#The Cleaners PBS Documentary

[rjzimmerman]

This documentary will be on PBS this coming Wednesday (March 31). Description from Sierra Club:

Monkeys leaping from trees to escape a forest fire; a beached orca whose local population has been rendered sterile because of polluted oceans; and pangolins, a gentile armadillo-like species, bagged like produce because of dubious medical claims about their scales. These are scenes from David Attenborough’s latest documentary, Extinction: The Facts. Known for feel-good nature films, Attenborough has pivoted in his recent work (including Life on Our Planet, which Sierra reviewed in October) to an urgent call to action. His latest film walks viewers through the rise of the extinction crisis, a human-caused event leading to biodiversity loss around the world.

You won't see epic migrations and breathtaking wilderness in Extinction: The Facts. Instead, the documentary, which first premiered in the UK, is like a film version of the UN report on biodiversity loss. Viewers learn that 1 million species face extinction, the insect apocalypse threatens global food production, and climate change and pollution are accelerating these threats.

Sadly, we know these overlapping crises are taking place but are doing too little to stop them. This feeling becomes all too real as we watch scenes of trawlers, large enough to fit four jumbo jets, overfishing a small patch of ocean. The visuals lay bare the destruction in a way that mere data never could. The purpose of these stories is to shock and alarm us, not because these narratives need exciting new twists, but because the time to act is running out.

If this all sounds too depressing, try not to despair. True, this is not the relaxing nature documentary of yore, but Extinction isn't all doom and gloom. The latter half is dedicated to solutions for averting the extinction crisis. We can reduce food waste to cut the need for agricultural land, Sir Watson explains. We can curb our use of pesticides and regulate fishing. Some of the biggest steps we can take, according to Professor Lord Nicholas Stern from the London School of Economics, include changing the way we produce and consume, for example, reducing pollution in factories, restoring degraded land, retrofitting buildings, and making our cities cleaner. 

[popofventi]

Ventipop #226 :: Good To Be Back

I know. I know. It’s been a spell. I’ve been off cheating on Ventipop with some other business excursions. My hope moving forward is to be a bit more monogamist with Ventipop and update at least once per week. I’ve also taken down the ads from all new posts. I’m not making any money unless generous readers like you choose to click on the Patreon button and give what you can. I enjoy finding reassuring stories which validate humanity is not all but lost. I hope I can keep ‘em coming. If you can’t give money, do the next best thing and tell a few people about Ventipop. I’d appreciate it. Now…for the first time in a long time…Let’s grind.

Recommendations

TV Recommendations - The Cleaners on PBS, Bodyguard on Netflix

Book Recommendations - Elevation by Stephen King, We Are Not Ourselves by Matthew Thomas

Music Recommendations - “New Birth in New England” by Phosphorescent, “Love You So Bad” by Ezra Furman

Japanese Subtlety

“Sober Halloween” is Japanese dry humor in it peak form. Flashy, fanciful costumes are banned in favor of gems like “Guy who spilled coffee down front of shirt” or “hotel guest going to get his breakfast”. Gold, Jerry, gold!

Can you guess these elaborately dull cosplay getups?

Art is Wherever You Find It

This artist uses jigsaw puzzles, with the same die cut pattern, to make these terrific mashups:

Fame Game 2018

This could be the most Buzzfeedy, YouTubey, Internety story ever:

Book by Book

Shoulder to shoulder, community members formed a line 500 feet long: from the stockroom of the old shop, down the sidewalk, and onto the shop floor of the new store.

Cafes brought cups of tea to the volunteers. People at bus stops joined in. Passersby asked what was happening, then joined the chain themselves.

"We had elderly people, children, and everybody in between," Brown said.

How Do You Move A Bookstore? With A Human Chain, Book By Book

Good Grief!

BBC writer Cameron Laux wrote a moving tribute to the work of Charles M. Schulz.

Awash in Creativity

“So not only do Gates and Bezos get to slip in a bit of mindfulness rinsing plates, their nightly chore is also a valuable spring of creativity…”

Kiddie Talk

An adorable little girl trying to get Amazon's A.I. assistant Alexa to play her favourite song 'Baby Shark'. But Alexa can't understand her voice.

"This is Daisy. She's a little bit crazy and rambles on the phone a lot.”

Bits n Pieces

"I’m a very quiet person with strong opinions,” he says, “and the beauty of building a fictional nation is it gives you an outlet to express those things."  -- Ian Silva, Australian Commuter Train Conductor and Creator of the Koana Islands

The world not a representation of what you would like it to be? Create your own.

A doughnut store owner had to keep working long days and couldn't visit his ailing wife. So the neighborhood starting buying out all of his doughnuts in the morning so he could leave early.

Seriously, Stephen King is a good dude.

"So I thought, 'Well, if a dog can smell fruits and vegetables in luggage, could they smell malaria in a person?'" - How A Dog Could Stop The Global Spread Of Malaria

Indiana Vending Machine Dispenses Clean Clothing and Blankets to People Without Homes

Why is everyone naming their babies with four-letter names?

No good answer as to ‘What are pubes actually for?’

Humor Me

Congrats to the Red Sox on the World Series. Here's a fun way to wrap the season:

The Future Is Now

China’s state news agency this week unveiled the world’s first virtual newsman:

Dubai Police are now training on flying motorbikes.

