Eric Byler's and Annabel Park's 9500 Liberty

Here is the first four parts of Byler and Park's documentary, 9500 liberty. You can find the rest at http://www.youtube.com/9500Liberty.

Watch

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/darfur/view/main.html

There's going to be trouble! Make that a Double!

Keeping It Real Goes Wrong

Dave Chappelle Keeps it Real

1234, One More Time.

If you wondered how they made that camera spin like that, check out the making of "1234." And if that's not enough, you can procrastinate more at the The Directors Bureau, featuring work of everyone's favorite, Patrick Daughters.

Also, a nytimes article and interview with Feist here and an older appearance on sound opinions here.

BILL MAHER ::SEPTEMBER 7 2007:: PART THREE

can i just say that i love this duo - mos def with his emphatic outbursts, calling things as they are, connecting the dots, and dr. cornel west taking the baton from mos to bring it back and sum it up in a few well-articulated points.
you can find parts four and five and six through youtube.

Blu Animation

taken from wooster collective...incredible wall animation by Blu

Will Forte Dance

Manning / Forte LockerRoom Dance
Uploaded by lmnopeek

i want to dance like will forte

The Hypnotic Brass Ensemble

Jena Six, a photo story (Jena6)

http://www.whileseated.org/photo/003244.shtml

http://www.colorofchange.org/jena/

in case there is any doubt, racism is a grim reality in our country.

The case of the Jena six- Racism in Louisiana - pt 1

There Will Be Blood and No Country for Old Men

Two trailers that are making me very impatient:





I want to see them now.

FYI: PT Anderson's film is scored by Johnny Greenwood of Radiohead

new graffiti from roadsworth

A few recent outtakes.

Feist and a Japanese Mob

see who you can pick out amongst those in the choir...there's kevin drew of broken social scene, and sprinkled in are members of grizzly bear and the national...

and on a completely unrelated note, here's video clips of a Japanese mob:

four-language rap

this is cool.

Miss South Carolina

Epuron - Interesting Commercial

Primer on Iraqi Mess

If you want a cliff notes version of how things have devolved in Iraq, watch the following:

FRONTLINE: END GAME

"In the classic arc of Greek tragedy, the hero rises to great heights, and then he's brought down by hubris, his own hubris.

"And I remember thinking, 'Well,' you know, 'we went through that part of it.' And except in this particular narrative, the hero has gathered himself and seen his errors and tried to get everything right. And maybe it's too late." - Dexter Filkins, New York Times

nostalgia

does anyone else remember this korean lullabye?

Acme Novelty Library #16, by Chris Ware

So the f. and I stumbled upon this book yesterday at Barnes, tucked away in the back, lost amongst the Harry Potter madness:



It's a hard bound comic by Chris Wares that interweaves the stories of various characters in Omaha, Nebraska, centering around an incredibly awkward eight year old boy named Rusty Brown, a kid with delusions of super-hero grandeur and an infatuation for Super Girl.

it's very worthy of the $15.95 sticker price...

fucked up shit and art that makes you go hmm....

fucked up shit: FEMA Knew Of Toxic Gas In Trailers

photos that makes you go hmmm....via amysteinphoto.com
















and :D

Wannabes

Why would anybody want, even choose, to be disabled in order to feel whole and secure? In this fascinating and challenging report from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, producer Kath Duncan, who herself was born without one arm and one leg, tries to understand why some people actually aspire to be like her. These "wannabes" are physically complete and able, but wish they weren't and will go to great lengths, even amputation, to achieve the body image they hold of themselves. Duncan brings us a moving portrait of her journey into a strange subculture. This program is part of our international documentary exchange series, Crossing Boundaries.

Listen to the report here.

In a completely unrelated story, we went hiking the other day and I thought this blog could use some more photos.

currently watching

http://www.noendinsightmovie.com/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LukWzli19M&mode=related&search=

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdCsoQPu5bg&mode=related&search=

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UD1K_ssAvtk&mode=related&search=

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20AWmX0SN-w&mode=related&search=

Beyond Absurd

From the Christian Science Monitor:
********************
Washington - Is Vice President Dick Cheney's office an executive branch agency? Or is it a Washington hybrid that works for both the executive and legislative branches of the US government? That's the underlying issue in a new controversy over Mr. Cheney's lack of cooperation with a government office charged with safeguarding national security information....At issue is the work of the Information Security Oversight Office – a small part of the National Archives whose job it is to oversee the government-wide security classification system.

As part of that work, the office collects data on how much US material is classified and declassified. Per a signed presidential executive order, agencies of the executive branch are required to hand this information over.

Cheney's office provided this information in 2001 and 2002. Then it stopped...

