secretmak's Xanga

Wednesday, October 12, 2005

Wed, 12 Oct 2005 16:34:04 GMT

Live Apple updates from Stuff website.

CNBC just reported new iMac and Video iPods (official announcement)

EDIT: Here is a repost from macrumors.com
Apple's managed to block most of the Mac web from updating live. We tip a hat to Apple for finding a location without cellphone or wireless access. Here's information gathered thus far.

New iMac, new Video iPod, new Apps.

- iMac: faster, larger disk, built in iSight. Includes FrontRow (app)
- iPod: 30GB/60GB with Video - realtime decoding of MPEG4 and H.264. 260,000 colors. Video out.
- FrontRow and PhotoBooth Apps.
- 30GB iPod: $299 - 31% thinner than current 20GB; - 60GB iPod: $399.
- New iPods avail next week. Comes with case
- iMac: $1299 for 17" model with 1.5GHz, $1799 for 20" model with 2.1GHz
- iTunes 6 to be released
- Front Row - comes with new iMacs. Lets you enjoy video/music/pictures from sofa. Everything still displayed on iMac screen. iPod-like remote. 6 button remote.
- Photobooth - appears to be slide show application.
- Music Videos. 2000 available to buy. $1.99 each.
- Can "gift" music to other people. Peer reviews and recommendation service.

Wednesday, October 12, 2005

Wed, 12 Oct 2005 16:07:12 GMT

New Video iPod?
Well, with all the rumors flying on the net about a video enabled iPod to be announced today, I stumbled upon this Chinese website that has some alleged photos of the new device. It appears to be 30GB with a bigger screen and the headphone port moved to the side. Looks like it is a bit thinner than the current 60GB iPod. So excited...only about an hour until the official announcement!

EDIT:
Here are some photos taken by the fine folks at iLounge.com who are at the special Apple event of outside posters...does look like the iPod above doesn't it?

Friday, September 30, 2005

Fri, 30 Sep 2005 20:23:10 GMT

Aborting All Black Babies OK If It Lowers Crime Rate?
Absolutely unbelievable. Former Education Secretary William Bennett (R) under the Reagan and Drug Czar under the Bush Administration made the comment that aborting "every black baby in this country" would reduce the crime rate. Republicans who are the so-called champions of the "right-to-life" have been slow to denounce the comments of Bennett. I guess the Republicans think that aborting a whole race of babies is OK as long as they are not white babies. (Can you say "Genocide"?) Bennett himself stood by his comments and remains unapologetic.

Read more:

Monday, September 19, 2005

Mon, 19 Sep 2005 08:36:55 GMT

Back in Eugene
I hate jet lag. I just got back from a week-long trip to Hong Kong to visit some family on my dad's side. My internal clock is totally messed up. It is 2:35 AM here, but I'm still on Hong Kong time. I'll blog some more later...gonna try to get some sleep.

Thursday, September 01, 2005

Thu, 01 Sep 2005 20:27:15 GMT

"Looting" or "Finding"?
I can't seem to drag myself away from the gut-wrenching images on the cable news channels of helpless people fighting for their lives. Flipping through newschannels last night I even watched some Faux News Channel. The O'Reilly Factor was on and good 'ol Bill was going off about those criminal black people looting and plundering poor Wal-Mart. Fucking neo-conservatives care more about goods that will never be sold than people who are starving, dehydrated, desparate, and have lost almost everything. Must be that compassionate conservatism they keep talking about. I bet they expect people to line up at their flooded local grocery store in the middle of New Orleans and wait for it to open. Hmmm...wonder when they're gonna open? Who's working today?

Zero tolerance is the official Bush Administration line for "looting"...does that mean shoot the poor black guy trying to get water and diapers for his family?

Also what is interesting is the news media keep showing footage of suffering black people and comment that it looks like a third world country...they show white people as people who have lost their homes and intercut it with footage of wreckage with an American flag. Hmmmm...I wonder what they are trying to say? I also noticed that the footage shown on the news depicts relief efforts focused on areas where white people live and there are close to no footage of help for black people. Makes me fucking angry and depressed. I guess Amerikkka has shown its true colors.