Epidemic

This reality is depressing…just look around you. The Ubiquity of Smartphones.

Duct Work

This is how a ship passes through the Panama Canal:

Wish List

Ani DiFranco's long-awaited memoir "No Walls and the Recurring Dream" is coming out May 7, 2019 via Viking Books! Pre-Order Here In her memoir, DiFranco recounts her early life from a place of hard-won wisdom, combining personal expression, the power of music, feminism, political activism, storytelling, philanthropy, entrepreneurship, and much more into an inspiring whole. In these frank, honest, passionate, and often funny pages is the tale of one woman's eventful and radical journey to the age of thirty. Ani's coming of age story is defined by her ethos of fierce independence--from being an emancipated minor sleeping in a Buffalo bus station, to unwaveringly building a career through appearances at small clubs and festivals, to releasing her first album at the age of 18, to consciously rejecting the mainstream recording industry and creating her own label, Righteous Babe Records. In these pages, as in life, she never hesitates to challenge established rules and expectations, maintaining a level of artistic integrity that has impressed many and antagonized more than a few. Ani continues to be a major touring and recording artist as well as a celebrated activist and feminist, standing as living proof that you can overcome all personal and societal obstacles to be who you are and to follow your dreams.

Feel

Odessa Goldberg put together a short tribute in honor of those who have lost their lives to violence - and a call to the rest of us not to remain silent:

Mental Yoga or Long Read of the Week

'Oh my God,' she said. 'What if this is what we should be doing? What if it's that simple?'" 

Jason Cherkis in HuffPo Highline: The Best Way To Save People From Suicide.

…And Finally…R.I.P. William Goldman

One of the most enjoyable books I’ve ever read:

“As you wish...”  ― William Goldman, The Princess Bride

Again, if you like what I do and want to see it continue, please consider supporting me on Patreon:

-xxx-

[cassatine]

two documentaries for anyone actually interested in human content moderation

The Moderators (Adrian Chen and Ciaran Cassidy)

In an office in India, a cadre of Internet moderators ensures that social media sites are not taken over by bots, scammers, and pornographers. The Moderators shows the humans behind content moderation, taking viewers into the training process that workers go through in order to become social media’s monitors.

The Cleaners (PBS | region-locked)

Social media sites have been under intense pressure to monitor and delete offensive, pornographic, and incendiary posts. Compassionately portraying the Filipino workers who comb through thousands of online images in the dark of night, The Cleaners exposes the dark side of information technology.

[trylonandperisphere]

​Just watched an interesting and disturbing documentary on "cleaners", content moderators in the Philippines who are subcontracted by social media platforms like Facebook, Youtube and Twitter. These people are contractually required to individually choose to censor or let by 25,000 images a day, from satirical art and memes, to political rallies and war bombings, to graphic beheadings and child pornography. If you ever wondered how social media platforms handle these things besides using "algorithms", this is quite an eye-opener. 

[lazylittledude]

“One of the misconceptions is that human nature is human nature, and the technology is just this neural tool,” says Tristan Harris, a former Google design ethicist, when interviewed in The Cleaners, a new documentary from PBS’ Independent Lens. “But this is not true.

[bobbykennedy]

Hey there; I love your blog; just wanted to ask you if you'd be able to make a list of some of the best Kennedy documentaries, tv series, or films you'd suggest for essential Kennedy watching. Thank you xx

Hello hello! Thank you so much. I’d be glad to! I’ll try to link them (or at least their trailers) where possible, as a lot of them are on YouTube. 

Documentaries:

A Ripple of Hope (2008) - This documentary (along with RFK in the Land of Apartheid (2009)) provides a view of Bobby’s effect on the lives he touched with his compassion, understanding, empathy, and desire for change. This documentary in particular uses his speech announcing MLK’s death as the centerpiece for historians and people who were in the crowd that night to talk about Bobby’s impact on America. I also love that it includes interviews with people who worked on his campaign and Civil Rights legends like John Lewis. It’s a really beautiful film that I think shows perfectly why Bobby resonated then, and continues to today, so strongly with people.

Crisis (1963) - Crisis is one of Robert Drew’s landmark Kennedy documentaries. This doc follows Jack and Bobby through the process of integrating the University of Alabama. There’s some great footage of them including the incredible footage of Bobby convincing Jack to make his (what would go on to be) famous Civil Rights Address, along with the hilarious moment of Jack giving Bobby a hard time in the Oval Office. I wish we had more footage of moments like that. There are some truly, truly amazing moments caught on film here and I highly recommend it. It’s a snapshot of race relations in America in 1963 and how Bobby’s pushing for legislation and action caused friction with Jack’s other advisers’ established agenda. 

Ethel (2012) - Whenever I’m asked for Bobby documentary recs, this is always the first one I mention. This film was produced and directed by Bobby and Ethel’s youngest daughter, Rory. It features interviews with Bobby and Ethel’s surviving children as well as Ethel herself (which is amazing because she does NOT do interviews, especially about Bobby, ever.) It covers everything from Ethel and Bobby’s childhoods through Bobby’s death and Ethel’s life for the last 50 years since. Ethel is packed full of great firsthand stories from Ethel and the kids and it paints a beautiful picture of not only Bobby and Ethel’s relationship, but also them as individuals. 

