FRAZAR ONLINE FILM COLLECTION

Who Wrote the Bible?

2011-02-15T10:45:00.000-06:00

Source Google Video

Who Wrote The Bible takes an in depth view at the origins of the sources texts of the Bible. Dr. Robert Beckford journeys to Jerusalem, Rome and the USA (with a stopover in Walthamstow) consulting scholars and historians on the way. What comes to light is a history of revisions, integration of additional ideology and censorship, driven by an emerging Church with a strong religious and political agenda

Resources:

In the Library:

Friedman, Richard Elliott [1989]. Who Wrote The Bible? Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall [WorldCat]
Kugel, James L [1997] The Bible As It Was. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. [WorldCat]
Greenspahn, Frederick E. [2008]. The Hebrew Bible : New Insights and Scholarship. New York: New York University Press. [NetLibrary]
Kaltner, John [2008]. The Uncensored Bible : The Bawdy and Naughty Bits of the Good book. San Francisco: HarperOne. [WorldCat]
Brueggemann, Walter. [2003] An Introduction to the Old Testament : The Canon and Christian Imagination. Louisville, Ky. : Westminster John Knox Press. [WorldCat]
VanderKam, James C [2002]. The Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls : Their Significance for Understanding the Bible, Judaism, Jesus, and Christianity. San Francisco, Calif. : HarperSanFrancisco. [WorldCat]
Smith, Mark S [2001]. The Origins of Biblical Monotheism : Israel's Polytheistic Background and the Ugaritic Texts New York : Oxford University Press [WorldCat]

On the Web:

Gladden, Washington [1891]. Who Wrote the Bible? Boston: Houghton Mifflin. [GoogleBooks]

The Story of Stuff

2011-02-04T15:35:00.001-06:00

The Story Of Stuff - Click here for more amazing videos

Source: Metacafe (alternate: StoryOfStuff.Com, YouTube, Google Video)
Download: Quicktime

From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world.

Resources:

In the Library:

Agyeman, Julian. 2005. Sustainable communities and the challenge of environmental justice. New York: New York University Press. [link: NetLibrary]
Boggs, Carl. 2000. The end of politics: corporate power and the decline of the public sphere. New York: Guilford Press. [link: WorldCat]
Conkin, Paul Keith. 2007. The state of the Earth: environmental challenges on the road to 2100. Lexington, Ky: University Press of Kentucky. [link: WorldCat]
Dobson, Andrew. 1995. Green political thought. London: Routledge. [link: NetLibrary]
Klare, Michael T. 2001. Resource wars: the new landscape of global conflict. New York: Metropolitan Books. [link: WorldCat]
Ridgeway, James. 2004. It's all for sale: the control of global resources. Durham: Duke University Press. [link: WorldCat]
Shabecoff, Philip, and Alice Shabecoff. 2008. Poisoned profits: the toxic assault on our children. New York: Random House. [link: WorldCat]
Steingraber, Sandra. 2001. Having faith: an ecologist's journey to motherhood. Cambridge, Mass: Perseus Pub. [link: WorldCat]
Sustainable Consumption, Ecology and Fair Trade. 2008. Routledge. [link: NetLibrary]

On the Web:

The Story of Stuff (Web site)
Environmental Research Foundation

Big Easy to Big Empty

2011-01-19T16:44:00.000-06:00

More at The Real News

Source: Real News Network

One year after hurricane Katrina, undercover investigator Greg Palast examines why New Orleans flooded in the wake of Katrina, why a private consulting firm was awarded a contract for managing the evacuation, why Hurricane researchers at Louisiana State University were ignored, and why undamaged property in New Orleans was boarded over and its residents prevented from returning.

Resources:

In the Library:

Bates, Kristin Ann, and Richelle S. Swan. 2007. Through the eye of Katrina: social justice in the United States. Durham, N.C.: Carolina Academic Press. [link]
Chamlee-Wright, Emily. 2010. The cultural and political economy of recovery. London: Routledge. [NetLibrary]
Levitt, Jeremy I., and Matthew C. Whitaker. 2009. Hurricane Katrina America's unnatural disaster. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. [NetLibrary]
Moore, Leonard N. 2010. Black rage in New Orleans: police brutality and African American activism from World War II to Hurricane Katrina. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. [NetLibrary]

On the Web:

Greg Palast Official Web Site
Katrina Reader: Readings by and for anti-racist educators and organizers
"Five years after Hurricane Katrina, 100,000 New Orleanians have yet to return" - from Nola.com

A World Without Water

2010-02-03T10:13:00.001-06:00

Frazar Online Film Collection: A World Without Water

Source: Google Video

A World Without Water is a Channel 4 program detailing the current global water crisis:

"The world is running out of its most precious resource. True Vision's timely film tells of the personal tragedies behind the mounting privatization of water supplies. More than a billion people across the globe don’t have access to safe water. Every day 3900 children die as a result of insufficient or unclean water supplies. The situation can only get worse as water gets evermore scarce."

Resources:

In the Library:

Conkin, Paul Keith. 2007. The state of the Earth: environmental challenges on the road to 2100. Lexington, Ky: University Press of Kentucky. [WorldCat]
Roddick, Anita, and Brooke Shelby Biggs. 2004. Troubled water: saints, sinners, truth and lies about the global water crisis. Chichester: Anita Roddick. [WorldCat]
Shiva, Vandana. 2002. Water wars: privatization, pollution and profit. Cambridge, MA: South End Press. [WorldCat]
Whiteley, John M., Helen M. Ingram, and Richard Warren Perry. 2008. Water, place, and equity. American and comparative environmental policy. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. [WorldCat, NetLibrary]

On the Web:

BBC News World Water Crisis Map - An interactive map featuring locations around the world affected by water shortages.
UN-Water - United Nations clearinghouse for water-related issues
Water For Life - Site for UN initiative to bring about fair global water management policies
Thrall Special Coverage Guide: Water - An informative guide created by the Middletown New York Thrall Public Library

BSD v. GPL

2010-02-03T08:46:00.004-06:00

Frazar Online Film Collection: BSD v. GPL

Source: Google Video
BSD vs GPL is a sweeping epic, focused on the dichotomy between good and evil. It peers inside the hearts and minds of the creators of these movements and dissects their battle for world domination. No common documentary will dare to follow the path that BSD vs GPL blazes. This presentation was given by Jason Dixon at the NYC BSD Conference at Columbia University on October 11, 2008.

Resources:

In the Library:

Dixon, Rod. 2004. Open source software law. Artech House telecommunications library. Boston: Artech House. [WorldCat, NetLibrary]

On the Web:

Open Source Licenses Compared - by Zack Rusin at KDE Developers site
Various Licenses and Comments About Them - from GNU.Org
Creative Commons License Generator

Stranger Among Bears

2010-02-03T08:05:00.000-06:00

Frazar Online Film Collection: Film

Source: Google Video

From Wikipedia:
Stranger Among Bears is a television documentary about Charlie Vandergaw, an older gentleman who has lived in Alaska for decades and illegally fed grizzly and black bears for many of those years. It was popularly aired on the station Animal Planet. His association with the animals is cause to say he's removing the bears' reluctance to approach humans, which is a danger. Bears usually fear people as much as people fear bears. Familiarization is also a tool for allowing humans to spend time among bears. Cameraman Richard Terry went to Vandergaw's self-proclaimed bear sanctuary to film the goings-on and was encouraged to approach a female and her cub in order to gain their trust. For his trouble, he received a severe laceration to the lower leg by the mother. Vandergaw himself was once a bear-hunter and confesses he's killed many in his past. In the show, Vandergaw would touch, pet and even film the bears along the similar vein of deceased eco-warrior Timothy Treadwell, who was eventually killed and devoured by grizzlies.

Resources:

In the Library:

Bass, Rick. 1995. The lost grizzlies: a search for survivors in the wilderness of Colorado. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. [WorldCat]
Lynch, Wayne. 1993. Bears: monarchs of the northern wilderness. Seattle, Wash: The Mountaineers. [WorldCat]
Murray, John A. 1995. Grizzly bears: an illustrated field guide. Boulder, Colo: Roberts Rinehart Publishers. [WorldCat]
Schullery, Paul. 1992. The bears of Yellowstone. Worland, WY: High Plains Pub. Co. [WorldCat]
Ward, Paul, and Suzanne Kynaston. 1995. Wild bears of the world. New York: Facts On File. [WorldCat]

On the Web:

Stranger Among Bears - Official Web site for the program at Animal Planet
Wild in Alaska: Charlie Vandergaw Shares Home With Grizzlies - Article from ABC News
Charlie Vandergaw's Facebook Page

Invisible Children

2009-09-16T07:57:00.001-05:00

Frazar Online Film Collection: Invisible Children

Source: Google Video

In the spring of 2003, three young Americans traveled to Africa in search of such as story. What they found was a tragedy that disgusted and inspired them. A story where children are weapons and children are the victims. The "Invisible Children: rough cut" film exposes the effects of a 20 year-long war on the children of Northern Uganda. These children live in fear of abduction by rebel soldiers, and are being forced to fight as a part of violent army. This wonderfully reckless documentary is fast paced, with an MTV beat, and is something truly unique. To see Africa through young eyes is humorous and heart breaking, quick and informative - all in the very same breath.

Resources:

In the Library:

Hansen, Holger Bernt, and Michael Twaddle. 1998. Developing Uganda. Oxford: James Curry. [link: NetLibrary, WorldCat]
Ness, Cindy D. 2008. Female terrorism and militancy: agency, utility, and organization. Contemporary terrorism studies. London: Routledge. [link: NetLibrary, WorldCat]
Vinci, Anthony. 2009. Armed groups and the balance of power the international relations of terrorists, warlords and insurgents. LSE international studies. London: Routledge. [link: NetLibrary, WorldCat]

On the Web:

Invisible Children - Documentary Web site
Uganda Civil War - History and background from GlobalSecurity.org
Lord's Resistance Army - Profile from GlobalSecurity.org
Lord's Resistance Army Links - External links from Wikipedia

The Donner Party

2009-07-14T08:45:00.005-05:00

Frazar Online Film Collection: The Donner Party

Source YouTube

At the start of spring in the year 1846 an appealing advertisement appeared in the Springfield, Illinois, Gazette. ''Westward ho,'' it declared. ''Who wants to go to California without costing them anything? As many as eight young men of good character who can drive an ox team will be accommodated. Come, boys, you can have as much land as you want without costing you anything.'' The notice was signed G. Donner, George Donner, leader of what was to become the most famous of all the hundreds of wagon trains to start for the far west, the tragic, now nearly mythic Donner Party.
If ever there was a moment when America seemed in the grip of some great, out-of-the-ordinary pull, it was in 1846. The whole mood was for movement, expansion, and the whole direction was westward. It was in 1846 that the Mormons set out on their trek to the Great Salt Lake. It was in 1846 that the Mexican war began and effectively all of Texas, Mexico and California were added to the United States.
And it wasn't just young men who answered the call. Whole families and people of all stations in life joined the caravan, which is part of the fascination of this haunting story. One is struck, for example, by how many women there were in the Donner party and how many of them survived the horrific ordeal they met. Imagine packing up an entire household, saying good-bye to all you've known and setting off to walk essentially to walk to California, a continent away, little knowing what was in store.

Resources:

In the Library:

Fisher, V. (1943). The mothers, An American saga of courage. New York: Vanguard Press.
Fisher, V. (1943). The mothers, An American saga of courage. New York: Vanguard Press.
Houghton, E. P. D. (1998). The expedition of the Donner Party and its tragic fate. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
King, J. A. (1992). Winter of entrapment: A new look at the Donner Party. Toronto: P.D. Meany.
Stewart, G. R. (1960). Ordeal by hunger; The story of the Donner Party. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Stewart, G. R. (1960). Ordeal by hunger; The story of the Donner Party. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Keithley, G. (1972). The Donner party. New York: G. Braziller.
Johnson, K. (1996). Unfortunate emigrants: Narratives of the Donner Party. Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press.

On the Web:

PBS American Experience: The Donner Party website
Donner Party Archaeology Project at the University of Montana website

Salt of the Earth

2009-06-25T10:36:00.005-05:00

Frazar Online Film Collection: Salt of the Earth

Source: Google Video

Herbert Biberman's 1954 film, Salt of the Earth, has the distinction of being the only film to be blacklisted in the United States. From the Wikipedia article:

Salt of the Earth (1954) is an American drama film written by Michael Wilson, directed by Herbert J. Biberman (husband of Academy Award-winning actress Gale Sondergaard), and produced by Paul Jarrico. All had been blacklisted by the Hollywood establishment due to their involvement in socialist politics.^[1]
The movie became a historical phenomenon and has a cult following due to how the United States establishment (politicians, journalists, studio executives, and other trade unions) dealt with the film. Salt of the Earth is one of the first pictures to advance the feminist social and political point of view.
The film centers around a long and difficult strike led by Mexican-American and Anglo miners against the Empire Zinc Company. The film shows how the miners, the company, and the police, react during the strike. In neorealist style the producers and director used actual miners and their families as actors in the film.

Resources:

In the Library:

Booker, M. K. (2007). From box office to ballot box The American political film. Westport, Conn: Praeger.
Buhle, P., & Wagner, D. (2003). Hide in plain sight: The Hollywood blacklistees in film and television, 1950-2002. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Ceplair, L. (2007). The Marxist and the movies A biography of Paul Jarrico. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.
Joseph, A. (2000). Skilled workers' solidarity The American experience in comparative perspective. Garland reference library of social science, v. 1412. New York: Garland Pub.
Lichtenstein, N. (2002). State of the Union: A century of American labor. Politics and society in twentieth-century America. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
Lorence, J. J. (1999). The suppression of Salt of the earth How Hollywood, big labor, and politicians blacklisted a movie in Cold War America. Albuquerque, N.M.: University of New Mexico Press.
McGilligan, P., & Buhle, P. (1997). Tender comrades: A backstory of the Hollywood blacklist. New York: St. Martin's Press.
Nicholson, P. Y. (2004). Labor's story in the United States. Labor in crisis. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
Stepan-Norris, J., & Zeitlin, M. (2003). Left out: Reds and America's industrial unions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

On the Web:

“Mining Salt of the Earth” - an essay by James J Larence from the Winsconsin Magazine of History [pdf].
“History makers reflect on Salt of the Earth - ‘Even more relevant now’ - Interview with Anita and Lorenzo Torres, participants in the in Empire Zinc strike on which the film is based; from People's Weekly World.

Emma Goldman

2009-06-18T10:11:00.003-05:00

Frazar Online Film Collection: Emma Goldman

Source: Google Video

On a cold December morning in 1919, just after midnight, Emma Goldman, her comrade Alexander Berkman, and more than 200 other foreign-born radicals were roused from their Ellis Island dormitory beds to begin their journey out of the United States for good.
Convicted of obstructing the draft during World War I, Goldman's expatriation came 34 years after she had first set foot in America, a young, brilliant, Russian immigrant. For more than three decades, she taunted mainstream America with her outspoken attacks on government, big business and war.
Goldman's passionate espousal of radical causes made her the target of persecution. Her sympathy for Leon Czolgosz, the assassin of President McKinley, brought down upon her the hatred of the authorities and the public at large. Feared as a sponsor of anarchy and revolution, she was vilified in the press as "Red Emma," "Queen of the Anarchists," and "the most dangerous woman in America."
Resources:

In the Library:

Goldman, Emma. (2007). Anarchism and Other Essays. Gardners Books.
Goldman, E. (1970). Living my life. New York: Dover Publications.
Morton, Marian J., and Emma Goldman. 1992. Emma Goldman and the American left: "Nowhere at home". Twayne's twentieth-century American biography series, no. 14. New York, N.Y.: Twayne Publishers.

