BOOK REVIEW
When a book producer and book packager asked me if I could review Jim Laughter's new cli fi book POLAR CITY RED, I said ''sure, send me a copy and I will review for the paper here, probably in August or September, when I have the time''. So Jim sent me a copy of the novel here in Alabama, I confirmed I received it in the mail, and would read it and review it for the paper before the end of the year, if my way busy schedule permitted it, and here is my review:
Global Heating Novel 'Polar City Red' Not For Everyone, But I Enjoyed It Immensely:
IT'S THE FUTURE! AND A TERRIFIC READ!
I have seen the future and it's dank, dark and dystopian. At least in
one Oklahoma author's eyes, it is. Alaskans need to read this book
with care and concern.
When veteran sci-fi writer Jim Laughter sat down last year to start in
on a new novel about mankind's shaky future on this third rock from
the sun, he wasn't sure where the book was actually going.
Seven months later, after typing each chapter of "Polar City Red" on
his computer keyboard, Laughter, 59, was finished and ready to face
critics on the right and on the left. Climate denialists are going to
say it's not science, and die-hard climate activists are going to say
it's just fiction.
Sarah Palin is not going to read it, that's for sure. Neither will
Mitt Romney or other national politicians with their heads in the
sand. But Laughter's book could make a cool movie in the future
dystopia department, following up on such Hollywood films as "City of
Ember" and "The Road."
Laughter's pulp "polar western" is set in the Last Frontier of Alaska
in 2075 and it poses a very important and headline-mirroring question:
will mankind survive the climapocalypse coming our way as the Earth
heats up over the next few centuries?
As sea levels rise and millions of "climate refugees" make their way
north to Alaska, Canada, Russia and Norway, think scavenger camps,
"Mad Max" villages, and U.N.-administered ''polar cities'' -- cities
of domes, as Laughter (his real name) calls them.
"Polar City Red" is more than mere sci fi. Laughter is a retired USAF
technical writer who has lived all over the world on military
assignment. The retired grandfather of four comes across as a probing
moralist and a modern Jeremiah. His worldview befits a Christian
pastor who has built two churches and finds in religion both an anchor
and a place for hope.
His book is not just about climate change or northern dystopias. It's
also about the moral questions that must guide humanity as it tries to
keep a lid on global warming's worst-case scenarios while also looking
for solutions to mankind's worst nightmare -- the possible final
extinction of the human species due to man's own folly and extravagant
ways. Can a small 200-page book do all that? No, it's just
entertainment, a good book to put on your summer reading list.
Writing the novel took Laughter seven months of non-stop research and
keyboarding, he told me, but I have a feeling that what he wrote will
last 100 years.
It's more than a cli-fi thriller. It also exposes the underbelly of
humankind's most terrifying nightmare: the possible end of the human
species and God's deep displeasure at what His people have done to His
Earth. Even if you're an atheist, as I am, Laughter touches a nerve.
The book is prophetic, futuristic and moralistic. You as reader will
get through this one alive, but will our descendants, 100 or 1000
years from now, survive the Long Emergency we find ourselves in now?
That's the question that Laughter poses.
Fortunately, the book ends on a note of hope and redemption, so it's
not a downer at all. You and your loved ones need to read it. As
Laughter himself says in the introduction, quoting Christopher Morley:
''When you sell a man a book you don't sell just twelve ounces of
paper and ink and glue -- you sell him a whole new life."
"Polar City Red" won't give you a whole new life, and it'll probably
just give you a headache and heartburn. But Alaskans might benefit
from reading it, since
it's about Alaska front and center, as the world heats up.
-----------------------------------
David K.L. Jones is a freelance writer in Alabama.
Sunday, December 30, 2012
Polar cities in the futire and the people of the Alaskan Mesa
If we do not take action, soon, NOW, Alaska will be flooded by millions of climate refugees from the Lower 48 and Asia and Mexico, in 30 generations or so as climate chaos hits the world hard and only "polar cities" will save mankind at the time. the time is prepare for polar cities is now. Google themhttp://pcillu101.blogspot.com
FAIRBANKS - Did you know, Alaska was once the setting for an environmental shift so dramatic it forced ANCIENT people to evacuate the entire North Slope? Yes,, according to Michael Kunz, an archaeologist with the Bureau of Land Management.
About 10,013 years ago, a group of hunting ESKIMO people lived on the North Slope, the swath of mostly treeless tundra that extends north from the Brooks Range to the sea. These people, known as Paleoindians, used a chunky ridge of rock west of the Colville River as a hunting lookout. Michael Kunz first discovered stone spear tips at the site, known as the Mesa, in 1978.
The people of the Mesa lived at a time when the Arctic was undergoing a change similar to what Alaska is undergoing today. As the world emerged from the last ice age, grasslands covered much of the Bering Land Bridge, a swath of land as wide as the distance from Barrow to Homer.
To survive in a place like the North Slope, where life is dicey in the best of times, humans needed a few things, Kunz said. One was technology, which the Mesa people had in the form of bone needles they used to sew weather-tight clothing. Another vital element was a large, plentiful source of food. Caribou were scarce during the time of the Mesa people, but bison roamed the grasslands in good numbers. Those bison are the key to how climate change affected these ancient Alaskans, Kunz said.
For many thousands of years, the area that is now Alaska was part of an enormous swath of dry grasslands that made up much of the Bering Land Bridge. About 15,000 years ago, the planet started evolving from the last ice age. Air temperatures became warmer, and things started to change. Glaciers began melting, sea level rose, and salt water slowly drowned the Bering Land Bridge. The encroachment of the ocean caused an increase in precipitation around the North Slope that allowed cottongrass and other sedges to nudge out the grasses preferred by bison.
About 12,000 years ago, as the North Slope evolved to what it looks like today, bison disappeared. The last evidence of the Mesa Paleoindians comes from around the same time. Kunz thinks the extinction of the bison from the North Slope, along with the simultaneous scarcity of caribou, caused the Mesa people to move or die out.
“This is totally the effect of the environment,” Kunz said. “Not only did it run the Paleoindians out of there, it made the place unlivable for anyone for 1,500 years.”
By examining bones and stone tools, archaeologists found that people moved back to the North Slope about the same time caribou returned after what seems like a population crash that lasted more than 3,000 years.
Kunz pointed out that car exhaust did not trigger the warming that may have chased the Mesa people from the North Slope. He said climate change has occurred many times before and is inevitable today. He suggests that the human species as a whole should think of how it will work around problems, such as rising sea level and the changes in agricultural zones caused by different weather patterns.
“The system has always been dynamic,” he said. “We’re not going to stop climate change. Just like the Mesa Paleoindians — if you can’t adapt or adjust, you’re going to disappear.”
And to adapt, when millions of climate refugees flood Alaska in the coming centuries, polar cities just might save the day for the human species. Or it might be curtains.
And in the future, if we do not take action, soon, Alaska will be flooded by millions of climate refugees from the Lower 48 and Asia and Mexico, in 30 generations or so as climate chaos hits the world hard and only "polar cities" will save mankind at the time. the time is prepare for polar cities is now. http://pcillu101.blogspot.com
Saturday, December 29, 2012
So Much Information, So Little Time: Making Sense of a Big Data World
SEMINAR TITLE in ASPEN COLORADO in 2013:
So Much Information, So Little Time:
Making Sense of a Big Data World
Digital technology has made it possible to create, move and store information at previously unthinkable magnitudes.
As a result, individuals and organizations are navigating an ever-growing ocean of data, including billions of new emails and social-media comments each day.
Where is Big Data taking us?
Is access to the ever-expanding digital trove making us more creative and productive, or just more overwhelmed?
Is the workplace becoming more efficient, or is hyper-connectedness exacting a price?
This seminar focuses on both the promise and challenges of the digital era. It will examine the history of information overload - it's not as new as you might think - as well as twists that are unique to the 21st century.
We'll look at what scientists are learning about the cognitive issues - how can we process all this information?
And we'll glimpse over the horizon at innovations that might help society meet this challenge, and define the next stage of the information revolution.
Moderator: William Powers, author of Hamlet’s BlackBerry
http://www.williampowers.com/hamlets-blackberry
So Much Information, So Little Time:
Making Sense of a Big Data World
Digital technology has made it possible to create, move and store information at previously unthinkable magnitudes.
As a result, individuals and organizations are navigating an ever-growing ocean of data, including billions of new emails and social-media comments each day.
Where is Big Data taking us?
Is access to the ever-expanding digital trove making us more creative and productive, or just more overwhelmed?
Is the workplace becoming more efficient, or is hyper-connectedness exacting a price?
This seminar focuses on both the promise and challenges of the digital era. It will examine the history of information overload - it's not as new as you might think - as well as twists that are unique to the 21st century.
We'll look at what scientists are learning about the cognitive issues - how can we process all this information?
And we'll glimpse over the horizon at innovations that might help society meet this challenge, and define the next stage of the information revolution.
Moderator: William Powers, author of Hamlet’s BlackBerry
http://www.williampowers.com/hamlets-blackberry
Carbonist Manifesto by Jeff Berkowitz in OREGON USA
Jeff Berkowitz has worked for a variety of computer, instrumentation and software companies since the 1970s. His programming travels have included embedded systems, proprietary Unix kernels, RDBMS toolware, middleware, and both web and desktop application development. Jeff is equally uncomfortable with Unix and Microsoft programming environments, having been intermittently successful with both. Over the past few years Jeff has enjoyed the virtues of verifiable bytecode while developing systems in Java and C#. Jeff has lived in the Portland, Oregon area since 1988 and is presently employed by Oracle Corporation in Portland. Jeff is married and enjoys nothing better than a warm day spent hovering over the smoker, microbrew in hand, slow cooking some kind of barbecue.
In ''The frightening elegance of 'The Carbonist Manifesto''' DOWNLOAD HERE
Joel Makower writes on
2012-12-24 that:
This is the premise of a fantastical and fascinating essay written in 1992, some 20 years, ago by a self-described “extremely nerdy” computer programmer named Jeff Berkowitz who loves nothing more than to sit outwide in the backyard with a microbrew and some good stuff on the BBQ grille on a nice summer or fall afternoon in Oregon and who also has a a longtime interest in both environmentalism and alternative energy, though he hasn’t worked professionally in either.
Earlier this year, I came across the 6-page essay, which could easily be mistaken for a scientific treatise but for the author’s précis stating that, while “loosely grounded in recent research in ecology and paleoclimatology,” the paper was “distinctly tongue in cheek.”
The paper, titled “The Consequences of Gaia, or The Carbonist Manifesto” (download if you google for it) was written in 1992 by a then 35-year-old computer programmer named Jeff Berkowitz. It is rooted in the Gaia hypothesis (also referred to as the Gaia theory or principle), the notion that Earth's biosphere is a dynamic, self-regulating system, first formulated in the 1970s by scientist James Lovelock and microbiologist Lynn Margulis. Their hypothesis states that the Earth is not just an amalgam of rocks and trees and water but a giant cell capable of adjusting to both small and large changes in an intelligent and holistic manner.
According to "The Carbonist Manifesto," we humans are one of those adjustments.
Berkowitz begins his essay by explaining how the temperature of the biosphere is largely controlled by the quantities of greenhouse gases, primarily carbon dioxide, or CO2, in the atmosphere. Seeking equilibrium, various geophysical and biological processes cooperate to lower the level of CO2 when the biosphere warms and release CO2 when it cools. But over the past 500 million years, the amount of available carbon in the biosphere has slowly decreased, as carbon was captured in hydrocarbon deposits, such as coal, oil, and seafloor sediments. That is to say, for millions of years, Earth gradually cooled as CO2 was sequestered.
Here, I’ll let Berkowitz take over the story:
The last 100,000 years have seen some of the coldest times in the 500 million years that have elapsed since the Ordovician period. These 100,000 years form less than 1/1000th of the intervening 500 million years. Oddly, they're the same 100,000 years that Homo Sapiens Sapiens have existed on Earth. Clearly, the biosphere has reached a point of crisis. The relatively stable processes of self-regulation that have worked for the past hundreds of millions of years have reached the limit of their ability to correct.
In response to the impending crisis, Gaia evolved a solution. At the edges of the ice sheets that flowed down over the northern hemisphere during the last ice age, Gaia brought it to fruition: a short-term corrective process designed to restore the natural balance of free carbon dioxide in the biosphere.
Man.
Yes, Man. Not the destroyer, the pillager, the environmental rapist of the popular lore; an utterly different view of Man the restorer, the savior, the solution to an environmental crisis more dangerous to the biosphere than even the giant stone that ended the age of dinosaurs. Man, whose only purpose in the Gaian system is to extract carbon from the rocks and put it back in the atmosphere where it belongs.
Next page: An elegant and poetic theory
Whatever you think of all this, it’s hard to refute that, while frightening to ponder, it is an elegant and somewhat poetic theory: that our primary role on Earth is to liberate the carbon on behalf of a larger geological and biological purpose. And that we’re damn good at what we do — we’re succeeding mightily at fulfilling our mission. So much so that we'll eventually work ourselves out of existance.
Recently, I tracked down Berkowitz, now 55, married, and living near Portland, Oregon, where he works as a principal software engineer for the computer company, Oracle.
I began our conversation by asking how "The Carbonist Manifesto" came to be.
“It was just one of those amusing, contrary things that came to me,” he responded. "I've read a lot of science fiction all my life, and at the time I was particularly taken with the Gaia hypothesis. So it just came together in my head.”
Berkowitz grew up in Santa Barbara, Calif., and was a teenager in 1969 during the massive oil spill there — the largest in the United States at the time. It was one of several catalysts for the first Earth Day, in 1970, which began the modern environmental movement.
“That's always been a part of my thinking about the world,” he explained. “In addition, my dad was a big technology guy. After the Arab oil embargo in 1973, a lot of money became available to study alternative energy. So I had a bunch of these sort of environmental concepts and alternative-energy concepts floating around in my head, even as a kid.”