Administration officials say Cheney's office is exempt from the executive order, since it has both executive branch and legislative functions. Per the US Constitution, the vice president serves as president of the Senate, and may vote to break ties in that chamber...

Rep. Henry Waxman (D) of California rejected this assertion as absurd. Representative Waxman is chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which is investigating the classification matter. In general, Waxman has been a thorn in the side of the White House since the Democrats gained control of Congress.

"The vice president can't unilaterally decide he is his own branch of government and exempt himself from important, commonsense safeguards for protecting classified information," said Waxman on June 22.
********************

The rest of the article can be found here:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0626/p02s01-uspo.html?page=3

How do you respond to such absurdity? You fight nonsense with nonsense...Here's a crazy Japanese video:

In Honor of AFI's New list...

After watching AFI's revision of its top 100 American films, I was inspired to research other favorite lists...and came across this gem...

5th avenue brooklyn street fair

i like this artist

i came across his work during the 5th ave. street fair in brooklyn a couple of months ago. it was an interesting mix of folks & goods, especially as you walked south from park slope towards sunset park. the sushi hand rolls and gourmetogranicveganwheat-free baked goods offered from various stands slowly gave way to buckets of brighly-colored faux-fruit magnets and cotton candy.

Creature Comforts

This show is very entertaining! From Nick Park, the creator of Wallace and Gromit. It originated in the UK, but is now playing on CBS. Check out CBS.com to see the first episode that aired on June 4. My co-worker was interviewed for it and he's the snake that swallowed a cat on the first show...

the possibility of hope.

I enjoyed the bonus feature mini-doc from The Children of Men. I hope you do, too.

REALITY

Slavoj Zizek, Philosopher, Cultural Critic
For me, The Children of Men is a realist film, but in what sense? Hegel in his aesthetics says somewhere that a good portrait looks more like the person who is portrayed than the person himself, like a good portrait is more you than you are yourself. I think this is what the film does with our reality. The changes that it introduces do not point towards alternate reality. It simply makes reality more what it already it is. It makes us perceive our own reality as an alternate reality, like we already live in alternate reality in the sense that we didn’t do it properly and history took the wrong turn.

Naomi Klein, Anti-Globalization Activist
Really, all Utopianism is, is the impulse to dream, to dream your way out of the present. So, I’m not against utopianism at all. I think that impulse to dream, we need to cherish – we need to develop it. I think we have a very stunted ability to imagine a different world and to work towards it. But I think we do need to identify what it is about a certain ideology, certain models of thought, that are dangerous.

Tzvetan Todorov, Philosopher and Historian
It would be interesting to point to some major characteristics of the present day. One of these characteristics is the growing threat coming from individuals. What has happened with the enormous progress of technology, which allows now, isolated individuals to have as much power as a whole state. It’s called globalization. The second major change of course – the acceleration of contact between populations.

Fabrizio Eva, Human Geographer
One of the primary characteristics of human beings is that they have always moved. They started from a central point, Africa, and from there, migrated everywhere. In the last 30 years, migration has taken on a global dimension and has produced problems. Places of departure have changed considerably, and destinations have changed, too. Human mobility is uncontrollable unless you act on the main cause of mobility, especially in our days. I think the main cause is inequality – inequality of opportunities, not only socioeconomic conditions.

Saskia Sassen, Sociologist of Human Migrations
The good scenario is that the countries where the people are coming from, together with the countries where they’re going to, get their act together, creating the economic environments so that people don’t have to leave unless they want to. But that scenario has many causes. Not just that they don’t get together and do something about it, but that global warming delivers its goods, which is a lot more water in a lot of parts of poor countries, which means that people will have to leave. We can call this a kind of environmental-driven migration. Now, mind you, many of these things – the environmental question, the economic question, the civil wars, the privatization of land, the pushing-off of people – those things are happening. They’re happening all over the world.

John Gray, Philosopher and Economist
The most fundamental reality at the present time is that the human species has overshot the capacity of the planet to sustain it, both in terms of human numbers, and in terms of the impact of these human beings on the planet. This is a very challenging situation, and the first challenge it poses is of really understanding it, of accepting it, because unless we understand the extent to which we’ve already damaged the planet, the extent to which climate change is already irreversible, then whatever we do to cope with environmental issues will have no real long-term effect.

James Lovelock, Scientist and Futurologist
I look on the earth as an elderly patient. She is someone, who would be, if she were human, in her 80s. In other words, strong, vigorous for her 80s, but not as young as she once was. She has only, at the most, a billion years more to live, whereas she has lived perhaps nearly four billion. Because she is quite old, any stress she receives – it’s the same with one of us – I’m at about her age in my 80s, and if I get influenza, it’ll be a lot more serious than it would be if you get it. Well, our patient, the Earth, has the problem of humans. There are, I’m afraid, too many of them, and they are doing too much damage to her capacity to regulate her temperature and composition.