The Kennedy Assassination: 24 Hours After (2009) - There are a million assassination documentaries out there, but this is the one I always go back to. This gives a minute by minute, hour by hour account of what happened that day, not only in Dallas, but also back in Washington. This program focuses heavily on the Bobby/LBJ dynamic and gives a full picture of who was doing what that day and when. It features interviews with a variety of historians and Kennedy experts and it is incredibly well done. 

The Kennedys: An American Experience (1992) - This is quite possibly the most comprehensive program about the family that I’ve seen. It’s long and incredibly detailed. Everything from Joe and Rose’s upbringings in turn of the century Boston to Ted’s presidential run in the 1980s is covered. It. Is. A. Lot. If you’re just getting into the Kennedys, or are looking to learn more about them, go for this. It has it all. PBS has done individual An American Experience specials about Jack and Bobby that are really well done as well. PBS and History Channel docs are usually the best and most accurate, in my opinion. 

The Lost Kennedy Home Movies (2011) - If you want to see the Kennedy family outside the political arena, this is what you need to watch. There’s so, so much amazing content in this program, I don’t know where to begin. It has footage of them in the 40s right through to the early 60s, and there is so much to see. You see young versions of Jack and Bobby with their siblings Joe Jr., Kick and the others. The Kennedys were ridiculously funny, and the footage of Jack and Bobby dancing on the beach proves it.

Dramas:

Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy (1981) - Jaclyn Smith plays Jackie in this, and it is incredibly sugarcoated, but it’s fun to watch. This covers Jackie’s life from girlhood to Dallas. They really bent the story around to make it something neater and cleaner than it was. This one is good if you want a harmless version of events, and I think Jaclyn does a beautiful job with the role. Side note: my mother has been a huge Jackie fan her entire life and this is her favorite Jackie portrayal. 

JFK: Reckless Youth (1993) - Patrick Dempsey plays a young Jack Kennedy brilliantly in this. They cover Jack’s years at Choate through his election to Congress. This program also has my favorite portrayal of Jack and Kick’s relationship, which is something I really, really wish there were more dramatizations of. 

The Kennedys (2011) - This is 100% my personal favorite Kennedy drama. They do take some creative liberties, and over-dramatize some of the story, (which they caught A LOT of flack for, and rightfully so) but the portrayals are incredible. Barry Pepper’s Bobby Kennedy is my favorite dramatization of him, no question. By the end, you forget that it isn’t actually Bobby you’re watching. Greg Kinnear is a pretty good Jack as well, and I love Katie Holmes – I think she’s a solid Jackie. This program focuses heavily on the White House years; there are flashbacks of Jack, Joe Jr., and Rosemary in the 30s & 40s as well. 

The Kennedys of Massachusetts (1990) - If you’re looking for dramas about Joe and Rose, this is absolutely the place to start. This covers everything from their courtship days in the early 1900s through Jack’s inauguration. I really love the casting for the most part in this program. The family members featured are: Rose, Joe Sr., Joe Jr., Jack, Kick, and Honey Fitz. 

Thirteen Days (2000) - I! Love! This! Film! Everything about it: the writing, the portrayals, the cinematography, I love it all.It focuses exclusively on the Cuban Missile Crisis, and really captures the high stakes that are sometimes downplayed in other dramas. It’s based heavily on The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House during the Cuban Missile Crisis and government documents that were released after Jack and Bobby’s deaths. Steven Culp is fantastic as Bobby, Bruce Greenwood is amazing as Jack, and it takes some dramatic liberties in making Kevin Costner’s Kenny O’Donnell the protagonist, but he’s wonderful and it works. 

I also want to mention The Missiles of October (1974) here which is another Cuban Missile Crisis film and features possibly the most accurate Jack portrayal ever by William Devane. (seriously, he sounds just like him, it’s almost creepy). Martin Sheen plays Bobby in it and I really enjoy his take on RFK. This program is based on Bobby’s memoir, Thirteen Days, but doesn’t include all the government document details that the Thirteen Days film does, as they were not yet released in the 1970s.

You can check out my tags page to see posts about each of these programs, as well as many others. 💕

[haroldgonzalles]

Five Common Electronics Companies Forget To Recycle

You probably still remember the three R’s that you learned in school: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle! While that motto is quite old, it’s components are necessary now more than ever. According to Frontier Group — a group that provides analysis and information to citizens for living cleaner and healthier — the U.S. produces more than 30 percent of the planet’s total waste, though it is home to just 4 percent of the world’s total population. They also cite a study from Columbia University which shows that Americans throw out 7 pounds of material per person PER DAY. The National Conference of State Legislatures reports that Americans own approximately 24 electronic items per household. Hundreds of millions of tons of trash is thrown out every year, and it’s top contributors include homes, businesses and institutions (like universities and libraries).

PBS states that dead electronics make up the world’s fastest-growing source of waste, and that the U.S. produces more e-waste (electronic waste) than any other country in the world. The Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity promotes a program that aims to specifically help business to reduce their waste. This program reminds us that there are both environmental and business reasons for seeking reduction of waste. In Illinois alone, for example, about half of the state’s waste is generated by and disposed of by businesses. That’s a massive responsibility!