I asked Berkowitz how much he actually believed in what he wrote.
“Rather than directly answer your question,” he said, “I'll just say this: The essay sounds like nonsense. And I rarely if ever believe in nonsense. But I can't prove that it's nonsense, and neither can you or anyone else. That's the beauty of it.”
Berkowitz describes himself as an extreme skeptic, quick to question conventional wisdom. For example, he doesn’t view the possibility that a lot of species could be wiped out in by climate change as a tragedy. He acknowledges that this could make him sound “at worst insane or at best incredibly callous.”
“I don't believe I'm either insane or callous,” he says. “I admit no metaphysics in my world view. I think the history of the universe is a set of random events followed by other random events. For those of us who really think this way, the idea of putting value judgments on random events is kind of silly. Of course, I'd hate to be hit by a meteor — or, more likely here in Cascadia, crushed in a 9.2 quake.
“But the ‘I'd hate that’ part is about me; it's not about the event. Events are neutral. Goodness and badness happen inside the observer and are based on the observer's narrow perspective. The dinosaur killer was terrible if you were there, but maybe without it there would never have been any higher primates. So is that good or bad? I could ask the equally meaningless question: Is the existence of higher primates a good thing or a bad thing? Questions like this are just silly.”
Next page: Are consumers immoral?
According to Berkowitz, it’s equally silly to label consumers immoral for wanting certain products at the best price, or to label their suppliers immoral for supplying them. His point is that the sum total of human interactions is as “natural” a disaster as an asteroid hitting the planet leading to mass extinction.
“We're a species, naturally evolved, that at some point began passing cultural knowledge about modifying our environment to a much greater extent than any species before us,” he said. “That's all. It happened in the natural course of events. The common use of the word ‘unnatural’ to describe some of our more advanced technologies is perhaps the most dangerous of all our fallacies about the world. It implies that somehow we are separate from nature, or that the consequences of our actions can somehow lie above or outside of nature. That's a fundamentally broken way to think about the world and I believe it underlies some of our most serious problems.”
Berkowitz recognizes that his view is at odds with most people who call themselves environmentalists. And he’s concerned that it sounds negative and fatalistic. “My arguments about the neutrality of events in no way prevent us from using our free will to choose and guide certain outcomes at the expense of others for whatever reasons we may prefer. I bet I love polar bears as much as you or anyone else, and I'm willing to modify my economic behavior, within limits, to try and ensure that they survive.”
But if we fail to do that sufficiently or in time — well, that's just nature taking its course.
One of the things I found remarkable about Berkowitz’s 20-year-old paper is that it could have been written today. Indeed, it’s that much more salient given that it was penned well before climate change and global warming were well understood. And the questions he raises are as relevant as ever. Whether and how we successfully address climate change will depend on the collective actions of humanity.
“In order to prevent the widespread consequences of global warming, we need to make pragmatic choices about actions that will work,” says Berkowitz. “Making those choices starts with a hard-headed worldview that's not cluttered up with unexamined notions about natural versus unnatural, good versus evil, or some grand plan of a big guy upstairs.”
He concludes: “Getting people to think about these questions is perhaps the point of the essay.”
In ''The frightening elegance of 'The Carbonist Manifesto''' DOWNLOAD HERE
Joel Makower writes on
2012-12-24 that:
Humans were put on Earth for the primary purpose of returning carbon to the atmosphere in order to warm the planet, at which point our services will be done, our world will become inhospitable, and we will depart, having helped restore planetary equilibrium along the way.
No, this is not a Mayan prophesy. More like a Gaian prophesy.
This is the premise of a fantastical and fascinating essay written in 1992, some 20 years, ago by a self-described “extremely nerdy” computer programmer named Jeff Berkowitz who loves nothing more than to sit outwide in the backyard with a microbrew and some good stuff on the BBQ grille on a nice summer or fall afternoon in Oregon and who also has a a longtime interest in both environmentalism and alternative energy, though he hasn’t worked professionally in either.
Earlier this year, I came across the 6-page essay, which could easily be mistaken for a scientific treatise but for the author’s précis stating that, while “loosely grounded in recent research in ecology and paleoclimatology,” the paper was “distinctly tongue in cheek.”
The paper, titled “The Consequences of Gaia, or The Carbonist Manifesto” (download if you google for it) was written in 1992 by a then 35-year-old computer programmer named Jeff Berkowitz. It is rooted in the Gaia hypothesis (also referred to as the Gaia theory or principle), the notion that Earth's biosphere is a dynamic, self-regulating system, first formulated in the 1970s by scientist James Lovelock and microbiologist Lynn Margulis. Their hypothesis states that the Earth is not just an amalgam of rocks and trees and water but a giant cell capable of adjusting to both small and large changes in an intelligent and holistic manner.
According to "The Carbonist Manifesto," we humans are one of those adjustments.
Berkowitz begins his essay by explaining how the temperature of the biosphere is largely controlled by the quantities of greenhouse gases, primarily carbon dioxide, or CO2, in the atmosphere. Seeking equilibrium, various geophysical and biological processes cooperate to lower the level of CO2 when the biosphere warms and release CO2 when it cools. But over the past 500 million years, the amount of available carbon in the biosphere has slowly decreased, as carbon was captured in hydrocarbon deposits, such as coal, oil, and seafloor sediments. That is to say, for millions of years, Earth gradually cooled as CO2 was sequestered.
Here, I’ll let Berkowitz take over the story:
The last 100,000 years have seen some of the coldest times in the 500 million years that have elapsed since the Ordovician period. These 100,000 years form less than 1/1000th of the intervening 500 million years. Oddly, they're the same 100,000 years that Homo Sapiens Sapiens have existed on Earth. Clearly, the biosphere has reached a point of crisis. The relatively stable processes of self-regulation that have worked for the past hundreds of millions of years have reached the limit of their ability to correct.
In response to the impending crisis, Gaia evolved a solution. At the edges of the ice sheets that flowed down over the northern hemisphere during the last ice age, Gaia brought it to fruition: a short-term corrective process designed to restore the natural balance of free carbon dioxide in the biosphere.
Man.
Yes, Man. Not the destroyer, the pillager, the environmental rapist of the popular lore; an utterly different view of Man the restorer, the savior, the solution to an environmental crisis more dangerous to the biosphere than even the giant stone that ended the age of dinosaurs. Man, whose only purpose in the Gaian system is to extract carbon from the rocks and put it back in the atmosphere where it belongs.
Next page: An elegant and poetic theory
Whatever you think of all this, it’s hard to refute that, while frightening to ponder, it is an elegant and somewhat poetic theory: that our primary role on Earth is to liberate the carbon on behalf of a larger geological and biological purpose. And that we’re damn good at what we do — we’re succeeding mightily at fulfilling our mission. So much so that we'll eventually work ourselves out of existance.
Recently, I tracked down Berkowitz, now 55, married, and living near Portland, Oregon, where he works as a principal software engineer for the computer company, Oracle.
I began our conversation by asking how "The Carbonist Manifesto" came to be.
“It was just one of those amusing, contrary things that came to me,” he responded. "I've read a lot of science fiction all my life, and at the time I was particularly taken with the Gaia hypothesis. So it just came together in my head.”
Berkowitz grew up in Santa Barbara, Calif., and was a teenager in 1969 during the massive oil spill there — the largest in the United States at the time. It was one of several catalysts for the first Earth Day, in 1970, which began the modern environmental movement.
“That's always been a part of my thinking about the world,” he explained. “In addition, my dad was a big technology guy. After the Arab oil embargo in 1973, a lot of money became available to study alternative energy. So I had a bunch of these sort of environmental concepts and alternative-energy concepts floating around in my head, even as a kid.”
I asked Berkowitz how much he actually believed in what he wrote.
“Rather than directly answer your question,” he said, “I'll just say this: The essay sounds like nonsense. And I rarely if ever believe in nonsense. But I can't prove that it's nonsense, and neither can you or anyone else. That's the beauty of it.”
Berkowitz describes himself as an extreme skeptic, quick to question conventional wisdom. For example, he doesn’t view the possibility that a lot of species could be wiped out in by climate change as a tragedy. He acknowledges that this could make him sound “at worst insane or at best incredibly callous.”
“I don't believe I'm either insane or callous,” he says. “I admit no metaphysics in my world view. I think the history of the universe is a set of random events followed by other random events. For those of us who really think this way, the idea of putting value judgments on random events is kind of silly. Of course, I'd hate to be hit by a meteor — or, more likely here in Cascadia, crushed in a 9.2 quake.
“But the ‘I'd hate that’ part is about me; it's not about the event. Events are neutral. Goodness and badness happen inside the observer and are based on the observer's narrow perspective. The dinosaur killer was terrible if you were there, but maybe without it there would never have been any higher primates. So is that good or bad? I could ask the equally meaningless question: Is the existence of higher primates a good thing or a bad thing? Questions like this are just silly.”
Next page: Are consumers immoral?
According to Berkowitz, it’s equally silly to label consumers immoral for wanting certain products at the best price, or to label their suppliers immoral for supplying them. His point is that the sum total of human interactions is as “natural” a disaster as an asteroid hitting the planet leading to mass extinction.
“We're a species, naturally evolved, that at some point began passing cultural knowledge about modifying our environment to a much greater extent than any species before us,” he said. “That's all. It happened in the natural course of events. The common use of the word ‘unnatural’ to describe some of our more advanced technologies is perhaps the most dangerous of all our fallacies about the world. It implies that somehow we are separate from nature, or that the consequences of our actions can somehow lie above or outside of nature. That's a fundamentally broken way to think about the world and I believe it underlies some of our most serious problems.”
Berkowitz recognizes that his view is at odds with most people who call themselves environmentalists. And he’s concerned that it sounds negative and fatalistic. “My arguments about the neutrality of events in no way prevent us from using our free will to choose and guide certain outcomes at the expense of others for whatever reasons we may prefer. I bet I love polar bears as much as you or anyone else, and I'm willing to modify my economic behavior, within limits, to try and ensure that they survive.”
But if we fail to do that sufficiently or in time — well, that's just nature taking its course.
One of the things I found remarkable about Berkowitz’s 20-year-old paper is that it could have been written today. Indeed, it’s that much more salient given that it was penned well before climate change and global warming were well understood. And the questions he raises are as relevant as ever. Whether and how we successfully address climate change will depend on the collective actions of humanity.
“In order to prevent the widespread consequences of global warming, we need to make pragmatic choices about actions that will work,” says Berkowitz. “Making those choices starts with a hard-headed worldview that's not cluttered up with unexamined notions about natural versus unnatural, good versus evil, or some grand plan of a big guy upstairs.”
He concludes: “Getting people to think about these questions is perhaps the point of the essay.”
Friday, December 28, 2012
Muttering movie morass in Communist China as ''black'' and ''white'' "water armies'' piss on the movie industry
Dubious online picks and pans inundate legitimate film commentary in Communist China today. Here in a pirated article we follow one movie maker's effort to fight back.BEIJING -- Movies so often depend on word of mouth for promotion, but in the Internet age it can be fabricated. Opinions you see on the net may not represent what people actually think about a movie, but could even mislead to the point of contradicting public opinion.
As soon as The Last Supper debuted on Nov. 29th, director Lu Chuan knew he was in trouble. His historical drama about a ruthless emperor was getting the lowest possible scores on Douban and Mtime, two websites that aggregate movie feedback - this in contrast with the mostly positive reviews he got from critics. Lu realized he was being targeted by the nation's "water army".
"Water army" is a nickname for web users who are hired to talk up or talk down a product. For a product with a limited shelf life but intensive response, the impression of waves of praise or disparagement can make or break it before the press and the audience discover it for themselves.
"When plugging a new release, everyone would say great things about one's own work. I can accept that," says Lu Chuan. "But our profession has reached the moral low of hiring people to throw mud at the competition."
To counteract the effect of the avalanche of manufactured ill will (some 9,000 negative comments per day), Lu admitted in a press interview that he had spent 50,000 yuan ($8,005) to "bump up" his movie's online score, thus becoming the first Chinese filmmaker to acknowledge the employment of the "water army".
Lu did not use the term "water army", but a more euphemistic "word-of-mouth protection team" instead. "I would never pay someone to badmouth my competitor," he adds.
However, Lu Chuan's admission placed himself in an extremely unfavorable situation. As phony comments mingle with real ones online, one may not be able to prove beyond reasonable doubt that a certain remark is definitely the result of rivals running amok, or that there is a force behind these bad words.
Instead of getting sympathy from the public, Lu got suspicion at most, with some media commentators saying he should focus on making a better movie rather than battling negative comments.
Gao Jun, an executive involved in film production and exhibition, said it was foolish of Lu to make such a confession to the public. (Lu later shifted his statement, saying that the hiring was done by his subordinates without his prior knowledge.)
Some insiders charge that every movie resorts to such secret agents for creating buzz, each at a cost of over 1 million yuan. But this was refuted by Zhang Baiqing, president of China Film Criticism Association, who explains that at least half of China's feature films cost less than 5 million to make and therefore cannot afford such practices.
"The dueling with the aid of the water army happens among some big-budget commercial films," he says, "and the trick is getting less and less effective."
If you are a soldier of a water army, you are invisible. You will not tell your family or colleague you love or hate this movie. All you're required to do is to talk a movie up to the sky, or malign one to the bottom and do it online. For every post, you'll be paid 10 to 50 Chinese cents.
Those who talk up are called "white water army", and those who talk down "black water army". White or black, they tend to be proud of their collective power, but not proud enough to admit to what they conduct with online anonymity. This accounts for the difficulty of actually interviewing an individual foot solider, but they are said to be mostly students or young people with lots of spare time.
A water soldier who devotes all his or her time to the job, though, can bring in somewhere between 1,000 to 3,000 yuan a month.
Those who do the dirty job are entitled to only 40 percent of what film companies spend on it. The rest goes to online promotion firms that act as the middleman. According to a People's Daily blog post, most of these firms have fewer than 10 employees. They rely on a massive number of account holders through online communication tools. Once they get a job, they subcontract it to the thousands who make postings to drown out legitimate appraisals.