FEAR

Zizek: We no longer live in a world. “World” means when you have a meaningful experience of what reality is, which is rooted in your community and in its language, and it is clear that the true, most radical impact of global capitalism is that we lack this basic, literally, world view, a meaningful experience of totality. Because of this, today, the main mode of politics is fear. The motive, how you mobilize people, it’s fear. Political groups today are bands of people who are afraid, who are mobilized by fear, fear of immigrants, even leftists, fear of too-strong state, fear of taxation. This is the definition of infertility – is that when your mobilizing principle is just pleasure and fear. This again, I think, it’s a very sad indication of where we stand today.

Todorov: This new contact of populations is, I think, dominated by two major passions, and these two passions come out of a reaction to our inequality. These two big passions are called humiliation and fear. The humiliation is experienced by the powerless toward the more powerful. It encounters, on the other side, fear, and fear is just as powerful a source of violence. In fact, if we think of the major violences of the recent times, they all come out of fear. It is because we were so afraid of what will happen, that we accepted torture, and if you are really frightened, you get accustomed to different transgressions of the rules of normal life between human beings.

Klein: When people fall in love with what seems to be a perfect theory, a set of rules, and they love those rules more than they love people or places. In fact they begin to see the messy reality of life as interfering with the beauty, the imagined beauty, that exists only in their text, only in the sacred texts, whether they’re economic texts, or religious texts, or some dream of racial purity. I think we need to fear people who love systems more than people because the flip side of the love is the hatred for anything or anyone that interferes with the realization of that system, and this is the other thing about dangerous utopias, is that they can’t coexist with other ideas. They need the whole stage.

Zizek: When people say that 1990 was the time of the end of utopias – 1990 fiasco of communist regimes, also of welfare state, symbolized with the fall of the Berlin Wall – but the true utopia was the idea that at the end of history, “Now, okay, there may be some dictators here and there, but we have the formula: ‘global, liberal capitalism with democracy.’”

Eva: In the capitalistic system, economic inequality is acceptable. It’s the engine of production. So, the political organizations and the state have to guarantee this inequality because theoretically, inequality brings richness.

Sassen: The fact of the corruptions and the abuses of power: they are all legal! Those are our contemporary brutalities. The problem is that so many of these brutalities, of global capitalism, are not immediately legible. You need to make the connections between that which appears unconnected and to show the extent to which suffering here is a product of what we admire and consider prosperous and desirable there. And, so today, too, I think you see it happening in bits and pieces, that recognition that this global capitalism needs to be civilized. We need to tame, you know, as the taming of a wild animal, that wild capitalism.

Klein: It doesn’t have the ability to think rationally, this economic model. It thinks like a drug addict: “Where can I get my next fix?” It doesn’t learn wisely, if we think of, you know, any kind of measure of natural wisdom would be, you make a mistake, you correct it the next time around, but a drug addict feels terrible and then says, “I want more.” Unfortunately, we have an economic model that thinks like a crack addict.

WALLS

Lovelock: The earth, just like a human, occasionally gets fevers, in the course of usually, dealing with an infection, or some problem that has occurred. In other words, it’s not deliberately making things hot, just to remove us, but just as you, when you get a fever, warm up, it is part of your body’s response to a problem, and it’s the same with the Earth.

Zizek: The problem is what is happening with democracy in our times. It’s no longer this old democracy focused on justice, equality, unconditioned participation of everybody in public life. Our democracy is segregation, gated communities. The practical ethic of globalization is that new walls are popping up all around – United States building walls on the frontier of Mexico and so on. That’s the reality of globalization.

Eva: Frontiers have progressively changed their meaning. Today, they are more and more functional. In the economical field, they want frontiers to be eliminated to facilitate exchange. Frontiers are an obstacle when you set out to make money especially in a globalized economics. For people, by contrast, boundaries are still kept. This is a contradiction with respect to migrating dynamics. Liberalization is incompatible with control of movements.

Sassen: Hermetic walls don’t seem to work in this world of ours. It works rhetorically for those who want to control the border – the state, some politicians. Very powerful. But it also works, rhetorically, in making those who want to come in feel that they’re violating something – that they’re violating a country – not just crossing a border informally, but violating a nation state. Hey, that’s a heavy burden; I wouldn’t want to have it.

