role of New Technologies in a Sustainable Energy Economy
Angela Belcher
Daniel Nocera
October 25, 2006

Japanese Onsens

2010-01-07T12:16:00.009+09:00

A Japanese onsen is a natural hot spring for bathing. Also an onsen is used to describe the bathing facilities and inns around such hot springs.

Japan is a volcanically active country, and has thousands of onsens scattered across the archipelago. Onsen by definition use naturally hot water from geothermally heated springs. Note: An onsen should be considered different from Japanese sentos, which are just indoor public bath houses where the baths are filled with heated tap water.

Major onsen resort hotels often feature a wide variety of themed spa baths and artificial waterfalls in the bathing area. Onsens come in many types and shapes, including outdoor and indoor baths. Baths may be either public run by a local city, or private run as part of a hotel, ryokan or Bed and Breakfast.

Historically, traditional onsen were located outdoors. A large number of inns have now built indoor bathing facilities as well. Onsen water is believed to have healing powers derived from its mineral content. A particular onsen may feature several different baths, each with water with a different mineral composition, at different temperatures.

The outdoor bath tubs are most often made from Japanese cypress, marble or granite, while indoor tubs may be made with tile, acrylic glass or stainless steel. Many onsens boast about their unique water and mineral compositions, plus what healing properties these may contain. Other spa services like massages are often offered.

Traditionally, men and women bathed together at the onsen and sentō but single-sex bathing has become the norm since Japan opened to the West during the Meiji period in the late 1800's. Mixed-sex (named konyoku) bathing still exists at many onsens in the rural areas of Japan, which usually provide the option of separate "women-only" baths or different hours for the two sexes. Children of either sex may be seen in both the men's and the women's baths.

Foreign Affairs: The Dollar and the Deficits

2009-11-24T18:28:00.005+09:00

Foreign Affairs
November/December 2009
Volume 88, Number 6

The Dollar and the Deficits: How Washington Can Prevent the Next Crisis
by C. Fred Bergsten, Peterson Institute for International Economics

iie.com - Peterson Institute of International Ecomomics

Tufts.edu (pdf)

Frontline: The Card Game

2009-11-24T17:24:00.004+09:00

The Credit Card Game
Tuesday, November 24, 2009, at 9 P.M. ET on PBS

As credit card companies face rising public anger, new regulation from Washington and staggering new rates of default and bankruptcy, FRONTLINE correspondent Lowell Bergman investigates the future of the massive consumer loan industry and its impact on a fragile national economy.

Watch the full episode. See more FRONTLINE.

In The Card Game, a follow-up to the Secret History of the Credit Card and a joint project with The New York Times airing Tuesday, Nov. 24, 2009, at 9 P.M. ET on PBS (check local listings), Bergman and the Times talk to industry insiders, lobbyists, politicians and consumer advocates as they square off over attempts to reform the way the industry has done business for decades.

"The card issuers could do anything they want," Robert McKinley, CEO of CardWeb.com, tells FRONTLINE of the industry's unchecked power over consumers. "They could change your interest rate. They could impose an annual fee. They could close your account." High interest rates along with more and more penalty fees drove up profits for the industry, Bergman finds, as the banks followed the lead of an aggressive upstart: Providian Bank. In an exclusive interview with FRONTLINE, former Providian CEO Shailesh Mehta tells Bergman how his company successfully targeted vulnerable low-income customers whom Providian called "the unbanked."

"They're lower-income people-bad credits, bankrupts, young credits, no credits," Mehta says. Providian also innovated by offering "free" credit cards that carried heavy hidden fees. "I used to use the word 'penalty pricing' or 'stealth pricing,'" Mehta tells FRONTLINE. "When people make the buying decision, they don't look at the penalty fees because they never believe they'll be late. They never believe they'll be over limit, right? ... Our business took off. ... We were making a billion dollars a year."

Harvest for the World

2009-11-04T18:39:00.003+09:00

All babies together, everyone a seed
Half of us are satisfied, half of us in need
Love's bountiful in us, tarnished by our greed
Oh, When will there be a harvest for the world

A nation planted, so concerned with gain
As the seasons come and go, greater grows the pain
And far too many, feelin' the strain
Oh, When will there be a harvest for the world

Gather every man, gather every woman
Celebrate your lives, give thanks for your children
Gather everyone, gather all together
Overlooking none, hopin' life gets better for the world

Dress me up for battle, when all I want is peace
Those of us who pay the price, come home with the least
And nation after nation, turning into beast
Oh, When will there be a harvest for the world

Yeah, yeah
When will there be
I wanna know now now
When will there be a harvest for the world
A harvest for the world

Frontline: Obama's War

2009-09-26T11:24:00.007+09:00

Obama's War
Tuesday, October 13, 2009, at 9 P.M. ET on PBS

Frontline examines U.S. counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan

Watch the full episode. See more FRONTLINE.

Tens of thousands of fresh American troops are now on the move in Afghanistan, led by a new commander and armed with a counterinsurgency plan that builds on the lessons of Iraq. But can U.S. forces succeed in a land long known as the "graveyard of empires"? And can the U.S. stop the Taliban in neighboring Pakistan, where U.S. troops are not allowed and the government is weak?