On the Web:

Emma Goldman: American Experience - Official film website at PBS; includes synopsis, transcript, primary sources and more.
Emma Goldman Papers (DL Sunsite) - official papers at the University of California at Berkeley Library.
Goldman Collected Works - Full text of books and articles at the Anarchy Archives

Home

2009-06-16T15:45:00.014-05:00

Frazar Online Film Collection: Home

Source: YouTube

French environmentalist and photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand's film Home, which was recently released world-wide in a record 181 countries, chronicles the current state of our impact upon the Earth's environment. Comprised of stunning aerial photography and a moving musical score, the film was made available on YouTube on the same day as it debuted in theatres across the world.

Resources:

In the Library:

Broswimmer, F. J. (2002). Ecocide A short history of mass extinction of species. London: Pluto Press.
Slobodkin, L. B. (2003). A citizen's guide to ecology. New York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press.
Lorey, D. E. (2003). Global environmental challenges of the twenty-first century: Resources, consumption, and sustainable solutions. The world beat series, no. 3. Wilmington, Del: SR Books.
Redman, C. L. (2004). The archaeology of global change: The impact of humans on their environment. Washington: Smithsonian Books.
Jensen, D. (2000). A language older than words. New York: Context Books.
Kimble, J. M. (2004). The Global Carbon Cycle: Integrating Humans, Climate, and the Natural World. JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY. 33, 2389-2390.
Mitchell, A. (2005). Dancing at the Dead Sea: Tracking the world's environmental hotspots. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Morton, M. J., & Goldman, E. (1992). Emma Goldman and the American left: "Nowhere at home". Twayne's twentieth-century American biography series, no. 14. New York, N.Y.: Twayne.

On the Web:

Home - Official Website
World Environment Day 2009 - Press release from the United Nations Environment Programme

Introduction to Buddhism

2009-06-08T09:42:00.005-05:00

Frazar Online Film Collection: Introduction to Buddhism

Source: YouTube

From Open Culture:

When the Dalai Lama paid a visit to Emory University, he offered an introductory lecture to Tibetan Buddhism. The lecture is not exactly what you’d normally get in the university classroom. The talk is not entirely linear. And he spends some time speaking in English, then speaks in his native tongue (with the help of an interpreter). But, he can talk about Buddhism with the authority that few authors can, and there’s a reason audiences come to see him in droves. Things really get going about 23 minutes in.

Resources:

In the Library:

Bstan-ʼdzin-rgya-mtsho, and Robert Kiely. 1996. The good heart: a Buddhist perspective on the teachings of Jesus. Boston: Wisdom Publications. [link: WorldCat]
Bstan-ʼdzin-rgya-mtsho, and Victor Chan. 2004. The wisdom of forgiveness intimate conversations and journeys. New York: Riverhead Books. [link: WorldCat, NetLibrary]
Cherniack, David, Bstan-ʼdzin-rgya-mtsho, and Robert A. F. Thurman. 1997. The Four Noble Truths [DVD]. New York: Mystic Fire Video. [link: WorldCat]
Conze, Edward. 1959. Buddhism, its essence and development. New York, N.Y.: Harper & Bros. [link: WorldCat]
Goleman, Daniel. 2003. Destructive emotions: how can we overcome them? : a scientific dialogue with the Dalai Lama. New York: Bantam Books. [link: WorldCat]
Hamilton, Clarence Herbert. 1952. Buddhism, a religion of infinite compassion; selections from Buddhist literature. The Library of religion, v.1. New York: Liberal Arts Press. [link: WorldCat]

On the Web:

The Website of the Office of His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama - Office Site
Charlie Rose interview with the 14th Dalai Lama (Google Video)

Invisible Ballots: A Temptation for Electronic Voter Fraud

2009-05-20T17:35:00.001-05:00

Frazar Online Film Collection: Invisible Ballots

Source: Google Video

Invisible Ballots - A Temptation for Electronic Vote Fraud - Governments are installing computerized voting systems with no paper record to verify accuracy. Elections will be controlled by companies that do not allow voters to inspect their software. If vote counting becomes privatized, there may be no way to get it back. Hightech vote fraud is already a reality. If you value your vote, you must get this information to your friends – and fast!

Resources:

In the Library:

Alvarez, R. Michael, and Thad E. Hall. 2004. Point, click, and vote the future of Internet voting. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press.
Celeste, Richard F., Dick Thornburgh, and Herbert Lin. 2006. Asking the right questions about electronic voting. Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press.
Fund, John H. 2004. Stealing elections: how voter fraud threatens our democracy. San Francisco, CA: Encounter Books.

On the Web:

E-Voting Rights - From the Electronic Frontier Foundation
Black Box Voting.org - Electronic voting watchdog group
Evaluating the security of Electronic Voting Systems - Contains paper, reports & video from the Computer Security Group at University of California at Santa Barbara
Analysis of an Electronic Voting System - paper from IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy 2004.

The Wave That Shook the World

2009-04-30T17:10:00.002-05:00

Source: Google Video

This PBS documentary details the events that occurred on December 26, 2004, in which an undersea earthquake off of the coast of Sumatra, Indonesia caused massive tidal flooding along several coasts in the Indian Ocean, including Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India and Thailand. Over 225,000 people lost their lives, and is considered one of the worst natural disasters in recorded history.

Resources:

In the Library:

Iles, Curt. 2005. Hearts across the water: stories of hope from hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and the tsunami. Dry Creek, Louisiana: Creekbank Stories. [link: WorldCat]
Tsunami response : lessons learned : hearing before the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, One Hundred Nineth [sic] Congress, first session, February 10, 2005. USGPO. [4th floor, Gov. Docs: Y 4.F 76/2:S.HRG.109-153]
Murty, T. S., U. Aswathanarayana, and N. Nirupama. 2006. The Indian Ocean tsunami. London: Taylor & Francis. [link: WorldCat, NetLibrary]

On the Web:

The December 26, 2004, Sumatra Earthquake and Indian Ocean Tsunami: Field Perspectives on the Impacts to the Peoples, Cultures - An information portal by the Center for Global Studies at the University of Illinois.
Asian Tsunami 2004 - An information portal linking to governmental and academic material.
NOAA Center for Tsunami Research

Anarchism in America

2009-04-30T12:45:00.009-05:00

Google Video

A colorful and provocative survey of anarchism in America, the film attempts to dispel popular misconceptions and trace the historical development of the movement. The film explores the movement both as a native American philosophy stemming from 19th century American traditions of individualism, and as a foreign ideology brought to America by immigrants. The film features rare archival footage and interviews with significant personalities in anarchist history including Murray Bookchin and Karl Hess, and also live performance footage of the Dead Kennedys.

In the Library:

David, H. (1958). The history of the Haymarket affair; A study in the American social-revolutionary and labor movements. New York: Russell & Russell.

Goldman, E. (1969). Anarchism, And other essays. New York: Dover Publications.

Goldman, E. (1970). Living my life. New York: Dover Publications.

Shatz, M. (1971). The Essential works of anarchism. New York: Bantam Books.

Tullock, G. (1972). Explorations in the theory of anarchy. Balcksburg, Va: Center for the Study of Public Choice, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.

Bakunin, M. A., & Dolgoff, S. (1972). Bakunin on anarchy. New York: A.A. Knopf.

Tullock, G. (1974). Further explorations in the theory of anarchy. Blacksburg, Va: University Publications.

Carr, E. H. (1975). Michael Bakunin. New York: Octagon Books.

Pennock, J. R., & Chapman, J. W. (1978). Anarchism. Nomos, 19. New York: New York University Press.

Thomas, P. (1980). Karl Marx and the anarchists. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Bakunin, M. A., & Shatz, M. (1990). Statism and anarchy. Cambridge texts in the history of political thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Sonn, R. D. (1992). Anarchism. Twayne's studies in intellectual and cultural history, no. 4. New York: Twayne.

Brooks, F. H. (1994). The Individualist anarchists: An anthology of Liberty (1881-1908). New Brunswick, N.J., U.S.A.: Transaction.

Heider, U. (1994). Anarchism: Left, right, and green. San Francisco: City Lights Books.

McLaughlin, P. (2002). Mikhail Bakunin The philosophical basis of his theory of anarchism. New York: Algora Pub.

Stringham, E. (2005). Anarchy, state and public choice. New thinking in political economy. Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar.

Berkman, A., Fellner, G., & Zinn, H. (2005). Life of an anarchist: The Alexander Berkman reader. New York: Seven Stories Press.

Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media

2009-04-17T11:39:00.004-05:00

Source: Archive.org (Alternate: Google Video, YouTube pt.1, pt.2, pt.3, pt.4, pt.5, pt.6, pt.7, pt.8, pt.9, pt.10, pt.11, pt.12, pt.13, pt.14, pt.15, pt.16, pt.17)

From Wikipedia:

Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media (1992) is a multi award-winning documentary film that explores the political life and ideas of Noam Chomsky, a linguist, intellectual, and political activist. Created by two Canadian independent filmmakers, Mark Achbar and Peter Wintonick, it expands on the ideas of Chomsky's earlier book, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, which he co-wrote with Edward S. Herman.

Resources:

In the Library:

Barsky, Robert F. 1997. Noam Chomsky: a life of dissent. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. [link: WorldCat]
Chomsky, Noam. 1969. American power and the new mandarins. New York: Pantheon Books. [link: WorldCat]
Chomsky, Noam. 1991. Deterring democracy. London: Verso. [link: WorldCat]
Chomsky, Noam. 2003. Hegemony or survival: America's quest for global dominance. New York: Metropolitan Books. [link: WorldCat]
Chomsky, Noam, and Carlos Peregrín Otero. 2004. Language and politics. Oakland, CA: AK Press. [link: WorldCat]
Chomsky, Noam. 2000. A new generation draws the line: Kosovo, East Timor, and the standards of the West. London: Verso. [link: WorldCat]
Chomsky, Noam, and Noam Chomsky. 2002. Pirates and emperors, old and new: international terrorism in the real world. Cambridge, MA: South End Press. [link: WorldCat]
Chomsky, Noam. 1996. Powers and prospects: reflections on human nature and the social order. Boston, MA: South End Press. [link: WorldCat]
Chomsky, Noam. 1975. Reflections on language. New York: Pantheon Books. [link: WorldCat]
Chomsky, Noam. 1982. Towards a new cold war: essays on the current crisis and how we got there. New York: Pantheon Books. [link: WorldCat]
Chomsky, Noam, and Edward S. Herman. 1979. The Washington connection and Third World fascism. Boston: South End Press. [link: WorldCat]
Chomsky, Noam. 1992. What Uncle Sam really wants. The Real story series. Berkeley: Odonian Press. [link: WorldCat]
Collier, Peter, and David Horowitz. 2004. The anti-Chomsky reader. San Francisco: Encounter Books. [link: WorldCat, NetLibrary]
Hamm, Bernd. 2005. Devastating society: the neo-conservative assault on democracy and justice. London: Pluto Press. [link: WorldCat]
Harman, Gilbert. 1974. On Noam Chomsky; critical essays. Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Press. [link: WorldCat]

On the Web:

Official Noam Chomsky Website
Noam Chomsky - MIT faculty Website
Z Space - Noam Chomsky - active archive of Chomsky-related text and video hosted by Znet.org

The Least of These: Family Detention in America

2009-04-17T09:55:00.001-05:00

Source: SnagFilms

The Least of These explores one of the most controversial aspects of American immigration policy: family detention.

As part of the Bush administration policy to end what they termed the “catch and release’” of undocumented immigrants, the U.S. government opened the T. Don Hutto Residential Center in May 2006 as a prototype family detention facility. The facility is a former medium-security prison in central Texas operated by CCA, the largest private prison operator in the country. The facility houses immigrant children and their parents from all over the world who are awaiting asylum hearings or deportation proceedings.

The facility was initially activated with little media attention or public knowledge. Soon, however, immigration attorney Barbara Hines was contacted by detainees seeking representation, and she became increasingly concerned about the troubling conditions there. She joined forces with Vanita Gupta of the ACLU and Michelle Brané of the Women’s Refugee Commission to investigate conditions and seek changes. Their efforts were initially hampered by a lack of openness and oversight within the Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) organization. Undeterred, the three attorneys attempted to bring about changes in both policy and conditions, by making their findings public, encouraging involvement by activists and the media, and ultimately by filing a historic lawsuit.

As these events unfold, the film explores the government rationale for family detention, conditions at the facility, collateral damage, and the role (and limits) of community activism in bringing change. The film leads viewers to consider how core American rights and values – due process, presumption of innocence, upholding the family structure as the basic unit of civil society, and America as a refuge of last resort – should apply to immigrants, particularly children.

Resources:

In the Library:

Daniels, Roger. 2004. Guarding the golden door: American immigration policy and immigrants since 1882. New York: Hill and Wang. [WorldCat]
Elsner, Alan. 2004. Gates of injustice: the crisis in America's prisons. Financial Times Prentice Hall books. Upper Saddle River, NJ: FT Prentice Hall. [WorldCat, NetLibrary]
González, Juan. 2000. Harvest of empire: a history of Latinos in America. New York: Viking. [WorldCat]
Graham, Otis L. 2004. Unguarded gates: a history of America's immigration crisis. Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. [link: WorldCat, NetLibrary]
Haines, David W., and Karen Elaine Rosenblum. 1999. Illegal immigration in America: a reference handbook. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press. [link: WorldCat]
Hayter, Teresa. 2000. Open borders the case against immigration controls. London: Pluto Press. [link: WorldCat, NetLibrary]
Loury, Glenn C. 2008. Race, incarceration, and American values. A Boston review book. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. [Link: WorldCat]
Wong, Carolyn. 2006. Lobbying for inclusion: rights politics and the making of immigration policy. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press. [link: WorldCat, NetLibrary]

Neuman, Gerald L. 1998. Habeas Corpus, Executive Detention, and the Removal of Aliens. Columbia Law Review 98, no. 4 (May): 961-1067. doi:10.2307/1123354. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1123354. [link: JSTOR]

On the Web:

The Least of These - Official documentary Web site
Challenge to the Hutto Detention Center - List of legal documents filed by the ACLU
"Jailed Without Justice" - Report by Amnesty International (pdf)
"Locking Up Family Values" - Analysis of Don Hutto (Texas) and Berks (Pennsylvania) detention centers (pdf)
ICE Family Residential Services - Link to standards and policy documents on family residential services by Immigration and Customs Enforcement
The Business of Detention - Watchdog group providing information of corporations which provide family detention services
ImmigrationProf Blog - Immigration law blog maintained by a group of prominent Law professors
T. Don Hutto Blog - blog covering news and events about the Hutto Detention Center

Sir Ken Robinson: Do Schools Kill Creativity?

2009-04-03T08:03:00.006-06:00

Source TED Talks

Why don't we get the best out of people? Sir Ken Robinson argues that it's because we've been educated to become good workers, rather than creative thinkers. Students with restless minds and bodies -- far from being cultivated for their energy and curiosity -- are ignored or even stigmatized, with terrible consequences. "We are educating people out of their creativity," Robinson says. It's a message with deep resonance. Robinson's TEDTalk has been distributed widely around the Web since its release in June 2006. The most popular words framing blog posts on his talk? "Everyone should watch this."

A visionary cultural leader, Sir Ken led the British government's 1998 advisory committee on creative and cultural education, a massive inquiry into the significance of creativity in the educational system and the economy, and was knighted in 2003 for his achievements. His latest book, The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything, a deep look at human creativity and education, was published in January 2009.

Resources:

In the Library:

Flower, J. A. (2003). Downstairs, upstairs: The changed spirit and face of college life in America. Ohio history and culture. Akron, Ohio: University of Akron Press.

Stevens, M. L. (2007). Creating a class: College admissions and the education of elites. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.

Dressel, P. L., & Faricy, W. H. (1972). Return to responsibility. The Jossey-Bass series in higher education. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Fisher, R., & Williams, M. (2004). Unlocking creativity Teaching across the curriculum. London: David Fulton.

Drews, E. M. (1972). Learning together; how to foster creativity, self-fulfillment, and social awareness in today's students and teachers. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.