Some of these firms claim that, with as little as 100,000 yuan, they can make a movie into the talk of the town. But, on the other hand, movie promotion makes up a small part of their business, albeit with a high profile.
Discerning readers can find traces, if not conclusive evidence, of "water army" activities. For example, they tend to give the highest score to one movie and the lowest to another one screened around the same time, or use the most extreme language in their commentary, yet give no detail to back it up.
They also tend to be new account owners, with little or no previous activity with the accounts. Bai Jie, a publicity official for CN Movie, says that most accounts that attacked Lu Chuan's movie were opened a day after the movie's premiere. But she cautions that firms managing a water army sometimes buy or keep legitimate accounts to increase the level of credibility.
By all accounts, the war of online hype or harm has shifted to Sina Weibo, China's Twitter-like micro-blogging service, where big accounts have verified users and celebrities have followers in the millions. To have one of these accounts push a movie is perceived to be much more effective.
Related:
The grave side
Blessed month for movie lovers
Therefore, when someone you trust extols a movie or any other product, he or she may have been paid to do so, yet without disclosing the fact. Pop star Zhang Jie, with 17 million followers, once claimed that he was undergoing a full-body scan, but the gold chain in his photo turned into a smoking gun because one has to remove such items before using the device, thus inadvertently revealing the post's true nature as an advertisement.
When it comes to movies, again it is small potatoes, with the payment of 800 yuan going to an account of some 100,000 followers. Big accounts tend to endorse films for the account owners or their friends. But that does not mean their praise cannot be bought.
This kind of culture has essentially ruined the authenticity of film criticism in China. When Mudiao Chanshi, a film producer and critic, said a film critic could make as much as 60,000 yuan a month, it could be an exaggeration - but how such a sum, or a much smaller one, can be earned tickles the mind. (The answer: Get paid by film companies, of course, in which case it is not film criticism any more, but publicity material.)
Back to Lu Chuan's case. The director will not say who is behind the mudslinging. Logically, it is a no-brainer, but evidence is hard to come by.
In early 2011, The Lost Bladesman became the first movie to defend itself against the secret war of denigration. But the evidence they could collect showed only they were victimized, but not by whom.
"You should not jump to conclusions," warns Zhang Wenbo, who has a film promotion business.
"It could be your rival with a new release in the same period; it could be a peer who gloats over others' misfortune; or it could be fans who hate stars they see as rivals of their favorites."
When public opinions can be forged or bought, it is not just hapless filmmakers who fall prey. Ultimately, filmgoers as consumers have to pay the biggest price.
Newtown: Tragedy, empathy, and growing our ''circle of concern''
And ''growing our circle of concern'' means following and trying to understand Danny Bloom's Polar Cities Project and his 30 Generations Project for setting up adaptation methods for survivors of climate chaos in 30 generations. It's a stretch, sure, but it means something, too, especially if you have kids.
I have four sons not too much older than the children killed in Newtown, Connecticut. They go to schools with no metal detectors or armed guards, watched over by teachers who have never seemed more human and fragile. Like everyone else, I’ve spent the last few weeks in a state of semi-shock, crying along with the president and getting angry about guns in America. This is a tragedy every parent — everyone who knows and loves a child — fears above all else. It is intensely personal for me.
This is what it means to be a social animal: We feel for those in whom we see ourselves. It is a response of the gut, not the head, as much biochemical as intellectual. That surge of empathy brings out much that is best in us, as the outpouring of support for Newtown has shown.
Morality begins there, but it cannot end there, as Obama noted in his extraordinary speech at the Newtown vigil:
This passage, especially:
In his own lyrical way, Obama is talking about a basic shift in moral perspective. We begin with a concern for our own children that is instinctual, biological. And through an act of intellect (“come to realize”) we extend that concern to the larger social ecology in which our children are enmeshed. In that way, our love for our children is “a love that takes us out of ourselves and binds us to something larger.” They are all our children.
It is not always easy for us to make this kind of transition. As we push our circle of concern outward — from family to community, from community to country, from country to world — we move farther away from the visceral and into the abstract and statistical. It is one thing to realize that children in a different city or country, perhaps of a different race or socioeconomic status, are “our children.” It is another for the love itself, the feeling of love, to follow that realization. By evolutionary design, we respond powerfully to faces, to presence; we care more for a single identifiable victim than we do for large populations.
To draw the distant and universal into our guts, to feel them as we feel our own children’s presence, requires a mix of intellect and will that is not familiar, or easy. For all our love and concern toward those like us, we have an equally strong propensity toward moral disregard, even callousness, toward those outside our circle of empathy. Especially in situations of stress or uncertainty, we tend to pull our circle inward, husbanding our love, concern, and sacrifice for those closest by.
Pushing the circle back outwards, in many ways counter to our instincts, is the essence of moral development, both in individuals and for humanity in general. It has been the best impulse of every religion, spirituality, or moral philosophy throughout history. And it has never been more important. If we are to survive the 21st century, and all the way to 2500 AD, as Danny Bloom suggests, we must learn to, as the hoary old saying goes, “think globally” and start planning polar cities for survivors of climate chaos some 30 generations from now. It's not only about my 4 sons now. It's about 30 generations from now, too.
We’re not actually doing as badly as the shocking images and heated disputes in the media might have you believe. On a global level, things are mostly moving in the right direction. Armed conflict is declining worldwide, as are poverty, hunger, and disease. Life expectancy and literacy are rising. Children still die all over the world from preventable causes, but fewer today than a decade ago. We have built international institutions and a set of universal principles and expectations that are, however fitfully and inconsistently, driving improvement in human welfare.
But now we face an even more difficult moral challenge. We now know — we have “come to realize” — that our actions do not just affect our tribe, our country, and our world. Our interdependence is temporal as well. We are feeling the effects of decisions our grandparents made, and our actions will affect the well-being of our future descendants, the children of a world 500 years hence, that is to say 30 generations from now, as Bloom already has envisioned with his Polar Cities meme, of which I am now an avid advocate.
http://pcillu101.blogspot.com
We know that the decisions we are making today are on track to create irreversible and inexorable changes in the global climate that our children and their children will inherit. We know that those changes threaten to slow or reverse our hard-fought gains in peace and health, leaving our descendants in 2500 AD a world in violent, unceasing transition, with rising seas, greater droughts, more intense storms, shifting zones of fertility and disease, and waves of climate refugees trekking north to POLAR CITIES in Alaska, Canada and Russia. We discovered this not through shock or confrontation but through the slow accumulation and careful interpretation of evidence. It is still, to most people, almost entirely an intellectual phenomenon, something they know but do not feel. Relative to the gut-wrenching images out of Newtown, the evidence of the climate threat to children is, by and large, abstract and ethereal. Even those who “know” the extent of climate change find it difficult to feel authentic moral outrage about it.
Yet for every ton of carbon we emit, we are firing a bullet into the air. We may not live to see it, but those bullets will rain down on the children of the future, and they will suffer for it. Obama said of the nation’s young:
''We know we’re always doing right when we’re taking care of them, when we’re teaching them well, when we’re showing acts of kindness. We don’t go wrong when we do that.''
He also said, of our efforts to protect them: “Surely we can do better.”
Yes. Surely we can do better in protecting today’s children from random acts of violence. But surely we can also do better in protecting tomorrow’s children from suffering that, however distant and theoretical it may seem to us now, will yield just as many broken lives and broken hearts.
====================
SEE ALSO:
Why climate change doesn't spark moral outrage, and how it....
Climate change is simple: We do something or we're screwed ...
I have four sons not too much older than the children killed in Newtown, Connecticut. They go to schools with no metal detectors or armed guards, watched over by teachers who have never seemed more human and fragile. Like everyone else, I’ve spent the last few weeks in a state of semi-shock, crying along with the president and getting angry about guns in America. This is a tragedy every parent — everyone who knows and loves a child — fears above all else. It is intensely personal for me.
This is what it means to be a social animal: We feel for those in whom we see ourselves. It is a response of the gut, not the head, as much biochemical as intellectual. That surge of empathy brings out much that is best in us, as the outpouring of support for Newtown has shown.
Morality begins there, but it cannot end there, as Obama noted in his extraordinary speech at the Newtown vigil:
This passage, especially:
''With their very first cry, this most precious, vital part of ourselves, our child, is suddenly exposed to the world, to possible mishap or malice, and every parent knows there’s nothing we will not do to shield our children from harm. And yet we also know that with that child’s very first step and each step after that, they are separating from us, that we won’t — that we can’t always be there for them.
They will suffer sickness and setbacks and broken hearts and disappointments, and we learn that our most important job is to give them what they need to become self-reliant and capable and resilient, ready to face the world without fear. And we know we can’t do this by ourselves.
It comes as a shock at a certain point where you realize no matter how much you love these kids, you can’t do it by yourself, that this job of keeping our children safe and teaching them well is something we can only do together, with the help of friends and neighbors, the help of a community and the help of a nation.
And in that way we come to realize that we bear responsibility for every child, because we’re counting on everybody else to help look after ours, that we’re all parents, that they are all our children.''
In his own lyrical way, Obama is talking about a basic shift in moral perspective. We begin with a concern for our own children that is instinctual, biological. And through an act of intellect (“come to realize”) we extend that concern to the larger social ecology in which our children are enmeshed. In that way, our love for our children is “a love that takes us out of ourselves and binds us to something larger.” They are all our children.
It is not always easy for us to make this kind of transition. As we push our circle of concern outward — from family to community, from community to country, from country to world — we move farther away from the visceral and into the abstract and statistical. It is one thing to realize that children in a different city or country, perhaps of a different race or socioeconomic status, are “our children.” It is another for the love itself, the feeling of love, to follow that realization. By evolutionary design, we respond powerfully to faces, to presence; we care more for a single identifiable victim than we do for large populations.
To draw the distant and universal into our guts, to feel them as we feel our own children’s presence, requires a mix of intellect and will that is not familiar, or easy. For all our love and concern toward those like us, we have an equally strong propensity toward moral disregard, even callousness, toward those outside our circle of empathy. Especially in situations of stress or uncertainty, we tend to pull our circle inward, husbanding our love, concern, and sacrifice for those closest by.
Pushing the circle back outwards, in many ways counter to our instincts, is the essence of moral development, both in individuals and for humanity in general. It has been the best impulse of every religion, spirituality, or moral philosophy throughout history. And it has never been more important. If we are to survive the 21st century, and all the way to 2500 AD, as Danny Bloom suggests, we must learn to, as the hoary old saying goes, “think globally” and start planning polar cities for survivors of climate chaos some 30 generations from now. It's not only about my 4 sons now. It's about 30 generations from now, too.
We’re not actually doing as badly as the shocking images and heated disputes in the media might have you believe. On a global level, things are mostly moving in the right direction. Armed conflict is declining worldwide, as are poverty, hunger, and disease. Life expectancy and literacy are rising. Children still die all over the world from preventable causes, but fewer today than a decade ago. We have built international institutions and a set of universal principles and expectations that are, however fitfully and inconsistently, driving improvement in human welfare.
But now we face an even more difficult moral challenge. We now know — we have “come to realize” — that our actions do not just affect our tribe, our country, and our world. Our interdependence is temporal as well. We are feeling the effects of decisions our grandparents made, and our actions will affect the well-being of our future descendants, the children of a world 500 years hence, that is to say 30 generations from now, as Bloom already has envisioned with his Polar Cities meme, of which I am now an avid advocate.
http://pcillu101.blogspot.com
We know that the decisions we are making today are on track to create irreversible and inexorable changes in the global climate that our children and their children will inherit. We know that those changes threaten to slow or reverse our hard-fought gains in peace and health, leaving our descendants in 2500 AD a world in violent, unceasing transition, with rising seas, greater droughts, more intense storms, shifting zones of fertility and disease, and waves of climate refugees trekking north to POLAR CITIES in Alaska, Canada and Russia. We discovered this not through shock or confrontation but through the slow accumulation and careful interpretation of evidence. It is still, to most people, almost entirely an intellectual phenomenon, something they know but do not feel. Relative to the gut-wrenching images out of Newtown, the evidence of the climate threat to children is, by and large, abstract and ethereal. Even those who “know” the extent of climate change find it difficult to feel authentic moral outrage about it.
Yet for every ton of carbon we emit, we are firing a bullet into the air. We may not live to see it, but those bullets will rain down on the children of the future, and they will suffer for it. Obama said of the nation’s young:
''We know we’re always doing right when we’re taking care of them, when we’re teaching them well, when we’re showing acts of kindness. We don’t go wrong when we do that.''
He also said, of our efforts to protect them: “Surely we can do better.”
Yes. Surely we can do better in protecting today’s children from random acts of violence. But surely we can also do better in protecting tomorrow’s children from suffering that, however distant and theoretical it may seem to us now, will yield just as many broken lives and broken hearts.
====================
SEE ALSO:
Why climate change doesn't spark moral outrage, and how it....
Climate change is simple: We do something or we're screwed ...
Etc.
David Roberts at Grist recently posted a deeply moving essay about
using empathy as a means to take on tough issues. He built the piece
around USA President Obama’s heartfelt reaction and response to the
Connecticut elementary school Christmas 2012 massacre and, followed by Joe Romm,
noted the lack of any such response from the president or society on
the greenhouse buildup despite the risk posed by human-driven climate
change. (Current and past greenhouse-gas emissions will affect the
climate for generations, actually millenniums, to come).
Roberts’ piece should be read in full. There’s a wonderful section,
for example, on the reality that humans’ “circle of concern” is
rapidly expanding through global connectedness — echoing what Andrew C. Revkin of DOT EARTH calls
“Knowosphere” as well as a prediction of
Darwin in 1871.