In FRONTLINE's season premiere, Obama's War, airing Tuesday, Oct. 13, 2009, at 9 P.M. ET on PBS, veteran correspondent Martin Smith travels across Afghanistan and Pakistan to see firsthand how the president's new strategy is taking shape, delivering vivid, on-the-ground reporting from this war's many fronts. Through interviews with top generals, diplomats and government officials, Smith also reports the internal debates over President Obama's grand attempt to combat terrorism at its roots.

The National Parks: America's Best Idea by Ken Burns

2009-09-26T11:15:00.003+09:00

The National Parks: America's Best Idea is a six-episode series directed by Ken Burns and written and co-produced by Dayton Duncan. Filmed over the course of more than six years at some of nature's most spectacular locales – from Acadia to Yosemite, Yellowstone to the Grand Canyon, the Everglades of Florida to the Gates of the Arctic in Alaska.

Full Episodes Online September 28th - October 9th, 2009

NPR: How Tiny Nanoparticles Are Transforming Technology

2009-09-05T19:38:00.001+09:00

How Tiny Nanoparticles Are Transforming Technology
NPR Talk of the Nation Science Friday, September 4, 2009

From cancer treatments to self-cleaning windows and clear solar panels, nanotechnology is revolutionizing medicine, renewable energy and computing. Chemists Mark Ratner and James Gimzewski discuss what's special about nanoscale particles, and how they may shape the future.

The Human Family Tree

2009-08-12T13:37:00.004+09:00

The Human Family Tree: Tracing the Human Journey Through Time

Airs on National Geographic Channel Sunday, August 30, 2009, 9pm

The Genographic Project is creating a picture of when and where ancient humans moved around the world by mapping the genetic markers in modern peoples. These great migrations eventually led the descendants of a small group of Africans to occupy even the farthest reaches of the earth.

200,000 – 150,000 years ago: The genetic journey of everyone alive today began with one woman — “Scientific Eve” — who lived in Africa and passed along her DNA through special cell structures called mitochondria, which only women pass down to further generations.

195,000 years ago: No one knows when modern humans first appeared, but the oldest skulls and bones of anatomically modern humans were found in Ethiopia’s Omo River Valley by paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey in 1967. Our ancient homo sapien ancestors remained in Africa for as long as three-quarters of our history as a species.

150,000 years ago: The first branch point on our human family tree is marked by the earliest major movement of humans: One group headed to southern Africa and the other to eastern Africa — and later, to the rest of the world.

Aomori Japan

2009-08-10T12:20:00.001+09:00

Aomori is the capital city of Aomori Prefecture, the Northernmost state of Japan's Tohoku region North of Akita, Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures. The city faces the Tsugaru Strait via Mutsu Bay to the North and the Hakkoda Mountains to the South. It has the biggest seaport in the prefecture. Aomori ”青森” literally means blue/green forest. Snow and cold weather characterize the winter climate in Aomori. The city and its surrounding area is renowned for its heavy snowfall, which is said to be the heaviest among all Japanese cities. In 1981 the city recorded a maximum snow cover of 196 cm. Aomori is especially famous for its apple orchards.

The Seikan Tunnel is a 53.85 km (33.46 mi) railway tunnel in Japan, with a 23.3-kilometre (14.5 mi) long portion under the seabed. It is the longest undersea tunnel in the world. It travels beneath the Tsugaru Strait — connecting Aomori Prefecture on the Japanese island of Honshū and the island of Hokkaidō. Before the Seikan Tunnel opened, Aomori's port connected the city via ferry to Hakodate in Hokkaidō, serving as the main entrance to Honshū for passengers and cargo to and from Hokkaidō.

Lake Towada, a beautiful caldera, lies on the boundary between Akita and Aomori Prefectures. The Oirase river drains Lake Towada; in the summer it is refreshing and in the autumn the leaves are breathtaking. It is the largest caldera lake in Honshū island, Japan. Located on the border between Aomori and Akita prefectures, it lies 400 meters (1,800 ft) above sea level and is 327.0m (1,073 ft) depth,. With a surface area of 62.2 km², Towada is Japan's 12th largest lake, its bright blue color due to its depth.

The Oirase mountain stream is the only stream that has Lake Towada as its source, and the upper reach of the stream runs for 14 km. The area around the stream is famous for its splendid landscape and the beauty of the colorful autumn leaves.

Tsugaru ben is one of the local dialects spoken in Northern Japan. It is not well understood by most Japanese people outside of Aomori.

The Tsugaru clan was a Japanese samurai clan originating in northern Japan, Mutsu Province. A branch of the local Nanbu clan, the Tsugaru rose to power during the Azuchi-Momoyama period. It was on the winning side of the Battle of Sekigahara, and entered the Edo period as a family of lords (daimyo) ruling the Hirosaki Domain. A second branch of the family was later established, which ruled the Kuroishi Domain. The Tsugaru survived as a daimyo family until the Meiji Restoration, when Tsugaru Tsuguakira of Hirosaki and Tsugaru Tsugumichi of Kuroishi were relieved of office. Their extended family then became part of the new nobility in the Meiji era.