McVickar, P. (1972). Imagination: key to human potential. Washington: National Association for the Education of Young Children.

Guilford, J. P. (1968). Intelligence, creativity, and their educational implications. San Diego, Calif: R.R. Knapp.

De Bono, E. (1968). New think; The use of lateral thinking in the generation of new ideas. New York: Basic Books.

Gowan, J. C., Demos, G. D., & Torrance, E. P. (1967). Creativity: its educational implications. New York: Wiley.

Massialas, B. G., & Zevin, J. (1967). Creative encounters in the classroom; Teaching and learning through discovery. New York: Wiley.

Smith, J. A. (1967). Creative teaching of the creative arts in the elementary school. Allyn and Bacon series in creative teaching. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Gelb, M. (1998). How to think like Leonardo Da Vinci: Seven steps to genius every day. New York, N.Y.: Delacorte Press.

Root-Bernstein, R. S., & Root-Bernstein, M. (1999). Sparks of genius: The thirteen thinking tools of the world's most creative people. Boston, Mass: Houghton Mifflin.

On the Web:

Sir Ken Robinson's official website

Pirate Radio USA

2009-03-23T07:58:00.007-06:00

Source: Google Video

Pirate Radio USA looks at the rise of "pirate radio" following the regulation and licensing of radio frequency broadcast by the FCC, featuring a number of pirate radio stations around the United States, their various techniques, as well as the reasons why for broadcasting in violation of Federal laws. The documentary also details the impact of pirate radio (as a component of Indymedia) during the World Trade Organization protests during the Seattle 1999 meeting.

Resources:

In the Library:

Albarran, Alan B., and Gregory G. Pitts. 2000. The radio broadcasting industry. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon. [link: WorldCat]
American Radio Relay League. 1985. The ARRL handbook for the radio amateur. Newington, Conn: American Radio Relay League. [link: WorldCat]
Anders, Allison, Dean Lent, Kurt Voss, Marcus De Leon, Chris D., Luanna Anders, Chris Shearer, John Doe, and Dave Alvin. 2006. Border radio. [Irvington, N.Y.]: Criterion Collection. [link: WorldCat]
Doerksen, Clifford John. 2005. American Babel: rogue radio broadcasters of the jazz age. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. [link: WorldCat]
Einstein, Mara. 2004. Media diversity economics, ownership, and the FCC. LEA's communication series. Mahwah, N.J.: L. Erlbaum Associates. [link: WorldCat]
Hilliard, Robert L. 1991. The Federal Communications Commission: a primer. Electronic media guides. Boston: Focal Press. [link: WorldCat]
Squier, Susan Merrill. 2003. Communities of the air: radio century, radio culture. Durham: Duke University Press. [link: WorldCat]
Walker, Jesse. 2001. Rebels on the air: an alternative history of radio in America. New York: New York University Press. [link: WorldCat]

On the Web:

Pirate Radio USA - Official MySpace page
Pirate Radio - Wikipedia article
Pirate Radio in North America - Wikipedia article
Prometheus Radio Project - non-profit organization to expand access to low-power FM broadcasting
Interview with Stephen Dunifer
Interview with Pete Tridish (cached at Archive.org)
Interview with DJ Him & Her (at The Brooklyn Rail)
Free Speech Radio News
Low Power FM Radio - Consumer FAQ at the FCC's Web site

Common Routes: St. Dominique, Louisiana

2009-03-18T20:12:00.000-06:00

Source: Google Video

This short film produced for the an exhibition at the Historic New Orleans Collection traces some of the parallel history and experiences of creoles of color in two of France's premiere colonies in the New World: Saint-Domingue (now Haiti) and Louisiana.

Resources:

In the Library:

Baade, Hans W. 1980. Louisiana's laws and the Creole family in history. Austin, Tex: Baade. [link: WorldCat]
Brown, Gordon S. 2005. Toussaint's clause: the founding fathers and the Haitian revolution. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. [link: WorldCat]
Brown, Richmond F. 2007. Coastal encounters the transformation of the Gulf South in the eighteenth century. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. [link: WorldCat, NetLibrary]
Gomez, Michael Angelo. 2006. Diasporic Africa a reader. New York: New York University Press. [link: WorldCat, NetLibrary]
Hall-Quest, Olga Wilbourne, and Victor Lazzaro. 1968. Old New Orleans, the Creole city; its role in American history, 1718-1803. New York: Dutton. [link: WorldCat]
Ingersoll, Thomas N. 1999. Mammon and Manon in early New Orleans: the first slave society in the Deep South, 1718-1819. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. [link: WorldCat]
James, Cyril Lionel Robert. 1980. The black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo revolution. Motive. London: Allison & Busby. [link: WorldCat]
Kein, Sybil. 2000. Creole: the history and legacy of Louisiana's free people of color. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. [link: WorldCat]

On the Web:

The Creole City - an online exhibit at the Louisiana State University Libraries Web site.

Rip! A Remix Manifesto

2009-03-18T11:55:00.005-06:00

Meet Girl Talk. Today we're going to make a mash-up, find out who Girl Talk is, and why his music holds the key to the future of culture.

Copyright vs Copyleft. Let's explore the remixers manifesto.

Culture always builds on the past. Did Muddy Waters build on the blues? And did Led Zeppelin build on Muddy Waters? Does Girl Talk need permission to build on all of it?

Asking permission. What would happen if Girl Talk asked permission to sample from the people who own the history of music?

The past tries to control the future. The Internet was not the first technology to disrupt business models. From the printing press to the player piano, one generation is always calling the next a "pirate."

Lawrence Lessig gives Brett some advice. Lessig has been traveling the globe for over a decade trying to convince the world to re-think copyright. We asked him for some legal advice.

Open source cinema. Today's remixers are building a new literacy and they're leaning on a tradition much older than Girl Talk.

Cory Doctorow and the King of Remix. Walt Disney, the biggest remixer of all, built an empire from remixing fairy tales from the public domain. Why can't we do to Mickey Mouse what Walt did to the Brothers Grimm?

Culture jam! Remixers are fighting back. Meet Negativland, the original Culture Jammers.

Our culture is becoming less free. In the US, copyright laws are allowing record companies to sue preachers, single moms and even dead people. My country – Canada – is being pressured to adopt this approach to intellectual property. Is yours?

Radio Head – Paris Hilton – Girl Talk. The Internet may be a highway of piracy for some, but not for many musicians. It is providing them access to a whole world of fans. The music industry is evolving, and in the process, providing a road map for all areas of our culture.

Open Source art in Brazil. Do we have to beg permission to build on the past? In Brazil, a balance has been struck between intellectual property and the public domain.

The Revolution will be digitized. We could all learn a little from the Mouse Liberation Front. The future is ours!

Resources:

In the Library:

Fishman, S. (2001). The public domain How to find copyright-free writings, music, art & more. Berkeley: Nolo.com.

Vaidhyanathan, S. (2001). Copyrights and copywrongs: The rise of intellectual property and how it threatens creativity. New York: New York University Press.

Lessig, L. (2004). Free culture: How big media uses technology and the law to lock down culture and control creativity. New York: Penguin Press.

Herrington, T. K. (2001). Controlling voices Intellectual property, humanistic studies, and the Internet. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.

National Research Council (U.S.). (2000). The digital dilemma Intellectual property in the information age. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

Litman, J. (2001). Digital copyright: Protecting intellectual property on the Internet. Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books.

Matsuura, J. H. (2003). Managing intellectual assets in the digital age. Boston, MA: Artech House.

Einhorn, M. A. (2004). Media, technology, and copyright Integrating law and economics. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar.

Spinello, R. A., & Tavani, H. T. (2005). Intellectual property rights in a networked world Theory and practice. Hershey, PA: Information Science Pub.

Rimmer, M. (2007). Digital copyright and the consumer revolution Hands off my iPod. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar.

On the Web:

Sita Sings the Blues

2009-03-17T20:00:00.000-06:00

Source: Google Video (Hi Res sources: WNET-13.org, Archive.org, MegaUpload, or BitTorrent file)

From Wikipedia:

Sita Sings the Blues is a 2008 animated feature film written, directed, produced and animated entirely by American artist Nina Paley (with the exception of some fight animation by Jake Friedman in the "Battle of Lanka" scene)^[2] primarily using 2D computer graphics.

It intersperses events from an episode of the Ramayana, illustrated conversation between Indian shadow puppets, musical interludes voiced with tracks by Annette Hanshaw and scenes from the artist's own life. The ancient mythological and modern biographical plot are parallel tales, sharing numerous themes.

In the Library:

Dehejia, Vidya. 1994. The Legend of Rama: artistic visions. Bombay: Marg Publications. [link: WorldCat]
Vālmīki, and Aubrey Menen. 1954. The Ramayana. C. Scribner. [link: WorldCat]

On the Web:

Sita Sings the Blues - Official Site
Sita Sings the Blues - Wikipedia article

Closing the School of Assassins

2009-03-17T17:49:00.005-06:00

Source: YouTube

A radio interview with Father Roy Bourgeois, founder of School of the Americas Watch (SOAW), an advocacy group dedicated to shutting down the U.S. Army School of Americas located in Fort Benning, Georgia. According to SOAW, the School of Americas:

"trains Latin American security personnel in combat, counter-insurgency, and counter-narcotics. SOA graduates are responsible for some of the worst human rights abuses in Latin America. In 1996 the Pentagon was forced to release training manuals used at the school that advocated torture, extortion and execution. Among the SOA's nearly 60,000 graduates are notorious dictators Manuel Noriega and Omar Torrijos of Panama, Leopoldo Galtieri and Roberto Viola of Argentina, Juan Velasco Alvarado of Peru, Guillermo Rodriguez of Ecuador, and Hugo Banzer Suarez of Bolivia. Lower-level SOA graduates have participated in human rights abuses that include the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero and the El Mozote Massacre of 900 civilians."

Renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC) in 2000, the School continues to operate and provide training to military and para-military forces of several Latin and South American governments.

In this interview, Fr. Roy talks about his experiences growing up in Louisiana, serving in Viet Nam, the influences which brought him to the Catholic priesthood, his missionary work in Bolivia as well as his learning firsthand of human rights abuses in Latin America by groups and individuals directly sponsored by the US Government.

Resources:

In the Library:

Bouvier, Virginia Marie. 2002. The globalization of U.S.-Latin American relations democracy, intervention, and human rights. Westport, Conn: Praeger. [link: WorldCat, NetLibrary]
Gill, Lesley. 2004. The School of the Americas: military training and political violence in the Americas. American encounters/global interactions. Durham: Duke University Press. [link: WorldCat]

On the Web:

SOAWatch.org - Official site
Father Roy: Inside the School of Assassins [video] - PBS's Global Voices episode, hosted at SnagFilms.
Western Hemisphere Institute of Security Cooperation - Official site hosted by Ft. Benning, US Army (may require overriding browser's certification settings).
School of the Americas - A (partial) archive of the School's Web site before being redesignated in 2000, from archive.org.
Fr. Roy Background - short biographical sketch of Fr. Roy Bourgeois from ITVS.
The US Army School of Americas... [pdf] - History Masters Thesis submitted to Virginia Polytechnic Institute.

Goddess Remembered

2009-03-17T09:58:00.008-06:00

Source National Film Board of Canada

This documentary is a salute to 35,000 years of the goddess-worshipping religions of the ancient past. The film features Merlin Stone, Carol Christ, Luisah Teish and Jean Bolen, all of whom link the loss of goddess-centric societies with today's environmental crisis. This is the first part of a 3-part series that includes The Burning Times and Full Circle.

Resources:

In the Library:

Gimbutas, M. (1991). The language of the goddess: Unearthing the hidden symbols of western civilization. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco.

Reis, P. (1991). Through the Goddess: A woman's way of healing. New York: Continuum.

Campbell, J., & Musès, C. (1991). In all her names: Explorations of the feminine in divinity. [San Francisco]: HarperSanFrancisco.

Baring, A., & Cashford, J. (1991). The myth of the goddess: Evolution of an image. London, England: Viking Arkana.

Billington, S., & Green, M. J. (1996). The concept of the goddess. London: Routledge.

Monaghan, P., & Monaghan, P. (1997). The new book of goddesses & heroines. St. Paul, Minn: Llewellyn Publications.

Ruether, R. R. (2005). Goddesses and the divine feminine A Western religious history. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Gross, R. M., & Ruether, R. R. (2001). Religious feminism and the future of the planet: A Christian-Buddhist conversation. New York: Continuum.

Beattie, T. (2006). New Catholic feminism Theology and theory. London: Routledge.

Haddad, Y. Y., & Esposito, J. L. (2001). Daughters of Abraham: Feminist thought in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida.

Eller, C. (1993). Living in the lap of the Goddess: The feminist spirituality movement in America. New York: Crossroad.

Herbert's Hippopotamus: Marcuse and Revolution in Paradise

2009-03-02T14:30:00.000-06:00

Source: Google Video

This documentary examines the turbulent life in California of political philosopher Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979), author of One-Dimensional Man, Reason and Revolution and Eros and Civilization, among other books, professor of philosophy at the University of California San Diego, and a visionary and influential force for the student movement worldwide during the Sixties and Seventies. Blending archival footage, interviews, re- created scenes and voice-over narration, the video profiles not only the life of Marcuse but also the history of student protest and social activism. The video features interviews with Marcuse's student Angela Davis, former UCSD Chancellor William McGill, colleagues Fredric Jameson and Reinhard Lettau, and rare footage of Marcuse and former California Governor Ronald Reagan. Directed by Paul Alexander.

Resources:

In the Library:

Alford, C. Fred. 1985. Science and the revenge of nature: Marcuse & Habermas. Gainesville, FL: University Presses of Florida. [link: WorldCat, NetLibrary]
Breines, Paul. 1970. Critical interruptions; new left perspectives on Herbert Marcuse. [New York]: Herder and Herder. [link: WorldCat]
MacIntyre, Alasdair C. 1970. Herbert Marcuse; an exposition and a polemic. New York: Viking Press. [link: WorldCat]
Marcuse, Herbert, and Douglas Kellner. 2007. Art and liberation. London: Routledge. [link: WorldCat, NetLibrary]
Marcuse, Herbert. 1972. Counterrevolution and revolt. Boston: Beacon Press. [link: WorldCat]
Marcuse, Herbert. 1966. Eros and civilization; a philosophical inquiry into Freud. Boston: Beacon Press. [link: WorldCat]
Marcuse, Herbert, Richard Wolin, and John Abromeit. 2005. Heideggerian Marxism. European horizons. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. [link: WorldCat, NetLibrary]
Marcuse, Herbert, and Douglas Kellner. 2005. The new left and the 1960s. London: Routledge. [link: WorldCat, NetLibrary]
Marcuse, Herbert. 1964. One-dimensional man; studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society. Boston: Beacon Press. [link: WorldCat]
Marcuse, Herbert. 1960. Reason and revolution; Hegel and the rise of social theory. Boston: Beacon Press. [link: WorldCat]
Marcuse, Herbert. 1973. Studies in critical philosophy. Boston: Beacon Press. [link: WorldCat]
Robinson, Paul A. 1969. The Freudian left: Wilhelm Reich, Geza Roheim, Herbert Marcuse. New York: Harper & Row. [link: WorldCat]

On the Web:

Official Herbert Marcuse Web page
Marcuse Bibliography
Marcuse Secondary Literature
Herbert Marcuse Archive at Marxists.org
Illuminations: The Critical Theory Project by Douglas Kellner at UCLA
Marcuse Archive at the Institute for Design & Assessment of Technology (includes full-text of One-Dimensional Man)

The Political Dr. Seuss

2009-03-02T14:04:00.002-06:00

Source: Google Video

In celebration of Theodor Geisel's 105th birthday come's this biographical film of the all-time best-selling children's author known to millions as simply "Dr. Seuss."

