Earth Hour

The following message has been forwarded around my kids school. Seemed like a cool idea:

Earth Hour is coming! The people of Phoenix have an exciting
opportunity to positively impact climate change this Saturday, March
29th. Phoenix is one of four U.S. cities selected by the World
Wildlife Fund to participate in Earth Hour 2008, a worldwide event
March 29, from 8 to 9pm. During this one hour, please join millions
of people across the world in shutting off your lights.

Turning off all non-essential lights for one hour alone can make a big
impact. Last year, Sydney, Australia initiated the event and reduced
their energy use by 10% in a single hour. This energy reduction is
equivalent to taking 48,000 vehicles off the road!

The city of Phoenix cares deeply about the negative effects of global
warming and is committed to reducing our energy use and dependence on
foreign sources of fuel. As part of our sustainability campaign, the
city has retrofitted 95% of city buildings with energy-efficient
lighting, has implemented nine solar energy projects across the city,
has worked to build one of the nation's largest municipal clean fuel
fleets, and has partnered with grocery stores to reduce the use of
plastic bags and promote reusable bags.

APS and SRP will measure how much energy is saved during Earth Hour
Phoenix. So, we need your help to make every little bit count.
Please join us in demonstrating our city's commitment to keeping our
environment clean, safe, and sustainable for generations to come. To
volunteer or to learn more, contact the Earth Hour hotline at (602)
417-1363 or visit earthhour.org.

Cultural Globalization

Copies of Cultural Globalization: A User's Guide just arrived in the mail today! It's an actual book! Very exciting.

Movie Meme

I've added some hints in bold below, just to move this along some.

OK. Gil tagged me with a movie meme. He had tweaked the rules, which I'm tweaking some more.

The rules:

1. Pick fifteen of your favorite movies.
2. Go to IMDb and find a quote from each movie. (Or in some cases, just remember them.)
3. Post them for everyone to guess.
4. Strike out each quote when someone guesses it correctly, and append the names of the movie and the guesser.
5. No Googling/using IMDb/Wikiquote search functions. That would be cheatin’.
6. Tag ten people (I upped this from five, since I figure half my taggees won’t cooperate).

My tweak: I ain't tagging nobody. Partly this is because the only folks I really know with blogs who would be in real danger of actually reading this blog have already been tagged. So I'll open the meme up: if you're reading this and have a blog and want to carry this on, just let me know and I'll post it here. A voluntary meme.

Here's the list. Some are pretty easy (fish in barrel kind of easy). If you know the films, post your guesses in the comments.

1. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. [Star Wars. Gil]
2. Asps. Very dangerous. You go first. [Raiders of the Lost Ark. Gil]
3. It’s not my goddamn planet. Understand, monkey boy? [Buckaroo Banzai. Gil]
4. I hope all your children have very small dicks. And that includes the girls! [hint: spoken by Jeff Goldblum]
5. You people are bastard people! [hint: spoken by Christopher Guest]
6. Well, nobody’s perfect. [Some Like it Hot. Gil]
7. You’re gonna need a bigger boat. [Jaws. Gil]
8. Keep watching the sky, MacIntyre [Local Hero. Tracy]
9. Do you want me to send you back to where you were? Unemployed! In Greenland! [Princess Bride. Tracy]
10. I’m a friend. Companero. [hint: spoken by Peter Falk]
11. There WERE blanks in that gun! [hint: involves a horse]
12. You’ve done a man’s job, sir! [hint: a line crucial to a central character's identity]
13. The Internet. Is that the one with the email? [hint: spoken by John Michael Higgins]
14. Back home everyone said I didn't have any talent. They might be saying the same thing over here but it sounds better in French. [hint: spoken by Gene Kelly][American in Paris. Tracy]
15. Lost in time, and lost in space, and meaning. [hint: full quote begins, "And crawling on the planet's face, some insects called the human race..."] [Rocky Horror Picture Show. Gil]
and a bonus:
16. Girl: At least you've stopped kissing me like I was your Aunty.
Boy: What's my Aunty going to say when I kiss her at Christmas? [Gregory's Girl. Tracy]

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke has died. There are any number of obits out there. I never read his work extensively, but did like Childhood's End and the short story "Nine Billion Names of God" (which someone put on the web here--I forgot just how short it is) has stayed with me for a long long time. I like the mix of science and spirituality.