Nebuta Festival

2009-08-10T00:35:00.006+09:00

The Nebuta Festival is a weeklong Japanese summer festival that takes place in Aomori City, Japan. The festival attracts the most tourists of any of the country's nebuta festivals, and is counted among the three largest festivals in Northern region. The festival was designated an important part of the country's folk culture in 1980. "Nebuta" refers to the float of a brave warrior-figure which is carried through the center of the city, while dancers wearing a unique type of costume called haneto and dance chanting "Rassera".

Nebuta floats are made of a wood base, carefully covered with this same Japanese paper, beautifully clolred, and lighted from the inner part with hundreds of light bulbs. In early August the colorful floats are pulled through the streets accompanied by people dancing in native Nebuta costumes, playing tunes on flutes and drums. One of the reasons for the popularity of the Nebuta festival is the free participation of the public. The sounds of the Nebuta drums and bamboo flutes inspire people to prepare costumes and begin practice of the Nebuta dances. The festival is held every year from August 2 to August 7, where the float is carried through the city during the evening from August 2-6, and during the daytime on August 7. A fireworks show is held on the evening of the final day while the float is carried into the sea.

Atlas of the Human Journey

2009-07-29T11:43:00.000+09:00

The National Geographic Society, IBM, geneticist Spencer Wells, and the Waitt Family Foundation have launched the Genographic Project, a five-year effort to understand the human journey—where we came from and how we got to where we live today. This unprecedented effort will map humanity's genetic journey through the ages.

Frontline: Breaking the Bank

2009-06-19T16:21:00.007+09:00

FRONTLINE Breaking The Bank
Originally Broadcast June 16, 2009

Watch the full episode. See more FRONTLINE.

In Breaking the Bank, FRONTLINE producer Michael Kirk (Inside the Meltdown, Bush's War) draws on a rare combination of high-profile interviews with key players Ken Lewis and former Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain to reveal the story of two banks at the heart of the financial crisis, their rocky merger, and the government's new role in taking over -- some call it "nationalizing" -- the American banking system.

The Incredible Human Journey

2009-06-15T22:10:00.009+09:00

The Incredible Human Journey is a five-episode science documentary presented by Alice Roberts first broadcast on BBC television in May and June 2009 in the United Kingdom. It considers the evidence for and against the theory of early human migrations out of Africa and subsequently around the world.

Episode 1 "Out of Africa"
Episode 2 "Asia"
Episode 3 "Europe"
Episode 4 "Australia"
Episode 5 "Americas"

Before The Dawn

2009-06-14T23:34:00.002+09:00

Talk of the Nation, Science Friday
'Before the Dawn' Author Nicholas Wade
April 26, 2006

Review - Monstersandcritics.com

Amazon.com - From Publishers Weekly
"Scientists are using DNA analysis to understand our prehistory: the evolution of humans; their relation to the Neanderthals, who populated Europe and the Near East; and Homo erectus, who roamed the steppes of Asia. Most importantly, geneticists can trace the movements of a little band of human ancestors, numbering perhaps no more than 150, who crossed the Red Sea from east Africa about 50,000 years ago. Within a few thousand years, their descendents, Homo sapiens, became masters of all they surveyed, the other humanoid species having become extinct.

This I Believe: I am Still The Greatest

2009-04-06T16:21:00.006+09:00

All Things Considered: This I believe
Muhammad Ali: "I am still the greatest"
Read by his wife Lonnie Ali
April 6, 2009

Poem by Cassius Clay

This is the legend of Cassius Clay, The most beautiful fighter in the world today.

He talks a great deal and brags indeedy, Of a muscular punch that's incredibly speedy.

The fistic world was dull and weary, with a champ like Liston, things had to be dreary.

Then someone with colour, someone with dash, brought fight fans a-running with cash.

Yes, I'm the man this poem is about, I'll be Champ of the World, There isn't a doubt.

Here I predict Mr Liston's dismemberment, I'll hit him so hard, he'll wonder where October and November went.

Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison

2009-04-04T16:27:00.001+09:00

Black and Blue (review)
Time Magazine
April 14, 1952

Black and Blue
Louis Armstrong

Cold empty bed, springs hurt my head
Feels like ole ned, wished I was dead
What did I do, to be so black and blue?

Even the mouse, ran from my house
They laugh at you, and all that you do
What did I do, to be so black and blue

I'm white, inside, but, that dont help my case
Thats life, cant hide, what is in my face

How would it end, aint got a friend
My only sin, is in my skin
What did I do, to be so black and blue?

How would it end, I ain't got a friend
My only sin, is in my skin
What did I do, to be so black and blue?

Tokyo Metro: Please do it at home

2009-04-02T17:08:00.000+09:00

Tokyo Metro Public Service Ad Posters

Carbon Nanotech

2009-03-30T14:28:00.008+09:00

Nanotechnology is the study of the control of matter on an atomic and molecular scale. Generally nanotechnology deals with structures of the size 100 nanometers or smaller, and involves developing materials or devices within that size.

Nanotechnology is extremely diverse, ranging from novel extensions of conventional device physics, to completely new approaches based upon molecular self-assembly, to developing new materials with dimensions on the nanoscale, even to speculation on whether we can directly control matter on the atomic scale.