"Most people know Dr. Seuss as the man behind 'The Cat in the Hat.' But how many know that 'Yertle the Turtle' was modeled after Hitler--or that Dr. Seuss created WWII political cartoons that denounced racism, isolationism and other issues of the day. 'The Political Dr. Seuss' reveals how popular children's author Theodor Geisel advocated social change, teaching generations of children not only how to be better readers, but better people as well."

Resources:

In the Library:

Cohen, Charles D. 2004. The Seuss, the whole Seuss, and nothing but the Seuss: a visual biography of Theodor Seuss Geisel. New York: Random House. [link: WorldCat]
Geisel, Theodor Seuss. 1995. The secret art of Dr. Seuss. New York: Random House. [link: WorldCat]
Kemp, James W. 2004. The Gospel according to Dr. Seuss: [snitches, sneeches, and other creachas]. Valley Forge, PA: Judson Press. [link: WorldCat]
MacDonald, Ruth K. 1988. Dr. Seuss. Boston: Twayne Publishers. [link: WorldCat]
Minear, Richard H., Theodor Seuss Geisel, Seuss, and Art Spiegelman. 1999. Dr. Seuss goes to war: the World War II editorial cartoons of Theodor Seuss Geisel. New York: New Press. [link: WorldCat]
Morgan, Judith, and Neil Morgan. 1995. Dr. Seuss & Mr. Geisel: a biography. New York: Random House. [link: WorldCat]
Nel, Philip. 2004. Dr. Seuss: American icon. New York: Continuum. [link: WorldCat]
Seuss. 1986. You're only old once! New York: Random House. [link: WorldCat]

On the Web:

The Political Dr. Seuss - Web site for the documentary at PBS.org
Dr. Seuss Went to War - collection of anti-war cartoons by Dr. Seuss at University of California at San Diego Library Web site.
Green Eggs and Ham - Video on YouTube.

Ryan

2009-02-18T16:47:00.008-06:00

Source National Film Board of Canada

This Oscar®-winning animated short from Chris Landreth is based on the life of Ryan Larkin, a Canadian animator who, 30 years ago, produced some of the most influential animated films of his time. Ryan is living every artist's worst nightmare - having lost his ability to create and succumbing to addiction, he panhandles on the streets to make ends meet. Through the use of computer-generated characters, Landreth interviews his friend and colleague in an effort to shed light on his downward spiral. Some strong language. Viewer discretion is advised.

Resources:

In the Library:

Sarris, Nikos [2005] 3d modeling and animation : synthesis and analysis techniques for the human body. Hershey PA : IRM Press, [Netlibrary]
Grant, John [2001] Masters of Animation. New York, NY : Watson-Guptill Publications, [WorldCat]
Cohen, Karl. [1997] Forbidden animation : censored cartoons and blacklisted animators in America. Jefferson, N.C. : McFarland & Co. [WorldCat]
Sitney, P. Adams [2002] Visionary film : the American avant-garde, 1943-2000. Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press. [NetLibrary]

On the Web:

National Film Board of Canada official website for Ryan
Robinson, Chris. "Last Exit on St. Laurent Street: The Wonderfully F***ed Up World of Ryan Larkin." Animation World Magazine 5.8, November 2000.
Ryan Larkin's official website
2009 Oscar-nominated animated short films

The Pacifist Who Went to War

2009-02-11T19:29:00.010-06:00

Source National Film Board of Canada

This documentary is the story of two Mennonite brothers from Manitoba who were forced to make a decision in 1939, as Canada joined World War II. In the face of 400 years of pacifist tradition, should they now go to war? Ted became a conscientious objector while his brother went into military service. Fifty years later, the town of Winkler dedicates its first war memorial and John begins to share his war experiences with Ted.

Resources:

In the Library:

Huxley, Aldous. [1937] An encyclopaedia of pacifism . New York : Harper [WorldCat]
Brock, Peter. [1998] Varieties of pacifism: a survey from antiquity to the outset of the twentieth century. New York: Syracuse University Press. [Netlibrary]
Brock, Peter [1968] Pacifism in the United States, from the colonial era to the First World War. New Jersey: Princeton University Press. [WorldCat]
Payne, James. [2004] A history of force : exploring the worldwide movement against habits of coercion, bloodshed, and mayhem. Sandpoint, Idaho : Lytton Pub. Co [WorldCat]
Cooney, Robert. [1977] The Power of the people : active nonviolence in the United States. Culver City, Calif. : Peace Press. [WorldCat]
Cooper, Sandi. [1991] Patriotic pacifism : waging war on war in Europe, 1815-1914. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [WorldCat]
Yoder, John Howard. [1992] Nevertheless [electronic resource] : the varieties and shortcomings of religious pacifism. Scottdale, Pa. : Herald Press [Netlibrary]
Dyck, Cornelius J. [1993] An Introduction to Mennonite history [electronic resource] : a popular history of the Anabaptists and the Mennonites. Scottdale, Pa. : Herald Press. [Netlibrary]

On the Web:

Official website of the Mennonite Church in America
Definition of Pacifism from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Blog Post on John Abbott (a conscientious objector in WWII) by Dr. Johannes Bulhof
Blog Post on Bertrand Russell (philosopher and pacifist) by Dr. Johannes Bulhof

I Have A Dream Speech

2009-01-15T14:37:00.006-06:00

Source YouTube

I Have A Dream is the popular name given to the public speech by Martin Luther King, Jr. when he spoke of his desire for a future where blacks and whites among others would coexist harmoniously as equals. King's delivery of the speech on August 28, 1963 from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, was a defining moment of the American Civil Rights Movement. Delivered to over 250,000 civil rights supporters, the speech is often considered to be one of the greatest and most notable speeches in history and was ranked the top American speech of the 20th century by a 1999 poll of scholars of public address. According to U.S. Representative John Lewis, who also spoke that day as the President of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, "Dr. King had the power, the ability and the capacity to transform those steps on the Lincoln Memorial into a modern day pulpit. By speaking the way he did, he educated, he inspired, he informed not just the people there, but people throughout America and unborn generations."
At the end of the speech, King departed from his prepared text for a partly improvised peroration on the theme of "I have a dream", possibly prompted by Mahalia Jackson's cry, "Tell them about the dream, Martin!". He had delivered a speech incorporating some of the same sections in Detroit in June 1963, when he marched on Woodward Avenue with Walter Reuther and the Reverend C.L. Franklin, and had rehearsed other parts.
- wikipedia

Resources:

In the Library:

McElrath, Jessica [2008]. The Everything Martin Luther King Jr. Book : The Struggle, The Dream, The Legacy. Avon, Mass. : Adams Media. [WorldCat]
Clayborne, Carson [2008]. The Martin Luther King, Jr., Encyclopedia. Westport, Conn. [u.a.] Greenwood Press. [WorldCat]
Houck, Davis W [2006]. Rhetoric, religion and the civil rights movement, 1954-1965. Waco, Tex. : Baylor University Press. [NetLibrary]
Ellis, Kate [2005]. Say it plain : a century of great African American speeches . New York : New Press : Distributed by W.W. Norton & Co. [WorldCat]
Sunnemark, Fredrik [2004]. Ring out freedom!: The Voice of Martin Luther King, Jr. and The Making of the Civil Rights Movement. Bloomington : Indiana University Press. [WorldCat]
Hansen, Drew D. [2003] The dream : Martin Luther King, Jr., and The Speech That Inspired a Nation. New York : Ecco. [WorldCat]
Ling, Peter J. [2002] Martin Luther King, Jr. London ; New York : Routledge. [WorldCat]

On The Web:

Biography of Martin Luther King, Jr. Nobel Peace Price Recipient [link]
MLK Research and Education Institute at Stanford University [link]
The King Center [link]
The National Civil Rights Museum [link]

Lake Peigneur Disaster

2009-01-08T10:35:00.003-06:00

Source: YouTube

This History Channel segment details the events surrounding the 1980 Lake Peigneur Disaster. From Wikipedia:

In 1980, when the disaster took place, the Diamond Crystal Salt Company operated the Jefferson Island salt mine under [Lake Peigneur], while a Texaco oil rig drilled down from the surface of the lake searching for petroleum. Due to a miscalculation, the 14-inch (360 mm) drill bit entered the mine, starting a remarkable chain of events which at the time turned an almost 10-foot (3.0 m) deep freshwater lake into a salt water lake with a deep hole.

It is difficult to determine exactly what occurred, as all of the evidence was destroyed or washed away in the ensuing maelstrom. The now generally accepted explanation is that a miscalculation by Texaco regarding their location resulted in the drill puncturing the roof of the third level of the mine. This created an opening in the bottom of the lake, similar to removing the drain plug from a bathtub. The lake then drained into the hole, expanding the size of that hole as the soil and salt were washed into the mine by the rushing water, filling the enormous caverns left by the removal of salt over the years. The resultant whirlpool sucked in the drilling platform, eleven barges, many trees and 65 acres (260,000 m²) of the surrounding terrain. Leonce Viator, Jr., a local fisherman, was able to drive his small boat to the shore and tie it up to a tree, and get out, to later watch it and the tree get sucked down. So much water drained into those caverns that the flow of the Delcambre Canal that usually empties the lake into Vermilion Bay was reversed, making the canal a temporary inlet. This backflow created, for a few days, the tallest waterfall ever in the state of Louisiana, at 164 feet (50 m), as the lake refilled with salt water from the Delcambre Canal and Vermilion Bay. The water downflowing into the mine caverns displaced air which erupted as compressed air and then later as 400-foot (120 m) geysers up through the mineshafts.

Remarkably, there were no injuries and no human lives lost in this dramatic event. All 55 employees in the mine at the time of the accident were able to escape thanks to well-planned and rehearsed evacuation drills, or through heroic efforts by co-workers. The staff of the drilling rig fled the platform before it was sucked down into the new depths of the lake. Three dogs were reported killed, however. Days after the disaster, once the water pressure equalized, nine of the eleven sunken barges popped out of the whirlpool and refloated on the lake's surface.

Resources:

In the Library:

Autin, Whitney J. “The Sinking of Lake Peigneur.” Attakapas Gazette. 25.3 (Fall 1980), p. 142-143. [Serials, 2nd Floor]

On the Web:

Lake Peigneur - Oil Rig Disasters - Brief article on the events surrouding the Lake Peigneur disaster, accompanied by photos and diagrams taken from the Daily Advertiser.
Lake Peigneur: The Swirling Vortex of Doom - another summary from DamnInteresting.com.
Lake Peigneur “Bubbled” - A 2007 AP story from KATC.com on possible natural gas leakage from Lake Peigneur.
"What's Under Lake Peigneur?" - from SaveLakePeigneur.org, this page provides information about the potential danger resulting from the storage of natural gas within the underground salt domes beneath Lake Peigneur.
Lake Peigneur Facts - A Web site put out by AGL Resource Inc. concerning their operations around Lake Peigneur.

Gulf War Syndrome: Killing Our Own

2008-12-11T13:10:00.004-06:00

Source: Google Video

After the Vietnam War, hundreds of thousands of U.S. veterans suffered toxic reactions, neurological damage, and rare cancers due to exposure to 2,4,5,-D and 2,4,5-T dioxin that was used in the form of the defoliant Agent Orange. Unfortunately, the U.S. military denied the problem and failed to heed any of the lessons of this chemical butchery. Instead, it expanded its harmful legacy to the current generation of soldiers and civilians exposed to new, more deadly chemical toxins in the Persian Gulf.

Join accomplished filmmaker Gary Null, PhD, as he explores the real truth about Gulf War Syndrome and the secrets about chemical and germ warfare that the U.S. government is hiding from its veterans and the public. Dr. Null uncovers the hidden truths about Gulf War Syndrome, including the deadly and toxic effects of armor-piercing radioactive depleted uranium, the use of experimental and risky vaccines on over 1,100,000 U.S. troops, and the indescribable chemical contamination and environmental devastation that the military caused during the Persian Gulf Wars. In this film, Dr. Null relies on compelling testimony from eyewitnesses who served in the military, leading doctors and scientists who specialize in chemical exposure, and those veterans still suffering from the effects of their tours of duty. Dr. Null goes further than ever before to explain the illnesses of Gulf veterans, including their rare cancers, neurological diseases, cardiac ailments, genetic mutations, and autoimmune conditions, ranging from chronic fatigue syndrome to lupus and scleroderma. “Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome” is the glib and demeaning explanation that the U.S. Government likes to give to injured veterans and their families.

By revealing the truth about how and why American soldiers became ill while fighting overseas, this film sets the record straight and holds the government accountable for trivializing and covering up some of the major causes and consequences of Gulf War Syndrome. This film is also a scathing indictment of the practices and policies of modern warfare, and how they are causing massive illnesses that have never been seen before and which do not recognize political or geographic boundaries.

Resources:

In the Library:

Parker, James N., and Philip M. Parker. 2004. Gulf War syndrome a medical dictionary, bibliography, and annotated research guide to Internet references. San Diego, CA: ICON Health Publications. [link: NetLibrary]

On the Web:

GulfLink - Office of the Special Assistant For Gulf War Illness (from the Office of the Secretary of Defense)
Report to Congress: Gulf War Syndrome is Real (from LA Times, 11.18.08)

Jared Diamond: Why Societies Collapse

2008-12-04T12:30:00.006-06:00

Source TED Talks

From TED Talks:

Why do societies fail? With lessons from the Norse of Iron Age Greenland, deforested Easter Island and present-day Montana, Jared Diamond talks about the signs that collapse is near, and how -- if we see it in time -- we can prevent it. Jared Diamond is an award-winning scholar of ecology, biology and history, and best-selling author of Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.

Resources:

In the Library:

Diamond, Jared M. Why Is Sex Fun? : The Evolution of Human Sexuality. New York, NY : HarperCollins [WorldCat]
Diamond, Jared M. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. New York : W.W. Norton & Co. [WorldCat]
Diamond, Jared M. The Third Chimpanzee : The Evolution And Future Of The Human Animal. New York, NY : HarperCollins. [WorldCat]
Cody, Martin L. and Jared Diamond. Ecology And Evolution Of Communities. Cambridge, Mass. : Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. [WorldCat]
Braudel, Fernand. A History Of Civilizations. New York, N.Y., U.S.A. : A. Lane. [WorldCat]

On the Web:

PBS Guns, Germs, & Steel website
On Societal Ascendance and Collapse: An Austrian Challenge to Jared Diamond's Explications [Link]

Framing an Execution: Mumia Abu-Jabal and the Medi

2008-12-02T13:42:00.006-06:00

Source: Google Video

On Tuesday, December 9th 1981, Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner was in the process of arresting William Cook, the brother of journalist & activist Mumia Abu-Jamal. Shots were fired, and when additional officers arrived at the scene they found Abu-Jamal wounded and Faulker dead. In the subsequent trial, a jury found Mumia Abu-Jamal guilty of murder, and sentenced to death. However, irregularities in the trial and conviction soon came to light, which has been the focus of much media attention both for and against Abu-Jamal.

This documentary specifically examines the an apperant bias by ABC News and Sam Donaldson in covering the events of Faulkner's murder and the trial for 20/20. Narrated by Danny Glover, Framing an Execution casts doubts as to the credibility of key witnesses, highlights questionable procedures in conducting the case, and argues for Abu-Jamal's innocence.

