the ladybug and the lion

Michael Traveling.

Listen.

Sacha Baron Cohen.

This is an interview of Sacha Baron Cohen by Terry Gross from 2007 regarding the movie Borat.  It was re-aired today. 

I didn't especially like Borat.  Some specific scenes were really smart and hilarious, but I was put off by Cohen's representation of Kazakhstan.  It seemed a random choice of country and offensive without any purpose. While I have nothing against satire being offensive, in fact I think it's necessary, I believe that it has to be smart to be good.  I didn't see anything smart about Cohen's use of Kazakhstan.  Borat would have been just as hilarious, and made the same point, if Borat had come from a fictional backwater country.

But Cohen did say something in the interview that struck me.  Terry Gross was asking him, since Cohen is Jewish, if there was a difference between playing Borat, an anti-semite, and making fun of gay stereotypes as Bruno.

The main difference between doing Bruno and Borat, and Bruno, for those that don't know, is this Austrian gay fashion reporter, is that it is a lot more dangerous doing Bruno because there is so much homophobia.  So, for example, when I was doing Bruno at the Alabama Mississippi football game in Alabama a few years ago, 60,000 people started chanting, the crowd started chanting faggot and started throwing stuff at me and taunting me and spitting at me and threatening to kill me.  And those kind of situations are a lot more common when you're playing a gay character.  It is almost as if homophobia is the last form of prejudice that is really tolerated.

Online Lectures.

Online lectures and talks are an addiction of mine.  This is my current list of good sites, although I'm always looking for more.

Academic Earth.

Princeton.

Feynman.

Ted.

Along the same lines: MIT puts select course materials up online.

Paying To Die.

Assisted suicide is legal in Switzerland. Not only that, it is a service provided by a non-profit called Dignitas. It sounds kind of awesome.  For €4,000 you can have control of the moment you die, and you do it as painlessly as possible with as many family members around you as you desire (getting the people there will cost extra).  Why is this illegal in the US again?  It would be kind of strange if it was a for-profit endeavor where the government then taxed and profited from the death of its citizens.  Although, the idea of the government profiting from death is not new.

When Cartoons Should Remain Cartoons.

This is creepy.

A Flock Of Sheep.

via xkcd.

My New Addiction.

I love this image.  And the description from the creator:

It's a play on Nipper, the RCA dog who looked quizzically into a gramophone that played "his master's voice." I drew it with the P.D. Eastman children's book "Are you my mother?" in mind; the RCA dog was searching for his master and came up short again. I thought the e collar was a nice parallel to the gramophone. I realized later that the picture could also be read as a lost opportunity after a certain procedure at the veterinarian's office.

It's from my newest addiction: TeeFury.

The Blight of the Rich.

My friend, Ari R., pointed out that two articles in today's NYT (In Summer Hideaway for the Rich, Slump Is Visiting, Too and For Firstborns, Secondhand Fits the Bill)are about the same thing—how the depression is affecting rich people—and that this is about the 500th time the NYT has run a story on the subject.

Do people just read these for entertainment value or does anybody actually care that 7 month old Chase Hildenbrand has a second-hand $900 Bugaboo Cameleon Dutch stroller?

No longer is it necessary to buy a thousand-dollar changing table in order to prove your parental savvy and breadth of love.

Umm... good?

I love how the article also defines an entire demographic: "observers of baby consumerism".

Does anybody who read the article count?

Words.

Before studying abroad in South Africa I was told that calling native African communities tribes was offensive and inherently racist.  The word implied certain negative stereotypes and its use, I was told, should be avoided to stop the spread of these misconceptions.  But when I got to South Africa, all the local black people, including the academics, called their communities tribes.  I thought 'screw it', they should call themselves what they want.  If anything, telling them what they should call themselves is racist and offensive.   

So I especially enjoyed the ending of this story, about an American Indian and his struggle with how Germans perceive his culture:

Once, as part of his promotion efforts, he described his documentary in an e-mail to a hobbyist organization as being about "Indian life." He received a quick response informing him that the proper term was "First Nations," that he would do well not to use racist terminology.

"I am an Indian!" Blackbird shot back. "My friends are Indians, my family are Indians. We have always called ourselves Indians. I have a status card from the Canadian government that tells me I am an Indian. You have no right to tell me what I am."

The beginning and middle of the story are also worth a read.

CA's IOUs.

Who gets them and who does not.

(via Marginal Revolution)