---------------------
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/09/01/photo_controversy/print.html

"Looting" or "finding"?
Bloggers are outraged over the different captions on photos of blacks and whites in New Orleans.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Aaron Kinney

Sept. 1, 2005 | Two photographs of New Orleans residents wading through chest-deep water unleashed a wave of chatter among bloggers Wednesday about whether black people are being treated unfairly in media coverage of post-hurricane looting.

One of the images, shot by photographer Dave Martin for the Associated Press, shows a young black man wading through chest-deep waters after "looting" a grocery store, according to the caption. The young man appears to have a case of Pepsi under one arm and a full garbage bag in tow. In the other, similar shot, taken by photographer Chris Graythen for AFP/Getty Images, a white man and a light-skinned woman are shown wading through chest-deep water after "finding" goods including bread and soda, according to the caption, in a local grocery store.

The images were both published on Tuesday by Yahoo News. "We don't edit photo captions," Yahoo P.R. manager Brian Nelson told Salon. "Sometimes we take a look at the photos and we'll choose to pull photos, but the captions run as is." A search of AP and Getty's image databases confirms that Yahoo News did not alter either of the photo captions before posting them online.

Looting has become a serious problem in the aftermath of Katrina, and conditions in the area continue to be extremely challenging for everyone, journalists included. Bloggers were quick to raise allegations of insensitivity and racism regarding the disparity in the two captions -- but did they pass judgment too quickly? Not only did the photos come from separate outlets, bloggers had no knowledge of the circumstances in which the shots were taken, beyond what appeared in the published captions.

On Wednesday, D.C. Web gossip Wonkette suggested the Associated Press should apologize, while a blogger at Daily Kos commented alongside the juxtaposed images, "And don't forget. It's not looting if you're white."

"I am curious how one photographer knew the food was looted by one but not the other," wrote Boston Globe correspondent Christina Pazzanese, in a letter posted on media commentator Jim Romenesko's blog. "Were interviews conducted as they swam by? Should editors, in a rush to publish poignant or startling images, relax their standards or allow personal or regional biases creep into captions and stories?"

The AP database includes two other images from the same scene by photographer Dave Martin that refer to looters in the captions, though neither actually shows an explicit act of looting. Jack Stokes, AP's director of media relations, confirmed today that Martin says he witnessed the people in his images looting a grocery store. "He saw the person go into the shop and take the goods," Stokes said, "and that's why he wrote 'looting' in the caption."

Santiago Lyon, AP's director of photography, told Salon that all captions are vetted by editors and are the result of a dialogue between editor and photographer. Lyon said AP's policy is that each photographer can describe only what he or she actually sees. He added, "When we see people go into businesses and come out with goods, we call it 'looting.'" On the other hand, he said, "When we just see them carrying things down the road, we call it 'carrying items.'"

Regarding the AFP/Getty "finding" photo by Graythen, Getty spokeswoman Bridget Russel said, "This is obviously a big tragedy down there, so we're being careful with how we credit these photos." Russel said that Graythen had discussed the image in question with his editor and that if Graythen didn't witness the two people in the image in the act of looting, then he couldn't say they were looting.

But if he didn't witness an act of looting, how did Graythen determine where the items came from, or if they were "found"? "I wish I could tell you," Russel said. "I haven't been able to talk to Chris."

"The only thing I can tell you is they don't assume one way or another," she added.

Yahoo News published another photo Tuesday of a looting scene that caught bloggers' attention. This one, by AP photographer Bill Feig, shows a white man walking away from a looted convenience store, looking in a grocery bag, while a black man jumps out of the store's broken front window. The caption reads, "As one person looks through their shopping bag, left, another jumps through a broken window, while leaving a convenience store ... in Metairie, La." According to the caption, Feig shot the image while on a helicopter tour of Louisiana with Gov. Kathleen Blanco.