Resources:

In the Library:

Asher, Robert, Lawrence B. Goodheart, and Alan Rogers. 2005. Murder on trial: 1620-2002. Albany: State University of New York Press. [link: NetLibrary]
Cohen, Stanley. 2003. The wrong men: America's epidemic of wrongful death row convictions. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers. [link: WorldCat]
Lindorff, Dave. 2003. Killing time: an investigation into the death row case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. Monroe, Me: Common Courage Press. [link: WorldCat]
Ness, Immanuel. 2004. Encyclopedia of American social movements. Armonk, NY: Sharpe Reference. [link: WorldCat]
Rome, Dennis. 2004. Black demons: the media's depiction of the African American male criminal stereotype. Crime, media, and popular culture. Westport, Conn: Praeger. [link: NetLibrary]
Williams, Daniel R. 2001. Executing justice: an inside account of the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. New York: St. Martin's Press. [link: WorldCat]

Boghosian, Heidi. 2004. "Meeting Mumia Abu-Jamal." Guild Notes 28, no. 1: 12-13. Legal Collection, EBSCOhost (accessed December 3, 2008). [link: EbscoHost]
Bryan, Robert. 2007. "An Update on Mumia Abu-Jamal." Guild Notes 33, no. 4: 4-5. Legal Collection, EBSCOhost (accessed December 3, 2008). [link: EbscoHost]

On the Web:

DanielFaulkner.com - site which supports the court's conviction of Abu-Jamal, debunking the “myths” of Abu-Jamal defenders.
Prison Radio - list of Abu-Jamal audio podcasts and essays.

New Orleans: The Natural History

2008-11-25T10:09:00.005-06:00

Source: Google Video

“After Katrina, people ask why would anyone establish a city in a place that is below sea level, floods nearly every year, is as hot and humid as any tropical jungle, subject to outbreaks of deadly disease and faces annihilation as the result of a direct hit from a hurricane? More to the point, why would anyone try to save it? When you mention New Orleans to most people, the images evoked are of a lively port city populated by a sultry mix of people from many different cultures and, of course, jazz, Mardi Gras and world class cuisine. What few people realize is that the very forces that created New Orleans now threaten its very existence. The eco-system is incredibly fragile and volatile, and if no action is taken, the city could be wiped out in the next hurricane or gradually swept into the sea from the current course of things. With the critical issues of global warming and our ongoing struggle to strike a healthy balance between a healty environment and a growing economy, New Orleans serves as a microcosm in which we can examine the critical issues facing our planet.”

New Orleans: The Natural History was produced by Walter Williams, creator of Mr. Bill and a New Orleans native.

Resources:

In the Library:

Bates, Kristin Ann, and Richelle S. Swan. 2007. Through the eye of Katrina: social justice in the United States. Durham, N.C.: Carolina Academic Press. [link: WorldCat]
Bergal, Jenni. 2007. City adrift: New Orleans before and after Katrina. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. [link: WorldCat]
Brinkley, Douglas. 2006. The great deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast. New York: Morrow. [link: WorldCat]
Chase, Leah, Errol Domingue, Preston Doré, Marlon Horton, Ted Falgout, Kerry St. Pé, Christina Hendrick Melton, et al. 2006. Washing away losing Louisiana. [DVD] Baton Rouge, La: Louisiana Educational Television Authority. [link: WorldCat]
National Research Council (U.S.). Ocean Studies Board (2006). Drawing Louisiana's new map : addressing land loss in coastal Louisiana. [link: NetLibrary]
Tidwell, Mike. 2003. Bayou farewell: the rich life and tragic death of Louisiana's Cajun coast. New York: Pantheon Books. [link: WorldCat]
Tidwell, Mike. 2006. The ravaging tide: strange weather, future Katrinas, and the coming death of America's coastal cities. New York: Free Press. [link: WorldCat]

On the Web:

Coastal Erosion: Facts and Figures (from Restore or Retreat)
Louisiana Coastal Wetlands: A Resource at Risk (from the United States Geological Survey)
Coastal Erosion Links (from Texas A & M)

Isabel Allende: Tales of Passion

2008-11-21T16:12:00.004-06:00

Source TED Talks

Author and activist Isabel Allende discusses women, creativity, the definition of feminism -- and, of course, passion -- in this talk.

From TED:

As a novelist and memoirist, Isabel Allende writes of passionate lives, including her own. Born into a Chilean family with political ties, she went into exile in the United States in the 1970s -- an event that, she believes, created her as a writer. Her voice blends sweeping narrative with touches of magical realism; her stories are romantic, in the very best sense of the word. Her novels include The House of the Spirits, Eva Luna and The Stories of Eva Luna, and her latest, Ines of My Soul and La Suma de los Dias (The Sum of Our Days). And don't forget her adventure trilogy for young readers -- City of the Beasts, Kingdom of the Golden Dragon and Forest of the Pygmies.
As a memoirist, she has written about her vision of her lost Chile, in My Invented Country, and movingly tells the story of her life to her own daughter, in Paula. Her book Aphrodite: A Memoir of the Senses memorably linked two sections of the bookstore that don't see much crossover: Erotica and Cookbooks. Just as vital is her community work: The Isabel Allende Foundation works with nonprofits in the SF Bay Area and Chile to empower and protect women and girls -- understanding that empowering women is the only true route to social and economic justice.

Resources:

In the Library:

Allende, Isabel. Cuentos de Eva Luna. New York: HarperLibros [WorldCat]
Allende, Isabel. The Stories of Eva Luna. New York: Atheneum [WorldCat]
Allende, Isabel. The Infinite Plan: A Novel. New York: HarperCollins [WorldCat]
Allende, Isabel. Paula. New York: HarperCollins [WorldCat]
Allende, Isabel. Aphrodite: A Memoir of the Senses. New York: HarperFamingo [WorldCat]
Allende, Isabel. Conversations with Isabel Allende. Austin: University of Texas Press [WorldCat]
Allende, Isabel. Daughter of Fortune: A Novel. New York: HarperCollins [WorldCat]
Allende, Isabel. Portrait in Sepia: A Novel. New York: HarperCollins [WorldCat]
Allende, Isabel. Mi País Inventado : Un Paseo Nostálgico Por Chile . New York: Rayo [WorldCat]

A Tale of Two Cities

2008-11-18T14:53:00.005-06:00

Source: Internet Archives

This 12-minute newsreel produced by the United States War Department provides an account of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. Narration accompanies raw footage of the damage and destruction caused by the atomic blasts, detailing some of the strategic decisions behind the decision to bomb the two cities.

Resources:

In the Library:

Ferrell, Robert H. 1996. Harry S. Truman and the bomb: a documentary history. Worland, Wyo: High Plains Pub. Co. [Link: WorldCat]
Hersey, John, Warren Chappell, and Edith Goodkind Rosenwald. 1946. Hiroshima. New York: A.A. Knopf. [link:WorldCat]
Jungk, Robert. 1958. Brighter than a thousand suns; a personal history of the atomic scientists. New York: Harcourt Brace. [link: WorldCat]
Minear, Richard H., Tamiki Hara, Yōko Ōta, and Sankichi Tōge. 1990. Hiroshima: three witnesses. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. [link: WorldCat]
United States. 1990s. The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Champaign, Ill: Project Gutenberg. [link: NetLibrary]
Wyden, Peter. 1984. Day one: before Hiroshima and after. New York: Simon and Schuster. [link: WorldCat]

On the Web:

U.S. Stategic Bombing Survey: The Effects of the Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, June 19, 1946. (jpg facsimile from the Truman Library)
The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War 2 (government documents from the National Security Archive)
Scientific Data of the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Disaster (from Nagasaki University)
Eyewitness Account of Hiroshima by Fr. John Siemes
The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the Manhattan Engineer District, June 29, 1946 (from the Atomic Archive)

Tuesday in November

2008-11-18T10:49:00.005-06:00

Source: Internet Archive

Idealized portrayal of 1944 U.S. presidential election, made to show the world that the United States was sufficiently secure to hold a free and fair election during wartime. Shows campaign activities, efforts to ensure the secrecy of the ballot and fairness of the election, and media coverage of the electoral process, all culminating in a giant nighttime gathering in Times Square where a huge crowd awaits the result.

Resources:

In the Library:

Archer, J. Clark. 2006. Historical atlas of U.S. presidential elections 1788-2004. Washington, D.C.: CQ Press. [link: WorldCat]
Gersbach, Hans. 2005. Designing democracy: ideas for better rules. Berlin: Springer-Verlag. [link: NetLibrary]
Gumbel, Andrew. 2005. Steal this vote: dirty elections and the rotten history of democracy in America. New York: Nation Books. [link: WorldCat]
Warren, Kenneth F. 2008. Encyclopedia of U.S. campaigns, elections, and electoral behavior. Los Angeles: Sage. [link: WorldCat]
Watson, Robert P. 2004. Counting votes: lessons from the 2000 presidential election in Florida. Gainesville, Fla: University Press of Florida. [link: WorldCat]

On the Web:

United States Election Project (from George Mason University)
Law & Regulations (from the US Federal Election Commission)
Campaigns & Elections: Campaign Law (links from Polisource.com)
The 1944 Presidential Election (from the American Presidency Project, UC-Santa Barbara)

Prevention of deceptive practices and voter intimidation in federal elections : S. 453 : hearing before the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, One Hundred Tenth Congress, first session, June 7, 2007 [PDF]
The importance of poll workers : best practices and recommendations : hearing before the Subcommittee on Elections of the Committee on House Administration, House of Representatives, One Hundred Tenth Congress, first session, hearing held in Washington, DC, October 3, 2007 [PDF]

The River

2008-11-17T08:20:00.005-06:00

Source: Internet Archive (pt. 2)

Classic documentary history of the exploitation of the resources of the Mississippi River Valley and the work being done to rehabilitate and reclaim the area.

Views are shown of the Rockies in the West and the Alleghenies in the East, and of typical scenes of the Mississippi watershed from Minnesota to the sea. A map shows the vast network of rivers that flow into the Mississippi. The commentator says that the water from nearly two-thirds of the continent flows down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico. Along the banks of the lower Mississippi levees are being built to hold the river off the valley. These dikes, says the commentator, were begun by the French and Spanish before the Louisiana Purchase and were extended by us until they reached a thousand miles to the mouth of the Ohio.

The history of the Mississippi River, beginning with pre-Civil War days, is traced. Before the war, commerce of the inland states was sent in steamboats to the sea. There are scenes of cotton being picked, bound into bales, and rolled on board river boats. The Civil War interrupted that trade. Ruined southern homes symbolize the economic collapse of the South following the war. While the war was immediately responsible for that collapse, the soil which had been impoverished by a quarter of a century of frenzied cotton growing was a large contributing factor. Planters from the Old South moved westward. At the same time new industries arose -- lumbering in the North, coal and iron mining in the North and East. There is a series of views of lumbering and mining activities as the commentator tells of the rapid exploitation of these resources. Towns and cities sprang up in the Mississippi Valley and with them mills and factories and railroads.

The results of planless exploitation began to appear. The grasslands were plowed and the forests were cut over. There was no covering to hold the moisture, and more and more of the topsoil was washed away. In 1937 the river could no longer hold the excess water, and the worst flood in United States history was the result. The Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Civilian Conservation Corps, Works Progress Administration, and Red Cross were all called out to reinforce the levees and rescue the sick and drowning. The sharecroppers of the South suffer from the waste of the valley. They live in the richest river valley in the world but are ill-clad, ill-housed, and ill-fed. There are views of miserable living conditions among the sharecroppers.

The final sequence suggests the program which the government has undertaken to rehabilitate the river valley. The Tennessee Valley Authority is presented as a part of a program to reconstruct and conserve the resources of the valley. Civilian Conservation Corps boys are shown planting trees on cutover land. A model agricultural community is built and farmers are instructed in scientific tilling of the soil. The Tennessee Valley Authority provides electricity at a low cost to the people of the valley.

Resources:

In the Library:

Buchanan, Thomas C. 2004. Black life on the Mississippi: slaves, free Blacks, and the western steamboat world. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. [link: WorldCat]
Colten, Craig E. 2000. Transforming New Orleans and its environs: centuries of change. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. [link: WorldCat]
Gould, E. W. 1889. Fifty years on the Mississippi; or, Gould's history of river navigation. Saint Louis: Nixon-Jones printing co. [link: WorldCat]
Jackson, Joy J. 1993. Where the river runs deep: the story of a Mississippi River pilot. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. [link: WorldCat]
Kemper, James Parkerson. 1949. Rebellious river. Boston: Humphries. [link: WorldCat]
Pabis, George S. 2007. Daily life along the Mississippi. Greenwood Press "Daily life through history" series. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press. [link: WorldCat]

On the Web:

The Mississippi River and Tributaries Project (from Army Corps of Engineers)
Mississippi River (from InfoPlease)

Old Man River: Life Along the Mississippi (from the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library)

Life's Greatest Miracle

2008-11-15T08:26:00.010-06:00

Part 1:
Quicktime
Realplayer
Time: 09:53

Part 2:
Quicktime
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Time: 06:00

Part 3:
Quicktime
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Time: 05:41

Part 4:
Quicktime
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Time: 04:58

Part 5:
Quicktime
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Time: 07:47

Part 6:
Quicktime
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Time: 04:35

Part 7:
Quicktime
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Time: 06:39

Part 8:
Quicktime
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Time: 07:07

Source: PBS.Org

Originally broadcast on November 20, 2001. A sequel to the most popular NOVA of all time, "Miracle of Life," the program once again uses the extraordinary microimagery of Swedish photographer Lennart Nilsson to track human development from embryo to newborn.

Additional Resources:

In the library:

Hollen, Kathryn. The Reproductive System. Westport, Conn. : Greenwood Press. [WorldCat]
Ellison, Peter Thorpe. On Fertile Ground. Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press. [WorldCat]
Vaughan, Christopher. How Life Begins : The Science of Life In The Womb. New York : Times Books. [WorldCat]
Piñón, Ramón. Biology of Human Reproduction. Sausalito, Calif. : University Science Books. [WorldCat]
Schettler, Ted. Generations At Risk : Reproductive Health And The Environment. Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press. [WorldCat]
-. Reproduction, The Cycle of Life. New York : Torstar Books. [WorldCat]

Martin Luther King: I Have A Dream

2008-11-14T08:27:00.004-06:00

Source: YouTube

From Wikipedia:

"I Have A Dream" is the popular name given to the historic public speech by Martin Luther King, Jr., when he spoke of his desire for a future where blacks and whites among others would coexist harmoniously as equals. King's delivery of the speech on August 28, 1963, from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, was a defining moment of the American Civil Rights Movement. Delivered to over 250,000 civil rights supporters, the speech is often considered to be one of the greatest and most notable speeches in history and was ranked the top American speech of the 20th century by a 1999 poll of scholars of public address.