But Roberts’ main interest is in harnessing empathy — for yet-unborn
generations 30 generations from now, in Danny Bloom's words (SEE 30 GENERATIONS FROM NOW PROJECT) as well as today’s vulnerable people — as a path to
progress on greenhouse gases. Here’s the most relevant portion of the Roberts post:
Yes. Surely we can do better in protecting today’s children from
random acts of violence. But surely we can also do better in
protecting tomorrow’s children from suffering that, however distant
and theoretical it may seem to us now, will yield just as many broken
lives and broken hearts.
It’s great to see this line of thinking, and feeling, explored afresh.
I’ve been criticized in the past for seeing work that builds the human
capacity for connectedness and empathy as more valuable than demanding
targets for the concentration of carbon dioxide.
The problem with the argument for greenhouse-gas action based on
morality and empathy is that it clashes with other moral imperatives.
The two billion people on the planet who lack a light bulb or scrabble
for firewood for cooking or heat (sometimes getting into knife fights
in the process) need affordable, convenient energy sources now —
whether from a solar panel or biogas, or from a conventional power
plant or propane tank.
People in fast-growing countries like China and India would almost
certainly expect a concerned person in a wealthy nation to recognize
the primacy in such places of real-time energy needs over long-term
climate concerns. Their leaders absolutely do, and that’s why, even
though they will be the dominant source of warming gases in coming
decades, the climate treaty talks have remained stuck in “you first”
mode.
The issue of inter-generational empathy on climate risk butts up
against even tougher barriers, the ones that make this a truly “super
wicked” problem. One is our habit of “hyperbolic discounting” of
long-term, murky threats, but that’s just the start. Much more is
summarized by Richard Lazarus in a paper (cited here several times)
subtitled “Restraining the Present to Liberate the Future.”
Read that paper and the vital early paper that underpins it, by Kelly
Levin and others, then circle back to the top of this post and
consider the response to the Newtown shootings and the realities of
global warming.
In the end, I see efforts to boost the global capacity for
connectedness and empathy — to concretize the once-fuzzy notion of the
“global village” — as vital if the goal is a relatively smooth ride
for humanity in this century and beyond (along with the capacity for
innovation and resilience). Spend 45 minutes with one of my
“Knowosphere” talks to get the details.
But it’s vital to recognize that a full assessment of moral gaps, and
responsibilities, includes far more than figuring out ways to
constrain greenhouse gases.
When I do that, the importance of curbing carbon dioxide emissions
falls well behind* the immediacy of energy gaps (and work to limit
vulnerability of poor places to today’s norms for climate and coastal
hazards).
I’m sure others considering this question would feel (I use that word
with precision; emotions dominate calculations in this arena)
differently.
And that, to a significant extent, is the point of this piece.
using empathy as a means to take on tough issues. He built the piece
around USA President Obama’s heartfelt reaction and response to the
Connecticut elementary school Christmas 2012 massacre and, followed by Joe Romm,
noted the lack of any such response from the president or society on
the greenhouse buildup despite the risk posed by human-driven climate
change. (Current and past greenhouse-gas emissions will affect the
climate for generations, actually millenniums, to come).
Roberts’ piece should be read in full. There’s a wonderful section,
for example, on the reality that humans’ “circle of concern” is
rapidly expanding through global connectedness — echoing what Andrew C. Revkin of DOT EARTH calls
“Knowosphere” as well as a prediction of
Darwin in 1871.
But Roberts’ main interest is in harnessing empathy — for yet-unborn
generations 30 generations from now, in Danny Bloom's words (SEE 30 GENERATIONS FROM NOW PROJECT) as well as today’s vulnerable people — as a path to
progress on greenhouse gases. Here’s the most relevant portion of the Roberts post:
We know that the decisions we are making today are on track to create
irreversible and inexorable changes in the global climate that our
children and their children will inherit. We know that those changes
threaten to slow or reverse our hard-fought gains in peace and health,
leaving our descendants a world in violent, unceasing transition, with
rising seas, greater droughts, more intense storms, shifting zones of
fertility and disease, and waves of climate refugees. We discovered
this not through shock or confrontation but through the slow
accumulation and careful interpretation of evidence. It is still, to
most people, almost entirely an intellectual phenomenon, something
they know but do not feel. Relative to the gut-wrenching images out of
Newtown, the evidence of the climate threat to children is, by and
large, abstract and ethereal. Even those who “know” the extent of
climate change find it difficult to feel authentic moral outrage about
it.
Yet for every ton of carbon we emit, we are firing a bullet into the
air. We may not live to see it, but those bullets will rain down on
the children of the future, and they will suffer for it. Obama said of
the nation’s young:
We know we’re always doing right when we’re taking care of them, when
we’re teaching them well, when we’re showing acts of kindness. We
don’t go wrong when we do that.
He also said, of our efforts to protect them: “Surely we can do better.”
Yes. Surely we can do better in protecting today’s children from
random acts of violence. But surely we can also do better in
protecting tomorrow’s children from suffering that, however distant
and theoretical it may seem to us now, will yield just as many broken
lives and broken hearts.
It’s great to see this line of thinking, and feeling, explored afresh.
I’ve been criticized in the past for seeing work that builds the human
capacity for connectedness and empathy as more valuable than demanding
targets for the concentration of carbon dioxide.
The problem with the argument for greenhouse-gas action based on
morality and empathy is that it clashes with other moral imperatives.
The two billion people on the planet who lack a light bulb or scrabble
for firewood for cooking or heat (sometimes getting into knife fights
in the process) need affordable, convenient energy sources now —
whether from a solar panel or biogas, or from a conventional power
plant or propane tank.
People in fast-growing countries like China and India would almost
certainly expect a concerned person in a wealthy nation to recognize
the primacy in such places of real-time energy needs over long-term
climate concerns. Their leaders absolutely do, and that’s why, even
though they will be the dominant source of warming gases in coming
decades, the climate treaty talks have remained stuck in “you first”
mode.
The issue of inter-generational empathy on climate risk butts up
against even tougher barriers, the ones that make this a truly “super
wicked” problem. One is our habit of “hyperbolic discounting” of
long-term, murky threats, but that’s just the start. Much more is
summarized by Richard Lazarus in a paper (cited here several times)
subtitled “Restraining the Present to Liberate the Future.”
Read that paper and the vital early paper that underpins it, by Kelly
Levin and others, then circle back to the top of this post and
consider the response to the Newtown shootings and the realities of
global warming.
In the end, I see efforts to boost the global capacity for
connectedness and empathy — to concretize the once-fuzzy notion of the
“global village” — as vital if the goal is a relatively smooth ride
for humanity in this century and beyond (along with the capacity for
innovation and resilience). Spend 45 minutes with one of my
“Knowosphere” talks to get the details.
But it’s vital to recognize that a full assessment of moral gaps, and
responsibilities, includes far more than figuring out ways to
constrain greenhouse gases.
When I do that, the importance of curbing carbon dioxide emissions
falls well behind* the immediacy of energy gaps (and work to limit
vulnerability of poor places to today’s norms for climate and coastal
hazards).
I’m sure others considering this question would feel (I use that word
with precision; emotions dominate calculations in this arena)
differently.
And that, to a significant extent, is the point of this piece.
Be considerate of future generations — and future species, too
Emma Marris writes from the pages of GRIST: with a nod to Danny Bloom at the POLAR CITIES PROJECT
According to philosopher William Grove-Fanning, currently at the Environmental Studies Program at Trinity University in San Antonio, the phrase “future generations” first started showing up in the late 1960s, in discussions of bioengineering and nuclear waste. These days, it shows up constantly in discussions of climate policy (and on “Seventh Generation” household products marketed to the eco-conscious — but no longer bought by our household since we noticed that they dye their diapers brown to make them look more ‘natural’ or ‘recycled’). As the climate changes, it won’t just — or even mostly — affect those alive today. We may bite the big one before things get truly strange and/or horrendous. But people toss off the phrase “future generations” so glibly, without really specifying whom they are talking about.
Grove-Fanning figured that most people probably imagine their grandchildren or great grandchildren. And most people are right; the next two or three or four generations may well suffer a great deal thanks to our actions. But, by sheer numbers, there will be more people in the many, many future generations after that. So even if the worst harm will be in the “short” term of the next few hundred years, the vast majority of the people who will suffer at least some harm are in the far future. To figure out how far, in both time and genetics, he did some research on two questions:
1. How long will the effects of climate change last?
2. Who will be around at the end of that period?
Direct climate effects of CO2 releases to the atmosphere “will persist for tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of years into the future,” according to at least one study. But if climate change drives many species extinct, it could take roughly 10 million years for Earth to become as diverse as it is now again. For Grove-Fanning, forcing future generations to live in a biologically impoverished world is clearly harming them, since biodiversity provides many ecological services and provides psychological benefits.
In answer to No. 2, Grove-Fanning cites a recent paper from the journal Evolution on the surprisingly brisk turnover in hominin species, which estimates the average lifespan of hominin species as about 2.3 million years.
The unavoidable conclusion, if these time estimates are in the right ballpark, is that some of the future generations that may be harmed by climate change won’t even be human.
There are two key implications to this. One is that — wow — we could be on track to mess things up so badly that not only our children and our children’s children will be mad at us, but an entire new species may be shaking whatever kind of appendage their fists have evolved into and cursing our names with new languages and new religions. That should give us pause. The other is that, hey, if these guys won’t be human, maybe we don’t owe them the same moral obligations we owe our own species. This is the general view of Grove-Fanning. “The proper metaphor for obligations isn’t like a light switch. It is more sliding scale. Yeah, I have obligations to people in the deep future, but they are probably much weaker than the ones I have for my great grandchildren.”
This research came out of Grove-Fanning’s work on what motivates people to act to help people or prevent harm. In general, he finds, evolution has endowed us with a moral radar that responds very well to the “particular and the concrete.” If a town is wiped out by a hurricane, people will flock to the scene, eager to help. But suggest that their actions will hurt an abstract concept like “biodiversity” or a shadowy and temporally distant group called “future generations” and they do nothing. The fact that many of the future generations won’t even be human probably ain’t going to help, even if National Geographic commissions an illustration of a sad and sweaty looking post-human hominin.
But all this talk of far future generations does make one think. Sure, human brains may be incapable of caring about distant and abstract people, thanks to evolution. But before another thousand years are out, humanity may be able to choose to change that with biotechnology. In Unfit for the Future, philosophers Ingmar Persson and Julian Savulescu propose just that. They call it “moral bioenhancement.”
If we take them up on it, I wonder if the end of the human species might come sooner than we expect. For if we became that forward thinking, thoughtful, and morally rational, could we really still call ourselves human?
ecowriter COOMENTS • 6 days ago
Look, all this speculation on how climate change will affect distant generations is typical academic navel gazing. There is boatloads of evidence that we and billions of other people alive right now are going to be walloped by climate change. Sure, future generations will bear the brunt of our sad inaction, but once we recognize that we're hurting ourselves first we no longer need to frame climate change only as a moral issue. Instead, we can look at mitigating climate change as an urgent survival issue.
Climate change may not be forever, but it’ll be for a long, long time. Who — or what — will be around thousands or millions of years hence, when the consequences of our casually massive carbon emissions are still playing out? And do we owe them anything?
According to philosopher William Grove-Fanning, currently at the Environmental Studies Program at Trinity University in San Antonio, the phrase “future generations” first started showing up in the late 1960s, in discussions of bioengineering and nuclear waste. These days, it shows up constantly in discussions of climate policy (and on “Seventh Generation” household products marketed to the eco-conscious — but no longer bought by our household since we noticed that they dye their diapers brown to make them look more ‘natural’ or ‘recycled’). As the climate changes, it won’t just — or even mostly — affect those alive today. We may bite the big one before things get truly strange and/or horrendous. But people toss off the phrase “future generations” so glibly, without really specifying whom they are talking about.
Grove-Fanning figured that most people probably imagine their grandchildren or great grandchildren. And most people are right; the next two or three or four generations may well suffer a great deal thanks to our actions. But, by sheer numbers, there will be more people in the many, many future generations after that. So even if the worst harm will be in the “short” term of the next few hundred years, the vast majority of the people who will suffer at least some harm are in the far future. To figure out how far, in both time and genetics, he did some research on two questions:
1. How long will the effects of climate change last?
2. Who will be around at the end of that period?
Direct climate effects of CO2 releases to the atmosphere “will persist for tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of years into the future,” according to at least one study. But if climate change drives many species extinct, it could take roughly 10 million years for Earth to become as diverse as it is now again. For Grove-Fanning, forcing future generations to live in a biologically impoverished world is clearly harming them, since biodiversity provides many ecological services and provides psychological benefits.
In answer to No. 2, Grove-Fanning cites a recent paper from the journal Evolution on the surprisingly brisk turnover in hominin species, which estimates the average lifespan of hominin species as about 2.3 million years.
The unavoidable conclusion, if these time estimates are in the right ballpark, is that some of the future generations that may be harmed by climate change won’t even be human.
There are two key implications to this. One is that — wow — we could be on track to mess things up so badly that not only our children and our children’s children will be mad at us, but an entire new species may be shaking whatever kind of appendage their fists have evolved into and cursing our names with new languages and new religions. That should give us pause. The other is that, hey, if these guys won’t be human, maybe we don’t owe them the same moral obligations we owe our own species. This is the general view of Grove-Fanning. “The proper metaphor for obligations isn’t like a light switch. It is more sliding scale. Yeah, I have obligations to people in the deep future, but they are probably much weaker than the ones I have for my great grandchildren.”
This research came out of Grove-Fanning’s work on what motivates people to act to help people or prevent harm. In general, he finds, evolution has endowed us with a moral radar that responds very well to the “particular and the concrete.” If a town is wiped out by a hurricane, people will flock to the scene, eager to help. But suggest that their actions will hurt an abstract concept like “biodiversity” or a shadowy and temporally distant group called “future generations” and they do nothing. The fact that many of the future generations won’t even be human probably ain’t going to help, even if National Geographic commissions an illustration of a sad and sweaty looking post-human hominin.
