reader-list Digest, Vol 79, Issue 7

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Today's Topics:

   1. Re: For Apple Corporation Fans :) (Navayana Publishing)
   2. Fear of attack on Anti-POSCO movement (Anivar Aravind)
   3. Query - Influential Indians Online? (Chandni Parekh)
   4. Blog Post: Do our men have body issues? (Chandni Parekh)
   5. 100 Years of African American Cinema (Paul D. Miller)

--- Begin Message ---

Thanks Jeebesh
Enjoyed this thoroughly, belatedly though.
Anand

On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 3:52 PM, Jeebesh <jeeb...@sarai.net> wrote:

> http://www.bosey.co.in/2008/09/apple-launches-ithing-nobody-knows-what.html
>
> "“The iThing is amazing. Unlike windows - it never crashes, is
> extremely easy to use, and has absolutely no features . .er . .
> problems.”, said a spokesman for Apple. “Let's just face it - it's
> just BETTER.”, he said."
>
> Apple launches iThing – nobody knows what it does, but millions line
> up outside stores to buy one!
>
> by Anand Ramachandran, a proud member of the socio-religious-hip-
> amazingly-cool-and-even-more-cool DELL XPS cult. What? There isn't
> one? Oh! Damn!
>
>
> World renowned cool company Apple Inc. has launched their latest
> product, the iThing – a strange, minimalistic handheld device with no
> apparent features or uses. Now available in stores globally, the
> iThing is unbelievable sleek, sexy, desirable and useless. While even
> Apple has admitted that they have no idea what it actually is, this
> hasn't prevented millions of Mac fans from lining up outside retail
> outlets from the wee hours of the morning to be among the first to own
> one.
>
> “I'm a fan of anything Mac. I am proud that Apple have given me the
> opportunity to cluelessly stand in line for hours and pay through my
> nose for a product that I have no idea why I need!”, said a beaming
> Sankalesh Jimmy, conveniently stepping in to avoid embarrasment for
> any of the real-life Son of Bosey regulars, such as Tony Chacko and
> Nishraj Gurung.
>
> “Mac fans. What idiots.”, snapped renowned windows fanatic Priya
> Krishnan, while waiting for Vista to recover from a critical crash on
> her Windows laptop.
>
> “The iThing will revolutionize boring old things. Just like the iPhone
> revolutionized boring old phones, and the iMac revolutionized boring
> old Macs!”, said Apple supremo Steve Jobs, immediately regretting the
> last example and looking around shiftily to see if anyone noticed.
> “The iThing is the neXTstep in a proud Apple tradition of 'minimalist'
> design that makes products progressively more expensive and less
> useful.”, said Jobs, slipping in a quick in-joke that not many picked
> up on.
>
> “The iThing is amazing. Unlike windows - it never crashes, is
> extremely easy to use, and has absolutely no features . .er . .
> problems.”, said a spokesman for Apple. “Let's just face it - it's
> just BETTER.”, he said.
>
> ““The iThing is amazing. Unlike windows - it never crashes, is
> extremely easy to use, and has absolutely no features . .er . .
> problems. Let's just face it - it's just BETTER ”, said a proud Mac
> user, exhibiting the well-documented Mac fan behaviour of cluelessly
> repeating Apple's marketing rhetoric, making people wonder why Apple
> need spokesmen at all.
>
> “Hey, that's right! You're fired!”, said Steve Jobs to the spokesman,
> suddenly springing into action and instantly making Apple even more
> profitable. “We don't need any extra features, we don't need any extra
> employees. We're minimalist.”, he sniggered.
>
> When someone nearby asked why people would be dumb enough to pay a
> large amount of money for something that has no actual use, Jobs
> retorted with a wink “If they believe that a company that stupidly
> squandered a genuine advantage, and made a decade of crummy mistakes,
> before regaining its market share a full twenty years later, is full
> of innovative geniuses, they'll believe anything! Besides, they lapped
> up the iPhone, didn't they?”
>
> “Who says the iThing has no uses?” said Wildlife photographer and
> longtime Mac loyalist S.U.Saravanakumar. “Like all Apple products, it
> can be used to raise self-esteem, and to pick up chicks.”, he said,
> causing nearby Windows users to momentarily consider shifting to Mac
> themselves. “Not that I need it, heh heh!”, he added quickly.
>
> “I would like to personally thank Apple for making 'I' the coolest
> alphabet in the world.”, said an excited Aravind Murali. “Who wants
> some Calamari?”, he asked, before trotting off with a Japanese looking
> individual in the general direction of Mahabalipuram.
>
> As usual, other companies have been upset by Apple's instant success,
> and swung into action by announcing plans of their own. Sony has
> issued a press release that indicates that they will soon launch their
> own version of an overpriced, useless device called the
> er..uh..whateverStation. Microsoft has also said that they will issue
> an e-mail statement, just as soon as they can get IE to boot up.
> Nintendo was too busy making actually interesting products to respond
> to our messages.
>
> Apple, however, is not resting on their laurels. They have already
> started work on making a TV remote control with no buttons (but with a
> nice, backlit Apple logo), and a gaming console that will have no
> actual games of its own, but which will come with an insanely cool
> virtual machine for running XBOX 360 games (just so that users can say
> “Did you know, you can actually run XBOX 360 games on a Mac? Wow!
> _________________________________________
> reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city.
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-- 
www.navayana.org