Resources:

In the Library:

Baldwin, Lewis V. 2002. The legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr.: the boundaries of law, politics, and religion. Notre Dame, Ind: University of Notre Dame Press. [link: WorldCat]
Bass, S. Jonathan, and Martin Luther King. 2001. Blessed are the peacemakers: Martin Luther King, Jr., eight white religious leaders, and the "Letter from Birmingham Jail". Baton Rouge, La: Louisiana State University Press. [link: WorldCat]
Boyd, Herb. 2004. We shall overcome [book & CDs]. Naperville, Ill: Sourcebooks. [link: WorldCat]
Carson, Clayborne. 2008. The Martin Luther King, Jr., encyclopedia. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press. [link: WorldCat]
Ellis, Kate, and Stephen Smith. 2005. Say it plain: a century of great African American speeches [book & CDs]. New York: New Press.[link: WorldCat]
Hansen, Drew D. 2003. The dream: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the speech that inspired a nation. New York: Ecco. [link: WorldCat]
King, Martin Luther, and Clayborne Carson. 1998. The autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. New York: Intellectual Properties Management in association with Warner Books. [link: WorldCat]
King, Martin Luther, Clayborne Carson, Peter Holloran, Ralph Luker, and Penny A. Russell. 1992. The papers of Martin Luther King, Jr. Berkeley: University of California Press. [E185.97.K5 A2 1992, v.1-4]
Sunnemark, Fredrik. 2004. Ring out freedom!: the voice of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the making of the civil rights movement. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. [link: NetLibrary]

On the Web:

Martin Luther King, Jr. Research Institute (home of the King Papers and Liberation Curriculum at Stanford University)
The FBI file of Martin Luther King, Jr. (from the FBI's Web site)
The King Report (from the US DoJ)

Thomas Friedman: Why We Need a Green Revolution

2008-11-14T08:20:00.002-06:00

Source: Fora.tv

Synopsis

Resources:

In the Library:

ABC News, and Films for the Humanities & Sciences (Firm). 2007. Going green real-world solutions for the environment [DVD]. Princeton, N.J.: Films for the Humanities & Sciences. [link: WorldCat]
Conkin, Paul Keith. 2007. The state of the Earth: environmental challenges on the road to 2100. Lexington, Ky: University Press of Kentucky. [link: WorldCat, NetLibrary]
Friedman, Thomas L. 1999. The Lexus and the olive tree. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux. [link: WorldCat]
Friedman, Thomas L. 2005. The world is flat: a brief history of the twenty-first century. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. [link: WorldCat]
Hawken, Paul. 2007. Blessed unrest: how the largest movement in the world came into being, and why no one saw it coming. New York: Viking. [link: WorldCat]

On the Web:

Thomas Friedman Home page
"Thomas Friedman's Argument for 'Geo-Greenism'" (audio & text from NPR)
"Tom Friedman: We Need 'Overwhelming Force' to Green the Economy" (from the Huffington Post

The Secret History of Hacking

2008-11-13T19:38:00.007-06:00

Source: Google Video

Documentary tracing the history hacking, focusing on the changing meaning “hacker.” It covers groundbreaking personalites and events, such as John Draper (a.k.a. Captain Crunch) who hacking telephone systems with a toy whistle found inside a box of Captain Cruch cereal; Steve Wozniak and the founding of the Altair 8800 enthusist group known as the Homebrew Computer Club; and the arrest, evasion, and eventual capture by the FBI of Internet hacker Kevin Mitnick.

Resources:

In the Library:

Himanen, Pekka. 2001. The hacker ethic, and the spirit of the information age. New York: Random House. [link: WorldCat]
Raymond, Eric S. 1999. The cathedral & the bazaar musings on Linux and open source by an accidental revolutionary. Beijing: O'Reilly. [link: WorldCat]
Schell, Bernadette H., John L. Dodge, and Steve S. Moutsatsos. 2002. The hacking of America: who's doing it, why, and how. Westport, CT: Quorum Books. [link: WorldCat]
Wark, McKenzie. 2004. A hacker manifesto. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. [link: WorldCat]

On the Web:

The Secret History of Hacking Homepage (Channel 4)
The Hacker Crackdown by Bruce Sterling (classic eBook at MIT)
Timeline: A 40-year History of Hacking (from CNN.com)

Oliver Cromwell: God's General

2008-11-13T18:51:00.005-06:00

Source: Brightcove

Profile of the controversial and contradictory character of Oliver Cromwell, a crucial figure in overthrowing the tyrannical Stuart monarchy and, for a short time, turning England into a 'Republican Commonwealth' before becoming a tyrant himself!

Resources:

In the Library:

Bennett, Martyn. 2006. Oliver Cromwell. Routledge historical biographies. London: Routledge. [link: NetLibrary]
Cromwell, Oliver, and Thomas Carlyle. 1871. Oliver Cromwell's letters and speeches; with elucidations. London: Chapman and Hall. [link: WorldCat]
Hill, Christopher. 1970. God's Englishman; Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution. New York: Dial Press. [link: WorldCat]
McMains, H. F. 2000. The death of Oliver Cromwell. Lexington, Ky: University Press of Kentucky. [link: WorldCat]

On the Web:

The Oliver Cromwell Website (from the Cromwell Association and the Cromwell Museum Huntingdon)

Together We Win: The Fight to Organize Starbucks

2008-11-13T18:32:00.006-06:00

Source: Archive.org (alternative: Quicktime mov)

Diane Krauthamer's short film on how Starbucks employees in the US have organized themselves, in conjunction with the IWW, to secure better conditions in the workplace.

Resources:

In the Library:

Clawson, Dan and Mary Ann Clawson. 1999. "What Has Happened to the US Labor Movement? Union Decline and Renewal." Annual Review of Sociology, 25: 95-119. [link: JSTOR]
Davis, Rowenna. 2008. "The barnstorming barista." New Internationalist , no. 1: 24. MAS Ultra - School Edition, EBSCOhost [link: EbscoHost]
Herbst, Moira. 2007. "Starbucks: More Charges of Union-Busting." Business Week Online : 1-1. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost [link: EbscoHost]
Lynd, Staughton, and Daniel Gross. 2007. "Solidarity Unionism at Starbucks: The IWW Uses Section 7: Commentary." WorkingUSA 10, no. 3: 347-356. EconLit, EBSCOhost [link: EbscoHost]

On the Web:

Starbucks Union (film producer)
"Starbucks Statement Regarding Our Partners and Union Representation" (from Starbucks)

Tattoo

2008-11-13T18:20:00.006-06:00

Source: Brightcove

Tatoo (1976) - A 20-minute documentary film based on the art of tattooing, the tattoo artists and their clients, with interviews on the fascination for -- and the reasons behind -- choosing to be tattooed. Won “Outstanding Film Award” at the National Film Festival.

Resources:

In the Library:

Rio, Dale. Tatoo. Courage Books [WorldCat]
Pitts-Taylor, Victoria. In The Flesh : The Cultural Politics of Body Modification. Palgrave Macmillan. [GN419.15 .P57 2003]
Griffin, Karol. Skin Deep : Tattoos, The Disappearing West, Very Bad Men, and My Deep Love For Them All. Harcourt [WorldCat]
Lloyd, J.D. Body Piercing and Tattoos. Greenhaven Press. [GT2345 .B63 2003]
Gay, Kathlyn. Body Marks : Tattooing, Piercing, and Scarification. Millbrook Press. [GN419.5 .G39 2002]
Miller, Jean-Chris. The Body Art Book : A Complete, Illustrated Guide To Tattoos, Piercings, and Other Body Modifications. Berkeley Books [WorldCat]
Camphausen, Rufus C. Return Of The Tribal : A Celebration Of Body Adornment : Piercing, Tattooing, Scarification, Body Painting. Park Street Press. [WorldCat]
Hewitt, Kim. Mutilating the Body : Identity In Blood and Ink. Bowling Green State University Press. [WorldCat]
Wojcik, Daniel. Punk and Neo-Tribal Body Art. University Press of Mississippi.
[WorldCat]
Sangl, Harry. The Blue Privilege : The Last Tatooed Maori Women : Te Kuia Moko. Richards Pub. in association with W. Collins [WorldCat]

Can Dialectics Break Bricks?

2008-11-13T17:04:00.004-06:00

Source: Brightcove (pt2, pt3, pt4; alternative: UbuWeb)

Can Dialectics Break Bricks? (1973) is a situationist-inspired film by French director René Viénet. It utilizes the concept of “détournement” -- the appropriation of an existing work of art which is “turned around” by introducing elements which run counter to the intentions of the original artist, which then becomes subversive. By combining the theories of surrealism with Marxism, the French social theorist Guy Debord envisioned this method of film-making which would serve to undermine the “commodity fetishism” inherent in modern life. While Debord experimented with video collage in his The Society of the Spectacle (1973), Viénet took an existing film (kung-fu movie The Crush, by Doo Kwang Gee) and redubbed the entire sequence, with characters mostly spouting Marxist doctrine. Like the surrealism before, the techniques of détournement proved better suited for generating comedy than transforming society (the classic representitive being Woody Allen's What's Up Tiger Lily? (1966)).

Resources:

In the Library:

Lang, Berel, and Forrest Williams. 1972. Marxism and art; writings in aesthetics and criticism. New York: McKay. [link: WorldCat]
Macdonald, Bradley J. 2006. Performing Marx: contemporary negotiations of a living tradition. SUNY series in political theory. Albany: State University of New York Press. [link: NetLibrary]
Plant, Sadie. 2002. The most radical gesture the Situationist International in a postmodern age. London: Routledge. [link: NetLibrary]
Sadler, Simon. 1998. The situationist city. Cambridge Mass: MIT Press. [link: NetLibrary]

On the Web:

Debord, Guy and Gil Wolman. “A User's Guide to Dtournement.” Situationist International anthology. Berkeley, CA: Bureau of Public Secrets. (from Bureau of Public Secrets)
“Dubbed and Dubber: Can Dialectics Break Bricks?” (review at Chicago Reader)
“Methods of Détournement” (from Nothingness.org)

Birth of A Nation

2008-11-13T16:11:00.010-06:00

Source Google Video

From Dr. Catherine Lavender, director of American Studies Program at the College of Staten Island of the City University of New York:

In D.W. Griffith's masterpiece, two families -- the Stonemans from the North and the Camerons from the South -- experience the Civil War and Reconstruction. Through these families' stories, Griffith addresses the devastation wrought by the Civil War (especially in the South) and the social disruptions caused by Reconstruction. Griffith adapted the film from a propaganda piece about the Ku Klux Klan, The Clansman, written by Thomas Dixon. D.W. Griffith, a Southerner and the son of a Confederate War cavalry officer who returned from the war a broken man only to "suffer the disgrace of Reconstruction," blamed Reconstructionists and Southern blacks for his own misfortunes. This film reflects that resentment by depicting radical Republicans and "uppity" African-Americans as the cause of all social, political, and economic problems since the Civil War.

When Griffith released the film in 1915, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (or NAACP) and other groups protested; the NAACP published a 47-page pamphlet titled "Fighting a Vicious Film: Protest Against The Birth of a Nation," in which they referred to the film as "three miles of filth." W. E. B. Du Bois published scathing reviews in The Crisis, spurring a heated debate among the National Board of Censorship of Motion Pictures as to whether the film should be shown in New York. However, President and former history professor Woodrow Wilson viewed the film at the White House and proclaimed it not only historically accurate, but like "history writ with lightning." Like Woodrow Wilson, many whites felt it a truthful and accurate portrayal of racial politics, so much so that they flocked to join the rejuvenated Ku Klux Klan. The years after Griffith released The Birth of a Nation saw massive race riots throughout the country, peaking especially in the North in 1919; many historians lay the blame for this racial conflict on Griffith's The Birth of a Nation.

The Birth of a Nation is a complex artifact of its times. Several noteworthy themes run through the film, and it especially sheds light on the construction of categories of identity -- race, class, gender, and region -- during the early twentieth century

Resources:

In the Library:

Michele Faith Wallace. The Good Lynching and "The Birth of a Nation": Discourses and Aesthetics of Jim Crow. Cinema Journal, Vol. 43, No. 1 (Autumn, 2003), pp. 85-104 [JSTOR]
Stokes, Melvyn. D. W. Griffith's The birth of a nation: a history of "the most controversial motion picture of all time" New York: Oxford University Press. [NetLibrary]
Lang, Robert. The Birth of a nation : D.W. Griffith, director. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press. [WorldCat]
Stone, David P. Film History. New Jersey: Jones International, Ltd. [WorldCat]
Pearson, Roberta E. Eloquent gestures: the transformation of performance style in the Griffith Biograph films. Berkeley: University of California Press [NetLibrary]

On the Web:

D.W. Griffith. PBS American Masters Series [Link]
Derek Malcolm's Century of Film. The Guardian U.K. [Link]

Five Steps to Tyranny

2008-11-13T15:36:00.005-06:00

Source: Brightcove (alternative: YouTube: pt1, pt2, pt3, pt4, pt5)

Five Steps to Tyranny (2000) examines the psychological and social factors that lead to individual conformity. Using examples like the Milgram experiment, Albanian bigotry in Kosovo, Rwandan genocide, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, this documentary details five factors that enable one group of people to dominate, oppress, and even kill another. The film features commentary by psychologist and architect of the Stanford Prison experiment, Philip G. Zimbardo.

Resources:

In the Library:

Blass, Thomas. 2000. Obedience to authority: current perspectives on the Milgram paradigm. Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. [link: WorldCat]
Kallen, Evelyn. 2004. Social inequality and social injustice: a human rights perspective. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. [link: WorldCat]
Newman, Leonard S., and Ralph Erber. 2002. Understanding genocide the social psychology of the Holocaust. New York: Oxford University Press. [link: NetLibrary]
Sunstein, Cass R. 2003. Why societies need dissent. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. [link: WorldCat]

On the Web:

“Thinking Humanity After Abu Garib” Podcasts (from Stanford University)

Triumph of the Will

2008-11-13T12:22:00.003-06:00

Source: Google Video

Few films have received as much praise and vilification as Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will (1935). The film covers the events of the 1934 Nazi Party Congress in Nuremberg. Riefenstahl was hand-picked by Adolf Hitler to shoot the rally, which was specifically orchestrated for the sake of filming. The use of telephoto lenses, aerial shots, and musical score were innovative cimematic techniques, and served to underscore the work of art as propaganda. Much like D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation, Triumph of the Will is a classic example of art in the service of reprehensive political views.

Resources:

In the Library:

Baird, Jay W. 1974. The mythical world of Nazi war propaganda, 1939-1945. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. [link:WorldCat]
Blakesley, David. 2003. The terministic screen rhetorical perspectives on film. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. [link: NetLibrary]
Riefenstahl, Leni. 1993. A memoir. New York: St. Martin's Press. [link: WorldCat]
Smith, Matthew Wilson. 2007. The total work of art: from Bayreuth to cyberspace. New York: Routledge. [link: NetLibrary]
Zeman, Z. A. B. 1964. Nazi propaganda. London: Oxford University Press. [link: WorldCat]

On the Web:

Ebert, Roger. “Triumph of the Will.” Chicago Sun-Times (26 June 2008). (review)

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

2008-11-12T20:38:00.007-06:00

Source Google Video

From Wikipedia.org

Sweeney Todd is a character who first appeared as one of the protagonists of penny dreaful serial entitled string of pearls (1846-1847). Claims that Sweeney Todd was a real person are strongly disputed by scholars, although there are possible legendary prototypes, arguably making the story of Sweeney Todd an example of an urban legend.
In the original version of the tale he is a barber who murders wealthy customers by slitting their throats with a straight razor and letting the dead bodies fall through a secret trap door beneath his barber's chair, and into the basement below the first floor pie shop. After Todd has robbed his dead victims of their goods, Mrs. Lovett, his partner in crime (in some later versions, his friend who wants to become his lover), assists him in disposing of the bodies by having their flesh baked into meat pies, and selling them to the unsuspecting customers of her pie shop, because "times is hard" and she cannot afford the meat.

This is the 1936 film version of the Victorian melodrama starring Tod Slaughter as Sweeney Todd and Stella Rho as Mrs. Lovett. The very first film version of this story was a shot in 1926, but has been lost. Two years later, the first surviving film adaptation was made as a silent film starring Moore Marriott as Sweeney Todd. Tim Burton’s 2007 film version is actually based on Stephen Sondheim’s 1979 stage musical of Sweeney Todd.

Resources:

In the Library:

Kaye, Marvin. Sweet Revenge : 10 Plays of Bloody Murder New York: Fireside Theater [ WorldCat]
Bordman, Gerald Martin. American operetta : from H.M.S. Pinafore to Sweeney Todd New York: Oxford University Press [WorldCat]
Rosenman, Ellen Bayuk. 'Mimic Sorrows': Masochism and the Gendering of Pain in Victorian Melodrama. Studies in the Novel Spring 2003, Vol. 35 Issue 1. [EBSCO]

Rashomon

2008-11-12T19:45:00.003-06:00

Source: Google Video

Although it was not his first movie, Rashomon (1950) was the movie which brought Akira Kurosawa critical acclaim. Based on an amalgam of two short stories by Ryûnosoke Akutagawa, Rashomon depicts the interpretations of various characters concerning the events surrounding the murder of a samurai. In each case, the account conflict with one another, raising questioning the possibility of ever knowing the truth. While filming, several of the cast members, perplexed by the explicit relativism of the script, ask Kurosawa, “What does it mean?” Kurosawa replied that the film reflects life, and life does not always have clear meaning. This expression of subjectivity in Rashomon has influenced scholars from Martin Heidegger to Karl Herder.