Why Reduce E-Waste?

Not only is it important to reduce waste for environmental reasons, such as conserving our earth’s natural resources and reducing emissions, but also for maintaining sustainability as a business. Recycling for businesses helps to reduce cost, increase operating efficiency, and demonstrate environmental governance. We must remember that recycling does produce a cost, but limiting the amount waste disposed also saves cost.

As we know, recycling and reuse greatly benefits the environment. With an overwhelming amount of greenhouse emissions and companies exporting their products to foreign countries, we are wreaking havoc on the environment. Heavy metals such as lead and cadmium and other toxic chemicals are infiltrating our resources — on a global scale. Electronic products that contain toxic chemicals are being sent to landfills here in the United States, and being shipped to foreign countries who aren’t disposing of them properly either.

Did you know that according to a PBS documentary that the United States is the only industrialized country in the world that hasn’t ratified the Basel Convention? This is an international treaty that was created to prevent industrialized nations from dumping their waste on poorer countries. As a country that produces so much waste, we should in fact, then, have the greatest responsibility for what we are consuming and how we dispose of it. Waste impacts everything — from oceans and streams, to our drinking water, the food we grow and eat, and the air we breathe. I don’t think anyone can argue that we aren’t all individually impacted by these things.

What Are We Forgetting About?

Mobile devices, televisions, printers/faxes/scanners, and computers make up some of the more commonly recycled electronic items. For consumers, many of these items can be dropped off or sent to many retailers such as Best Buy or Staples and many manufactures such as Samsung, Dell, LG, Vizio, and Sony have programs or partnerships in place to help as well.

However when it comes to businesses recycling electronics, some electronic items that are more often forgotten about include specialized equipment (such as medical equipment in hospitals or POS equipment in retail), projectors, networking equipment, handheld scanners, and office phones.  All of these items contain toxic elements if they were sent to a landfill, and equally importantly all of these items can and often do contain sensitive data that must be properly destroyed.  

ERI offers recycling kits in a mail-back program comprised of flat-rate boxes that comes in several different sizes for your recycled items. These kits are available for technology only (electronics and IT assets), batteries and lamps. Once you fill your box with your recyclable items, you can work with UPS for it to be returned to ERI’s recycling facility.  Or you can of course contact ERI to request a quote if you have more electronics to recycle than will fit in a box, and our team will custom develop a solution based on your needs. 

Options For Recycling Electronics

Find a local waste agency or association that can provide you additional resources based on your location. The Environmental Protection Agency also offers an abundance of information on their website, among which you can find a link to help you locate electronic recycling resources near you. This tells you specifically where you can donate or recycle your electronics. If possible, you can also utilize Certified Electronic Recyclers; the link provides a map for your convenience. ERI has eight certified facilities itself in the United States, all of which are R2 and e-Stewards certified.

What To Consider For Your Business

You want your business to run efficiently, and in order to help it run more efficiently there are some things to consider. Know your waste stream, know the services and markets that are available, consider the costs and savings, and reach out to relevant key contacts. For example, purchasing in bulk, or products that have reduced or reusable packaging. You may even be able to donate or repurpose working equipment, and ERI can help with that too.

As you evaluate and establish waste reduction programs for your business, consider investigating composting, sourcing reduction and reuse, and green procurement, which is purchasing items that have a minimal adverse environmental impact. No matter what you decide to do, choose wisely how you dispose of your products and do your research. When electronic products that contain toxic chemicals are not safely handled, they can pose a threat to human and environmental health. You can do your part by trying to select companies who are disposing of products, and specifically electronics, responsibly.

  Five Common Electronics Companies Forget To Recycle published first on https://schrottabholung.weebly.com/

[zerocard]

Great new documentary free on PBS website about thousands overseas people’s jobs outsourced to remove restricted content on Facebook 

[victoryliononline]

Content moderators share the horrifying things they face in ‘The Cleaners’

Delete or ignore . Image: GEBRUEDER BEETZ FILMPRODUKTION “Out of sight, out of mind” doesn’t job when cleansing out the darkest corners of social media platforms. That’s what the documentary The Cleaner , which airs Monday evening on PBS, exposes about content moderators in the Philippines who are relentlessly bombarded with violent, graphic, and perturbing images and videos. Ahead of the TV release at a San Francisco screening, the filmmakers...

The post Content moderators share the horrifying things they face in ‘The Cleaners’ appeared first on Victory Lion.

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[celebsrumorblog]

'The Cleaners' shows the terrors human content moderators face at work

'The Cleaners' shows the terrors human content moderators face at work

[ad_1]

“Out of sight, out of mind” doesn’t work when cleaning out the darkest corners of social media platforms. 