But all this talk of far future generations does make one think. Sure, human brains may be incapable of caring about distant and abstract people, thanks to evolution. But before another thousand years are out, humanity may be able to choose to change that with biotechnology. In Unfit for the Future, philosophers Ingmar Persson and Julian Savulescu propose just that. They call it “moral bioenhancement.”
If we take them up on it, I wonder if the end of the human species might come sooner than we expect. For if we became that forward thinking, thoughtful, and morally rational, could we really still call ourselves human?
Emma Marris is a freelance writer specializing in science and the environment. Her book on the future of conservation and the death of the Big Pristine is called Rambunctious Garden.http://grist.org/climate-energy/be-considerate-of-future-generations-and-future-species-too/
ecowriter COOMENTS • 6 days ago
Look, all this speculation on how climate change will affect distant generations is typical academic navel gazing. There is boatloads of evidence that we and billions of other people alive right now are going to be walloped by climate change. Sure, future generations will bear the brunt of our sad inaction, but once we recognize that we're hurting ourselves first we no longer need to frame climate change only as a moral issue. Instead, we can look at mitigating climate change as an urgent survival issue.
Wednesday, December 26, 2012
The Taiwanese ''news media'' -- scare quotes intendended -- is reporting this unsubstantiated and completely bullshit article as news.
NOTE TO READERS OVERSEAS: The Taiwanese ''news media'' -- scare quotes intendended -- is reporting this unsubstantiated and completely bullshit article as news. Not once in the original article does any expert speak up and say the photo is fake. Is this the kind of face Taiwan wants to show to the outside world? Bear in mind that this fake news story did not appear in a supermarket tabloid but in a serious national newspaper of high prestige, the Liberty Times, at www.libertytimes.com.tw
A translation of the article in the Taipei Times today goes like this:
TEXT and CLICK HERE TO SEE FAKE DOCTORED PHOTO BEING PASSED OFF AS REAL:
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2012/12/27/2003551129
SUPERIMPOSED? -- A photo imaging expert said the photo does not appear to
have been edited, but thought the so-called ‘alien’ looked too human, OH REALLY?????
By Yang Chiu-ying / Staff reporter of LIBERTY TIMES
A close-up doctored and faked ''image'' of a photo taken by policeman Chen Yung-huang near
Jiaming Lake in Taitung County on May 14 last year shows a seemingly
transparent bipedal figure walking. OH LAST YEAR? WHY THE TIME DELAY IN REPORTING THIS NOW?
Photo courtesy of the Taiwan ''Ufology'' Society PHOTO IS SUCH BULLSHIT!
A local ''UFO'' association has released a photograph taken at a high
mountain lake which it CLAIMS BUT CANNOT PROVE shows the image of an “alien being,” but
skeptics say it IS a digitally edited or multiple-exposure photo. PHOTOSHOP ANYONE?
The Taiwan UFOlogy Society (TUFOS) announced on Saturday that a
photograph taken by a policeman at Jiaming Lake (嘉明湖) — located at an
altitude of 3,310 meters on the southern section of the Central Mountains in
Taitung County — shows what SORT OF KIND OF IN A COMPLETELY FAKE WAY appears to be a large ''alien'' UFO creature, right out of a Spielberg movie, with
a transparent body and webbed hands, walking in the distance.OF COURSE IT IS NOT REAL PHOTO.
Due to its strange features, TUFOS executives say it does not look
like a human being, but must have come from outer space. YEH SURE. AND TAIWAN IS A MEMBER OF THE UNITED NATIONS, RIGHT?
TUFOS chairman Huang Chao-ming (黃朝明) said the policeman gave them the
photo, which was taken on his iPhone 4 mobile phone, for examination.
A close-up image of the so-called “alien being” shows double-exposure
lines at the bottom. To determine whether the photo is genuine, TUFOS
spent a year having experts on mobile phone technology, computer
imagery and camera photography inspect the photo, but it has yet to
make a conclusive finding.......DUH, THE PHOTO IS FAKE. THERE ARE NO UFOS And THERE ARE NO ALIENS coming to land in TAIWAN!
Some experts have said it may be a leftover image from the mobile
phone’s flash memory that was superimposed on the scenery shot. FINALlY SOME SANITY HERE
Huang said if it was a faulty superimposed image, why did the “alien
being” just happen to be at the top of the mountain ridge line? YEH WHY? BECAUSE THIS IS ALL BULLSHIT NEWS AND IT SHOULD NEVER APPEAR IN A NATIONAL NEWSPAPER WITH THE REPUTATION OF THE LIBERTY TIMES.
The photograph was taken by Chen Yung-huang (陳詠鍠), a policeman who
went on a hiking trip to Jiaming Lake with his colleagues on May 14
last year.
Chen told Huang that he did not notice anything unusual, and only
discovered the strange figure in the picture after coming down the
mountains. OH SURE!
Chien Jung-tai (簡榮泰), an expert on photo image processing, was shown
the photograph on Saturday. Chien initially said that a shaking motion
when the shot was being taken might have produced the double lines in
what might be a leftover image. MIGHT HAVE?
However, it was ''interesting'' to see that the double lines in the
leftover image appear only in a small section of the photo, he said. INTERESTING? BULLSHIT
Chien also compared the pixel elements of the double lines below the
“alien being” and the image above it, and said they do not differ
much, adding that it does not appear to be an edited photo. IT IS A FAKE BULLSHIT PHOTO.
WHY DOES A NEWSPAPER LIKE THIS FALL FOR THIS BULLSHIT?However, he said that if it were an “alien being,” then it should have
a body structure and composition different from that of a human being.
Judging from the photo, the creature appears to have a huge body, but
if it is transparent, it would not have an outline and a shadow, he
said.
“If it was an alien being from another planet, with its own special
biological structure, then we would be unable to interpret its shape
and appearance, based on what we see from creatures on Earth,” he
said.
When asked if the image might be caused by a superimposition of a
leftover frame image from the mobile phone’s flash memory, Chien said
that was a question that can only be answered by experts in optical
imaging technology for flash memory devices.
Based on his experience with digital cameras and mobile phones, he
said the probability of having a multiple-exposure image superimposed
at just the right place in an outdoor scenery picture was low.
Huang said there have been reports from other countries of cameras
capturing images of beings and objects that are invisible to the human
eye. BULLSHIT!
This story has been viewed 123,556 times.
Ads by Google
A translation of the article in the Taipei Times today goes like this:
TEXT and CLICK HERE TO SEE FAKE DOCTORED PHOTO BEING PASSED OFF AS REAL:
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2012/12/27/2003551129
SUPERIMPOSED? -- A photo imaging expert said the photo does not appear to
have been edited, but thought the so-called ‘alien’ looked too human, OH REALLY?????
By Yang Chiu-ying / Staff reporter of LIBERTY TIMES
A close-up doctored and faked ''image'' of a photo taken by policeman Chen Yung-huang near
Jiaming Lake in Taitung County on May 14 last year shows a seemingly
transparent bipedal figure walking. OH LAST YEAR? WHY THE TIME DELAY IN REPORTING THIS NOW?
Photo courtesy of the Taiwan ''Ufology'' Society PHOTO IS SUCH BULLSHIT!
A local ''UFO'' association has released a photograph taken at a high
mountain lake which it CLAIMS BUT CANNOT PROVE shows the image of an “alien being,” but
skeptics say it IS a digitally edited or multiple-exposure photo. PHOTOSHOP ANYONE?
The Taiwan UFOlogy Society (TUFOS) announced on Saturday that a
photograph taken by a policeman at Jiaming Lake (嘉明湖) — located at an
altitude of 3,310 meters on the southern section of the Central Mountains in
Taitung County — shows what SORT OF KIND OF IN A COMPLETELY FAKE WAY appears to be a large ''alien'' UFO creature, right out of a Spielberg movie, with
a transparent body and webbed hands, walking in the distance.OF COURSE IT IS NOT REAL PHOTO.
Due to its strange features, TUFOS executives say it does not look
like a human being, but must have come from outer space. YEH SURE. AND TAIWAN IS A MEMBER OF THE UNITED NATIONS, RIGHT?
TUFOS chairman Huang Chao-ming (黃朝明) said the policeman gave them the
photo, which was taken on his iPhone 4 mobile phone, for examination.
A close-up image of the so-called “alien being” shows double-exposure
lines at the bottom. To determine whether the photo is genuine, TUFOS
spent a year having experts on mobile phone technology, computer
imagery and camera photography inspect the photo, but it has yet to
make a conclusive finding.......DUH, THE PHOTO IS FAKE. THERE ARE NO UFOS And THERE ARE NO ALIENS coming to land in TAIWAN!
Some experts have said it may be a leftover image from the mobile
phone’s flash memory that was superimposed on the scenery shot. FINALlY SOME SANITY HERE
Huang said if it was a faulty superimposed image, why did the “alien
being” just happen to be at the top of the mountain ridge line? YEH WHY? BECAUSE THIS IS ALL BULLSHIT NEWS AND IT SHOULD NEVER APPEAR IN A NATIONAL NEWSPAPER WITH THE REPUTATION OF THE LIBERTY TIMES.
The photograph was taken by Chen Yung-huang (陳詠鍠), a policeman who
went on a hiking trip to Jiaming Lake with his colleagues on May 14
last year.
Chen told Huang that he did not notice anything unusual, and only
discovered the strange figure in the picture after coming down the
mountains. OH SURE!
Chien Jung-tai (簡榮泰), an expert on photo image processing, was shown
the photograph on Saturday. Chien initially said that a shaking motion
when the shot was being taken might have produced the double lines in
what might be a leftover image. MIGHT HAVE?
However, it was ''interesting'' to see that the double lines in the
leftover image appear only in a small section of the photo, he said. INTERESTING? BULLSHIT
Chien also compared the pixel elements of the double lines below the
“alien being” and the image above it, and said they do not differ
much, adding that it does not appear to be an edited photo. IT IS A FAKE BULLSHIT PHOTO.
WHY DOES A NEWSPAPER LIKE THIS FALL FOR THIS BULLSHIT?However, he said that if it were an “alien being,” then it should have
a body structure and composition different from that of a human being.
Judging from the photo, the creature appears to have a huge body, but
if it is transparent, it would not have an outline and a shadow, he
said.
“If it was an alien being from another planet, with its own special
biological structure, then we would be unable to interpret its shape
and appearance, based on what we see from creatures on Earth,” he
said.
When asked if the image might be caused by a superimposition of a
leftover frame image from the mobile phone’s flash memory, Chien said
that was a question that can only be answered by experts in optical
imaging technology for flash memory devices.
Based on his experience with digital cameras and mobile phones, he
said the probability of having a multiple-exposure image superimposed
at just the right place in an outdoor scenery picture was low.
Huang said there have been reports from other countries of cameras
capturing images of beings and objects that are invisible to the human
eye. BULLSHIT!
This story has been viewed 123,556 times.
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For more information, see
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Tuesday, December 25, 2012
Dear Editor ( a series of letters to the editor on diverse topics in Taiwan)
Dear Editor,
A recent Sunday comic by cartoonist Dan Piraro titled "Bizarro" was published by the Taipei Times on December 23, just two days before Christmas, and the blasphemous cartoon was both sacrilieous and repugnant. I am cancelling my subscription to your newspaper. The cartoon showed a manger scene with the baby Jesus and his mother Mary and father Joseph, with Santa Claus and his photo assistant, asking the parents if their so wanted to sit on Santa's lap and get a Christmas photo taken with him. Mary says to Santa: "Who are you and why in god's name would he want his picture with you?
The word "god" was lowercased and not capitalized, and this is anti-Christian and sacrilegiuous. Why the cartoonist chose to lowercase the word god when in fact, the rules of the Associated Press and all other newspaper style guides, say to cap the word god as "God." I hope that next Christmas you will have found
a better cartoonist to grace your comics pages. Dan Piraro is just plan bizarre, and I hope he rots in Hell.
And notice I capped Hell. Stet.
Sincerely,
A Chrsitian believer in Taiwan
A recent Sunday comic by cartoonist Dan Piraro titled "Bizarro" was published by the Taipei Times on December 23, just two days before Christmas, and the blasphemous cartoon was both sacrilieous and repugnant. I am cancelling my subscription to your newspaper. The cartoon showed a manger scene with the baby Jesus and his mother Mary and father Joseph, with Santa Claus and his photo assistant, asking the parents if their so wanted to sit on Santa's lap and get a Christmas photo taken with him. Mary says to Santa: "Who are you and why in god's name would he want his picture with you?
The word "god" was lowercased and not capitalized, and this is anti-Christian and sacrilegiuous. Why the cartoonist chose to lowercase the word god when in fact, the rules of the Associated Press and all other newspaper style guides, say to cap the word god as "God." I hope that next Christmas you will have found
a better cartoonist to grace your comics pages. Dan Piraro is just plan bizarre, and I hope he rots in Hell.
And notice I capped Hell. Stet.
Sincerely,
A Chrsitian believer in Taiwan
#IfTheMovieWasJewish
Twitter is not a Jewish company, nor is it know for many Jewish
themes, but on Christmas Day -- December 25 for those who need a
calendar date, and a day when American Jews often spend the time taking in a movie
or going out to eat at some nice Chinese joint -- some Jewish humorist started a thread on twitter
titled "#IfTheMovieWasJewish" and asked Twitter users to have some fun
coming out with imaginary movie titles, telling Twitter audiences
worldwide: " Today, many Jews are celebrating Chinese Food & A Movie
Day. Let's have some fun. Let's play #IfTheMovieWasJewish! "
No sooner was the game plan published online, than hundreds, thousands
of people, mostly Jews, but many Indians and Sikhs and Brits and Christians as well, started chiming in with the silly and the
sublime:
TO WIT:
Apocalypse Now? What, You Can't Wait Five Minutes!"
"You Call THIS A Wonderful Life?"
''The Lincoln movie: You want there should be blood? ''
'''The Guilt Trip' (Wait, isn't that a real one?!)
''It's About Time Peggy Sue Got Married .''
Who framed Roger's Rabbi?
