Early on Gandhi was dubbed a ‘mortal demi-god’—and he has been regarded that way ever since
But there is more than one side to every story. The new biography by Joseph Lelyveld also shows Gandhi as racist towards the blacks of South Africa, as well as politically fractious towards the political leaders of the Muslims and the lowest caste of Hindus, the so-called Untouchables. This divisiveness probably delayed India’s reaching independence, and left many people in jail when Gandhi repeatedly abandoned his civil disobedience campaigns “just as they were beginning to be successful.” Read the full article at the WSJ.
These kids literally built their dreams, one plank, one nail at a time. That’s the way to do it.
This film is based on a true story. In 1986 a football team that lived on a little island in the south of Thailand called “Koh Panyee”. It’s a floating village in the middle of the sea that has not an inch of soil. The kids here loved to watch football but had nowhere to play or practice. But they didn’t let that stop them. They challenged the norm and have become a great inspiration for new generations on the island.
Animators have always struggled to make human characters appear realistic. As viewers, our eyes have been trained to notice fakery now more than ever thanks to the saturation of computer enhancement in almost every visual medium available. Gamasutra has an interview with Brendan McNamara, Founder of Team Bondi, who is working on the upcoming game, L.A. Noire. McNamara discusses the technology that was developed for realistic facial animations in the game. Critical to the unique gameplay of lie detection, the characters express real emotion that the player can detect and respond to, giving us a taste in the next step in video games and the future of computer animation.
Graphic Patrick has a series of minimalistic posters that display various mental disorders. They are effective visual representations to educate and inform people that may recognize the names but not the effects, nor what it might feel like to actually have a disorder. The concept has promoted discussion, awareness, and even controversy.
Apparently marijuana plants used to grow uninhibited in empty lots and abandoned factories in Brooklyn and Queens. Some was harvested by “bold” farmers, but most of it was destroyed by the sanitation department.
“In the summer of 1951, sanitation workers dug up and incinerated 41,000 pounds of marijuana from 274 lots around the city. Queens produced the largest crop, at 17,445 pounds, while Brooklyn was a close second, with 17,200 pounds.” (CarollGardens)
Note that it was the sanitation department trying to clean up the city, and not the DEA out to bust criminals. The ’50s was a different world, all right.
Score one for transparency. Over the next two years, Georgia Tech researchers will use $1 million from Google’s pocket to develop
‘simple tools to detect Internet throttling, government censorship, and other “transparency” problems.’ (arstechnica)
These tools are essential for true net neutrality, and have yet to be developed. Once again, Google proves their worth by anticipating what people want and stepping in to provide it. Kind of hard to hate even a multi-billion dollar corporation when their projects have transparency and freedom as their goals.
Searing hot, the surface of the grill as it pushed up against his right palm. George felt the thin plastic kitchen glove fuse with his bare skin, and his hand applied the kind of pressure that only someone unaware of the pain would willingly apply to the clean, shining metal surface of the flat top grill in the morning. —read on »
“Reading usually precedes writing and the impulse to write is almost always fired by reading. Reading, the love of reading, is what makes you dream of becoming a writer.”
Susan Sontag