Navayana
155, Second Floor
Shahpur Jat
New Delhi 110049

Landline: +91-11-26494795
Mobile: +91-9971433117

--- End Message ---

--- Begin Message ---

PRESS RELEASE:
       URGENT! Fear of attack on Anti-POSCO movement

Balitutha, Orissa: The threat of state and company sponsored violence
looms large over hundreds of farmers sitting on an indefinite dharna
at Balitutha in Jagatsinghpur district against the Orissa government’s
pet POSCO steel project.

Since 26 January this year the farmers have been carrying out their
peaceful protest against fresh attempts by the Naveen Patnaik regime
to acquire their land on behalf of the South Korean steel corporation.

“We are expecting police action any time soon including an attack on
our leader Abhay Sahoo by goons hired by the company,” said a
spokesperson of the POSCO Pratirodh Sangram Samithi (PPSS), which has
spearheaded the agitation against the project for the past five years.

Over 30,000 farmers are expected to lose their lands and livelihood if
the US$12 billion project, billed as India’s largest Foreign Direct
Investment, is implemented. POSCO signed an MoU with the Orissa
government in mid-2005, for the setting up of an integrated steel and
power plant, a private port and mining of over 600 million tonnes of
Orissa’s high grade iron ore.

For the steel and power plants alone the project needs around 4004
acres, of which 3566 acres is government owned forest and revenue land
but 438 acres belongs to local farmers who are refusing to part with
it. The PPSS apprehends that over 25 platoons of police are being
brought in to surround the farmers sitting on dharna at Balitutha,
which is at the entrance to the land that belongs to them.

As per a letter issued by the Collector of Jagatsinghpur District on
January 19 this year Palli Sabhas in the project area have been asked
to obtain approval of local bodies about the ‘diversion of their lands
under forest category to POSCO’ by February 10th. On February 3
however, at a meeting of Palli Sabha of Nuagaon village all the 700
participants unanimously disapproved of the move. In a resolution
passed at the Palli Sabha they said  that such lands were being used
by people for cultivation and housing since last 300 years and in no
case they can be handed over to POSCO.  Other Palli Sabhas in the area
are expected to pass similar resolutions.

PPSS activists say, faced with the firm opposition to the POSCO
project and land acquisition the Orissa adminstration is getting
desperate and plans to remove the farmers by force. On February 1 the
state government issued a notice in various newspapers that if the
people fail to file  their claims for compensation within fifteen
days, they will get nothing at all.

The PPSS dharna has found support around the country with leaders of
trade unions and people’s movements visiting the protestors sitting on
dharna. Those participating in the dharna include leaders of leaders
of the All India Trade Union Congress from different states  and the
Orissa Bidi Workers  and Domestic Workers Associations.