That’s what the documentary The Cleaners, which airs Monday night on PBS, reveals about content moderators in the Philippines who are relentlessly bombarded with violent, graphic, and disturbing images and videos. Ahead of the TV release at a San Francisco screening, the filmmakers…

[tvrundownusa]

tvrundown USA 2018.11.12

Monday, November 12th:

(hour 1): Arrow (theCW), The Neighborhood (CBS) /   / Happy Together (CBS), The Voice (NBC, 2hrs), Dancing With the Stars (ABC, 2hrs), The Resident (FOX, repeat)

(hour 2): DC's Legends of Tomorrow (theCW), Magnum P.I. (CBS), The Voice (NBC, contd), Dancing With the Stars (ABC, contd), Family Time (BounceTV), Holiday Baking Championship (FOOD), 9-1-1 (FOX, repeat)

(hour 3): Bull (CBS), Manifest (NBC), The Good Doctor (ABC), Busy Tonight (E!) /   / Nightly Pop (E!), Christmas Cookie Challenge (FOOD)

(also new): The Heart Guy (AcornTV, season 3 available), "The Price of Everything" (HBO, art documentary, 105mins), Mars (NatGeo, season 2 opener), Independent Lens (PBS, "The Cleaners", 90mins), Star Talk with Neil deGrasse Tyson (NatGeo, season 5 opener, latenight)

[nyklifsondiviiportfolio-blog]

Syllabus Project Critical Analysis

Nyk Lifson

Rachel Rubinstein

Myths of America

May 16, 2015

I had a really difficult time doing this project. I really enjoy working with others, and have been a camp counselor every summer since I was fourteen working with children, teaching children.  Yet, I struggle with conventional educational structure.  I guess that makes sense. I am at Hampshire.

Why does this matter? Every time in the process of putting this syllabus together, when I formulated  a central theme,  I thought of myself taking the class and how bored I would be. The idea would be scrapped, another bibliography wasted.

I had to push through this mental block. So finally I knuckled down and just started writing, not caring if anything made sense or whether or not I was going to give students too much busy work. Essentially, the syllabus began with a lot of random thoughts and much less structure, an emphasis on depth of exposure and participation and less on how feasible it might be in a semester’s time.  I always have ten-mile-high ideas,and this time I ended up shooting for the moon and inevitably ended up falling short of that dream, but not too short. So with that in mind, here we go.

I chose to title this course,”Creating the American Image.”  The idea  to follow  American Photography from it origins though the beginning of the Industrial Revolution came because I know a little bit about the subject and generally wanted to delve further into this time period.  I considered doing a timeline of art history, short stories from 1600-1900, literature not in english, and native art starting with Mesoamerica, showing how colonization affected civilizations already mature in their specific styles. All of these involved longer periods of study and more subjects to cover.

         With “Creating the American Image,”  I felt that focusing in on a more specific timeline would be cleaner to the students, with more depth of  information packed into classes covering a shorter period, a much more vertical rather than horizontal development  of the subject..  And the  goal throughout,  given Hampshire’s model, is to learn much more by doing and participating.

The class begins with brief attention to the birth of photography with some readings that refer back to Aristotle, along with suggestions that the idea or origins are even older. We will touch on  the uses of photography both scientific and artistic. To get from there to American Photography,  I will create a slideshow for the  beginning of class to go a bit more in depth into the obscuras uses, then will show a picture of Thomas Jefferson’s camera obscura. This segways  into students creating two different kinds of this type of homemade camera. First, we will all make individual ones together. Then take a ten minute break since the class is three hours long. Finally we will cover the windows up with trash bags and cardboard, leaving a single hole off-center. Viola! The room will have an upside down image of outside reflected on the walls. Students will be encouraged to take pictures and discuss the mechanics of this phenomena. This will be a good introduction into photography in general and how that was used in colonies, such as with tabletop camera lucidas and traveling camera obscuras.

Continuing on over the next several class periods,students will delve into creation of the daguerreotype and how it reached America, migrating  overseas from Europe to the new world with specific immigrant groups as we move in time from Post Revolutionary America to the heaviest period of immigration.  We will expand on the spread of media  through cultures and technologies coming to the new world though individual migration. I will bring in some family heirloom glass plates from the Civil War era to pass around. They have people blurred and unsmiling due to the long exposure times required. We will discuss post mortem photography and why it made sense. I will have a slide show put together of post mortem photography, Civil War documentation, portraits, and medical photos. We will discuss the evolution to the wet plate and the field camera. These images represent the beginnings of American documentation and image making. I’ll introduce the basics of photoshop by showing students how to photoshop their film into looking like a daguerreotype. Finishing up with this explosion of art in such a short time period we will look at a famous portrait photographer, Marian Hooper.

From origins and influences of photography during the infancy of America, through the period of the Civil War, the class now shifts towards innovation and mass production in keeping with the Industrial Revolution.   Students will discover the next wave of photography started in 1888 with Kodak’s mail-in film marketed and created by George Eastman.

At the same time, it will be critical to involve the class with assignments that supplement the historical and technological constructs we discuss.  Calotypes projects, for example, are a key type of media making to learn in the dark room. You don’t need a camera to make a beautiful image with light, the objects and world around you are enough.

Each assignment is vague purposely to allow beginners to grow, and make it acceptable for the more experienced students to let their imaginations run wild. Students will also see an evolution of photography and the way the image has been shaped through light and form. We make pinholes to introduce the dark room and so students know their way around when we learn to develop film. Students will have to turn in an annotated bibliography, proposal, and annotated bibliography to make sure they don’t procrastinate and help can be given in ample time if they need it. In addition, the film that will be screened over whatever vacation week kids have, Everyone will have the option of writing a 2-5 page critical analysis of the PBS documentary, in case they are behind and need to make up work.