Buckyball Discoverer Explores Nanotech Frontier
NPR Talk of the Nation Science Friday, March 20, 2009

Carbon nanotubes are allotropes of carbon with a nanostructure that can have a length-to-diameter ratio of up to 28,000,000:1, which is significantly larger than any other material. These cylindrical carbon molecules have novel properties that make them potentially useful in many applications in nanotechnology, electronics, optics and other fields of materials science, as well as potential uses in architectural fields. They exhibit extraordinary strength and unique electrical properties, and are efficient conductors of heat.

Frontline: Inside the Meltdown

2009-02-16T02:48:00.005+09:00

Frontline: Inside The Meltdown
PBS.org, Original Broadcast Feb 17, 2009

"FRONTLINE investigates the causes of the worst economic crisis in 70 years and how the government responded. The film chronicles the inside stories of the Bear Stearns deal, Lehman Brothers’ collapse, the propping up of insurance giant AIG, and the $700 billion bailout. Inside the Meltdown examines what Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke didn’t see, couldn’t stop and haven’t been able to fix.."

Looking for Lincoln

2009-02-12T22:00:00.006+09:00

Looking For Lincoln

Talk of the Nation, February 11, 2009
Scholar Reappraises President Lincoln

Looking for Lincoln, PBS
January 12, 2009

Historian Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s quest to piece together Lincoln’s complex life takes him from Illinois to Gettysburg to Washington, D.C., and face-to-face with people who live with Lincoln every day – relic hunters, re-enactors, and others for whom the study of Lincoln is a passion. Among those weighing in: Pulitzer Prize winners Doris Kearns Goodwin and Tony Kushner; presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush; and Lincoln scholars including Harold Holzer, vice chair of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission; Harvard University’s president Drew Faust and history professor David Hebert Donald; Yale University history professor David Blight; and Allen Guelzo of Gettysburg College.

Henry Louis Gates Jr.

Director, W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research

The Post-American World

2009-01-29T18:12:00.007+09:00

All Things Considered, April 29, 2008

'Post-American World' Offers New Role for U.S.'

Amazon.com Review
Book Description

"This is not a book about the decline of America, but rather about the rise of everyone else." So begins Fareed Zakaria's important new work on the era we are now entering. Following on the success of his best-selling The Future of Freedom, Zakaria describes with equal prescience a world in which the United States will no longer dominate the global economy, orchestrate geopolitics, or overwhelm cultures. He sees the "rise of the rest"—the growth of countries like China, India, Brazil, Russia, and many others—as the great story of our time, and one that will reshape the world. The tallest buildings, biggest dams, largest-selling movies, and most advanced cell phones are all being built outside the United States. This economic growth is producing political confidence, national pride, and potentially international problems. How should the United States understand and thrive in this rapidly changing international climate? What does it mean to live in a truly global era? Zakaria answers these questions with his customary lucidity, insight, and imagination.

In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto

2008-12-29T02:30:00.007+09:00

In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto
"Eat food, not too much, mostly plants."

Michael Pollan Interview by Bill Moyers (video)
November 28, 2008

Talk of the Nation, December 24, 2008

Nutritionist Michael Pollan Accepts No Imitations

michaelpollen.com

Pollan proposes a new (and very old) answer to the question of what we should eat that comes down to seven simple but liberating words: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. By urging us to once again eat food, he challenges the prevailing nutrient-by-nutrient approach -- what he calls nutritionism -- and proposes an alternative way of eating that is informed by the traditions and ecology of real, well-grown, unprocessed food. Our personal health, he argues, cannot be divorced from the health of the food chains of which we are part.

The Omnivore's Dilemma

2008-12-29T01:05:00.003+09:00

"In his new book, The Omnivore's Dilemma, journalist and writer Michael Pollan argues that many Americans suffer from a national eating disorder based on super-sized, corn-fed diets."

Talk of the nation Science Friday
April 14, 2006

Fresh Air - Dinner: An Author Considers the Source
April 11, 2006

Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression

2008-11-10T14:48:00.006+09:00

Hard Times, by Studs Terkel

Recordings from Hard Times
www.studsterkel.org

Terkel interviewed hundreds of people across the United States for his book on the Great Depression of the 1930s. In 1973, he selected several interviews that were included in his book to be broadcast in eleven parts on the Studs Terkel Program on WFMT radio (Chicago, IL). This gallery includes the interviews in those programs.

Terkel questions people about their recollections of employment problems, the crash of 1929, organized labor issues, “farm holidays” where crops were destroyed, and U.S. President Franklin Delanor Roosevelt’s New Deal programs. He asks them how they managed financially and personally through the economic slump and what personal qualities surfaced as a result. In particular he seems interested in exploring the relationship between their personal plight and values and their awareness of national issues and society’s values.

Studs Terkel
1912-2008

African American Lives

2008-10-23T13:02:00.005+09:00

PBS: African American Lives

"Hosted by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., W.E.B. Du Bois professor of the Humanities and chair of African and African American Studies at Harvard University, AFRICAN AMERICAN LIVES, an unprecedented four-part PBS series, takes Alex Haley's Roots saga to a whole new level through moving stories of personal discovery. Using genealogy, oral history, family stories and DNA analysis to trace lineage through American history and back to Africa, the series provides a life-changing journey for a diverse group of highly accomplished African Americans: Dr. Ben Carson, Whoopi Goldberg, Bishop T.D. Jakes, Dr. Mae Jemison, Quincy Jones, Dr. Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, Chris Tucker and Oprah Winfrey.