Resources:

In the Library:

Akutagawa, Ryūnosuke. 1952. Rashomon, and other stories. New York: Liveright Pub. Corp.[link: WorldCat]
Kurosawa, Hisao, Mike Y. Inoue, Akira Kurosawa, Akira Terao, Mitsuko Baishō, Toshie Negishi, Mieko Harada, et al. 2003. Akira Kurosawa's dreams. [DVD] Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video. [link: WorldCat]
Kurosawa, Akira, Serge Silberman, Masato Hara, Tatsuya Nakadai, and William Shakespeare. 1997. Ran. [VHS] World class cinema collection. New York: Fox Lorber Home Video.[link: WorldCat]
Kurosawa, Akira. 1985. Ikiru (To live). [VHS] Los Angeles, Calif: Media Home Entertainment. [link: WorldCat]
Prince, Stephen. 1991. The warrior's camera: the cinema of Akira Kurosawa. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. [link: WorldCat]
Richie, Donald. 1965. The films of Akira Kurosawa. Berkeley: University of California Press. [link:WorldCat]

Boyd, David. 1987. "RASHOMON FROM AKUTAGAWA TO KUROSAWA." Literature Film Quarterly 15, no. 3: 155. Communication & Mass Media Complete, EBSCOhost. [link: EbscoHost]
Karl G. Heider. 1988. “The Rashomon Effect: When Ethnographers Disagree,” American Anthropologist 90, no. 1, New Series (March 1988): 73-81. http://www.jstor.org/stable/678455. [link: JSTOR]
Medine, David. 1992. "Law and Kurosawa's Rashomon." Literature Film Quarterly 20, no. 1: 55. Communication & Mass Media Complete, EBSCOhost. [link: EbscoHost]

On the Web:

Ebert, Roger. “Rashomon.” Chicago Sun-Times (May 26 2002). (review)

The Ice Man: Confessions of a Mafia Hitman

2008-11-12T17:20:00.008-06:00

Source Google Video

Source Google Video

Richard Kuklinski, the Ice Man, is a self-professed Mafia contract killer. He claims to have killed approximately 100 people. He has gained enormous notoriety through two documentaries, including the one linked above. The two-part HBO documentary led to a lucrative book deal. However, the majority of his claims are unverifiable, including his links to organized crime.

Kuklinski was convicted of two murders in court; and sentenced to two life sentences. In court, he confessed to two other murders. Apart from these four murders, all of whom were close criminal associates of Kuklinski, there is only circumstantial evidence of his guilt. In some of the mob-related murders he claims as his own, evidence strongly implicates other men. The two documentaries and his biography are very fuzzy on details pertaining to murders other than the four mentioned earlier. He made his initial interview in 1991-1992. He returned to fame ca. 2002 when he intimated that ke killed Jimmy Hoffa, a rumor he dispelled later. Incidentially, the Hoffa reference came out around the same time as his biography was supposed to be published.

Although he is popularized as a serial killer, the prosecutor who convicted him made it clear that Kuklinski was not a serial killer because the four confirmed murders to his credit were all clearly business-related. Aside from his own biography, there are few, if any, books on organized crime that even mention him. However, Kuklinski was a criminal, and a murderer. His story, if not entirely accurate, does reveal the personality of a murderer.

Resources:

In the Library:

Demaris, Ovid. The last Mafioso : the treacherous world of Jimmy Fratianno. New York: Times Books [WorldCat]
Brandt, Charles. "I Heard You Paint Houses" : Frank "The Irishman" Sheeran and the inside story of the Mafia, the Teamsters,and the Last Ride of Jimmy Hoffa. Hanover, N.H. : Steerforth Press. [WorldCat]

On the Web:

Nathanson Center (York University) [Link]
Gang Rule [Link]

On Piracy

2008-11-12T15:19:00.005-06:00

Source: Google Video

On Piracy: On Piracy & The Future of Media (2007) is an independently-produced documentary by Julien McArdle on copyright, intellectual property, and illegal file sharing. From the Website:

Each day, millions of youths from Canada and around the world download music and movies off of the Internet. This epidemic of "unauthorized" downloading has been cited by the record and film industries as being the prime cause for billions in losses. Politicians have come under tremendous pressure to pass legislation on the issue.

But despite all the media frenzy on the piracy crackdowns, there's been very little attention to the topic itself. At the very best, news reporters regurgitated the contents of an industry press release. There was nothing of substance, which is where this documentary fits in: we wanted to cover the issue in-depth. We interviewed industry execs, copyright lawyers, pirates, consumers, artists, and everyone we could think of - and made you this film.

This film was originally released via BitTorrent on The Pirate Bay (where an ISO of the full DVD can still be found), and the subsequent DVD was released under the Creative Commons license.

Resources:

In the Library:

Kahin, Brian, and Charles R. Nesson. 1997. Borders in cyberspace information policy and the global information infrastructure. Publication of the Harvard Information Infrastructure Project. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. [link: NetLibrary]
Kusek, David, Gerd Leonhard, and Susan Gedutis Lindsay. 2005. The future of music: manifesto for the digital music revolution. Boston: Berklee Press. [link: WorldCat]
Vaidhyanathan, Siva. 2004. The anarchist in the library: how the clash between freedom and control is hacking the real world and crashing the system. New York: Basic Books. [link: WorldCat]

Bednarski, P. J. "NBC's Wright: Piracy Is Killing Us." Broadcasting & Cable 136, no. 39 (October 02, 2006): 3-3. Communication & Mass Media Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed November 13, 2008). [link: EbscoHost]
Seltzer, Trent. 2005. "RIAA, MPAA, and the Digital Piracy Issue: Comparing Public Relations Strategies and Effectiveness." Conference Papers -- International Communication Association : 1-24. Communication & Mass Media Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed November 13, 2008). [link: EbscoHost]
Sinha, Rajiv K, and Naomi Mandel. 2008. "Preventing Digital Music Piracy: The Carrot or the Stick?." Journal of Marketing 72, no. 1: 1-15. Communication & Mass Media Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed November 13, 2008). [link: EbscoHost]
Yar, Majid. 2008. "The rhetorics and myths of anti-piracy campaigns: criminalization, moral pedagogy and capitalist property relations in the classroom." New Media & Society 10, no. 4: 605-623. Communication & Mass Media Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed November 13, 2008). [link: EbscoHost]

On the Web:

On Piracy: On Piracy & the Future of Media (film Web site)
Piracy: Online & On the Street (from the RIAA's Web site)
Love, Cortney. “Cortney Love Redefines Music Piracy and Blasts the RIAA.” Salon.com (June 13 2000).
Julien McArdle's blog

Good Copy, Bad Copy

2008-11-12T14:09:00.003-06:00

Source: Blip.tv

From Wikipedia.org:

Good Copy Bad Copy, A documentary about the current state of copyright and culture, is a documentary about copyright and culture in the context of Internet, peer-to-peer file sharing and other technological advances. Directed by Andreas Johnsen, Ralf Christensen, and Henrik Moltke.

It features interviews with many people with various perspectives on copyright, including copyright lawyers, producers and artists.

A central point of the documentary is the thesis that "creativity itself is on the line" and that a balance needs to be struck, or that there is a conflict, between protecting the right of those who own intellectual property and the rights of future generations to create.

Originally made for the Danish National Broadcasting Network, the producers made the controversial decision to release the film for free as a BitTorrent download on The Pirate Bay. The documentary has subsequently been released under the Creative Commons (attribution, non-commercial) License and is hosted on Blip.tv.

Resources:

In the Library:

Landes, William M., and Richard A. Posner. 2003. The economic structure of intellectual property law. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. [link: WorldCat]
Lessig, Lawrence. 2004. Free culture: how big media uses technology and the law to lock down culture and control creativity. New York: Penguin Press. [link: WorldCat]
McLeod, Kembrew. 2005. Freedom of expression®: overzealous copyright bozos and other enemies of creativity. New York: Doubleday.[link: WorldCat]
National Research Council (U.S.). 2000. The digital dilemma: intellectual property in the information age. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press. [link: WorldCat]
Scafidi, Susan. 2005. Who owns culture?: appropriation and authenticity in American law. Rutgers series on the public life of the arts. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press. [link: WorldCat]

On the Web:

Berry, David M. and Giles Moss. “The Politics of Libre Commons.” First Monday 11, no. 2 (September 2006). http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue11_9/berry/index.html
Good Copy Bad Copy (official Website)
Creative Commons Press Kit (describes various CC licenses)
Henrik Moltkes Blog

The Last Man On Earth

2008-11-12T09:12:00.005-06:00

Source: Archive.org

Before Will Smith's I Am Legend (2007) and Charlton Heston's The Omega Man (1971), there was Vincent Price's The Last Man On Earth (1964). While latter screen adaptations of Richard Matheson's novel featured bigger budgets, this Sidney Salkow/Ubaldo Ragona film stays closer to the source. Although its limited budget, its dated horror conventions, and the rewriting of Matheson's original script prevented it from attaining “classic” status, the film is still quite watchable, mainly on the strength of Price's acting. In retaining the existential features of I Am Legend (the lone survivor narrative, disease-induced zombie apocolypse, etc.) The Last Man On Earth sets the blueprint for future horror and sci-fi films (the opening scene, where the vampire/zombies attempt to break into Morgan's home is cinematically copied in Night of the Living Dead).

Resources:

In the Library:

Matheson, Richard. 1954. I am legend. Cutchogue, N.Y.: Buccaneer Books. [link: WorldCat]
Morgan, Jack. 2002. The biology of horror: Gothic literature and film. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. [link: NetLibrary]
Price, Vincent. 1959. I like what I know; a visual autobiography. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday.[link: WorldCat]

On the Web:

The Last Man On Earth: Neitzsche or Nosferatu? (movie review @ SciFi.com)
The Last Man On Earth (Wikipedia.org)

Slacker Uprising

2008-11-11T16:02:00.008-06:00

From slackeruprising.org:

Moore’s goal four years ago was to convince millions of non-voting "slackers” -- mostly between the ages of 18-29 -- to give voting a try. Starting out in Elk Rapids, Michigan, in front of an audience of 400, the tour caught on like wildfire with up to 16,000 slackers each night coming to see Moore and his traveling band of speakers, comedians, and musicians.

To encourage the slackers to show up, they were offered a clean change of underwear, Ramen noodles, and a promise that no event would start before noon and no politician would be allowed to speak. These enticements filled basketball arenas and football stadiums every night on the "Slacker Uprising Tour."

Part concert tour, part stand-up comedy performance and part rock concert, Slacker Uprising is one man's look at the birth of a new political generation in America -- a generation of young people who would signal the era of “Obamania” that would take place just four years later.

Resources:

In the Library:

Benoit, William. Bush Versus Kerry : A Functional Analysis of Campaign 2004. New York: Lang Books [WorldCat]
Magleby, David B. Financing the 2004 Election. Washington D.C. : Brookings Institution Press [NetLibrary]
Shaprio, Walter. One-Car Caravan : On The Road With The 2004 Democrats before America Tunes In. New York : Public Affairs [WorldCat]

On the Web:

Slacker Uprising Official Website [Link]
Internet Archive: Election 2004 [Link]
University of Michigan Government Documents Collection on the 2004 Election [Link]

The English Civil Wars

2008-11-11T15:30:00.004-06:00

Source: Brightcove.tv

A lengthy documentary detailing the events of the English Civil War (1642-1651). Touching upon the religious and political differences between Royalist and Parliamentarians, military engagements, shifting allegiances, and missed opportunities are brought to life with dramatic reenactments by members of the English Civil War Society.

This documentary has been released by Christie Books and is hosted on Brightcove.

Resources:

In the Library:

Taylor, Philip A. M. 1960. The origins of the English Civil War: conspiracy, crusade, or class conflict? Problems in European civilization. Boston: Heath.[link: WorldCat]
Tierney, Brian. The English civil war: a fight for lawful government. 1967. New York: Random House.[link: WorldCat]

On the Web:

Ashton, Robert, and Raymond Howard Parry. 1970. The English Civil War and after, 1642-1658. Berkeley: University of California Press. [link: NetLibrary]
Purkiss, Diane. 2005. Literature, gender and politics during the English Civil War. Cambridge [u.a.]: Cambridge Univ. Press. [link: NetLibrary]

Terrorizing Dissent

2008-11-10T16:47:00.004-06:00

Source: TerrorizingDissent.org (pt1, pt2, pt3, pt4); LoBandwidth version (pt 1, pt2, pt3, pt4)

From IndyMedia.org [link]:

“Glass Bead Collective, Twin Cities Indymedia, and other independent media activists have released a new film, 'Terrorizing Dissent', an exposé of events at the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota.

“Featuring first-person accounts and footage from more than forty cameras on the streets, 'Terrorizing Dissent' focuses on the story of dissent suppressed. People charged with "conspiracy to riot in furtherance of terrorism" speak out against the government's campaign to manipulate media coverage and label civil disobedience and community organizing as terrorism.”

Cut from hundreds of hours of donated footage, "Terrorizing Dissent" has been released for free on the Internet in HD, FLV and Quicktime formats, under the Creative Commons / CopyLeft license, and its producers encourage everyone to share this important film.

Resources:

In the Library:

Krüger, Marlis, and Frieda Silvert. 1975. Dissent denied: the technocratic response to protest. New York: Elsevier.[link: WorldCat]
Meyer, David S., Nancy Whittier, and Belinda Robnett. 2002. Social movements: identity, culture, and the state. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [link: WorldCat]
Stephens, Julie. 1998. Anti-disciplinary protest: sixties radicalism and postmodernism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [link: WorldCat]
Trodd, Zoe. 2006. American protest literature. The John Harvard library. Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. [link: WorldCat]
Woodcock, George. 1977. The Anarchist reader. Hassocks, Eng: Harvester Press.[link: WorldCat]
Young, Alfred Fabian. 1968. Dissent. Explorations in the history of American radicalism. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press. [link: WorldCat]

On the Web:

“Amy Goodman & Two Democracy Now! Producers Arrested at RNC Protest” (from DemocracyNow.org)
“Police raid headquarters of RNC protesters” (from CNN.com)
“RNC Welcoming Committee Anarchists Busted” (from National Terror Alert Center)
RNC Welcoming Committee Homepage

Little Shop of Horrors

2008-11-04T09:58:00.004-06:00

Source Google Video

Released in 1960 and directed by Roger Corman the original title of the film was The Passionate People Eater. The 1960 version inspired an off-broadway musical, which in turn inspired a 1986 remake starring Rick Moranis as Seymour, which inspired a revival of the play on Broadway in 2003. A young Jack Nicholson appears in the 1960 version, a decade before his break-out role in Five Easy Pieces. Today Little Shop of Horrors continues to be a popular musical, performed most recently at the Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey on June 8, 2008.

Resources:

In the Library:

• Cochran, David. America Noir : Underground Writers and Filmmakers of the Postwar Era. Washington [D.C.] : Smithsonian Institution Press. [WorldCat]

• Menken, Alan. Little Shop of Horrors : A New Musical. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday. [WorldCat]

On the Web:

• Internet Broadway Database [link]

A Bucket of Blood

2008-10-31T10:37:00.003-06:00

Source: Internet Archive

In 1959, with fifty-thousand dollars and a five-day shooting schedule, Roger Corman wanted to break from shooting straight horror films, and set out to create a horror film infused with black comedic elements while also satirizing the beatnik, “art house” culture. With its low production value and farcical elements, A Bucket of Blood set the tone (which Corman sharpened the following year with The Little Shop of Horrors) not only for later horror-comedies, but for the boom in exploitation and grindhouse films of the 60s and 70s as well.

From Internet Movie Database:

At the time of its original release there was a promotion in the newspaper's movie section advertisements that made the offer, “If You Bring In A Bucket Of Blood To Your Local Theater's Management (Or Ticket Booth), You Will Be Given One Free Admission.”