For further information contact:

Prashant Paikray, spokesperson, PPSS at Ph: (0) 9437571547.



-- 
"[It is not] possible to distinguish between 'numerical' and
'nonnumerical' algorithms, as if numbers were somehow different from
other kinds of precise information." - Donald Knuth

--- End Message ---

--- Begin Message ---

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Peter Griffin <peter.grif...@gmail.com>
Date: 4 Feb 2010
Subject: [Griff's Picks] Query - Influential Indians Online?
To: Griff's Picks <griffspi...@googlegroups.com>

Payback time. You don't think I send out all those articles for altruistic
reasons, do you?

====

Tell me, who, in your opinion, are the most influential Indians online?

This includes blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Orkut, any other networking
microblogging sites you know of, personal websites, and so on.

Many thanks,

~p


-- 

Options, archives: http://groups.google.com/group/griffspicks
Share with friends:
http://groups.google.com/group/griffspicks/members_invite

--- End Message ---

--- Begin Message ---

I'm interested in the responses too. Intend to resume working on my module
for workshops on body image/body acceptance soon. - Me

>From http://www.openthemagazine.com/blogpost/do-our-men-have-body-issues -

By Shubhangi Swarup

Of late I’ve been catching a male friend or two looking in the mirror. When
they see me seeing them, they ask, “Have I put on weight?” Yesterday a good
friend asked me, “Do I look fat?” Immediately, alarm bells rang in my
thoughts. As an insecure female, I thought it was my birthright—and only
mine—to complain about my weight, go loopy at times when confronted with fat
me.

In my mind, men were above this kind of loopiness; they could go ahead and
order a cold coffee or lassi with cream without mentally counting the extra
calories. They could pose under a monsoon waterfall in their underwear
without fear of being judged. The Indian male, it must be said, can get away
with paunchiness, baldness, hairiness with dignity intact, even style if one
can call it that. To be exposed to the adolescent girl hiding under that
tough exterior is a shock to me. My expression conveyed as much to my friend
when he asked the million-dollar question, and laughed. “Maybe I have too
much oestrogen,” he joked. We laughed.

But there’s something sinister going on here that I can’t laugh off. It took
me a few years, lots of self-counselling and supportive partners to grow out
of my fragile, college-day body image. To enjoy a dessert without guilt. Or
stop resenting skinny girls for no reason. Spending three months with a
dance troupe in Turkey tested my self-image greatly, and I’m proud to have
returned home without an eating disorder or inferiority complex. Dancers are
size zero. When one of my mates fell violently sick and lost many pounds,
another girl congratulated her at the achievement.

Just a few weeks ago, I was chatting with someone about dance bars, how
popular they were and all that. Not all men who visit dance bars visit
prostitutes. This is something I find hard to understand, and my friend
spent a passionate, caffeinated half hour explaining the phenomenon.
“Imagine you are an ugly, pot-bellied guy who no one checks out. You step
into a bar, and for a few drinks and a little money, these dance girls make
you feel like the hottest shit going. They have eyes for no one but you.”
According to him, the universal need to be checked out, to feel hot is as
vital as the need to get laid. Okay, so some men visit dance bars to be
checked out.

For inexplicable reasons, commenting on my sister’s weight gain post
pregnancy is a huge source of dining table humour for everyone, including
her husband. After one such jibe, my dad wryly commented once how he never
said a word to mum, despite the double-digit kilos she gained with each
pregnancy. Mum loves feeding dad fried potatoes and dessert. And dad can’t
handle mum dieting. He knows how happy sweet things make her. Their
relationship says something, something relevant to this blog, but I don’t
know what. Looks never mattered in their equation, but I don’t know if it’s
as simple as that.

Where have we gone wrong, or how are we going wrong? Emancipation never
meant converting female insecurities into male ones. Among the few perceived
advantages women had was our ability to fall in love with ugly men. We
didn’t go by inches. We were happy to have found companionship. Clearly,
this is in the realm of myth-making. Or else, why would the other half of
our equation fall prey to the boy issues we love wallowing in?