Eva: This globalization process does not extinguish other cultures because it takes a long time for other cultures to disappear. Yet, it has repercussions between young and old people. Young people are willing to move, so they already have a preexisting conviction that they don’t have to accept their culture the way it is. When they realize that life somewhere else might be better, they move to find their own, new identities.

Todorov: We all belong to some form of culture. We absorb this culture through the education that we receive in childhood. It is related to our language, then to different landscapes that we live in. Now, what happens is that, during migrations of populations, they lose the initial culture, especially the younger ones, the children, but they don’t acquire a new culture. Now this is, of course, a huge danger, because it is the destruction of their humanity.

Sassen: I’m not so concerned about this question of identity. I am much more concerned about membership, the notion that you belong to some political community. When it comes to migrants, to asylum seekers, to refugees, if you’re miserable, then you are, in fact, robbed. Your identity doesn’t translate. You become invisible. You become a number. You become a problem.

Klein: I think we’ve abandoned a notion of development that is about steady progress that involves building infrastructure, putting in electricity, phone lines, water, building schools. You know, more and more in my travels, what I see is what I call the Global Green Zone, where you have a sort of bubble where the internationals are, and their local partners, right, working with NGOs. So instead of infrastructure, you have an absolute, kind of, apartheid system of the people with the generators, the bottle water, the cell phones, an expensive, totally privatized infrastructure, and then surrounded by this chaos. This is, maybe, the future that we’re seeing here, the Global Green Zone.

Sassen: Cities have always had walls, but they were invisible very often. What is interesting today is that the walls are deeply perforated. The walls are not working. So the next step is, of course, all kinds of securitizing, the weaponizing of urban space, the weaponizing of luxury buildings. The gated community is, in a way, the most extreme form, but the weaponizing of urban space is in full..you know, it’s totally there now. I see this also in a future scenario. I think that the real walls are going to be invisible walls, but if you cross them, you will know it, and they will know it, and that to me is a much scarier scenario.

FEVER

Lovelock: The fever has already started. The intergovernmental panel on climate change that was issued in 2001 warns of all the bad things that are going to happen during this century. If, for example, you live in Iceland, you’re in a very fortunate position because that part of the Earth is going to warm up but it’s very cold there, so it’ll just get better and better. Eventually, it will be tropical.

Gray: The scientific consensus is that climate change can’t now be reversed. We can perhaps prevent it from accelerating, but even if the whole world stopped using fossil fuels tomorrow, even if the whole world stopped further destruction of forests and rainforests and so on, there’s 100 or 200 years of climate change in the works.

Klein: And more and more, we see the progression of this economic model through disasters, so we’re now in a cycle where the economic model itself is so destructive to the planet that the number of disasters are increasing, both financial disasters and natural disasters. But if we think about hurricanes, earthquakes, they’ve increased dramatically in recent years. In the past 20 years, the number of market crashes has also increased.

Lovelock: If you live in the middle of Europe or here in America, things are going to get very bad indeed. It’s going to get so hot in the summer the crops won’t grow, so you won’t have food, and you won’t get it from the rest of the world, either, because they’ll all be under the same kind of drought conditions. What will happen, I think, is there’ll be mass migration.

Klein: We’re looking at a system of climate apartheid. The waters are rising, and some peoplea re going to be left to drown, a lot of people. There will be people who will be able to drive out. Not everyone will die. And those people will build their Global Green Zone where, Alaska? But this isn’t a joke, you know, land in Alaska is getting more expensive, and I think that that’s clearly the direction we’re going in. I wouldn’t say of human extinction, but it is going to be a genocidal logic. I suppose a survival of the fittest, but more what it’s about is, “Me and my friends are gonna be fine. We have SUVs. We have generators. We have air conditioners. We have bottled water, and we bought land in Alaska.”

Sassen: There is a large number of brilliant accountants, brilliant lawyers, and brilliant economists, all totally creative, whoa re trying to map the ways in which global warming is going to create new opportunities for profit-making. But if we think of the melting, the water, you know, the raising of the water level, that will produce refugee flows because there will be environmental refugees, actually.

Gray: Those parts of the world that have strong states will attempt, in various ways, to control the impact on themselves of issues of migration from parts of the world which are very badly affected. However, it’s far from being the case that the advanced world will be immune to large eruptions.

Sassen: And I think that this environmental catastrophe is going to make quite a few states, especially now we’ve had a proliferation of states that are not…they cannot survive. They’re not sustainable. And it’s going to again, demand from us thinking and innovating in terms of how this legal notion of political membership…What community do you belong to? Because there is enormous reluctance to take in asylum, to take in seekers, to take in refugees.