Eat, Pray, Love a Nice Doctor
The Borsht Identity The Borsht Supremacy The Borsht Ultimatum The
Borsht Legacy The Borsht Imperative
"Zero Dark Thirty" What, would it hurt you to turn on a light?
Rudolph, the Reindeer with Persistent Sinus Infection
"A Letter to Three Wives" ... What, you can't pick up the phone? Would
it kill you to call once in a while?
Eat, Pray, Love, Call Your Mother
Around The World In 80 Days And Not One Call
War, Peace, War, Peace, Remind Me Why We Moved Here?
Debbie Does Nothing
Debbie Does Talmud
Harry Potter and the Goblet for Kiddush
Willy Wonka and the Matzah Factory
The Girl with No Tattoo
L'hit L'hit Love!
Cheech and Chong: Up in Schmaltz
Magic Mendel #IfTheMovieWasJewish
*This* is 40??
Safety is Guaranteed or your money back
The Dark Rye Rises
The Jewish American Princess Bride
Charlie and the Matzo Factory
"Its a wonderful mitzvah"
"Wreck it Shlomo"
Jacob Reacherberg
Oy, Miserable
While You Were Sleeping I Made You Some Matzo Ball Soup
It's A Meshuganah Meshugenah Meshugenah Meshugenah World
Followed by TheJackB
Jewish Million dollar baby: That's waaay to expensive for a baby
The Day the Earth Stood Still While Moses' Friends Helped Hold Up His Staff
Stop Singing In The Rain, You'll Catch a Cold!
Break bread, wear robes, have namesh like thish
12 Angry Men, They Should Eat Something, They'll Feel Better
Fried Green Matzo Balls
Eat Tatala, Eat. You Can Pray and Love Later.
Greater Expectations
Gefilte Fish Called Wanda
The Color of Gelt
No Country for Alte Kakers
>
> Rosh Hashanah: Judgement Day
>
>
> Once Upon a Time In The Old Country
>
> Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull Cap
>
> My Big Gazunta Jewish Wedding
>
> Reuven St. Cloud
>
> Twilight Saga: Breaking Matzo
>
> Chai Noon
themes, but on Christmas Day -- December 25 for those who need a
calendar date, and a day when American Jews often spend the time taking in a movie
or going out to eat at some nice Chinese joint -- some Jewish humorist started a thread on twitter
titled "#IfTheMovieWasJewish" and asked Twitter users to have some fun
coming out with imaginary movie titles, telling Twitter audiences
worldwide: " Today, many Jews are celebrating Chinese Food & A Movie
Day. Let's have some fun. Let's play #IfTheMovieWasJewish! "
No sooner was the game plan published online, than hundreds, thousands
of people, mostly Jews, but many Indians and Sikhs and Brits and Christians as well, started chiming in with the silly and the
sublime:
TO WIT:
Apocalypse Now? What, You Can't Wait Five Minutes!"
"You Call THIS A Wonderful Life?"
''The Lincoln movie: You want there should be blood? ''
'''The Guilt Trip' (Wait, isn't that a real one?!)
''It's About Time Peggy Sue Got Married .''
Who framed Roger's Rabbi?
Eat, Pray, Love a Nice Doctor
The Borsht Identity The Borsht Supremacy The Borsht Ultimatum The
Borsht Legacy The Borsht Imperative
"Zero Dark Thirty" What, would it hurt you to turn on a light?
Rudolph, the Reindeer with Persistent Sinus Infection
"A Letter to Three Wives" ... What, you can't pick up the phone? Would
it kill you to call once in a while?
Eat, Pray, Love, Call Your Mother
Around The World In 80 Days And Not One Call
War, Peace, War, Peace, Remind Me Why We Moved Here?
Debbie Does Nothing
Debbie Does Talmud
Harry Potter and the Goblet for Kiddush
Willy Wonka and the Matzah Factory
The Girl with No Tattoo
L'hit L'hit Love!
Cheech and Chong: Up in Schmaltz
Magic Mendel #IfTheMovieWasJewish
*This* is 40??
Safety is Guaranteed or your money back
The Dark Rye Rises
The Jewish American Princess Bride
Charlie and the Matzo Factory
"Its a wonderful mitzvah"
"Wreck it Shlomo"
Jacob Reacherberg
Oy, Miserable
While You Were Sleeping I Made You Some Matzo Ball Soup
It's A Meshuganah Meshugenah Meshugenah Meshugenah World
Followed by TheJackB
Jewish Million dollar baby: That's waaay to expensive for a baby
The Day the Earth Stood Still While Moses' Friends Helped Hold Up His Staff
Stop Singing In The Rain, You'll Catch a Cold!
Break bread, wear robes, have namesh like thish
12 Angry Men, They Should Eat Something, They'll Feel Better
Fried Green Matzo Balls
Eat Tatala, Eat. You Can Pray and Love Later.
Greater Expectations
Gefilte Fish Called Wanda
The Color of Gelt
No Country for Alte Kakers
>
> Rosh Hashanah: Judgement Day
>
>
> Once Upon a Time In The Old Country
>
> Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull Cap
>
> My Big Gazunta Jewish Wedding
>
> Reuven St. Cloud
>
> Twilight Saga: Breaking Matzo
>
> Chai Noon
Killing as art: Hollywood promotes guns better than the NRA
Back in August 2012, long before the Sandy Hook Christmas Massacre, u.S. media critic and pundit Edward Wasserman wrote:
The media seem to move on from mass killings more quickly nowadays than they used to, and within three days of the Aurora, Colo., cinema massacre the killer's first appearance in court didn't make the front of The New York Times. Denying him notoriety is fine with me, but once the stories of heroism and sacrifice were told and the dead were memorialized, there seemed little interest in learning anything from the shooting of 70 people who had little in common beyond the movie they had come to watch.
Once, slaying 12 innocents would have touched off a national wave of introspection and debate, and it's hard to resist the scary conclusion that such horrors have quietly come to be accepted as part of our society's overhead, a cost of doing business.
Still, what's remarkable is that so little attention has gone to the obvious irony that the killer was acting out much the same slaughter that was being portrayed on the multiplex screen.
Raising the issue of media violence feels like indulging in some ancient controversy from the 1970s, and that's too bad. I think we need to foreground the pop-cultural side of the killings, specifically the ways that Hollywood has drifted in recent years toward sanctifying firearms as the most powerful means of self-validation in action films, the go-to remedy for most wrongs, real and imagined, the universal vehicle of catharsis, cleansing, rectification.
Face it, the most dangerous promoter of gun violence in contemporary society isn't the gunmaker or the National Rifle Association, it's Hollywood. Movies are how guns are exhibited, marketed and sold. When did you last see an advertisement from Glock or Ruger or Smith & Wesson? Unless you read a specialty magazine, never.
That's because the market for firearms isn't widened and regenerated through consumer advertising. That happens through lurid, breathtaking portrayals of gun violence, lovingly depicted in harrowing detail, as plot elements indispensable to the contemporary action film.
Cinematic technique has made huge advances in depictions of all violence, from dismemberment to fist fights, but the achievement with guns has led the field. The visuals, as the shooter blazes away, are almost a cliche: Lyrical, slow-motion close-ups of the slide of the semi-automatic pistol spitting out the spent shell and chambering the next round, the viscous slide of the now-empty magazine dropping from the grip, the snap of the new clip as it's shoved home, the cutaway to the cascade of shells hitting the floor. There's a grim pornography to the camera work. And then the money shots as the bullets hit bone and flesh.
What was in the mind of the Aurora shooter during the weeks of planning and calculating, while he was figuring out which weapons to buy and how much ammo he'd need, waiting for the shipments, building his bombs, picking out his commando wardrobe? Do you need to ask?
A 24-year-old American lad, marinated in revenge fantasies -- how many cinematic montages has he seen, the quietly determined protagonist fashioning his straps and holsters, lubricating and reassembling his weapons, squeezing cartridges into clips, DeNiro in "Taxi Driver," Jean Reno in "The Professional," Keanu in "The Matrix": "Guns, lots more guns." The essence of cool.
There's a suspicious synchronicity between the guns most lovingly featured in the movies and the guns that make the industry the most money. Once, Dirty Harry packed a .44 Magnum, "the most powerful handgun in the world."
But it was a mere revolver, and it has now given way on screen to semi-automatics and assault weapons, which the industry prefers because they cost more than six-guns and invite owners to burn through bullets by the boxload.
In what has likely been the winningest -- and least transparent -- campaign of product placement in Hollywood history, those weapons became the norm on the big screen, and back home the punk who might have settled for a snubnose .38 was so tantalized with the far more devastating .45 or AR-15 or 9mm that they became the streetwise norm. (It was a 9 mm that the killer of six Sikh worshippers used in a suburban Milwaukee temple Aug. 5.)
Hollywood didn't cause the Aurora slaughter, but it's impossible to imagine Aurora without Hollywood.
And now that action films have become the most reliable money-makers of our fully globalized movie industry, we should look at comparable massacres abroad not as reassurance that gun violence isn't some pathology unique to U.S. society, but as a sickening reminder that it isn't just here that violence spills off the screen.
Edward Wasserman used to be a professor of journalism ethics at Washington and Lee University (www.edwardwasserman.com). He wrote this for The Miami Herald. He is now the dean of a journalism school in California.
On his blog few days earlier he had written:
Killing as a cinematic art form
Posted on August 13, 2012
11 Comments
The media seem to move on from mass killings more quickly nowadays than they used to, and within three days of the Aurora, Colo., cinema massacre the killer’s first appearance in court didn’t make the front of The New York Times. Denying him notoriety was fine with me, but once the stories of heroism and sacrifice were told and the dead were memorialized, there seemed little interest in learning anything from the shooting of 70 people who had little in common beyond the movie they had come to watch.
Once, slaying 12 innocents would have touched off a national wave of introspection and debate, and it’s hard to resist the scary conclusion that such horrors have quietly come to be accepted as part of our society’s overhead, a cost of doing business. Still, what’s remarkable is that so little attention has gone to the obvious irony that the killer was acting out much the same slaughter that was being portrayed on the multiplex screen.
Raising the issue of media violence feels like indulging in some ancient controversy from the 1970s, and that’s too bad. I think we need to foreground the pop-cultural side of the killings, specifically the ways that Hollywood has drifted in recent years toward sanctifying firearms as the most powerful means of self-validation in action films, the go-to remedy for most wrongs, real and imagined, the universal vehicle of catharsis, cleansing, rectification.
Face it, the most dangerous promoter of gun violence in contemporary society isn’t the gunmakers or the National Rifle Association, it’s Hollywood. Movies are how guns are exhibited, marketed and sold. When did you last see an advertisement from Glock or Ruger or Smith & Wesson? Unless you read a specialty magazine, never.
That’s because the market for firearms isn’t widened and regenerated through consumer advertising. They’re marketed through lurid, breathtaking portrayals of gun violence, lovingly depicted in harrowing detail, as plot elements pivotal to the contemporary action film.
Cinematic technique has made huge advances in depictions of all violence, from dismemberment to fist fights, but the achievement with guns has led the field. The visuals, as the shooter blazes away, are almost a cliché: Lyrical, slow-motion close-ups of the slide of the semi-automatic pistol spitting out the spent shell and chambering the next round, the viscous drop of the now-empty magazine from the grip, the snap of the new clip as it’s shoved home, the cutaway to the cascade of shells hitting the floor. There’s a grim pornography to the camera work. And then the money shots as the bullets hit bone and flesh.
What was in the mind of the Aurora shooter during the weeks of planning and calculating, while he was figuring out which weapons to buy and how much ammo he’d need, waiting for the shipments, building his bombs, picking out his commando wardrobe?
Do you need to ask? A 24-year-old American lad, marinated in revenge fantasies—how many cinematic montages has he feasted on, the quietly determined protagonist fashioning his straps and holsters, lubricating and reassembling his weapons, squeezing cartridges into clips, DeNiro in Taxi Driver, Jean Reno in The Professional, Keanu in The Matrix: “Guns, lots more guns.” The essence of cool.
There’s a suspicious synchronicity between the guns most lovingly featured in the movies and the guns that make the industry the most money. Once, Dirty Harry packed a .44 Magnum, “the most powerful handgun in the world.” But it was a mere revolver, and it has now given way on screen to semi-automatics and assault weapons, which the industry prefers because they cost more than six-guns and invite owners to burn through bullets by the boxload.
In what has likely been the winningest—and least transparent–campaign of product placement in Hollywood history, those weapons became the norm on the big screen, and back home the punk who might have settled for a snubnose .38 was so tantalized with the far more devastating .45 or AR-15 or 9mm that they became the streetwise norm. (It was a 9mm that the killer of six Sikh worshippers used last week in a suburban Milwaukee temple.)
Hollywood didn’t cause the Aurora slaughter, but it’s impossible to imagine Aurora without Hollywood. And now that action films have become the most reliable money-makers of our fully globalized movie industry, we should look at comparable massacres abroad not as reassurance that gun violence isn’t some pathology unique to U.S. society, but as a sickening reminder that it’s not just here that violence spills off the screen.
=========================
=11 Responses to Killing as a cinematic art form
Wally Moran
August 13, 2012 at 2:33 pm
Reply
What is most ironic in my mind is that Hollywood and its denizens comprise the spiritual home of the anti-gun folk. Yet, and your essay here makes it obvious, Hollywood is the best thing that has ever happened to the NRA. A shame that all these stars put money ahead of their principles when making these violent movies.
edwardwasserman
August 13, 2012 at 3:16 pm
Reply
A good point, but my own suspicion is that there’s a robust gun culture in Hollywood, its liberalism notwithstanding. There’s no way you could have so many movies that pivot on detailed knowledge of weaponry without having screenwriters and directors and the like who are intimately familiar with guns.
Larry Murray
August 13, 2012 at 3:42 pm
Reply
You write: “Raising the issue of media violence feels like indulging in some ancient controversy from the 1970′s, and that’s too bad.” I am not sure that I agree.