Resources:

In the Library:

Corman, Roger, and Jim Jerome. 1990. How I made a hundred movies in Hollywood and never lost a dime. New York: Random House. [Link: WorldCat]
Fischer, Dennis. 1991. Horror film directors, 1931-1990. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland. [Link: WorldCat]
Dittman, Michael J. 2007. Masterpieces of Beat literature. Greenwood introduces literary masterpieces. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press. [Link: NetLibrary]

On the Web:

A Bucket of Blood (Wikipedia)
Roger Corman (at Senses of Cinema)

Dementia 13

2008-10-30T09:36:00.004-06:00

Sources: Google Video, Internet Archive

In 1963, after completing production of The Young Racers with an extra $20,000 left over, B-movie king Roger Corman approached the young Francis Ford Coppola, wanting him to make a psychological horror film along the lines of Hitchcock’s recent film, Psycho. Crafting a story over night, writing a screenplay in a matter of days, and shooting the entire film in a single location over the course of only a few weeks, Coppola’s Hollywood directorial debut stands up suprisingly well.

Resources:

In the Library:

Lewis, Jon. 1995. Whom God wishes to destroy--: Francis Coppola and the new Hollywood. Durham: Duke University Press. [Link: WorldCat]
Lourdeaux, Lee. 1990. Italian and Irish filmmakers in America: Ford, Capra, Coppola, and Scorsese. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. [Link: WorldCat]
Phillips, Gene D. 2004. Godfather: the intimate Francis Ford Coppola. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. [Link: WorldCat]

"Francis Ford Coppola." Guide to Literary Masters and Their Works (2007). Literary Reference Center, EBSCOhost. [Link: EbscoHost]

On the Web:

“Dementia 13” (review from 1000Misspenthours.com)

Solar System

2008-10-29T18:26:00.007-06:00

Source Internet Archive

When he saw saw this film in 1979, George Lucas hired Tom Smith to run his visual effects facility, Industrial Light and Magic. From 1980 to 1986, Smith oversaw the visual effects for many block buster features including: Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), E.T.: The Extra-Terrestial (1982), Poltergeist (1982), Return of the Jedi (1983), Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), and many others. This is his academic film masterwork, which took over a year to create, over 13 weeks to film, and utilized "traveling mattes," with as many as five separate films running in the background, showcasing wonderful models and graphics.

About the making of the film, Tom Smith writes:

"I made that film in 1976 with Richard Basehard as narrator and a classical music score recorded in the Soviet Union... this was the film that turned my career toward visual effects. We shot it in a large rented space in the back of a West Los Angeles dress factory. We hung large black curtains to keep out light out from the factory but we could still hear the sewing machine whirring away behind the curtain. They were making bathrobes at the time, out of luffy material. It took months of preparation before we could shoot our first frame of film. We laid down a forty foot stretch of track of parallel plumbing ipes and put down a camera support whose movements were on a geared guide so every increment of movement could be controlled with the turn of a wheel. Nearly all of the shots involved a moving camera. It was like animation with three dimensional model planets instead of cell images. We found the best material for the planets was hard wood. So we hired a Hollywood cabinet shop to make nine spheres for us, about 18 inches in diameter. These were sanded and painted to match images in astronomy books and observatory photos. Shooting one frame at a time meant we never got more than a few seconds of film shot in a day. One long shot involved the camera moving in on Mars. The first long day’s work was ruined. As the camera came in on the red planet, a large piece of fuzz came into frame, sitting on the planet. It had drifted down on the sphere from the dress factory." - Academic Film Archive

Resources:

In the Library:

• Rickitt, Richard. Special effects : The History and Technique [WorldCat]

• McCarthy, Robert E. Secrets of Hollywood Special Effects [WorldCat]

• Vaz, Mark Cotta. The invisible art : the legends of movie matte painting [WorldCat]

• Prince, Stephen. The Emergence of Filmic Artifacts: Cinema and Cinematography in the Digital Era. Film Quarterly, Vol. 57, No. 3 (Spring, 2004), pp. 24-33 [JSTOR]

On the Web:

• Industrial Light and Magic official website

• Bigoraphy of Thomas G. Smith at the Academic Film Archive of North America

Nosferatu

2008-10-28T12:57:00.005-06:00

Source: Google Video

For your Holloween enjoyment, we present F. W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (1921). This groundbreaking German silent film is essentially a “retelling” of the Dracula story. At the time of its production, the estate of Bram Stoker still retained the copyright to the Dracula novel, so Murnau's studio, Prana Film, tried to insert just enough creative license to pass off Nosferatu as a derivative work. Stoker’s estate thought the changes merely cosmetic, and brought Prana Film to court. The courts ruled in favor of Stoker, ordered all copies of the film confiscated, and forced Prana Film into bankruptcy. Fortunately (for posterity), a large number of reels had already been distributed overseas, ensuring the survival of this now classic film. Nosferatu even inspired a big-budget remake in 1979 by acclaimed German director, Werner Herzog.

Resources:

In the Library:

Carter, Margaret L. 1988. Dracula: the vampire and the critics. Studies in speculative fiction, no. 19. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press. [Link: WorldCat]
Eisner, Lotte H. 1973. Murnau. Berkeley: University of California Press. [Link: WorldCat]
Manvell, Roger, and Heinrich Fraenkel. 1971. The German cinema. New York: Praeger Publishers. [Link: WorldCat]
Skal, David J. 1990. Hollywood gothic: the tangled web of Dracula from novel to stage to screen. New York: Norton. [Link: WorldCat]

On the Web:

Nosferatu (comparison between the original Murnau film and the Herzog remake)
Nosferatu (1921) Classic Film Review (Contains information regarding the development of the film)

Who Killed the Electric Car?

2008-10-28T10:48:00.007-06:00

Source: [Google Video (French Subs), (Spanish Subs)]

Chris Paine’s 2006 documentary, Who Killed the Electric Car? traces the trials & travails of the General Motors EV-1, the first commercially produced electric car in modern times. The EV-1 was made available through a least program to California and Arizona residents from 1996 to 2003. In August of that year, General Motors made the controversial decision to recall all EV-1s, denying the requests of owners to extent the lease or to purchase the vehicle from GM.

Whether or not the decision to discontinue development of the EV-1 was a practical business decision or one shrouded in ulterior motives, the decision resulted in American auto manufacturers abandoning research into alternative fueled vehicles, while Honda and Toyota continued to develop battery and hybrid gas-electric designs. The decision to kill the EV-1 is one that Larry Burns, Chief of Research & Development for General Motors, recently lamented in Newsweek, stating, “If we could turn back the hands of time ... we could have had the Chevy Volt 10 years earlier.”

Resources:

In the Library:

Exum, Kaitlen Jay, and Lynn Messina. 2004. The car and its future. The reference shelf, v. 76, no. 5. New York: H.W. Wilson. [Link: WorldCat]

Shnayerson, Michael. 1996. The car that could: the inside story of GM's revolutionary electric vehicle. New York: Random House. [Link: WorldCat]

Westbrook, M. H. 2001. The electric car: development and future of battery, hybrid and fuel-cell cars. IEE power and energy series, 38. London: Institution of Electrical Engineers. [Link: WorldCat]

On the Web:

Barthmus, Dave. “Who Ignored the Facts About the Electric Car? | GM FYI Blog,” http://fyi.gmblogs.com/2006/06/who_ignored_the_facts_about_th.html.

Duck and Cover

2008-10-28T07:20:00.008-06:00

Source Internet Archive

Duck and Cover was a civil defense film produced in 1951 by the United States federal government's Civil Defense branch shortly after the Soviet Union began nuclear testing. Written by Raymond J. Mauer and directed by Anthony Rizzo of Archer Productions and made with the help of school children from New York City and Astoria, New York, it was shown in schools as the cornerstone of the government's "duck and cover" public awareness campaign. Narrated through Bert the Turtle, the movie states that nuclear war could happen at any time without warning, and U.S. citizens should keep this constantly in mind and be ever ready.

Although duck-and-cover drills are no longer held in United States schools and most fallout shelters have been closed down or abandoned, Duck and Cover, which was shown to an entire generation of children, is part of American popular culture. The idea has been constantly referenced in television shows and movies, usually in a context implying Duck and Cover is an example of kitch. - Wikipedia

Resources:

In the Library:

• Cannell, Roger S. Live; a handbook of survival in nuclear attack. [WorldCat]

• United States Defense Civil Preparedness Agency. Protection in the Nuclear Age. [Government Document D 14.8/3:20]

• United States Federal Emergency Management Agency. Home Fallout Shelter : Modified Ceiling Shelter, Basement Location Plan A. [Government Document FEM 1.8/3:12-A]

• Davis, Tracy C. Between History and Event: Rehearsing Nuclear War Survival. TDR, Vol. 46, No. 4 (Winter, 2002), pp. 11-45. [JSTOR]

On the Web:

• 1979 Office of Technology Assessment The Effects of Nuclear War

• Production History of Duck and Cover

The Man Who Planted Trees [L'homme qui plantait des arbres]

2008-10-26T15:53:00.009-06:00

Source Google Video

The Man Who Planted Trees, also known as The Story of Elzéard Bouffier, The Most Extraordinary Character I Ever Met, and The Man Who Planted Hope and Reaped Happiness, is an allegorical tale by French author Jean Giono, published in 1953. It tells the story of one shepherd's long and successful single-handed effort to reforest a desolate valley in the foothills of the Alps near Provence throughout the first half of the 20th century. Undeterred by two World Wars, and without any thought of personal reward, the shepherd tirelessly sows his seeds and acorns with the greatest care. As if by magic, a landscape that seemed condemned grows green again.

Resources:

In the Library:

• Giono, Jean. The song of the world [WorldCat]

• Giono, Jean. Blue Boy [WorldCat]

• Giono, Jean. Regain, Roman [WorldCat]

• Giono, Jean. Le chant du monde [WorldCat]

On the Web:

• Biography of Jean Gino

The Fog of War

2008-10-26T07:37:00.003-06:00

Source Google Video

Robert S. McNamara discusses his experiences and lessons learned during his tenure as Secretary of Defense under John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. He talks about his work as a bombing statistician during World War II, his brief tenure as president of Ford Motor Company, and the Kennedy administration's triumph during the Cuban Missile Crisis. However, the film focuses primarily on his failures in Vietnam. The theme of the film are his "eleven lessons" learned during this time. Some of these include improving military efficiency, understanding your enemy, and the frustrations of trying to deal with (and unsuccessfully trying to change) human nature.

Resources:

In the Library:

• Dobbs, Michael. One minute to midnight : Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the brink of nuclear war. [WorldCat]

• Freedman, Lawrence. Kennedy's wars : Berlin, Cuba, Laos, and Vietnam. [WorldCat]

• McNamara, Robert S. Argument without end : in search of answers to the Vietnam tragedy. [WorldCat]

• McNamara, Robert S. In retrospect : the tragedy and lessons of Vietnam. [WorldCat]

On the Web:

• Fog of War: The Official Site

•CNN Cold War Episode Interviewing Robert S. McNamara

Night of the Living Dead

2008-10-24T23:24:00.007-05:00

[Link: Google Video]
[Link: Internet Archive]

With Halloween approaching, we offer the 1968 George A. Romero classic, Night of the Living Dead. While not the first zombie movie (that honor goes to the 1932 Victor Halperin film, White Zombie, starring the legendary Bela Lugosi), Night of the Living Dead redefined the genre, spawned a ravenous horde of sequels and imitators, and its influence has infected virtually all media, from movies, books, and music to comic books and video games (there is even a zombie musical).

Outside of a few dark corners of literary studies, anthropology, comparative religion, zombies have until recently gained scant scholarly attention. But within the last decade they have come out of the darkness of pop culture into the light of academia, where these mindless creatures have given rise to serious thought. The philosopher David B. Chalmers used the idea of a zombie to critique generally accepted notions of human consciousness. His book, The Conscious Mind, provoked an onslaught of responses within philosophy, psychology, and cognitive science.

True to their nature, zombies have proven difficult to put down, even in the scholarly world. The zombie infection has slowly spread to other disciplines. In business, zombies have inspired the concept of “zombie firms” -- inefficient, debt-ladden firms which only continue to survive due to support from national banks,and in computer science, there is the “zombie computer” -- an idle computer whose security has been compromised and is being exploited by another. There was even a recent call for papers on interdisciplinary zombie studies. (If interested, you'd better hurry. The deadline is October 31st!)

Resources:
Chalmers, David B. (1996) The Conscious Mind. New York: Oxford University Press. [Link: NetLibrary]

Cavanaugh, Tim. “We the Living Dead: The Convoluted Politics of Zombie Cimema.” Reason Magazine. Febuary 2007. [Link: Reason Online]

Hoshi, Takeo. 2006. "ECONOMICS OF THE LIVING DEAD." Japanese Economic Review 57, no. 1: 30-49. [Link: Ebsco - Business Source Complete]

Paffinroth, Kim (2006). Gospel of the Living Dead: George Romero's Visions of Hell on Earth. Waco, Tx.: Baylor University Press. [Link: NetLibrary]

Kirk, Robert (2006). “Zombies.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = .

Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price

2008-10-23T15:40:00.012-05:00

Source Google Video

This documentary takes the viewer on a deeply personal journey into the everyday lives of families struggling to survive against the presence of Wal-Mart. From a family business owner in the Midwest to a preacher in California, from workers in Florida to a poet in Mexico, dozens of film crews on three continents capture these intensely personal stories. This documentary intends to show that even if your only connection to the company is seeing its large stores pass by the window of your car that its impact probably reaches your life in ways you never imagined.

Resources:

In the Library:

• Dicker, John. The United States of Wal-Mart. [WorldCat]

• Smith, Hedrick. Is Wal-Mart good for America? {videorecording} [WorldCat]

• Vedder, Richard K. The Wal-Mart revolution : how big-box stores benefit consumers, workers, and the economy. [WorldCat]

• Ortega, Bob. In Sam we trust : the untold story of Sam Walton and how Wal-Mart is devouring America [WorldCat]

• Vance, Sandra Stringer. Wal-Mart : a history of Sam Walton's retail phenomenon. [WorldCat]

On the Web:

• NPR - Wal-Mart's Social and Economic Impact

Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot

2008-10-23T10:07:00.003-05:00

Source: Google Video

On Friday, the philosophy club will present a showing of the film V For Vendetta (2005), directed by James McTeigue, and based on a graphic novel of the same name by Alan Moore. Following the showing of the film, Dr. Matthew Butkus will lead a discussion of philosophical themes in the movie. The main conceit of the film is that the character V, who hides behind a mask of Guy Fawkes, threatens to destroy the House of Parliament on November 5th, the anniversary of the gunpowder plot.

It was on that day in 1605 that a group of conspirators led by Robert Catesby hoped to overthrow the government of King James I with the help of a Guy Fawkes. Fawkes, who had become an explosives expert as a soldier fighting for Catholic Spain, shared the conspirator's disdain for Protestant rule. It was hoped that by blowing up the Parliament building during the state opening -- killing both James and the Protestant Aristocracy -- the resulting upheaval would result in Catholic nobility returning to power in England. But on the night of November 4th, Fawkes was captured in a vault beneath the House of Lords, guarding a cache of 36 barrels of gunpowder. His capture put an end to the consiracy, and the discovery of the plot turned public sentiment even more strongly in support of Protestant rule.

To this day, November 5th is a national holiday in the United Kingdom, and is celebrated with the exploding of fireworks.

Resources:

In the Library:

• Fraser, Antonia. 1996. Faith and Treason: the Story of the Gunpowder Plot . New York: Doubleday. [WorldCat]
• Gardiner, Samuel Rawson. 1969. What Gunpowder Plot Was . New York: AMS Press. [WorldCat]

On the Web:

• BBC History - The Gunpowder Plot
• UK Parliament - Gunpowder Plot