Lovelock: I think it would be a selection of survivors. Whenever there is something bad that happens, like a war, like a big accident, or a tsunami, or a giant storm, or anything like that, you find there are people that almost freeze on the spot and get killed and there are others who recognize the warning signs, take action and move and save themselves and they get selected. And in the course of the warm-up of the Earth, this is going to happen. The ones with a sense of survival will migrate and move to. The others will just stay put and hope that something will save them, and it won’t.

Gray: There is certainly a profound tendency in human beings, which, in evolutionary terms, was probably very useful to them, to struggle on blindly. Hope against hope. Optimism, I’m sure had profound evolutionary advantages, but in our present situation, realism is more useful.

Zizek: Let me ask you a simple question: Why do we…even now, with all these reports of global warming, why do we still not take it seriously? We take it seriously, rationally, but nonetheless, we cannot act, because we know that it’s true, what scientists are telling us. But, we don’t really believe them. You know, it’s like you read about global warming, then you go out and see, “My God, the sun, the flowers. Wait a minute, this cannot disappear. This is here.”

Lovelock: There is always a risk, for any species, that it will go extinct. I don’t think this will happen to humans. They’re one of the toughest of all animals. It’s not just a matter of people surviving. It’s a matter of civilization surviving, and I’m thinking of civilization in the broadest terms here. I’m not thinking of high technology or great art or things like that. I’m thinking of ways of living together, of ways of living decently as communities. That’s civilization, and that is the thing that is most threatened by this change because it can too easily degenerate into a Dark Age again with nothing but warlords running warring tribes – that sort of scenario. It’s quite possible that that will happen.

HOPE

Zizek: Hope is only where despair is. Something truly new-beginning happens only when you are in such a deep shit that, within the existing coordinates, you can find no way out, and then in order to survive, you have to invent something new. The magic is to turn a desperate situation into a new beginning.

Eva: My only utopian vision is what I would call a-spatial. Create multiple borderlines. If we have multiple borderlines, they will lose their meaning. We have to conceive the space as a global entity. The space has to lose its value as guarantor of rights. Let’s bring the conception of rights to an international level. This means that every state should then guarantee rights to everybody, not only to its citizens but to any human being, and this is the real utopia. We have to actively move to balance this inequality.

Lovelock: It’s too much to expect humans to pull together in that way for the sake of all humanity, but they would do it for their tribe. It sounds regressive to think of it in that sort of sense, but I think that is what is needed at the moment. And if they all respond in the right sort of way, the kind of combined effect of all tribes pulling together like that is a positive and a good one.

Gray: Well, it’s important to have hope that something can be done at some level to protect what’s of value in the world, and I think something can be done, but such hope must be informed by a realistic understanding of human beings as they are. There’s a type of hope now which I think is very harmful, which is essentially a form of blocking out reality because it’s too difficult to contemplate. Now, I think, actually, that’s a much more hopeless view.

Todorov: If we have reason not to be fully pessimistic, it is because of the basic features of human beings. The human child only becomes independent after something like six or seven years. This means that, during one tenth of our lives, we are dependent on others, which is not true of other mammals, so for a long time, we all know that our small ones are completely helpless, and we have to protect them, to nourish them, to take care of them. This attitude, of which every single human being has been the beneficiary, is inscribed, if not in our genes, at least in our minds. This means that we, in some instinctive way, know that we can only survive if we take care of the weaker ones, of the baby.

Zizek: What I like is that the solution is the boat (referring to the film). What is the definition of the boat? It’s that it doesn’t have roots. It’s rootless. It floats around. That’s the solution. We must really accept how we are rootless. This is, for me, the meaning of this wonderful metaphor, boat. Boat is the solution; “boat,” in the sense of, you accept rootless, free floating. You cannot rely on anything. You know, it’s not a return to land. Renewal means you cut your roots.

Lovelock: Well, I have nine grandchildren, so, to be absolutely honest, I don’t know what to tell them, except the truth, what will be happening, and the options as I see them, but it’s really going to be up to them. The best thing I can do is to encourage them, and get them to regard it with the sense that not only is it awful and terrible, but it’s also...There’s an adventure there and a chance of improvement, and that they should continue to have their children. They shouldn’t say, “Oh, what’s the point of giving birth to children now with a world like that ahead?” The whole point of natural selection will be spoilt if they do that because they are the very people that should be having children.

the devil made me do it

this is truly sad.

st, bernard parish, louisiana

arcade fire, 3-19-2007

#41 - Arcade Fire - Neon Bible & Wake Up
Uploaded by lablogotheque

they always manage to sound amazing...even in an elevator.

don't give up. continue to beat yourself!

for some reason, this video reminded me of one of my father's awkward aphorisms: "don't give up. continue to beat yourself!" obviously, by "beat," he meant best. but i like beat better.

my words of advice to this black ninja: "continue to beat yourself!"

hello

"Every time Richie mimes "hello" it's the most sincere hello ever offered in the history of hellos." - Pitchforkmedia.com

Harlem's Booster

Harlem 2007.
I'm moving back to Harlem but I feel like I'm entering Harlem v.2.1 All the blocks look like they've received updates, almost like automatic updates on your computer. Everyday something new keeps cropping up or coming down. will harlem's face lifts beat michael jackson's?