"I think it's fair to say that he described what he saw ... which is somebody going through their bag," Stokes said, affirming that Feig must not have seen the man with the grocery bag actually leaving the looted store.

Both Stokes and Russel said their photographers would be unable to comment further on the images for now, because of the chaos and poor communications conditions prevailing in New Orleans and the surrounding region.

The stakes remain high in the aftermath of this disaster, says Pazzanese. "Seems to me the national 'crisis mode' coverage of Katrina in a predominantly black, poor part of the country presents a number of professional challenges for everyone in the media around the subject of racial and economic sensitivity," she wrote on Romenesko. "Perhaps these photos will stimulate a media 'gut check' as we race to tell the stories of the thousands who lost their lives and livelihoods."

- - - - - - - - - - - -

About the writer
Aaron Kinney is an editorial fellow at Salon.

Tuesday, May 17, 2005

Tue, 17 May 2005 16:27:06 GMT

Star Wars III Axes Bai Ling

For those who know me, I'm a huge Star Wars fan. It's no wonder that I have tickets for the first showing at Midnight for Episode III. I recently ran across an article in AsianWeek article called, "She Takes it Off, ‘Star Wars’ Takes Her Out" (scroll to the middle) about how actor Bai Ling who is rumored to play one of the most prominent Asian roles in the six Star Wars movies was edited out of the film after appearing nude in Playboy. Too bad. Star Wars has never had a strong Asian character. On a related side note, Bai Ling is in a Hong Kong film called "Dumplings" a very disturbing movie that I highly recommend. I actually ran into her at the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival hosted by NAATA this past Spring Break during a filmmaker brunch.

Tuesday, May 17, 2005

Tue, 17 May 2005 15:08:39 GMT

America Planning War With China
I got my copy of "The Atlantic" magazine (ironic that it comes out during Asian American Heritage Month). The cover depicts an evil looking Chinese sailor with glowing Gould-like eyes. It is reminecent of the propaganda put out during WWII against Japanese Americans. Yes, Yellow Peril is back on the front page. Professor David Harvey argues that the United States is using its political and military might in the Middle East in order to control oil...since it knows that its main competitor's economy and military (aka China) are heavily dependent on this natural resource. In other words, control the oil and you control China. (Hmmm...I wonder why we went to war with Iraq?)
Below is an opinion piece about the articles in the magazine by Gwynne Dyer. It is an excellent political analysis of the neoconservative hegemon mindset. As Angry Asian Man would say, "That's Racist!"
---------------------------------
Planning the next Cold War

by Gwynne Dyer

Tuesday, May 17th 2005

http://www.trinidadexpress.com/index.pl/article_opinion?id=78162724
The cover of the May Atlantic Monthly has a angry-looking Chinese sailor glowering out at the reader in menacing black-and-white, next to a headline blaring: "How We Would Fight China: The Next Cold War.'' Yet Atlantic Monthly is one of the more respectable American monthly magazines, heavy on intellectual pretension and not generally seen as part of the lunatic fringe. If this is what passes for rational discourse among the American foreign policy establishment -and there have been many others like it in "serious'' journals and papers over the past year or so -then God help us all.

The author of the lead article in question is Robert D Kaplan, a minor player in the neo-conservative fraternity. In measured, almost academic tones, he discusses the strategy of the coming military confrontation between the United States and China as if it were inevitable.

A sample: "The Chinese navy is poised to push out into the Pacific -and when it does, it will very quickly encounter a US Navy and Air Force unwilling to budge from the coastal shelf of the Chinese mainland. It's not hard to imagine the result: a replay of the decades-long Cold War, with a centre of gravity not in the heart of Europe, but, rather, among Pacific atolls that were last in the news when Marines stormed them in World War II.'' So explain to us, Mr Kaplan: how is it that, 60 years after World War II, the US Navy and Air Force are unwilling to budge from the coastal shelf of the Asian mainland?