Finally, my thoughts about readings and class material focuses on the economics and fairness.  I do not want students to have to spend a lot of money on textbooks, because that can be exclusive and bring anxiety if they can’t just rent them or get them used. Also, since this is an art history course I wanted to make it more about the art, so I gave very minimal readings. I will either upload pdf’s for students to read or give them online sources to cater to the technological age we live in. Technology used to spread artwork is the reason why students are required to create a tumblr account to display their work. As for there only being 12 classes, I felt that art courses should be longer and it would be overkill to also add a film screening or lab time so I combined them all into a three hour class with a break.

[arabellaflynn]

Weekly Watch: BBC Engineering Test Tx

One of my weirder hobbies is digital archaeology. I've gotten oddly good at tracing the provenance of random pieces of media. Pictures and sound follow their own version of Locard's Exchange Principle: Every medium and environment they go through leaves a mark. No part of the signal chain is transparent. YouTube clips of home recordings of old transmissions are like matryoshka dolls, layer over layer of information on where they come from, and how they got here. This is going to be extremely long-winded and technical, so brace yourselves. Here's the example I'm using. 1. The first thing you check is the documentation. This is often crap, but a crap in informative ways. This particular clip is labeled "PALplus test" and the caption is in German. Translating things with technical terms in them can get interesting; Google usually at least tries to take context into account, but most machine translators trip over things like "Sendeschluss" and "FuBK" and "Längsspurton". "Sendeschluss" = lit., 'send-close'. Less literally, 'sign off'. Used for the picture, audio tagline, or video clip broadcast by a station to indicate they are shutting down transmission for the night. "FuBK" = "Funkanstalten Bildkarte", lit. '(broadcast) station picture card'. The equivalent term in English is 'test card' or 'test pattern', a still (or more rarely, animated) image broadcast by a television station that is specifically engineered to test the technical capability of the receiver. Famous test cards are the RCA-developed Indian head test pattern widely used in the black and white days, and the SMPTE color bars used in NTSC regions. "Längsspurton" = lit, 'long tracks'. Used here in the context of a VHS tape, it refers to a method of laying down the audio track linearly along the edge of the tape, rather than using the embedded signal-under method of a HiFi VCR, which in less-capable recorders can interfere with the picture. ARD is sort of a hybrid of the BBC in the UK and PBS in the US, a consortium of public broadcasters supported by a television licensing fee charged to each household, and ZDF (now 2DF, judging by their logo) is basically "BBC2". 2. The next thing is historical context. This is captioned a "PALplus" test, broadcast in Germany in 1993. PALplus is a variation on the PAL broadcast standard developed to handle 16:9 material, like movies and documentaries. The gist is that a standard 4:3 television would show the material in letterbox format, with black bars at the top and bottom, but that there would be extra data hidden in the letterboxing bars that would enable a 16:9 television to reconstruct the full original picture. The "hidden" data was known to sometimes cause spurious blue and yellow patches in the "black" bars, but that depended on how touchy your receiver was. The picture as presented on YouTube is full-frame 4:3, so there's no way to verify from the given video clip that the original transmission was in PALplus. 3. YouTube leaves its own mark. While the HD resolution options meet the standards now used worldwide, the SD resolutions are tailored for US sources. (480 is NTSC broadcast/Betamax/VHS SP standard, and compatible with early VGA; 360 and 240 are roughly VHS LP and EP standards; and 144 is roughly equivalent to elderly RealPlayer and QuickTime streaming video.) Standard definition PAL video starts out at 576 lines and counts down from there, so in order to smash it into a US-oriented video resolution, you need to do standards conversion, which is a generally destructive process. The detail in the original picture would have been very sharp and regular; any mottling or unevenness is due to unintelligent downsampling (or, at worst, just discarding lines) from the original video. The periodic blur - snap into focus - blur cycle is due to the YouTube MPEG compression algorithm not dealing terribly well with fine detail when not being babysat by a competent human. MPEG compression works by dividing the picture into blocks, and looking at those blocks to track how they change over time. If either the block size or the time window are badly-chosen, it gets confused and defaults to going, "Uh, and then... something happens... here...?" and fills in with a sort of average color, hoping you won't notice. A human can go in and fix it, but automatic algorithms are not necessarily that smart. 4. The video was recorded, as the caption says, on VHS. Terribly. VHS video is easily mangled in predictable ways, almost all of which can be seen on this despite the best efforts of the MPEG encoder to re-mangle everything in its own fashion. The vertical lines are all wibbly in a way characteristic of multi-head helical scan recording methods. The picture lines are recorded on the tape by a rapidly-spinning head assembly that has 2-4 little magnetic chips that actually do the writing; because it's all mechanical, and the tape is somewhat stretchy mylar, it's almost impossible to get the picture lines laid down exactly parallel to one another. TV doesn't use absolute pixel addresses like computer displays do, instead depending on the timing of the signal to line things up. If your timing is just a smidge off, your line will start just a smidge early (displaced to the left) or late (displaced to the right). It's not necessarily obvious, because our brains will ignore/correct a lot, but hard vertical lines show it badly. Little horizontal white streaks are places where the magnetic coating fell off the tape backing. They're common to all analog magnetic tape formats, which have no error correction. It makes the playback head go 'whoops, no signal, dunno what goes here' and creates a spot where the television essentially gets random static. Different tape formats show the streaks in different patterns; 2" Quad tape, for instance, breaks picture lines up into multiple lines on tape, so when the oxide falls off you get a shower of equally-spaced lines blinking into picture. VHS puts one picture line on one tape line, so you get chunks of static instead. The weird black stripe with crooked picture bits under it that pops up at the bottom of the picture is another VHS error. It means the timing is screwed up. The VHS player doesn't recognize the black bar as 'hey! this is the bottom of the picture! I'm blanking to give you time to get back up to the top of the screen to restart!'; it just takes X number of lines from wherever you tell it to start, assumes that's a screenful, and sends it to the TV. Tracking adjusts where you start the screenful, and someone here has set it slightly wrong, such that the picture starts a few lines late, sends the blanking interval as a black bar, and puts a few lines of the next screen on the bottom of this one. Something in the signal chain is rubbish, because the picture has appalling dot crawl. It happens when the horizontal and vertical sync signals interfere with the luminance signal; sync-on-composite is standard on both RCA cables (US), SCART connectors (EU), or S-Video (both), and most VCRs don't understand RGB component signals, so checkerboarding is common. Interestingly, some of the 'displaced streak' blips in one of the black and white test plates appear to be baked into the original transmission tape. There's another copy of the same test pattern, albeit a different broadcast, that has similar distortion. Either the receiver on the alternate copy is better at coping with it, or the first VHS recording exacerbates it, because it appears less mangled on the cleaner-looking copy. A mid-90s broadcast master would likely be on Betacam, for which that is a plausible kind of picture error. This alternate also doesn't have the problem with dot crawl, which suggests they had a much better SCART/S-Video cable, or a less noisy setup. There are various pieces of content and picture characteristics that also verify a PAL/BBC source and suggest a date, like the white balance, the noisy reds, and the test patterns, but this is getting long enough as it is. I'll get to that next week. from Blogger http://ift.tt/2oVpR08 via IFTTT -------------------- Enjoy my writing? Consider becoming a Patron, subscribing via Kindle, or just toss a little something in my tip jar. Thanks!