The most obvious change seems to be housing. Since my initial move in 2004, it seems like every avenue and every block has a new condo (with awesome names like SoHa118, The Amanda, The Blake). The NYTimes had an article about buying up in Harlem and everyone is buzzing about what's new and under construction.

The concentration of most of these changes are from 110th street up till 135th Street, from St.Nick's Avenue to 5th Avenue. here's my quick little map of new condos I've noticed in my neighborhood.


You can get a thorough list here.

It's alarming to see the process happen so quickly over the past 3 years. The condos, the big stores, the banks, and now, a medical school.

I have no doubt that this medical school will do wonders for the health of Harlem. The mission of the school is to train and to serve minority populations, particularly in Harlem.

i have a sneaky suspicion that though this might be a nice goal, there may be a lot of damage done to get there.

-----
The new Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine (TOUROCOM), slated to open in the fall of 2007, will be New York's first new medical school in nearly 30 years and the first osteopathic college of medicine with a special emphasis on training minority doctors.

"There is a need for a medical school in New York City to serve minority populations and the underprivileged," said Dr. Lander. "TOUROCOM will function as an integral part of the New York City/Harlem community and work with the community, local schools and other colleges and universities to promote the increased availability of medical services in Harlem, the study of medicine, and to deliver osteopathic medical services in a variety of settings."



So far, the school has received 800 applications for an opening class of 125, but few of the applicants are qualified minorities -- a problem that the College aims to rectify. It plans to recruit from minority populations, working with elementary schools, junior high schools and high schools in Harlem to encourage students to major in science and consider a medical career. Most clinical training will take place in Harlem and other underserved areas. Graduates will be encouraged to remain in Harlem to practice medicine.

According to school officials, the percentage of medical students of African-American and Hispanic backgrounds is very low and getting lower, and the number of American-trained medical residents in Harlem area hospitals is well below 50 percent. Additionally, Harlem has been designated by the federal government as an area short in physicians, according to a report by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Source: Prime Newswire

20 years earlier:
Harlem 1987.
people's forecasts of gentrification in harlem
-------
IT is not the first struggle over the gentrification of Harlem and it certainly won't be the last, but new battle lines in the war were drawn last week when David N. Dinkins, the Manhattan Borough President, condemned a city plan to turn over 45 empty buildings there to a white construction company to develop 900 units of new housing.

Mr. Dinkins said the proposal ''opens the way for widespread gentrification of Harlem with no promise of improvement for present residents.''

.....

''If you talk to 10 different people in Harlem about white gentrification, you're going to hear 10 different versions,'' said Mr. Brooker. ''I don't see a white takeover. There are isolated incidents of whites buying brownstones in certain neighborhoods, but they are limited in numbers to such an extent that they in no way could be considered a gentrification threat. It's inevitable that you're going to see whites moving in, as the area stabilizes itself, looking for the bargain that Harlem is. That's just good economic sense.''

Still, while the city and churches and civic-minded development companies struggle to refurbish and erect affordable housing, be it condominium or rental, other owners and investors continue to play the real-estate speculation game. Both blacks and whites are holding privately owned buildings off the market or flipping them repeatedly in anticipation of that gentrification potential that has made many local residents at once hopeful and scared.

''I have mixed emotions,'' said Inez Dickens-Russell, who, with her father, owns Lloyd E. Dickens Real Estate, a successful family business based in Harlem since 1925. ''Economically, it will raise our base, yes, but how many of us will be able to stay? I feel safe in Harlem. I don't know if I'd feel safe in a white neighborhood.''

Source: NYTimes

2027: Why are women infertile?

After watching Children of Men, I wondered what would cause women to become infertile. The advent of birth control pills that decrease the frequency of women's periods seems like a thing of the past. Starting July, a pill will stop periods all together.

wait, but isn't menstruation connected to pregnancy?

I'm not one for conspiracy theories but is this just another scam to give more money to pharmaceutical companies to put poison into our bodies and manage nature?

FDA approves first pill meant to end periods
Associated Press

The first birth-control pill meant to put a stop to women’s monthly periods indefinitely won federal approval Tuesday.