He does not, of course. He takes it as read that the natural dividing line between the navies of the United States and China, two countries separated by 6,000 miles of ocean, lies about ten miles off the Chinese coast. He also takes it as read that the growing power of China must be "contained,'' as NATO contained Soviet power during the old Cold War. And in these assumptions, he is entirely representative of the people who run US foreign policy these days.

Never mind that there is no evidence whatever that China is a territorially expansionist power (with the possible exception of Taiwan), whereas the armies of the old Soviet Union occupied and subjugated all the countries of Eastern Europe.

Never mind that the men ruling China are so uncertain of their grip on power that they would not dream of risking military clashes that would interrupt trade and kill the economic growth that keeps the masses quiet. In Kaplan's view, any country that grows strong enough to challenge America's status as the sole superpower is automatically an enemy to America, and must be contained: "Whenever great powers have emerged or re-emerged on the scene (Germany and Japan, to cite two recent examples), they have tended to be particularly assertive - and therefore have thrown international affairs into violent turmoil. China will be no exception.''

This stuff is so shallow that it would lose a student marks in a high school history essay. What about America's own emergence as a great power, or Russia's, for that matter? Few ordinary Americans would knowingly support the remilitarisation of international affairs and the launch of a second Cold War merely to preserve America's position as the sole military superpower on the planet, but they will never be asked the question in those terms. Instead, they will be warned of emerging "threats'' by people like Robert Kaplan, and told that China must be "deterred.'' They will not be encouraged to ask: deterred from doing what?

Kaplan is not some fringe loony. He is what passes for a house intellectual among the neo-conservatives who currently dominate American defence and foreign policy, and his ideas are fully shared by them. He recounts with approval how the United States has already "formed a Pacific military alliance of sorts'' through bilateral security agreements with "such places as Vietnam, Singapore, Thailand, Cambodia and the Philippines.'' Given the older US alliances with Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, China is already half-encircled.

Now the emphasis in Washington is on drawing India into an anti-Chinese alliance, too: US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited New Delhi recently bearing bribes in the form of access to next-generation American military technology, and President Bush himself is due there later this year. Fortunately, the Indians seem unconvinced of the need for a confrontation with China.

Kaplan, like most of the people he hangs out with, lives in a fantasy world that runs on the rules of the 18th- and 19th-century great-power game. Kaplan, for example, talks with perfect seriousness about "an ever expanding European Union (that) becomes a less-than-democratic superstate run in imperious regulatory style by Brussels-based functionaries.'' But these people are in charge of US policy now, and there is a significant risk that their fixation on a new Cold War with China could become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.

Monday, May 16, 2005

Mon, 16 May 2005 15:11:31 GMT

Asian American Podcasting?
I was wondering if anyone in Xangaland has experience in podcasting? I'm currently thinking about doing a weekly rant on race and ethnicity, media, politics, and tech stuff. Thinking of calling it "Air Asian America Radio." Probably another of my half-baked ideas.

Tuesday, May 10, 2005

Tue, 10 May 2005 03:25:49 GMT

Former Student Writes Article On My Class

Awwww....one of my former students from last summer wrote an article in the local paper about her experience in my Asian American Oral History Video Project class. I'm just glad that my students feel like they are gaining something valuable and are excited about school.

*Edit*
The class was part of the Lane Community College Rites of Passage Program where students of color come to learn about their history, literature, culture, and learn leadership skills. I will be teaching again this summer. I love teaching in this program because I really see a transformation in how the students see themselves. Growing up in Eugene as one of the few students of color, I know the pressures of assimilation and isolation that go along with living in a predominately white town. I really wish there was a program like this when I was growing up.

Coincidently, I had a meeting today with the head honcho of the program and he wants me to teach the Asian American and the African American students this year and expand it to the Latino/Chicano and American Indian students next year. Boy, I'm going to be bizzzzy!

http://www.registerguard.com/news/2005/05/09/tw.oralhistory.0509.html

www.registerguard.com | © The Register-Guard, Eugene, Oregon

May 9, 2005

History Lesson: Assignment to produce oral history gives teens newfound respect for people, places and events that shape them

By Chau Nguyen
20Below News Teams

Too often, the word "history" conjures up yawn-inducing images of boring textbooks, droning documentaries and distant names and dates of little obvious relevance to one's daily life.