[tragicbooks]

How to take your panic over Trump and the environment and turn it into real action.

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A lot of people are worried about the environment right now. And President Trump ... well, he's not helping.

Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images.

He's called climate change a Chinese hoax, made no secret of his disdain for the Clean Power Plan, and signaled that he might withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate deal.

But here's the thing: Though the political parties are divided, the American people are largely in agreement — we want to preserve the environment and take proactive steps against climate change. So, with that in mind...

Here are 21 things anyone can do over the next four years to take action for the environment:

1. Donate to organizations dedicated to environmental causes.

You know that old adage about voting with your dollar? Now's the time to put it to use. Check out organizations such as the Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, Ocean Conservancy, Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, World Wildlife Fund, Alliance for the Great Lakes, Rainforest Trust, or the Conservation Fund.

2. If you can't donate yourself — well, how do you like marathons and bake sales?

If donating money isn't in the cards, you could try signing up for charity drives or races. The World Wildlife Fund's Panda Nation program, for instance, can help you set up fundraisers that combine events like bake sales or marathons with charitable donations.

3. Get your hands dirty by joining a citizen scientist project.

A horseshoe crab. Image via iStock.

Instead of just promoting science and nature conservation, how about getting involved yourself? Scientists need lay people to help collect important data from all around the country. There are a ton of these projects, from tracking horseshoe crabs in Delaware Bay to watching urban birds. PBS, National Geographic, and Scientific American have lists of citizen science projects for you to help out in your area.

4. Prefer to keep your hands on the cleaner side? Help with research by playing games online.

No joke. Some of these citizen science projects have migrated to the internet. At Zooniverse, for instance, you can decipher bat calls, spy on colonies of penguins, investigate old whaling ship records, or play Chimp & See.

Other websites will let you use satellite footage to uncover archaeological sites or will fold proteins while you sleep.

5. Organize or participate in park cleanup events.

Image via iStock.

Instead of a hiking trip, why not join a park cleanup? It's a good workout, and at the end you can break out some beers and enjoy the newly clean park yourself.

Check out The Ocean Conservancy and GOOD for guides to getting started.

6. Support good science journalism with real, actual money.

You know what's the antidote to fake news? Real news.

Show your support for legitimate, nuanced science reporting by subscribing or donating to outlets such as National Geographic, Scientific American, and Smithsonian Magazine. While you're at it, support reputable news outlets such as The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, or NPR.

7. And follow them on social media so you can join in the discussion.

In addition to the places mentioned above, check out groups like the National Parks Service; science communicators like Neil deGrasse Tyson and Ed Yong; astronomer Phil Plait; and podcasts like "RadioLab." I mean, I could go on naming people all day. Join in to hear what they're saying and add your own voice.

That said, remember that people on social media are still people — keep it civil. It's always good to stay a little suspicious, fact-check, and read articles before you post or retweet them.

8. Or ditch the phone entirely and just go outside!

Image via iStock.