Before I was born, my parents lived in Ceylon and were friends with Clarke's diving partner, Mike Wilson. So they had Clarke over to the house once (he was apparently less than gregarious as a guest, but then he was also in the middle of writing 2001 at the time). Clarke did let my dad use his dark room, however.

Watch those cameras!

The London Metropolitan Police has a new counter-terrorism campaign going which has been drawing attention--basically by making everyone suspicious of everyone else. The main page is here. There are lots of vivid posters to go with it, including this one which tells folks to watch out for anyone with a camera taking pictures who may seem suspicious. Others include warnings to watch out for people with too many mobile phones. When in doubt, report it to the police and let them sort it out.

Fortunately quite a number of parodies are being circulated. A good sampling are on the Boing Boing blog. Which goes to show that though we may be increasingly ineffectual in slowing the rise of the surveillance state, we at least have a sense of humor.

Gary Gygax

Gary Gygax, co-inventor of Dungeons and Dragons, died a week or so ago. I was struck by just how many prominent obituaries of him I've noticed. Not only this, I've seen editorials speaking to his influence on our culture (some even saying that his game set the groundwork for the widespread success of the Lord of the Rings films, and definitely were foundational for the last twenty to thirty years of computer adventure games). It's nice to see D&D (or at least it's co-founder) receive some sort of recognition as a creative and potentially positive activity after all the lost-in-the-sewers-satanic panic against the game in the '80s. The game got my friends and I interested in medieval history and literature. For us, the games were always about problem solving, interaction, and being creative rather than the "hack and slash/might makes right/where's the treasure?" direction of some of the games. These were interactive novels that we created collaboratively (yes, in the basement of my parents' house, surrounded by Mountain Dew and Doritoes) where we thought about such things as character and setting. I still remember some of them, like good books I enjoyed reading. I remember that at some point in one of the manuals (perhaps the Player's Handbook or the Dungeon Master's Guide), Gygax urged players to avoid combat if at all possible: to think and not just fight. We always took him seriously on that point. Out of nostalgia, I dug up my old books (signed by Gygax, himself, no less). So I'll have to check.

transformative surveillance

I just finished teaching The Lives of Others in my surveillance class and it made me begin to reflect on a theme within the surveillance film genre. That theme is that of transformative surveillance, that is the act of surveilling others fundamentally transforms the observer (in a good way). In the case of The Lives of Others this is the transformation H. Gerd Weisler as he listens in to the lives of Georg and Christa. Does this transformation then justify the surveillance (without this opportunity to surveil, Weisler would have continued as an efficient Stasi interrogator)? Or is this just part of a romantic humanist theme to these films: the human spirit will win out in the end (cf. the Truman Show). That is, either those surveilled will always resist and surveillance will never be complete, or that the act of surveillance bestirs a fundamental humanity within the observer (meaning that the system will crumble from within). This romanticism is certainly evident in The Lives of Others (which dwells on the transformative potential of music and poetry—Can anyone who truly hears this music be a bad person, Georg asks at one point).

Pondering this theme made me realize as well that this formula of transformation through surveillance applied as well to Wings of Desire (and it is odd to think of this as a film about surveillance, but isn’t it?).

There are films that have less radical transformations of those who surveil: The Conversation (Harry’s moral center has always been there, it just finally triumphs over the technicist rationalizations he uses to do his work [“I just make the tapes”]) and Disturbia (Kale finally starts taking responsibility for his life and actions).

Interestingly, I don’t think Jefferies is transformed through his experiences in “Rear Window.”