Perhaps I’m overreacting. Perhaps this is just a Bombay thing. I wonder if
people in other cities have seen this too.

--- End Message ---

--- Begin Message ---

reasonably interesting article
Paul

Celebrating 100 Years of Black Cinema

     From the earliest days of film, black pioneers have
     imagined a better world for African Americans-a
     world that was often far ahead of reality.

By Nsenga Burton | 
Posted: February 3, 2010 at 12:27 PM
http://www.theroot.com/views/celebrating-100-years-black-cinema-0

As we all know, February marks Black History Month. But
this year, February also marks something else: The 100th
anniversary of the birth of black cinema. Black cinema
was making black history before Carter G. Woodson
founded Negro History Week in 1926. And this week, black
cinema is making history once again with the nomination
of Precious: Based on the Novel Push By Sapphire for
Best Picture. It's the first time in the history of the
Academy Awards that a film directed by a black director
is nominated for the top award. Director Lee Daniels is
following in the footsteps of those who came before him-
namely, William D. Foster and Oscar Micheaux.

Oscar Micheaux is often lauded as the father of black
filmmakers. But William D. Foster began producing films
nearly a decade earlier than Micheaux's first effort. In
1910, Foster, a sports writer for the Chicago Defender,
formed the Foster Photoplay Company, the first
independent African-American film company. (Foster
wasn't a complete stranger to show business; he had also
worked as a press agent for vaudeville stars Bert
Williams and George Walker.) In 1912, Foster, produced
and directed The Railroad Porter. The film paid homage
to the Keystone comic chases, while attempting to
address the pervasive derogatory stereotypes of blacks
in film.

This was three years before D.W. Griffith's The Birth of
a Nation (1915), a plantation fantasy credited with
establishing negative stereotypes of blacks in film that
still exists today. Consider the Reconstruction scene,
where barefoot black legislators eat fried chicken,
swill whiskey, lust after white women and pass a law
that all legislators must wear shoes. Insert a
cantankerous mammy, tragic mulatto, murderous buck,
black rapists and a lynching, and you've got what is
shamefully considered to be one of the greatest films of
all time.

In response to The Birth of a Nation, brothers George
Perry Johnson and Noble Johnson (a Universal Pictures
contract actor), founded the Lincoln Motion Picture
Company in 1916, producing middle-class melodramas like
The Realization of a Negro's Ambition (1916) and the
Trooper of Troop K (1917) and their most well-known
film, The Birth of a Race (1918). The Johnson brothers'
movies featured black soldiers, black families and black
heroes, concepts foreign to most mainstream films at
that time.


Oscar Micheaux soon followed suit with The Homesteader
(1919), becoming one of the most prolific filmmakers of
his time. He directed over 40 films, most notably Within
Our Gates (1920) and Body and Soul (1925), which
featured film star Paul Robeson, and God's Step Children
(1938). Micheaux's films explored the issues of the day:
passing, lynching, religion and criminal behavior. They
were independently produced until he filed bankruptcy in
1928, reorganizing with white investors as the Micheaux
Film Company. Some argue that this changed the tone and
direction of his films.

Micheaux's films attracted controversy: Some black film
critics criticized his work for its portrayal of blacks,
which sometimes perpetuated the same stereotypes found
in mainstream films. You didn't find these stereotypes
with the work of Eloise Gist, a black woman filmmaker,
who with her husband, James, made religious films.
Eloise Gist, a D.C. native, drove around with a camera,
shooting footage that used "real" people as actors. Her
morality films, Hellbound Train and Verdict: Not Guilty,
were released in 1930 and were strongly endorsed by the
NAACP.

Early black filmmakers aimed to show the full humanity
of African Americans with story lines and themes that
countered prevailing ideologies about blackness. Many of
the films are hard to find and have "poor" production
values because they were literally making something out
of nothing.

