Mazinaatesijigan Gekinoo’amaadiwin

Free movies on the UMM campus, open to all!

Watch out for the woo, but you’ve got to appreciate the fact that oppressed peoples are expressing themselves in their own words about their lives and the destruction that has been wreaked on them.

Mazinaatesijigan Gekinoo’amaadiwin Film Series (Films with Knowledge)
For much of the 20th century, American Indian identities were shaped, at least in popular culture and public imaginations, by advertising imagery, photographs, and wild west shows. In the past few decades, American Indian artists and filmmakers have extracted their own image from these external forces, challenging the established codes of representation. The goal of the Mazinaatesijigan Gekinoo’amaadiwin Film Series is to challenge participants to examine and discuss how film impacts Indigenous culture, identity, politics, and stereotypes.

Dakota 38 (2011, 78 min., Smooth Feather Productions)
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
7:00 p.m., 109 Imholte Hall
In the spring of 2005, Jim Miller, a Native spiritual leader and Vietnam veteran, found himself in a dream riding on horseback across the great plains of South Dakota. Just before he awoke, he arrived at a riverbank in Minnesota and saw 38 of his Dakota ancestors hanged.

Finding Our Talk (2009, 72 min., Mushkeg Media)
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
7:00 p.m., 109 Imholte Hall
Every fourteen days a language dies. By the year 2100 more than half of the world’s languages will
disappear. This film examines three indigenous communities struggling to preserve their languages: The Rapid Lake Anishinaabe from Quebec, the Wahpeton Dakota Nation from Saskatchewan, and the
Guovdageaidnu Sami from Norway.

Star Dreamers, Part One: The Indian System, Featuring Filmmaker Sheldon Wolfchild (2012, 72 min., 38 Plus 2 Productions)
Wednesday, November 7, 2012
7:00 p.m., 109 Imholte Hall
By 1862, the system had brought the Dakota living on reservations in Minnesota to the brink of starvation, offering them little option other than dying of hunger in war. The system made war inevitable. his is the first of a three-part documentary series on the origins of the Dakota War.

Independent Indigenous Film & Media Shorts Featuring Filmmaker Missy Whiteman
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
7:00 p.m., 109 Imholte Hall
A compilation of short films :
Coyote Way (2012, 5 min.)
Nawa Giizhigong (2012, 7 min.)
Indigenous Holocaust (2008, 5 min.)
Neinoo (Mother) (2007, 3 min.)
Walk in Shadows (2004, 7 min.)

The best thing I’ve read today

I know it’s early, but I expect it to be the best thing for a few days yet. David Byrne writes about his love affair with sound, and I came away from it feeling like I’d both learned something new and that it fit well with other ideas I already had — it was a revelation to see how well music and evolution fit together.

Because music evolves. Byrne’s thesis is that it evolves to fit its environment (sound familiar?), and that you can see the history of a genre of a music in its sound. It’s all about the spaces it was played in, which shapes the kind of sound can be used effectively…and he makes the strong point that you can’t fully appreciate the music of a culture or a time when you transpose it to a different space. He goes through all kinds of music, from medieval chants (cathedrals!) to hip hop (cars!). The iPod isn’t just a passive delivery system for generic music, it influences how music will sound — ear buds represent a completely different sonic environment from a cluttered dance club.

Apparently, David Byrne is an Ecological Developmental Biology kind of guy. I like him even more already.

Because that’s what eco devo is all about. Development and environment are all intertwined, with one feeding back on the other — species are products of the spaces they evolved and developed in, and cannot be comprehended in isolation. It’s one of the weird things about modern developmental biology, that we preferentially study model systems, organisms that have been able to thrive when ripped out of their native environments and cultured in the simplified sterility of the lab. My zebrafish live now in small uncluttered tanks with heavily filtered water; their environment is like iPods, simple, streamlined, focused with relatively little resonance. The zebrafish evolved in mountain streams feeding into the Ganges, in lands seasonally flooded by great monsoons, a vast and complicated opera hall of an environment. A wild zebrafish and a lab zebrafish are two completely different animals.

Oh, look. I have a new metaphor for issues I’ve been thinking about for some time. Thanks, David Byrne!

I might just make his essay part of the readings for my developmental biology course next term.

SRS has more targets

ShitRedditSays, the subreddit that exposes the worst of Reddit, is going on the warpath. They’ve published a long list of sick subreddits and are asking that the news be spread far and wide. Here’s an example of the kind of subreddit they dislike:

Reddit also has subreddits which publish images of women’s and underage girls’ private areas, including "upskirt" and "downblouse" pictures, without the knowledge or consent of their subjects. The users of these subreddits trade tips on how to stalk and photograph women and minors and encourage each other to go out and take more such pictures.

I know exactly how people will fight back on this one. They will claim that it’s a bunch of prudes who don’t like sex who are trying to shut down the more risqué discussions. But it’s not about sex.

They already cite reddit management that makes the argument that it’s all about free speech. But the objections have nothing to do with free speech.

It’s about consent.

Look through their long list of nasty subreddits, and that’s the theme running through them: these are forums dedicated to obtaining revealing images of minors, of people in private situations, of people being raped or beat up, and making them public. Or dedicated to teaching people how to violate others. It shouldn’t be about taking down things some people find offensive, it should be about demanding responsibility and requiring permission before publishing photographs of someone’s breasts (oh, hi, Kate Middleton!) and making special efforts to shelter people who can’t give informed consent, like children.