Grab some friends and and organize hikes, boating expeditions, or nature walks. Hit the beach. Check out the tide pools. Get a hunting permit and go hunting, if that's your thing. Get a fishing permit and go fishing. Get an annual pass to the national parks and go enjoy some of the most beautiful landscapes our country has to offer.

Why? Because, well, nature is goddamn beautiful and being outside is good for you. But it'll also remind you of why it's worth protecting.

9. Call your representatives and senators and let them know you care about the environment and they should too.

Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images.

Making small changes yourself to protect the environment is good, but in order to make a huge difference, we need systemic changes too. It's important to make sure politicians are paying attention. Call them.

Actual phone-to-phone conversations make a difference. Remind them what's important to you. Here are all the phone numbers for the House of Representatives. Here are all the phone numbers for the Senate. You can also sign up for email alerts from various conservation organizations like the Environmental Defense Fund or for apps like Countable that will let you know when important bills are up for a vote.

10. If your representatives don't listen, set up a calendar reminder so you don't forget the midterm elections.

Or, heck, have you considered running for office yourself? If you're not happy with how the government works, why not get involved? Anyone can run for office, so if you've got some good ideas, why not throw your hat in the ring?

11. If you have kids, get involved in their environmental education.

If you have kids, offer to chaperone a school field trip to a museum or park. If their school isn't planning any field trips, help set one up for the class. An AZA-accredited zoo or aquarium is a great place to start. Or maybe your kid would like a birthday party at a natural history museum or a trip to a day camp or summer camp? If you're in the Seattle area, the city has a list of camps.

12. Fill your car's tires. Yeah, I'm serious.

A well-maintained car gets better gas mileage and produces fewer emissions. Just filling low tires can improve your fuel efficiency by up to 3%. You may want to get regular tune-ups and consider going easy on the pedal and brake as well.

Image via iStock.

If you live in a place where bikes and buses are a thing, save the car for long trips and use alternative transportation whenever you can instead.

13. Rethink your grocery list.

We all need food to live, but the way we grow it can be kind of taxing on the planet. Large livestock such as cows and pigs often take a lot of land, feed, fuel, and antibiotics to raise, which can be tough on the environment. Eating smaller, buying local, and eating animals further down the food chain can reduce the impact your grocery list has on the environment.

Consider swapping burgers for barbecue chicken or adding an extra vegetable to your dishes, and whenever possible try to eat things that are grown in the same state you live in.

14. Get rid of all the junk mail and needless paper waste that's been piling up.

Oh good, I qualified for 47 different credit cards today. Image via iStock.

More than 4 million pounds of junk mail is produced each year, and about half of it ends up in the trash. You can help cut down on this waste by talking to your local post office or using services like Catalog Choice, DMAChoice, or  OptOutPrescreen to remove your name from mailing lists.

While you're at it, sign up for electronic billing and receipts instead of paper ones.

(Also, who wouldn't want less junk mail?!)

15. Make sure you're recycling electronics properly.

Computers, electronics, and batteries can be full of acids, rare metals, and lead. That gunk can end up in our soil and water, which is, you know, not good. You can help keep lead and toxins out of the soil by using proper e-waste procedures.

Instead of tossing your old cell phone in the trash or leaving your old laptop on the curb, use this website to find a recycling center near you. You can also donate or recycle old cell phones. Many carriers, such as AT&T and Verizon, also have trade-in programs.

16. If thinking about the global environment feels overwhelming, think local instead.

We might not be able to count on the federal government, but that doesn't mean cities, towns, and neighborhoods can't still take action to protect the environment.

Join Audubon International's Green Neighborhood program, read the NRDC's neighborhood development guide, create a neighborhood repair team, persuade your city to turn defunct industrial sites into green spaces, or follow the small town of Ashton Haye's example and go carbon-neutral altogether.

17. Download apps that will help you keep conservation and environment info handy.

Put your phone to good use. Find more sustainable fish with an app like Seafood Watch, lower your water bill with Dropcountr, get ocean conservancy tips from Rippl, learn what's going on in your neighborhood with Ecoviate, or find new ideas with #climate.

18. Educate yourself by watching amazing environmental documentaries.

Image from "Before the Flood."

Documentaries are a great way to get caught up on current issues. Check out BBC's delightful "The Blue Planet," "Life," "Life Story," and "Planet Earth" series; Leonardo DiCaprio's "Before the Flood"; "Chasing Ice"; Discovery Channel's "Wildest" series; or both "Cosmos" series.

19. Have uncomfortable conversations.

Look, I can write as much as I want here, but if you actually want to change someone's mind, you've really got to talk to them. Connect over shared values. If you're a hunter, talk to other hunters. If you're a farmer, talk to other farmers. If you're a city dweller, talk to other city dwellers. Find the places where you can agree, and go from there.

It can be weird, but it helps.

20. Don't panic.

Yes, climate change is real. Yes, it's caused by humans. Though some politicians may try to sow confusion, we just need to look out the window to see that the weather's getting weirder.

That said, it's not too late. We probably can't stop it entirely, but we still have the power to both lessen its effects and prepare for the future.

So don't panic.

21. Remember, you are not alone.

Though we may disagree sometimes on the best way to do it, the majority of Americans do want action on climate change and conservation. Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, or Green, this is an issue we can all get behind.

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