The series works to restore the participants' lineages in reverse chronological order. Starting with the oral histories of the individuals' families, and drawing on photographs, film clips, music and early personal records, Professor Gates begins to trace their family trees back through the 20th century. Noted historians and expert genealogists around America help fill in missing branches, in the process explaining how such major events as Jim Crow segregation and the post-World War I "Great Migration" from the South to the North helped shape African-American families."

Frontline: Heat

2008-10-21T12:34:00.006+09:00

Frontline: Heat
PBS.org, Original Broadcast Oct 21, 2008

Watch the full episode. See more FRONTLINE.

"Melting glaciers, rising sea levels, fires, floods and droughts. On the eve of a historic election, award-winning producer and correspondent Martin Smith investigates how the world's largest corporations and governments are responding to Earth's looming environmental disaster.

The world needs to dramatically cut the carbon emissions responsible for wreaking havoc on the planet's climate, according to Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, whose organization, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), shared last year's Nobel Peace Prize. "If we don't take action immediately, we face a crisis," Pachauri tells Smith. "Climate change is caused by human actions, and we need to do something about it. The sooner we realize that, the better."

With that sense of urgency in mind, Smith traveled to 12 countries on four continents to investigate whether major corporations and governments are up to the challenge. HEAT features in-depth interviews with top policy-makers and with leading executives from many of the largest carbon emitters from around the world, including Chinese coal companies, Indian SUV makers and American oil giants. The report paints an ominous portrait. Despite increasing talk about "going green," across the planet, environmental concerns are still taking a back seat to shorter-term economic interests."

Tesla Motors and Roadster

2008-10-14T21:53:00.004+09:00

Tesla Motors, Inc. is private a Silicon Valley automobile startup company focusing on the production of high performance, consumer-oriented battery electric vehicles.

The Tesla Roadster is a fully electric sports car. It is the first car produced by electric car firm Tesla Motors.

The car can travel 244 mi (393 km) on a single charge of its lithium-ion battery pack and accelerate from 0-60 mph (97 km/h) in 3.9 seconds.

The Roadster's efficiency, as of February 2008, is reported as 199 W·h/km (3.12 mi/kW·h), equivalent to 105 mpg–U.S. (2.24 L/100 km / 126.1 mpg–imp)

Frontline: The Choice 2008

2008-10-14T11:48:00.007+09:00

Frontline: The Choice 2008

PBS.org, Original Broadcast Oct 14, 2008

Watch the full episode. See more FRONTLINE.

"It has been called one of the most historic presidential elections in our nation's history -- Barack Obama versus John McCain. It is a race that pits the iconoclast against the newcomer, the heroic prisoner of war against the first African American nominated by a major party. FRONTLINE's critically acclaimed series The Choice returns this election season to examine the rich personal and political biographies of these two men in The Choice 2008.

The Choice 2008 draws on in-depth interviews with the advisers, friends and those closest to these unlikely candidates, as well as with seasoned observers of American politics, who together tell the definitive story of these men and their ascent to their party's nominations.

When FRONTLINE first aired a profile of presidential candidates during the 1988 election, The Choice redefined political journalism on television. Now, in an unprecedented election year, veteran FRONTLINE producer Michael Kirk (Bush's War, Cheney's Law) goes behind the headlines to tell a deeper political story about the candidates, the decisions they made, and why their nominations may indicate a historic change in American politics."

This American Life: Another Frightening Show About the Economy

2008-10-06T12:16:00.007+09:00

This American Life
Chicago Public Radio
October 3, 2008

Episode 365: Another Frightening Show About the Economy

Alex Blumberg and NPR's Adam Davidson — the two guys who reported our Giant Pool of Money episode — are back, in collaboration with the Planet Money podcast. They'll explain what happened this week, including what regulators could've done to prevent this financial crisis from happening in the first place.

Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy (2002)

2008-09-05T11:01:00.006+09:00

Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy confronts head-on Americans' critical concerns about the new interconnected world. Based on the best-selling book by Pulitzer Prize-winner Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw, this groundbreaking series explores our changing world—the great debate over globalization and the future of our society.

MIT makes solar energy breakthrough

2008-08-06T02:43:00.004+09:00

Major discovery' from MIT primed to unleash solar revolution

Daniel G. Nocera, the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy at MIT, has developed a simple method to split water molecules and produce oxygen gas, a discovery that paves the way for large-scale use of solar power.

MIT researchers have developed a new catalyst, consisting of cobalt metal, phosphate and an electrode. When the catalyst is placed in water and electricity runs through the electrode, oxygen gas is produced. When another catalyst is used to produce hydrogen gas, the oxygen and hydrogen can be combined inside a fuel cell, creating carbon-free electricity to power a house or an electric car, day or night.

With Daniel Nocera's and Matthew Kanan's new catalyst, homeowners could use their solar panels during the day to power their home, while also using the energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen for storage. At night, the stored hydrogen and oxygen could be recombined using a fuel cell to generate power while the solar panels are inactive.

How to kick the oil habit

2008-06-23T22:05:00.004+09:00

As prices rise, the race for new energy sources--from wind farms to liquid coal--heats up. Get ready for the withdrawal symptoms.