That’s what makes the people who participate in those subgroups creepy. It’s not that they like to talk about sex, or that they’re defenders of free speech…it’s that they don’t give a damn about privacy or autonomy.

California’s largest lake is doomed

The Salton Sea with Mount San Jacinto in the background

The Salton Sea with Mount San Jacinto in the background — CC photo

A week ago today a good-sized storm blew into Southern California’s desert off the Sea of Cortez, a.k.a. the Gulf of California. In the Salton Basin (a.k.a. the Salton Trough) north of the Gulf winds averaged 40 mph or so, with gusts above 60. The Salton Sea fills the lowest part of the Salton Basin and the winds churned that water, roiled up its murky, anaerobic depths, and released a cloud of stench, mostly hydrogen sulfide, into the air. People who’ve lived in the Basin are used to that smell, but last weekend the wind off the Sea of Cortez picked up that mixed hydrogen sulfide cocktail and blew it to Los Angeles. On Monday, air quality management districts got complaint calls from residents of Simi Valley, almost 200 miles from the Salton Sea.

It took a day or so before everyone agreed that the Salton Sea was to blame for the stench, and now a few more people are aware of the fact that it’s in trouble. There are plans to “fix” the Sea that would cost several billion dollars, which is getting no traction at all in Sacramento given rabid anti-tax sentiment in California. But “fixing” the Sea in the long term is futile, and the reason involves the Colorado River, plate tectonics, and — possibly — the Grand Canyon.

[Read more…]

Arrest everyone who disagrees with me! Show trials for all!

R. Joseph Hoffman is a flaming authoritarian, about as illiberal as you can get without joining the Tea Party. He’s very, very upset at Terry Jones and that gang of blithering idiots who assembled that terrible movie slandering Muslims, provoking riots in Egypt and Libya. Oh, and also his comrades-in-arms, Jerry Coyne, Eric MacDonald, and me.

I have just one question for PZ: What are you thinking now? God save the First Amendment?

Actually, I suppose he could bothered to read what I wrote on the “work of a group of incompetent fundamentalist Christian assholes pissing on entire cultures”, but that would be too much too ask — R. Joseph Hoffman is very busy raging at the voices in his head. I don’t even know why he bothers to ask what I’m thinking, since it won’t matter what I say, what with his fantasies informing his perceptions. I mean, we went around on this before, and he interprets what I wrote as “Hoffman coddles Muslims”. Go ahead, read what I wrote; you’ll have a very tough time pulling that interpretation out of what I said.

But what do I think of this situation? May reason save the rule of law.

Terry Jones and his compatriots are idiots, but they have a right to say hateful, awful, evil things. I’d say the same is true of the Rev. Phelps, the KKK, the Catholic Church, the Mormons, and R. Joseph Hoffman. I should have the right to say how much I despise them all, and I should also have the right to tune them out and ignore them. I’d actually rather they spoke up and made their positions clear; the threats I get in email don’t trouble me so much as the worry that the ones who’ll actually do something dangerous aren’t so stupid as to open their mouths and announce their intent.

Terry Jones is an intolerant ignoramus, but I don’t worry about him. What bothers me more are the intolerant ignoramuses who riot and murder when they’re offended; I’d rather they went out and made an incompetent propaganda film, for instance. I worry that our president might actually listen when Egypt calls for world-wide censorship, as when the White House explored the idea of having an offensive video removed from youtube (Google said no, fortunately — but they do assist in local censorship efforts).

Decide that a Terry Jones must be silenced, and who is next? I can tell you: atheists. Egypt has arrested Alber Saber for the crime of atheism.

On Wednesday, September 12th, a Muslim friend and neighbor using Saber’s computer reportedly discovered that he was the admin for the Egyptian Athiests Facebook page, which is the largest of several such groups online with over a thousand “likes”. On September 10 the notorious “Innocence of Muslims” had been posted on the site. Over the next two days crowds began to gather outside his house, threatening Saber and his mother.

On Thursday night Saber’s mother called the police, hoping for protection. When the police arrived however, rather than fending the threatening mob outside, they arrested her son.

The charge according to his lawyer and supporters, focuses on videos in which Saber discusses his own Coptic faith or lack thereof. This makes sense as to charge anyone for posting the “Innocence of Muslims” video would set an impossible precedent. Even conservative broadcasters have also shown the video, or sections of it on their shows. It is not yet clear however, which materials will be included in the case against him, which is currently in the hands of the General Prosecutor. The next hearing is expected in four days.

After talking with Saber’s friends it seems likely to me that Egypt’s Islamist leaders are hoping to create a local issue where they can be seen as the tough guys, to distract Egyptians from how the furor in the international arena, in the context of which they seem impotent.

There is no difference between what the Egyptian government has done to this man, and what R. Joseph Hoffman asks the American government to do to Terry Jones:

Arrest him without delay. Deploy the National Guard. Surround the Church.

No. That’s totalitarianism. Free speech isn’t free if you’re only allowed to speak government- and church-approved opinions. It’s surprising how many people cannot comprehend that.

(via Why Evolution Is True)

Around FtB

You’re sitting at home, skipping church, and there’s nothing on the TV but right wingers babbling about politics. Fix yourself some pancakes and browse the godless blogs instead.