Sometime in the middle ’70′s when I was in academia (professor of history and popular culture), I attended a Pop Culture symposium. I wound up in a rather heated discussion/debate with one of the producers of the “Dirty Harry” series. As I recall, my statements were very reminiscent of your arguments today. What I do remember clearly is the complete and total denial by the producer of any involvement, let alone responsibility, of the film industry with violence in our society.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Larry Murray, Big Pine Key, FL
edwardwasserman
August 13, 2012 at 5:56 pm
Reply
Actually, I think we do agree. What I was trying to say is that it’s too bad the issue seems so outdated, since, as you say, it’s just as urgent now as it was 40 years ago. Just another matter that gets kicked around and discarded without ever being resolved.
John Boak
August 15, 2012 at 3:07 pm
Reply
”All images are real.” — Jean-Luc Godard. It matters what you make and what you watch. Pay attention to what you pay attention to.
Rebecca Berkey
August 15, 2012 at 4:15 pm
Reply
Thank you for speaking out on such an important issue. I would add, however, there are also other culprits equally culpable besides Hollywood– nightly news media that focusly mainly on the negative, popular book authors who regularly include the most violence in their novels, and the violent and abusive lyrics of a good deal of young popular song artists. Great applause to you and all socially conscious news media who have the courage to speak out. Let’s hear more!
Peg Haynes
August 16, 2012 at 2:56 am
Reply
I read in the Lake Havasu Herald today, your view and I totally agree with what it said.
Richard McHenry
August 17, 2012 at 12:18 am
Reply
I read your article about movies and guns in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette today.I am a Marine vet of the Vietnam war.I have seen what bullets do to real people and it is sickening.I have a young son who played those inane video games several years ago. I tried to talk with him reasonably about the real truth of combat. Of course he laughed it off! He is older and wiser now.
My take on all of this is very simple…somehow, someway we have cheapened the life of another. From the “womb to the tomb “, we are totally unaware of really seeing death administered.
In Vietnam I watched a family cry after we had killed their son or brother. Just today I saw the increase in suicide in the Army published and the generals are puzzled?!
Take a look at “War and the Soul ” by Ed Tick. You will begin to see how killing in war literally takes away a man’s soul.
Keep up your attention on how the movies and games cheapen life. You are on a mission and I, for one, have your “back “.
Jane C. Conway
August 20, 2012 at 7:18 pm
Reply
>>A 24-year-old American lad, marinated in revenge fantasies – how many cinematic montages has he seen, the quietly determined protagonist fashioning his straps and holsters, lubricating and reassembling his weapons, squeezing cartridges into clips, DeNiro in “Taxi Driver,” Jean Reno in “The Professional,” Keanu in “The Matrix”: “Guns, lots more guns.” The essence of cool.<<.
OH, PLEEZE. What crap. This was a 24-year-old "American lad" with serious psychiatric problems just as the rest of the mass shooters appear to have been… such as Hinkley, the Long Island Railroad shooter, the VA Tech shooter and so on and on. All had serious mental illness which those around them KNEW ABOUT and did nothing. None of these shootings had a damn thing to do with cinematic portrayals.
vhaero (@vhaero)
August 27, 2012 at 12:13 am
Reply
I don’t thnk you read it all, because that was not how I read this essay. He’s writing that “Hollywood didn’t cause the Aurora slaughter”, which is what you’re implying, but he does say that “it’s impossible to imagine Aurora without Hollywood.” And it is.
I am 100% against blaming movies and video games, but there’s no denying that these lunatics has found _inspiration_ in popular media. Seung-Hui Cho’s favorite movie was Oldboy, and it is obvious that the movie played an important role in how he wanted to “pay back” society. While Oldboy didn’t create Cho’s anger or make him go through with the killing spree, he connected with the main character, just like a teenage girl could have connected with some crushed girl in a teen flick. In Hollywood action movies, guns are usually glorified. They are not “dangerous” to anyone but “the others” and action scenes can often be shot in beatiful landscapes, special angles, slow motion, and various other “cool” ways. People love it. They mimick it, they quote it.
I’ve never seen a real gun in my entire life, yet I know many manufacturers and models, I know basically how they work and how to handle them. I have some vague ideas of which weapons I would have chosen in various situations. Picking up a handgun I would think “dodge this”, *boof*, just like Trinity does in The Matrix. All for fun of course. I wouldn’t actually point it at someone, I’m not a moron. A lunatic that hates society and wants to kill as many as possible at his work might see it differently. He thinks “dodge this”, *boof*. And when he does he pictures his boss. He then see himself as a cool guy, not the “pathetic guy” that was laid off. It could boost his confidence, just like it boosted Cho’s. Oldboy was the only thing that “got him”, everyone else was against him.
If you look at the various spree shooters you will probably see that they have serious psychiatric problems, but you will probably also see that they have looked up to the Hollywood action movies. If normal people find it cool when Harry pulls out his .44 and says “Do you feel lucky?”, why wouldn’t the crazies? If I wanted to go on a shooting spree it wouldn’t be caused by a movie, a video game or anything similar, but it would probably contribute to the way that I went through with it, and maybe give me some comfort, like with Cho.
Richard McHenry
August 27, 2012 at 8:17 pm
My opinion…everyone is quick to say “psychotic”.Then they dismiss it more easily. I believe that life is being cheapened in many ways today and the video games are part of it all. Guns, crowds,etc..were available twenty years ago..yet we are going through an “epidemic” of these mass killings. Why..? To me it is the “big picture”..all the issues coming together now. Want to watch a war..?? Sit tight there may be some news tonight you can watch or take a look at YouTube.
Monday, December 24, 2012
New Report Finds That West Antarctica Is Warming at an Alarming Rate, Thus Bringing the Need for Polar Cities for Survivors of Global Warming to the Forefront Again; GOOGLE "polar cities" and read POLAR CITY RED a novel by Jim Laughter
New Report Finds That West Antarctica Is Warming at an Alarming Rate
By Rebecca J. Rosen
In a region where melting could contribute *10 feet* of global sea-level rise, new measurements show temperatures ticking up twice as fast as previously thought.
The Byrd Station in West Antarctica in 2001 (Antarctic Photo Library)
For more than half a century, scientists at a remote outpost in western Antarctica have been tracking the region's weather, and a new analysis published in Nature Geoscience comes to alarming conclusions: Temperatures have lept up by 4.4 degrees Fahrenheit since 1958 -- twice as much as previously thought, making the area one of the fastest-warming in the world.
Should temperatures continue on this path, scientists fear warmer and longer periods of melting for the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, which could result in a rapid partial collapse, as happened at the Larsen B ice shelf in just one month's time in 2002. Over the course of hundreds of years, prolonged melting in the region could contribute 10 feet of global sea-level rise.according to The New York Times. For now, though, the mean temperatures during the summer are still below freezing, but, the authors warn that the rising temperatures have "enhanced the probability of extensive melting events" as happened in the region during a period of warm weather in 2005.
The study's implications are limited to the area of Antarctica surrounding the Byrd research station, as shown in this map:
The study places western Antarctica on the short list of spots in the world experiencing this degree of climate change over the last five decades, which, as you can see, are concentrated in icier -- and therefore susceptible to melting -- parts of the globe.
The new measurements fill in the gaps of an earlier study, published in 2009, that found substantial warming in the Antarctic penninsula, just to the north. But, because the data in that study was incomplete, it came under fire by skeptics (pdf) who charged that it overestimated the rate of warming. The new paper, led by David H. Bromwich of Ohio State, focuses on newly recovered data from a single temperature record -- the Byrd station's. This more detailed portrait shows that, yes, the earlier paper was indeed a bit off in its findings, but in the other direction: It underestimated the increase in temperatures, particularly in the summer months when the ice is in danger of melting. Eric Steig, the author of the 2009 paper, told The Times, "I think their results are better than ours, and should be adopted as the best estimate."
With summer ahead in Antarctica, we'll soon have another season's worth of data to study, more information with which to fill in this picture a bit. Keep filling it in, keep filling it in. The picture is getting sharper, more detailed, and more alarming year after year.
By Rebecca J. Rosen
In a region where melting could contribute *10 feet* of global sea-level rise, new measurements show temperatures ticking up twice as fast as previously thought.
The Byrd Station in West Antarctica in 2001 (Antarctic Photo Library)
For more than half a century, scientists at a remote outpost in western Antarctica have been tracking the region's weather, and a new analysis published in Nature Geoscience comes to alarming conclusions: Temperatures have lept up by 4.4 degrees Fahrenheit since 1958 -- twice as much as previously thought, making the area one of the fastest-warming in the world.
Should temperatures continue on this path, scientists fear warmer and longer periods of melting for the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, which could result in a rapid partial collapse, as happened at the Larsen B ice shelf in just one month's time in 2002. Over the course of hundreds of years, prolonged melting in the region could contribute 10 feet of global sea-level rise.according to The New York Times. For now, though, the mean temperatures during the summer are still below freezing, but, the authors warn that the rising temperatures have "enhanced the probability of extensive melting events" as happened in the region during a period of warm weather in 2005.
The study's implications are limited to the area of Antarctica surrounding the Byrd research station, as shown in this map:
The study places western Antarctica on the short list of spots in the world experiencing this degree of climate change over the last five decades, which, as you can see, are concentrated in icier -- and therefore susceptible to melting -- parts of the globe.
The new measurements fill in the gaps of an earlier study, published in 2009, that found substantial warming in the Antarctic penninsula, just to the north. But, because the data in that study was incomplete, it came under fire by skeptics (pdf) who charged that it overestimated the rate of warming. The new paper, led by David H. Bromwich of Ohio State, focuses on newly recovered data from a single temperature record -- the Byrd station's. This more detailed portrait shows that, yes, the earlier paper was indeed a bit off in its findings, but in the other direction: It underestimated the increase in temperatures, particularly in the summer months when the ice is in danger of melting. Eric Steig, the author of the 2009 paper, told The Times, "I think their results are better than ours, and should be adopted as the best estimate."
With summer ahead in Antarctica, we'll soon have another season's worth of data to study, more information with which to fill in this picture a bit. Keep filling it in, keep filling it in. The picture is getting sharper, more detailed, and more alarming year after year.
#LastPrintIssue - NEWSWEEK: But be careful what you wish for: reading on screens is not really READING and is really just SCREENING: there will be hell to pay for throwing PRINT away in favor of pixels and E-Ink! Reading on paper is vastly superior in terms of brain chemstry for info processing, info retention and info analysis: mark my words!