Called Lybrel, it’s the first such pill to receive Food and Drug Administration approval for continuous use. When taken daily, the pill can halt women’s menstrual periods indefinitely and prevent pregnancies.

Lybrel is the latest approved oral contraceptive to depart from the 21-days-on, seven-days-off regimen that had been standard since birth-control pill sales began in the 1960s. The pill, manufactured by Wyeth, is the first designed to put off periods altogether when taken without break.

The pill isn’t for everyone, an FDA official said. About half the women enrolled in studies of Lybrel dropped out, said Dr. Daniel Shames, a deputy director in the FDA’s drugs office. Many did so because of the irregular and unscheduled bleeding and spotting that can replace scheduled menstruation.

“If you think you don’t want to go down this road, this is not for you,” Shames told reporters.

Wyeth plans to start Lybrel sales in July. The Madison, N.J., company said it hasn’t yet determined a price for the 28-pill packs. The pill contains a low dose of two hormones already widely used in birth-control pills, ethinyl estradiol and levonorgestrel.

A study showed Lybrel was just as effective in preventing pregnancy as a traditional pill, Alesse, also made by Wyeth. However, since Lybrel users will eliminate their regular periods, it may be difficult for them to recognize if they have become pregnant, Shames said.

For keyboard (mac!) nerds

Mac OS X Keyboard Short cuts

Here's a little to whet your appetite:

i like your style, barry

Excerpt from a great New Yorker article via leeser:

It is, then, not surprising that when it was proposed that America should invade Iraq with the goal of establishing democracy there, Obama knew that it would be a terrible mistake. This was American innocence at its most destructive, freedom at its most deceptive, universalism at its most naïve. “There was a dangerous innocence to thinking that we would be greeted as liberators, or that with a little bit of economic assistance and democratic training you’d have a Jeffersonian democracy blooming in the desert,” he says now. “There is a running thread in American history of idealism that can express itself powerfully and appropriately, as it did after World War II with the creation of the United Nations and the Marshall Plan, when we recognized that our security and prosperity depend on the security and prosperity of others. But the same idealism can express itself in a sense that we can remake the world any way we want by flipping a switch, because we’re technologically superior or we’re wealthier or we’re morally superior. And when our idealism spills into that kind of naïveté and an unwillingness to acknowledge history and the weight of other cultures, then we get ourselves into trouble, as we did in Vietnam.”

“I’ve never been a conspiracy theorist,” he says. “I’ve never believed there are a bunch of people out there who are pulling all the strings and pressing all the buttons. And the reason is that the older I get, the more time I spend meeting people in government or in the corporate arena, the more human everybody becomes. What I do believe is that those with money, those with influence, those with control over how resources are allocated in our society, are very protective of their interests, and they can rationalize infinitely the reasons why they should have more money and power than anyone else, why that’s somehow good for the society as a whole.”

not-so-model minorities

i wonder if this media coverage on the mental/emotional problems of asian american youth is productive or harmful...admittedly, it is difficult to read about or listen to discussions about the pressures asian american adolescents face - whether or not the issues are specific to the as am community - because the information feels sparce.

asian americans are largely absent from mainstream media, except for a small handful of caricatures (i just came across one this weekend: sandra oh, in a small side role in _waking the dead_ as the "korean whore" - that is what she is referred to, broken korean accent and all), so it's weird to have the large gaps about such a large, diverse group of people filled in with these droplets...about depression and suicide no less.

not that depression and other mental/emotional problems should be invisible. obviously, people, especially adoloscents - especially adolescents whose experiences in this country may be all the more complicated because of their ethnic background - need the spaces and support to decompress. in order to do that, we neeed to talk about what the problems are. however, the brief mentions of academic pressure, gendered socialization and expectations, and racial identity formation/confusion are only brief mentions. perhaps more could be understood about the challenges adolescents face if these sources could be more closely examined....

.. . . . .. .. . . . . .. . . . .. .

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- One evening in 1990, Eliza Noh hung up the phone with her sister. Disturbed about the conversation, Noh immediately started writing a letter to her sister, a college student who was often depressed. "I told her I supported her, and I encouraged her," Noh says.

But her sister never read the letter. By the time it arrived, she'd killed herself.

Moved by that tragedy, Noh has spent much of her professional life studying depression and suicide among Asian-American women. An assistant professor of Asian-American studies at California State University at Fullerton, Noh has read the sobering statistics from the Department of Health and Human Services: Asian-American women ages 15-24 have the highest suicide rate of women in any race or ethnic group in that age group. Suicide is the second-leading cause of death for Asian-American women in that age range. (Watch more about Asian-Americans' feelings of pressure to hide depression )

Depression starts even younger than age 15. Noh says one study has shown that as young as the fifth grade, Asian-American girls have the highest rate of depression so severe they've contemplated suicide.