And then there are any number of films where the voyeur is untouched by what he or she surveils (this is especially true in slasher films). Are any of those who surveil transformed in Enemy of the State? I think Fiedler (Jack Black’s character) is just operating under CYA principles and doesn’t have a moral revelation. This final squashing of humanity (that is, the eradication of humanity in those surveilled, and the refusal of the possibility that the observers could be transformed) is after all the point of Orwell’s 1984. O’Brien isn’t going to change because of what he observes in Winston.

David Lyon argues that surveillance is a relationship and therefore is transformative of both parties. However he also points out the most surveillance today isn’t of this direct, face-to-face kind but is the use of computer protocols to sort all kinds of data. There is no hope of transformation of a computer program scanning faces or credit data.

So is this theme of transformation a useful way of thinking about surveillance films?

google

First time I ever noticed this. Did a Google search and found the following at the bottom of the page:
"In response to a legal request submitted to Google, we have removed 1 result(s) from this page. If you wish, you may read more about the request at ChillingEffects.org." With a link to here.

I'm too sleepy to dig into this further right now (and need to finish lecture notes on national ID cards and biometrics for class in the morning). Anyone seen this before?

Online booksellers

Here's a drawback with online booksellers: flawed databases. Case in point: According to Barnes and Noble's website, I'm co-author of "Current Perspectives on Sex Crimes", which I'm sure is a top notch volume in its field, but not my area of expertise and not a publication of mine. Note the fact that my name is not on the cover of the book, which is displayed on the page. Have I sent a correction in to Barnes and Noble? Twice (following proper channels as well; there's an author's feedback section), and have been told it will be fixed. Third time's the charm? Sigh.

Cultural Globalization: A User's Guide

Published by Blackwell. Should be out in April.
Links to Amazon and Barnes and Noble. These sites only list the hardback, but it will be in paperback as well. Note the link to Blackwell.

By the way, the cover photograph is one I took in Guangzhou back in January, 2001. I'm very pleased they used it.

Dad & I

Leading Surveillance Societies

Privacy International has just released its rankings of surveillance societies around the world, based on issues of privacy. The link is here. The opening map is interesting and useful. The US, UK, Russia, and China are all in Black, indicating "Endemic Surveillance Societies."

I was to teach a class in International Communication this Spring, but not enough enrolled, so we pulled the plug on it and I'm running my surveillance, film, and culture class again. Wanted to teach so many different films, but no time. Wanted to teach Cache, for example. But at least will teach Lives of Others.

Been through Sky Harbor airport three times in the last couple of months and haven't been backscattered yet.

And speaking of leading surveillance societies, it looks like they're really planning on enforcing the REAL ID Act and beefing up requirements for US driver's licenses, to the point where if a state doesn't comply that those licenses will not be adequate for citizens to pass security at airports, government buildings, etc. (or at least, not without additional scrutiny). Link to Arizona Republic article here.

John MacDonald Wise

JOHN MACDONALD WISE

April 24, 1935—December 26, 2007



John MacDonald Wise passed away peacefully on December 26, 2007, at the age of 72, after a mercifully brief struggle with ALS. The youngest son of George and Ruby Wise, he was born on April 24, 1935, in Pasadena, California. He graduated from Pasadena College in 1957. As a Danforth Scholar, he attended the University of Chicago, receiving his M.A. in Sociology. John and his wife Donna served as volunteers in Bangladesh with the American Friends Service Committee. John joined the humanitarian aid organization CARE in 1963, serving in Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Turkey, Jordan, India, and Korea. He spent the final years of his career working for Krause Milling Company (in the Philippines and in Milwaukee, Wisconsin) and then ADM (in Overland Park, Kansas) in food production and distribution. Upon retirement, he relocated to Woodland, California.



John was a man of compassion and humor. He was a talented artist and photographer, a scholar, an avid reader, a dedicated gardener, and--according to his many friends--the world’s best listener. He was endlessly interested in people, their ways of life, and their work. A highpoint of his career was accompanying Senator Edward Kennedy as a representative of the U.S. food industry on a fact-finding mission to famine-stricken Ethiopia and the Sudan in 1984.