Early black cinema is an important part of American
culture because it visually brought our stories to life.
Without the black independent film movement, there would
be very few black films today. Where would the black
film canon be without the Los Angeles School of Black
Filmmakers of the 1970s? Haile Gerima, Charles Burnett,
Larry Clark, Pamela Jones, Jamaa Fanaka, Julie Dash,
Billy Woodberry, Alile Sharon Larkin all came out of
UCLA. Their films tied black stories to black political
struggles with an intellectual and cultural core.

Some say Melvin Van Peebles' Sweet Sweetback's
Baadasssss Song (1971) was revolutionary; others found
it to be pornographic Van Peebles made this cult classic
for $500,000; it grossed $10 million. Without Sweet
Sweetback, there would have been no space for Gordon
Parks Jr., Ossie Davis and others to direct films during
the blaxploitation era. Although controversial, the
blaxploitation era gave black actors, filmmakers and
musicians an opportunity to make movies-at least in the
beginning. During that era, one of the most profound
independent films of all time emerged-Ivan Dixon and Sam
Greenlee's The Spook Who Sat by the Door (1973), which
gave voice and visuals to the black power ideology that
was evolving at that time. It was an unapologetic look
at rebellion and literally using the masters' tools to
dismantle the masters' house.

It wasn't so long ago that so many people of all races
didn't believe that they would see an African-American
president in their lifetime. But what some couldn't
imagine in reality, black filmmakers created in fantasy,
reimagining an America where a black man could be
president. In The Man (1972), James Earl Jones stars as
Douglass Dilman, a black man who becomes president of
the United States after the untimely deaths of the
president and speaker of the House. (The vice president
was too sick to take over.) Jones brilliantly conveys
the struggle over power and identity in this cult
classic that shows the complexity of race and class in
the Oval Office.

Historically, black cinema has been inextricably linked
to social issues in our community. The controversy over
Tyler Perry's and Daniels' films has a lot to do with
class issues, something that Oscar Micheaux also
experienced. While black filmmakers have broken many
barriers, there is still much work to be done. For
example, Cheryl Boone Isaacs is currently the only
African American among the 43 governors of Academy of
Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. While African-American
film directors like Antoine Fuqua and F. Gary Gray are
directing films that encompass many different genres
including action and suspense, black female directors
like Kasi Lemmons (Eve's Bayou) and Euzhan Palcy (A Dry
White Season) have not fared as well.

Black cinema has always imagined what we could never
dream of in reality. Now that reality is catching up
with black film, it will be fascinating to see where it
goes, particularly on the independent front. Let's think
about how the concept of black cinema is being redefined
when a film like Avatar features Zoe Saldana, Laz Alonso
and CCH Pounder in starring roles.

Black cinema is evolving and will continue to evolve. It
did not start with Tyler Perry, nor will it end with
him. There would be no Denzel Washington without Sidney
Poitier and no Sidney Poitier without Paul Robeson.
There would be no Halle Berry without Dorothy Dandridge,
no Dorothy Dandridge without Lena Horne and Lena Horne
without Fredi Washington. There would be no Hughes
Brothers without the Johnson Brothers, no Lee Daniels
without Spike Lee, no Gina Prince-Bythewood without
Darnell Martin. There would be no Tyler Perry Company
without New Millenium Studios, no New Millenium Studios
without Third World Cinema.

As in many other industries, African Americans have made
their mark in film narratively, stylistically,
historically, thematically, economically and
aesthetically. What some call poor production values,
particularly as it relates to early black films, I call
a survival aesthetic-doing the best that we can with
what we have. Now that we have 100 years under our
belts, we will do better. No matter how much black film
changes, the ways in which we interrogate society
through our films will not.

As we embark on a new decade in American society where
many believe race will become less of an issue, we often
forget how long black film has been around and how it
has given voice-and image-to our issues.

Black cinema is black history-and our future.

Nsenga K. Burton Ph.D. serves as cultural critic for
Creative Loafing. An assistant professor at Goucher
College in Baltimore, she is a media scholar and
filmmaker who recently finished Four Acts, a documentary
on the 2007 public servants strike in South Africa.
Follow her on Twitter.

--- End Message ---

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