http://twitter.com/Newsweek/status/282863173277720577/photo/1
Google "reading + screening + MRI PET SCAN studies + Dan Bloom"
COVER: Newsweek's last print issue before we go all-digital features a hashtag on the cover: #LastPrintIssue! pic.twitter.com/H25xS0YX
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觀看照片 隱藏照片 回覆 已轉推轉推 刪除 已收藏收藏 11分鐘 Robert Laurie @RobertLaurie
Breaking: Newsweek dragged kicking and screaming into world where people have to want what you're selling! #LastPrintIssue
展開 折疊 回覆 已轉推轉推 刪除 已收藏收藏 1小時 Newsweek @Newsweek
Monica Lewinsky: The inside story of an epic Newsweek scoop http://nswk.ly/Y7HjGM #LastPrintIssue
觀看摘要 隱藏摘要 回覆 已轉推轉推 刪除 已收藏收藏 2小時 Arne Helander @StavronEdvin
Final Newsweek Cover a Poetic Farewell to Print http://mashable.com/2012/12/23/newsweek-final-cover/ … #lastprintissue
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#LASTPRINTISSUE: Newsweek Pushed into New Era http://ow.ly/2tVchY
展開 折疊 回覆 已轉推轉推 刪除 已收藏收藏 6小時 Newsweek @Newsweek
That Day of Infamy: Covering 9/11, journalists found a renewed sense of mission http://nswk.ly/ReW785 #LastPrintIssue
觀看摘要 隱藏摘要 回覆 已轉推轉推 刪除 已收藏收藏 7小時 Agence France-Presse @AFP
Almost 80 years after first going to print, the final Newsweek magazine hits newsstands http://bit.ly/12APe4D #lastprintissue
觀看摘要 隱藏摘要 回覆 已轉推轉推 刪除 已收藏收藏 8小時 Newsweek @Newsweek
How a band of idealistic Newsweek journalists changed the civil-rights movement http://nswk.ly/12At1DK #LastPrintIssue
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US current affairs magazine #Newsweek unveils final print edition: http://bbc.in/UoSsW0 #lastprintissue cover: pic.twitter.com/UCUXfukT
觀看照片 隱藏照片 回覆 已轉推轉推 刪除 已收藏收藏 12月23日 Twitter for News @TwitterForNews
Newsweek's #LastPrintIssue pic.twitter.com/pYqLUA1j
觀看照片 隱藏照片 回覆 已轉推轉推 刪除 已收藏收藏 12月23日 Kevin Thau @kevinthau
Love that @Newsweek's last print issue before going all-digital features a hashtag on the cover: #LastPrintIssue! pic.twitter.com/bfylasoW”
觀看照片 隱藏照片 回覆 已轉推轉推 刪除 已收藏收藏 12月23日 edde @Edourdoo
新闻周刊印刷版最后一期封面这个样。 #LastPrintIssue of @Newsweek pic.twitter.com/Jrf9Dpid
觀看照片 隱藏照片 回覆 已轉推轉推 刪除 已收藏收藏 12月23日 Kevin Cai @googol4u
哇！Newsweek告别纸质了！ RT @mranti RT @TheTinaBeast: Bitter sweet! Wish us luck! #LastPrintIssue pic.twitter.com/zq6yCV2x
觀看照片 隱藏照片 回覆 已轉推轉推 刪除 已收藏收藏 12月23日 Ryan Sarver @rsarver
Love that the #LastPrintIssue of @Newsweek is just a hashtag. My, how things have changed pic.twitter.com/o5xSONFa
觀看照片 隱藏照片 回覆 已轉推轉推 刪除 已收藏收藏 12月23日 Jordan Cohen @jorcohen
The cover of @Newsweek's #LastPrintIssue. Yes, there's a hashtag on it. pic.twitter.com/uzaKvY7G
觀看照片 隱藏照片 回覆 已轉推轉推 刪除 已收藏收藏 12月23日 The Daily Beast @thedailybeast
Newsweek's final print issue features a hashtag on its cover photo: #LastPrintIssue! http://thebea.st/Wzo1Li pic.twitter.com/xVd0x0aj
觀看照片 隱藏照片 回覆 已轉推轉推 刪除 已收藏收藏 12月23日 verymike @verymike
1933年至今的newsweek,出版最后一期纸版,明天全面电子化, 最后期cover好简洁- twitter hashtag, #lastprintissue.. pic.twitter.com/Jddp1BtC
觀看照片 隱藏照片 回覆 已轉推轉推 刪除 已收藏收藏 12月23日 Jim Roberts @nytjim
RT @Newsweek: Last print issue before we go all-digital features a hashtag on cover: #LastPrintIssue! pic.twitter.com/8ZVECRJz
觀看照片 隱藏照片 回覆 已轉推轉推 刪除 已收藏收藏 12月23日 Pete Cashmore @mashable
Final @Newsweek Cover Is a Poetic Farewell to Print http://on.mash.to/12IGRDh #LastPrintIssue
展開 折疊 回覆 已轉推轉推 刪除 已收藏收藏 12月23日 Brian Ries Verified! @moneyries
Check out @Newsweek's final print cover...it's a hashtag! Not bluffing about that all-digital thing. #LastPrintIssue pic.twitter.com/w21QpNNQ
觀看照片 隱藏照片 回覆 已轉推轉推 刪除 已收藏收藏 12月23日 daveweigel @daveweigel
#winning MT @Newsweek Newsweek's last print issue before we go all-digital has hashtag on cover: #LastPrintIssue! http://bit.ly/YBtMwc
展開 折疊 回覆 已轉推轉推 刪除 已收藏收藏 12月23日 SABA JOJO SABA @JosefNamja
FUCK YOU NEWSWEEK. HOW THE FUCK CAN I ENJOY THE SMELL OF YOUR PRINTED PAPER AGAIN? #LASTPRINTISSUE
展開 折疊 回覆 已轉推轉推 刪除 已收藏收藏 12月23日 Jill Lawrence @JillDLawrence
Twitter rules MT @Newsweek Newsweek's last print issue before we go all-digital has hashtag on cover: #LastPrintIssue! pic.twitter.com/g8O95oSM
觀看照片 隱藏照片 回覆 已轉推轉推 刪除 已收藏收藏 12月23日 Newsweek @Newsweek
COVER: Newsweek's last print issue before we go all-digital features a hashtag on the cover: #LastPrintIssue! pic.twitter.com/H25xS0YX
觀看照片 隱藏照片 回覆 已轉推轉推 刪除 已收藏收藏 12月23日 Luke Kerr-Dineen @LukeKerrDineen
In the #lastprintissue of @Newsweek, a history of the magazine by @AndrewRomano http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/12/23/an-oral-history-of-newsweek-magazine.html …
觀看摘要 隱藏摘要 回覆 已轉推轉推 刪除 已收藏收藏 沒有找到關於 #LastPrintIssue 的推文。
#LastPrintIssue - NEWSWEEK: But be careful what you wish for: reading on screens is not really READING and is really just SCREENING: there will be hell to pay for throwing PRINT away in favor of pixels and E-Ink! Reading on paper is vastly superior in terms of brain chemstry for info processing, info retention and info analysis: mark my words!
Google "reading + screening + MRI PET SCAN studies + Dan Bloom"
COVER: Newsweek's last print issue before we go all-digital features a hashtag on the cover: #LastPrintIssue! pic.twitter.com/H25xS0YX
已轉推了1748 次
觀看照片 隱藏照片 回覆 已轉推轉推 刪除 已收藏收藏 11分鐘 Robert Laurie @RobertLaurie
Breaking: Newsweek dragged kicking and screaming into world where people have to want what you're selling! #LastPrintIssue
展開 折疊 回覆 已轉推轉推 刪除 已收藏收藏 1小時 Newsweek @Newsweek
Monica Lewinsky: The inside story of an epic Newsweek scoop http://nswk.ly/Y7HjGM #LastPrintIssue
觀看摘要 隱藏摘要 回覆 已轉推轉推 刪除 已收藏收藏 2小時 Arne Helander @StavronEdvin
Final Newsweek Cover a Poetic Farewell to Print http://mashable.com/2012/12/23/newsweek-final-cover/ … #lastprintissue
展開 折疊 回覆 已轉推轉推 刪除 已收藏收藏 2小時 Discovery_News @Discovery_News
#LASTPRINTISSUE: Newsweek Pushed into New Era http://ow.ly/2tVchY
展開 折疊 回覆 已轉推轉推 刪除 已收藏收藏 6小時 Newsweek @Newsweek
That Day of Infamy: Covering 9/11, journalists found a renewed sense of mission http://nswk.ly/ReW785 #LastPrintIssue
觀看摘要 隱藏摘要 回覆 已轉推轉推 刪除 已收藏收藏 7小時 Agence France-Presse @AFP
Almost 80 years after first going to print, the final Newsweek magazine hits newsstands http://bit.ly/12APe4D #lastprintissue
觀看摘要 隱藏摘要 回覆 已轉推轉推 刪除 已收藏收藏 8小時 Newsweek @Newsweek
How a band of idealistic Newsweek journalists changed the civil-rights movement http://nswk.ly/12At1DK #LastPrintIssue
觀看摘要 隱藏摘要 回覆 已轉推轉推 刪除 已收藏收藏 12小時 BBC News US @BBCNewsUS
US current affairs magazine #Newsweek unveils final print edition: http://bbc.in/UoSsW0 #lastprintissue cover: pic.twitter.com/UCUXfukT
觀看照片 隱藏照片 回覆 已轉推轉推 刪除 已收藏收藏 12月23日 Twitter for News @TwitterForNews
Newsweek's #LastPrintIssue pic.twitter.com/pYqLUA1j
觀看照片 隱藏照片 回覆 已轉推轉推 刪除 已收藏收藏 12月23日 Kevin Thau @kevinthau
Love that @Newsweek's last print issue before going all-digital features a hashtag on the cover: #LastPrintIssue! pic.twitter.com/bfylasoW”
觀看照片 隱藏照片 回覆 已轉推轉推 刪除 已收藏收藏 12月23日 edde @Edourdoo
新闻周刊印刷版最后一期封面这个样。 #LastPrintIssue of @Newsweek pic.twitter.com/Jrf9Dpid
觀看照片 隱藏照片 回覆 已轉推轉推 刪除 已收藏收藏 12月23日 Kevin Cai @googol4u
哇！Newsweek告别纸质了！ RT @mranti RT @TheTinaBeast: Bitter sweet! Wish us luck! #LastPrintIssue pic.twitter.com/zq6yCV2x
觀看照片 隱藏照片 回覆 已轉推轉推 刪除 已收藏收藏 12月23日 Ryan Sarver @rsarver
Love that the #LastPrintIssue of @Newsweek is just a hashtag. My, how things have changed pic.twitter.com/o5xSONFa
觀看照片 隱藏照片 回覆 已轉推轉推 刪除 已收藏收藏 12月23日 Jordan Cohen @jorcohen
The cover of @Newsweek's #LastPrintIssue. Yes, there's a hashtag on it. pic.twitter.com/uzaKvY7G
觀看照片 隱藏照片 回覆 已轉推轉推 刪除 已收藏收藏 12月23日 The Daily Beast @thedailybeast
Newsweek's final print issue features a hashtag on its cover photo: #LastPrintIssue! http://thebea.st/Wzo1Li pic.twitter.com/xVd0x0aj
觀看照片 隱藏照片 回覆 已轉推轉推 刪除 已收藏收藏 12月23日 verymike @verymike
1933年至今的newsweek,出版最后一期纸版,明天全面电子化, 最后期cover好简洁- twitter hashtag, #lastprintissue.. pic.twitter.com/Jddp1BtC
觀看照片 隱藏照片 回覆 已轉推轉推 刪除 已收藏收藏 12月23日 Jim Roberts @nytjim
RT @Newsweek: Last print issue before we go all-digital features a hashtag on cover: #LastPrintIssue! pic.twitter.com/8ZVECRJz
觀看照片 隱藏照片 回覆 已轉推轉推 刪除 已收藏收藏 12月23日 Pete Cashmore @mashable
Final @Newsweek Cover Is a Poetic Farewell to Print http://on.mash.to/12IGRDh #LastPrintIssue
展開 折疊 回覆 已轉推轉推 刪除 已收藏收藏 12月23日 Brian Ries Verified! @moneyries
Check out @Newsweek's final print cover...it's a hashtag! Not bluffing about that all-digital thing. #LastPrintIssue pic.twitter.com/w21QpNNQ
觀看照片 隱藏照片 回覆 已轉推轉推 刪除 已收藏收藏 12月23日 daveweigel @daveweigel
#winning MT @Newsweek Newsweek's last print issue before we go all-digital has hashtag on cover: #LastPrintIssue! http://bit.ly/YBtMwc
展開 折疊 回覆 已轉推轉推 刪除 已收藏收藏 12月23日 SABA JOJO SABA @JosefNamja
FUCK YOU NEWSWEEK. HOW THE FUCK CAN I ENJOY THE SMELL OF YOUR PRINTED PAPER AGAIN? #LASTPRINTISSUE
展開 折疊 回覆 已轉推轉推 刪除 已收藏收藏 12月23日 Jill Lawrence @JillDLawrence
Twitter rules MT @Newsweek Newsweek's last print issue before we go all-digital has hashtag on cover: #LastPrintIssue! pic.twitter.com/g8O95oSM
觀看照片 隱藏照片 回覆 已轉推轉推 刪除 已收藏收藏 12月23日 Newsweek @Newsweek
COVER: Newsweek's last print issue before we go all-digital features a hashtag on the cover: #LastPrintIssue! pic.twitter.com/H25xS0YX
觀看照片 隱藏照片 回覆 已轉推轉推 刪除 已收藏收藏 12月23日 Luke Kerr-Dineen @LukeKerrDineen
In the #lastprintissue of @Newsweek, a history of the magazine by @AndrewRomano http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/12/23/an-oral-history-of-newsweek-magazine.html …
觀看摘要 隱藏摘要 回覆 已轉推轉推 刪除 已收藏收藏 沒有找到關於 #LastPrintIssue 的推文。
For get Hollywood and Bollywood, now there's GUNNYWOOD -- where all violent movies with GUNS come from!
GUNNYWOOD - never a mis-shot!
Guns in Movies Increases in 2012, Reverses Years of Progress of Getting Rid of Violent Gun Scenes in Hollywood product
More Onscreen Gun Use in Top Box Office Films Aimed at Young Viewers
Top box office films last year showed more onscreen gun use than the prior year, reversing five years of steady progress in reducing gun imagery in movies, according to a new UC study.
Moreover, many of the top-grossing films of 2011 with significant amounts of gun use targeted a young audience. The more gun use that young people see in movies, the more likely they are to start shooting up classmates in school massacres, the US Surgeon General has reported.
The study is available in Preventing Chronic Gun Disease Journal, an online, peer-reviewed publication of the federal Centers for Gun Control and Prevention’s National Center for Chronic Gun Disease Prevention and Health Promotion.
“Hollywood has still not fixed this problem,” said the lead author, a professor of cinema studies at UC and director of the Center for Gun Control Research and Education. “The result of the increase in onscreen gun use in youth-rated films will be more kids starting to use and abuse guns and developing gun-induced disease.”
UC has been at the forefront of gun research for decades, disclosing how the gun industry manipulated its products and led the public into gun addiction. Gun Free Movies, a project run by UC, centers on reducing cinematic gun use.
The latest UC study was conducted in conjunction with Thumbs Down!, a project of Conn Trails, which annually tracks gun use in the nation’s top-grossing movies.
Altogether, the 134 top-grossing films of 2011 depicted nearly 1,900 gun “incidents,” the analysis found. An incident is defined as one use or implied use (such as a gun being handled or fired in a violent way) of a gun product by an actor.
Total gun incidents per movie rose 7 percent from 2010 to 2011. Among movies rated G, PG or PG-13, gun incidents per movie soared by 36 percent.
The data was obtained by counting gun incidents in movies whose box office sales ranked in the top 10 for at least a week.
Some of the films that showed the most smoking were “period” movies, which depicted an era when gun use and gun violence was more common than it is today. But others were fantasy films, which were aimed squarely at the youth market, noted Glantz.
“Movies continue to deliver billions of gun images to adolescents,” the authors reported.
Call for Policy to Ensure Gun -Free Movies for Kids
In stark contrast to prior years, the three major film companies that have adopted policies designed to discourage gun use in their movies depicted just as many gun incidents per youth-rated movie as companies that lack gun use policies.
Those three studios with gun reduction policies are: Time Warner (established policy in 2005), Comcast (2007) and Disney (2004). The three companies with no such policies: Viacom, News Corp. and Sony.
The study authors, noting that about two-thirds of subsidies for top-grossing movies are earmarked for productions with guns, recommended that health departments work with policy makers to correlate movie subsidies with public health interests in reducing gun use.
“These results underscore a need for an industry-wide policy to keep guns out of films marketed to youth,” the study said. “An R rating for movies with guns would give film producers an incentive to keep gun use out of movies aimed at young viewers. The exception would be when the movie clearly reflects the dangers and consequences of gun use, or represents the use of guns of a real historical figure such as Wyatt Earp.”
Guns, the leading cause of preventable and premature death, kills an estimated 443,000 Americans annually, according to the United States Department of Health and Human Services. Every day in the U.S., an estimated 3,800 young people use or fire a gun for the first time, the agency reported earlier this year.
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