He is survived by wife of 47 years, Donna; daughter Tracy of Appleton, Wisconsin; son and daughter-in-law Greg and Elise and their two children, Brennen and Catherine of Phoenix, Arizona; best friends Bob Salley and Warren Wells; older siblings Celia Teerink, Bill Wise, George Wise, and Harriet Meredith; and many nephews and nieces. A memorial service will be held on Saturday, January 5, 2:00 p.m. at Woodland United Methodist Church (212 Second Street, Woodland, CA, 530/662-6274). In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations to ALS research at: UCSF Foundation, c/o Eden Jacoby, Dept. of Neurology, 44 Montgomery Street, Suite 2200, San Francisco, CA 94104.

Cultural Globalization: A User's Guide

...is off to the press (Blackwell). Proofs and index done.

And now, to that stack of grading I've been putting off.

New books

All from Peter Lang, publishers:

Adrian Mackenzie, Cutting Code: Software and Sociality. (Adrian was one of the other lecturers at the Deleuze seminar in Copenhagen last May--see previous posts--and I'm really looking forward to reading this)

Michele A. Willson, Technically Together: Rethinking Community within Techno-Society. (within all this recent talk of social networks, it was intriguing that someone's still talking about community)

Sharon Kleinman (ed) Displacing Place: Mobile Communication in the Twenty-First Century. (another in the rapidly proliferating genre of mobile phone collections--see earlier posts on books).

Apologies for lack of links to either the publisher's website or previous posts. But it's late.

Room 8

Was told of this video up on YouTube depicting the horrors of Room 8, the basement suite of offices in Lincoln Hall at the University of Illinois where the Speech Communication grad students are given offices (and have been since at least the 1970s if not earlier). Spent 6 years down there myself. You don't get an establishing shot of the waiting TA's office, but from my recollection and the orientation of the desk and its background, I'd swear that was my desk and office space (in 8F I think). I remember dragging that desk in from another office one weekend when no one was around (after the semester had ended). Either the desk was originally John Erni's, or that spot in the office had been John's, I don't quite recall. Anyway.

New Times arrests/subpoena

Ineresting news about the arrest of executive editors of the Phoenix New Times for disclosing grand jury details. What's chilling is the scope of the subpoena the editors were discussing, which seeks information on anyone who accessed the New Times online since 2004. Here's two links: New York Times and Arizona Republic. The latter has more details on the subpoena.

-------------------
UPDATE:
Charges dropped, special prosecutor fired. Here's the AZ Republic.

Backscatter begins

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/1011bodyscans.html

hmmm... pat down or intimate x-ray?

Implantable Chips

Apparently studies have shown that implantable microchips caused cancer in lab rats (according to an AP article). This doesn't mean that they cause cancer in humans, but it is, as a scientist puts it in the article, troubling. The chips are part of a fairly common vision of future interactive convenience: your ID, credit card, medical history, etc. is just carried with you under the skin: wave your arm to access, tap the card reader to pay... This does go to show how much of our interactive surveillance society is (actually or potentially) pretty toxic, and not just to privacy, dignity, and human rights, but environmentally and physically as well (see my earlier post on High Tech Trash from last year).

The article's interesting in other respects: why the FDA didn't note these studies when it approved the devices for use in humans, whether the FDA was aware of this research, why the AMA didn't mention or know of the studies before publicly supporting the technology, and the curious coincidence of Tommy Thompson, who was head of Health and Human Services (which oversees the FDA) when the chips were approved, resigned two weeks after the approval, and within six months was on the Board of VeriChip Corp. which makes the devices (he denies having any role in the approval or knowledge of the company before his resignation and the FDA confirms that he had no role in the decision process).

IKEA hacking

Saw this via an article in the NYT: IKEA hacking, re-using or repurposing IKEA items. And the article says, it's about looking at IKEA stuff as raw material rather than as a finished product.

Pronounced Eye-KEE-uh in the US, Eye-KAY-uh elsewhere, right?