As Noh and others have searched for the reasons, a complex answer has emerged.

First and foremost, they say "model minority" pressure -- the pressure some Asian-American families put on children to be high achievers at school and professionally -- helps explain the problem.

Push to achieve tied to suicide in Asian-American women

By Elizabeth Cohen
CNN

"In my study, the model minority pressure is a huge factor," says Noh, who studied 41 Asian-American women who'd attempted or contemplated suicide. "Sometimes it's very overt -- parents say, 'You must choose this major or this type of job' or 'You should not bring home As and Bs, only As," she says. "And girls have to be the perfect mother and daughter and wife as well."

Family pressure often affects girls more than boys, according to Dr. Dung Ngo, a psychologist at Baylor University in Texas. "When I go talk to high school students and ask them if they experience pressure, the majority who raised their hands were the girls," he said.

Asian-American parents, he says, are stricter with girls than with boys. "The cultural expectations are that Asian women don't have that kind of freedom to hang out, to go out with friends, to do the kinds of things most teenagers growing up want to do."

And in Asian cultures, he added, you don't question parents. "The line of communication in Asian culture one way. It's communicated from the parents downward," he says. "If you can't express your anger, it turns to helplessness. It turns inward into depression for girls. For boys it's more likely to turn outwards into rebellious behavior and behavioral problems like drinking and fighting."

But Noh says pressure from within the family doesn't completely explain the shocking suicide statistics for young women like her sister.

She says American culture has adopted the myth that Asians are smarter and harder-working than other minorities.

"It's become a U.S.-based ideology, popular from the 1960s onward, that Asian-Americans are smarter, and should be doing well whether at school or work."

Noh added that simply being a minority can also lead to depression.

"My sister had a really low self-image. She thought of herself as ugly," she says. "We grew up in Houston in the '70s and '80s, and at that time in school there were very few Asian faces. The standard of beauty she wanted to emulate was white women." In college, Noh's sister had plastic surgery to make her eyes and nose appear more European-looking.

Heredity, Noh says, also plays a role. She says in her study, many of the suicidal women had mothers who were also suicidal. She says perhaps it's genetic -- some biochemical marker handed down from mother to daughter -- or perhaps it's the daughter observing the mother's behavior. "It makes sense. You model yourself after the parent of the same gender."

As varied as the causes of depression, Noh says she saw just as many approaches to overcoming it.

While some women in her study did seek help through counseling and prescription drugs, most of her subjects were ambivalent or even negative about counseling. "They felt the counselor couldn't understand their situation. They said it would have helped if the counselor were another Asian-American woman."

These women found help through their religious faith, herbs, acupuncture, or becoming involved in groups that help other Asian women.

"It shows the resourcefulness of these women," she says. "They had really diverse healing strategies."

Elizabeth Cohen is a CNN Medical News correspondent. Senior producer Jennifer Pifer and associate producer Sabriya Rice contributed to this report.

I want me some Tyra lovin'

Tyra needs to start consulting Oprah for hosting tips; this screamin' ain't working for her.



You don't know what I've been through!!! biatch.

(damn, she's kind of scary)

Chorophobia

i'm sure this kid is going to have a phobia for breakdancers for the rest of his/her life.

****Additional Note****
as a form of public service, here is a link that will direct and assist any chorophobic to a path of healing:

Chorophobia: Treatment and Hope

"If you are living with chorophobia, what is the real cost to your health, your career or school, and to your family life? Avoiding the issue indefinitely would mean resigning yourself to living in fear, missing out on priceless life experiences big and small, living a life that is just a shadow of what it will be when the problem is gone.

For anyone earning a living, the financial toll of this phobia is incalculable. Living with fear means you can never concentrate fully and give your best. Lost opportunities. Poor performance or grades. Promotions that pass you by. chorophobia will likely cost you tens, even hundreds of thousands of dollars over the course of your lifetime, let alone the cost to your health and quality of life. Now Chorophobia can be gone for less than the price of a round-trip airline ticket."

May 9th, Radio City Music Hall

From the looks of the stage....

...my 58-year-old catholic mother would of thought of this as an annual gathering of New York City Satan worshippers...






...but it was simply a joyous congregation of arcade fire fans, presided by the ever holy david bowie....

...who failed to make his much anticipated appearance...

playground, battery park city

dar la luz

we have arrived! a little late, but better than never. let the "festival of exchanging" commence with this decorative piece i discovered in a SVA studio last year:


the first guy is saying, "mahn-sae!"

i wish i had something more substantive to share on this inauguration night, but alas, this is all i've got for now. more soon...