It's difficult to imagine that history is not only a matter of the past when living history itself sounds like an oxymoron.

But last summer, through a film class project, I and my classmates came to realize the existence of an emotionally packed history right here in our own community and within our very own families. It is an oral history surviving in the memories of our elders, hidden within fading black-and-white photographs and torn newspaper clippings, yellowed with age - all lost alarmingly easily to the passage of time.

Armed with a video camera and the directions and advice of our teacher, Jason Mak, I set out with two fellow team members to complete our film project. Unknowingly, I would come to record a part of the past that is an essential part of who I am.




	Illustration: Aaron Sullivan / 20Below artist

The assignment was to create a short oral history documentary on topics of our choosing. For someone who barely knew where the record button was (like me), the task proved to be monumental, but I had a vision for a story to guide me. After the initial week of learning about the technicalities - from lighting and sound to types of camera shots and interviewing techniques - my crew finally was entrusted with expensive equipment to begin filming.

With team members Tony on camera and Cherie-Anne checking sound, I interviewed my grandfather about why he came to Springfield from Vietnam and how. Worries about adequate lighting and background noises abated as he poured out an incredible story of a sea voyage made in 1978. I listened attentively as he spoke of a fishing boat fixed up with a car engine by his hands as a mechanic, and of coping with fires and freshwater shortages onboard a precarious journey for what else, but freedom.

In the search for visuals to accompany my grandfather's story, certain familiar photographs in my grandmother's albums now bore a whole new meaning. In one picture, I finally noticed the abandoned gray fishing boat in a corner and understood that the figures staring out at me were refugees who had risked their very lives in exchange for a better future for themselves and their children. Along with that understanding came newly found respect.

The process of editing footage and sound to put the documentary together was in itself a time-consuming and patience-testing effort. However, being able to share a part of one's family's history in a way that others will understand and be interested in hearing made the results well worth it.

Within the combined projects of the class, people shared personal stories of all scopes, from events that took place in World War II to childhood memories, recounting matters that brought both tears and laughter. My participation brought further knowledge about where I came from and of the people, places and events that shape who I am today.

Equally important, it also provided me with the opportunity to preserve that newly discovered knowledge.

What amazing and intriguing true stories your family members and their friends could tell you, especially the older generations, if they're only asked. As loved ones will inevitably pass away, the stories of their lives, filling the gaps in a history that includes everyone from the famed to the everyday people, will be lost forever if they are to go on unspoken and unrecorded.

How important it is then that we must attempt to keep it alive and pass it on, a fleeting oral history of such personal significance and value.

The undertaking of such a task, done with tact and care, will be appreciated and become a reward in itself.

Chau Nguyen is a sophomore at Springfield High. She can be reached at 20Below@guardnet .com.

Wednesday, April 06, 2005

Wed, 06 Apr 2005 10:06:05 GMT

Public Speaking...to six year-olds!
I was just asked by a principal at a local elementary school to speak at his staff's inservice and also to give a talk to his entire student body. The staff part is a no-brainer. I'll talk to them about their whiteness (this is Eugene) and cultural competency in the context of my own experience growing up in the 4J School District as one of the few students of color. (He also wants me to teach his staff salsa dancing.) That's the easy part. I'm scared crapless of addressing his student body. K-5th grade is definitely not my forte. Middle school and High school I can handle, but 6 year olds? How do you talk about racism in a way that will interest and be understandable to this age group? In a setting of 1000+ rowdy students in a gym? I'm losing sleep over this one. I'll be hitting the library tomorrow to look up some resources. I need an underlying message (Is it racism is bad? Respect all people? Be kind to others?). Maybe I should tell them a story? Grad school never prepared me for this one...anybody know of any good websites?