"If anyone harbored any doubts that hybrid cars are hot, last week the 2005 Tokyo Motor Show put them to rest. Carmakers practically ran over one another promoting their versions in attempts to catch up with Honda and Toyota, the technology's pioneers. Companies such as Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Mazda, Mitsubishi, GM, Volkswagen and Porsche showed new models or talked about plans to sell them by the end of the decade at the latest."

time.com Oct 23, 2005

Michael Klare on Entering the Age of Resource Wars

2008-06-23T22:02:00.003+09:00

(The Party's Over)

Michael Klare on Entering the Age of Resource Wars: The Twilight Era of Petroleum August 4, 2005

Frontline: Young & Restless in China

2008-06-17T19:25:00.008+09:00

FRONTLINE presents Young & Restless in China
Originally Broadcast Tuesday, June 17, 2008, from 9 to 11 P.M. ET on PBS

Watch the full episode. See more FRONTLINE.

“This generation will be running China in a few years. They are the next international politicians and business leaders, and their choices will affect us all,” says FRONTLINE producer Sue Williams about the new generation shaping China’s future.

In Young & Restless in China FRONTLINE presents intimate portraits of nine young Chinese over the course of four years, examining the reality of their lives as they navigate their way through a country that is changing daily. They are westernized, savvy about today’s interconnected world, ambitious – and often torn between their culture and their aspirations. Set to an original soundtrack of Chinese rock and hip-hop music, this provocative film presents an in-depth look at what it means to be young and Chinese today.

Unforgivable Blackness (2004)

2008-04-29T00:50:00.007+09:00

film description wikipedia.org:

"Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson is a documentary by filmmaker Ken Burns based on the nonfiction book of the same name by Geoffrey C. Ward (2004)."

Unforgivable Blackness @ PBS.org

download "Unforgivable Blackness" via bittorrent (requires bittorrent client)

Frontline: Bush's War

2008-03-26T14:12:00.007+09:00

Frontline: Bush's War
PBS.org, Original Broadcast March 24 & 25, 2008

Watch the full episode. See more FRONTLINE.

Now, on the fifth anniversary of the Iraq invasion, the full saga unfolds in the two-part FRONTLINE special Bush's War. Veteran FRONTLINE producer Michael Kirk draws on one of the richest archives in broadcast journalism -- more than 40 FRONTLINE reports on Iraq and the war on terror. Combined with fresh reporting and new interviews, Bush's War will be the definitive documentary analysis of one of the most challenging periods in the nation's history.

"Parts of this history have been told before," Kirk says. "But no one has laid out the entire narrative to reveal in one epic story the scope and detail of how this war began and how it has been fought, both on the ground and deep inside the government."

Bush's War is the sixth in a series of Iraq war stories from FRONTLINE producer Michael Kirk, including Rumsfeld's War, The Torture Question, The Dark Side, The Lost Year in Iraq and
Endgame.

Gorée Senegal Diaspora

2008-03-04T06:46:00.004+09:00

African Diaspora

The African diaspora was the movement of Africans and their descendants to places throughout the world such as the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Australia. Much of the African diaspora is descended from people who were enslaved and shipped to the Americas during the Atlantic slave trade, with the largest percentage sent to Brazil. Brazil obtained 37% of all African slaves traded, and more than 3 million slaves were sent to Brazil.

The Trans Atlantic Slave Trade

The Trans-Atlantic Slave trade resulted in a vast and as yet still unknown loss of life for African captives both in and outside of America. Approximately 8 million Africans were killed during their storage, shipment and initial landing in the New World. The amount of life lost in the actual procurement of slaves remains a mystery but may equal or exceed the amount actually enslaved. If such a figure is to be believed, the total number of deaths would be between 16 and 20 million. Most historians now agree that at least 12 million slaves left the continent between the fifteenth and nineteenth century, but 10 to 20% died on board ships. Thus a figure of 11 million slaves transported to the Americas is the nearest demonstrable figure historians can produce.

Goree Island, Dakar Senegal

Gorée is famous as a former center of the Atlantic slave trade from where many Africans were forcibly departed to the Americas. Gorée is a small island 900 m in length and 350 m in width sheltered by the Cape Vert Peninsula. Now part of the city of Dakar, it served for many centuries as one of the principal factories in the triangular trade between Africa, Europe and the Americas.

The House of Slaves

Gorée is best known as the location of the House of Slaves used as a holding and transfer point during the slave trade. The House of Slaves is one of the oldest houses on the island. The Door of No Return in the House of Slaves is said to be the final exit point of the slaves from Africa.

The House of Slaves is powerful, not because millions of slaves actually left through The Door of No Return, but because Africa's descendants have made this their place to honor them.

Descendent's of the Gorée Diaspora

The slaves from Gorée were destined essentially to the French colonies in the Caribbean (prominently Haiti) and in Louisiana, as well as to the Spanish colonies (Cuba essentially) and to the Portuguese colonies in Brazil. Very few African Americans from the U.S. have ancestors who went through Gorée, as the English colonists had other sources of "import" for their slaves. Those who can with most certainty consider Gorée as a transit point for their ancestors are the African Americans whose family are from the south of Louisiana, some of which actually still speak some sort of French. As African Americans have migrated a lot throughout the US in the last 100 years, it can be difficult to know with certainty which families were originally from French Louisiana.

Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African-American Experience

2008-03-03T12:08:00.002+09:00

Legendary scholar-activist W.E.B. Du Bois labored to complete an "Encyclopedia Africana" before his death in 1963. Just over 35 years later, two Harvard educators, Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Ghanaian-born Kwame Anthony Appiah, have brought Du Bois' intellectual dream to life in Africana, the most complete and comprehensive record of the Pan-African diaspora compiled into one volume.

The two Harvard professors have commissioned and condensed more than 3000 articles by more than 400 scholars. Though the bulk of the entries are devoted to the African continent and its descendant cultures in Latin America, the Caribbean and North America, the encyclopedia also addresses the African presence in Europe, Asia and the rest of the world.

Don't care where you come from
As long as you're a black man
You're an African

No mind your nationality
You have got the identity of an African

'Cause if you come from Clarendon
And if you come from Portland
And if you come from Westmoreland
You're an African

No mind your nationality
You've got the identity of an African

'Cause if you come Trinidad
And if you come from Nassau
And if you come from Cuba
You're an African

CHORUS
No mind your complexion
There is no rejection
You're an African

'Cause if your plexion High, High, High,
If your complexion low, low, low
And if your plexion in between
You're an African

No mind denomination
That is only segregation
You're an African

'Cause if you go to the Catholic
And if you go to the Methodist
And if you go to the Church of Gods
You're an African

No mind your nationality
You have got the identity of an African

Peter Tosh
African

Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route

2008-03-02T15:42:00.003+09:00

Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route (Hardcover)
by Saidiya Hartman

Author Finds Heritage in Africa
News & Notes, January 23, 2007
npr.org

" As part of NPR's Crossing the Divide series, author Saidiya Hartman talks about one of the oldest and deepest divides in America: slavery. In Hartman's new book, Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route, she returns to Ghana to do research, but instead finds personal transformation."

Amazon.com

"In this rousing narrative, Berkeley professor Hartman traces first-hand the progress of her ancestors-forced migrants from the Gold Coast-in order to illuminate the history of the Atlantic slave trade. Chronicling her time in Ghana following the overland slave route from the hinterland to the Atlantic, Hartman admits early on to a naïve search for her identity: "Secretly I wanted to belong somewhere or, at least, I wanted a convenient explanation of why I felt like a stranger." Fortunately, Hartman eschews the simplification of such a quest, finding that Africa's American expatriates often find themselves more lost than when they started.

Instead, Hartman channels her longing into facing tough questions, nagging self-doubt and the horrors of the Middle Passage in a fascinating, beautifully told history of those millions whose own histories were revoked in "the process by which lives were destroyed and slaves born." Shifting between past and present, Hartman also considers the "afterlife of slavery," revealing Africa-and, through her transitive experience, America-as yet unhealed by de-colonization and abolition, but showing signs of hope. Hartman's mix of history and memoir has the feel of a good novel, told with charm and passion, and should reach out to anyone contemplating the meaning of identity, belonging and homeland."

W.E.B Du Bois, 1868-1963 (W.E.B = William Edward Burghardt)

W.E.B Du Bois, Citizen of Ghana
wikipedia.com

"Du Bois was invited to Ghana in 1961 by President Kwame Nkrumah to direct the Encyclopedia Africana, a government production, and a long-held dream of his. When, in 1963, he was refused a new U.S. passport, he and his wife, Shirley Graham Du Bois, became citizens of Ghana, making him dual citizens of Ghana and the United States. Du Bois' health had declined in 1962, and on August 27, 1963, he died in Accra, Ghana at the age of ninety-five, one day before Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech."

Works by W.E.B. DuBois at Project Gutenberg:

The Conservation of Races (English)
Darkwater Voices from Within the Veil (English)
The Negro (English)
The Negro Problem (English) (as Contributor)
The Quest of the Silver Fleece A Novel (English)
The Souls of Black Folk (English)
The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America 1638-1870 (English)

“It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.” W. E. B. Du Bois

Smile Please

2008-02-10T23:00:00.001+09:00

A smiling face is an Earth like star
A frown can't bring out the beauty that you are
Love within and you'll begin smiling...
There are brighter days ahead

Don't mess your face up with bitter tears
'Cause life is gonna be what it is
It's okay, please don't delay from smiling...
There are brighter days ahead

A smiling face you don't have to see
'Cause it's as joyful as a Christmas tree
Love within and you'll begin smiling...
There're brighter days ahead

Love's not competing, it's on your side
You're in life's picture, so why must you cry?
So for a friend please begin to smile - Please
There are brighter days ahead

Bum,
Bum bum di ti bum,
Bum bum di ti bum,
Bum bum di ti bum

Please smile for me

Stevie Wonder
Fulfillingness First Finale
"Smile Please"

WGBH (Great Blue Hill)

2008-01-03T17:17:00.000+09:00

WGBH is an established public television and public radio broadcast service located in Boston, Massachusetts. It operates over ten broadcasts: primarily WGBH 2 and WGBX 44 (television) and WGBH 89.7 FM (radio). WGBH is a member of PBS in regard to its television broadcasts, and both a member of NPR and an affiliate of PRI for its radio broadcasts. The license-holder is the WGBH Educational Foundation.

WGBH produces many shows for the above organizations, including nearly a third of PBS's national prime-time TV.

"GBH" stands for Great Blue Hill, the location of WGBH's FM transmitter, as well as the original location of WGBH-TV's transmitter. Great Blue Hill in Milton, Massachusetts, has an elevation of 635 feet (193 m) and is the highest point in the Boston area.

Blue Hill Ave.

WGBH Forum Network - Weekly Podcasts and New Downloads

Thanksgiving

2007-11-22T15:11:00.003+09:00

The Thanksgiving Story - wilstar.com

"The Pilgrims set ground at Plymouth Rock on December 11, 1620. Their first winter was devastating. At the beginning of the following fall, they had lost 46 of the original 102 who sailed on the Mayflower. But the harvest of 1621 was a bountiful one. And the remaining colonists decided to celebrate with a feast -- including 91 Indians who had helped the Pilgrims survive their first year."

The Pilgrims

The Mayflower - en.wikipedia.org
The Mayflower was the ship which transported the Pilgrim Fathers from Plymouth, England to "North Virginia" (in what was later to become the United States of America) in 1620, leaving Plymouth on September 6 and dropping anchor near Cape Cod on November 11.

Plimouth Plantation - plimoth.org
A reconstruction of the 1627 village occupied by the Pilgrims.

The Native People

Blue Hill Ave.

Massachuset: Meaning ">at the range of hills," and meant the Blue Hills past Milton.

The Massachuset belonged to the Algonquian linguistic stock, their tongue being an n-dialect, and formed one group with the Narraganset, Niantic (East and West), and Wampanoag, and probably the Nauset.

In the region of Massachusetts Bay between Salem on the north and Marshfield and Brockton on the south. Later they claimed lands beyond Brockton as far as the Great Cedar Swamp, territories formerly under the control of the Wampanoag.

500 Nations - Massachusetts Tribes

Native Traditions in Massachusetts

The Bering Strait Land Bridge and the Migration of Early Indians

Bering Strait Theory

"Most anthropologists today believe that the ancestors of all American Indians immigrated from northeastern Asia across the Bering land bridge during the Ice Age, between 12,000 and 60,000 years ago. Known as the Bering Strait theory, this idea is supported by archaeological, biological, and geological evidence."

Plane Ticket $350...

2007-10-29T14:20:00.001+09:00

Plane Ticket: $350.
Game Ticket: $750.
The Yankees Watching the Sox in the World Series: PRICELESS.

Mountain men: Sox are champs

Boston rides four-game sweep to second title in four seasons

Frontline: Showdown With Iran

2007-10-24T20:34:00.003+09:00

Showdown With Iran
10/23/2007

As the United States and Iran are locked in a battle for power and influence across the Middle East -- with the fear of an Iranian nuclear weapon looming in the background -- FRONTLINE gains unprecedented access to Iranian hard-liners shaping government policy, including parliament leader Hamid Reza Hajibabaei, National Security Council member Mohammad Jafari and state newspaper editor Hossein Shariatmadari.

Frontline: Cheney's Law

2007-10-16T11:54:00.001+09:00

Cheney's Law

10/16/2007

Watch the full episode. See more FRONTLINE.

For three decades Vice President Dick Cheney conducted a secretive, behind-closed-doors campaign to give the president virtually unlimited wartime power. Finally, in the aftermath of 9/11, the Justice Department and the White House made a number of controversial legal decisions. Orchestrated by Cheney and his lawyer David Addington, the department interpreted executive power in an expansive and extraordinary way, granting President George W. Bush the power to detain, interrogate, torture, wiretap and spy -- without congressional approval or judicial review.

Come On People - Bill Cosby & Alvin F. Poussaint

2007-10-15T04:05:00.008+09:00

Entertainer Bill Cosby and Harvard Medical School Psychiatry Professor Dr. Alvin Poussaint tackle the controversial and complicated issues facing black communities across the nation and discuss their new book, "Come On, People: On the Path from Victims to Victors.

Meet the Press’ transcript for Oct. 14, 2007

Chapter 1

WHAT’ S GOING ON WITH BLACK PEOPLE?
For the last generation or two, as our communities dissolved and our parenting skills broke down, no one has suffered more than our young black people.

Your authors have been around long enough, and traveled widely enough, to think we understand something about the problem. And we’re hopeful enough—or desperate enough—to think that with all of us working together we might find our way to a solution. Let’s start with one very basic fact. Back in 1950, before Brown v. Board of Education, before the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, when Rosa Parks was still sitting in the back of her Montgomery bus, when the NBA was just about all white, back in those troubled times, black boys were born into a different world than they are today. Obviously, many civil rights leaders had hoped that with the demise in the 1960s of officially sanctioned forms of segregation and discrimination, black males would have greater access to the mainstream of American society. They had fully expected that these young men would be in a better position in every way—financially, psychologically, legally—to sustain viable marriages and families. Instead, the overall situation has continued to go downhill among the poor who are mostly shut out from the mainstream of success.

How is that possible?

There is one statistic that captures the bleakness. In 1950, five out of every six black children were born into a two-parent home. Today, that number is less than two out of six. In poor communities, that number is lower still. There are whole blocks with scarcely a married couple, whole blocks without responsible males to watch out for wayward boys, whole neighborhoods in which little girls and boys come of age without seeing up close a committed partnership and perhaps never having attended a wedding.