Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Yawn

Nothing deep or insightful tonight, as I'm all written out; instead, here's an excerpt from one of my favorite comics, Calvin and Hobbes :


Nevermind -- gotta get in one more quip:  this, my friends, sums up the education system quite nicely.


Second, here's a trailer of another one of those eye-opening documentaries that I like so much, this one talking about the processes of natural gas extraction in the US:


A commenter raised the issue of bias in documentaries: this is indeed true.  Bias exists in all media, news outlets, and, at in the highest level, in the upper echelons of legislation and politics (e.g., lobbyists).  The importance of documentaries, I feel, come from their ability to present information from a perspective we may not be intuitively aware of.  The important thing is for us to consider this perspective and reach our own conclusions on its validity.  Even then, documentaries  (in the video, 1:17 - 1:19ish shows a brief overhead view of the extent of the sprawl of the natural gas mining operations in the mid-west.  In the full video, it shows a map of one of the counties, which were near-completely marked.  This alone was enough to stop and make me think).  Anyway, this is a good one.  Enjoy.

13 comments:

  1. Calvin and Hobbes is always nice

    and the documentary looks interesting. have you seen "the end of suburbia"? it speaks of a related matter... suburban US way of life and the absolute oil dependency it creates...

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  2. one of my favourite childhood comics. =)

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  3. Gasland makes me laugh, doesn't seem like the most choice title haha.

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  4. I don't have time this morning to watch the video, but I feel the same way. A documentary might be an orgy of one-sided opinions, but it still makes you think from a different perspective!

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  5. I think if there was the political will we could develop green technologies which would in turn create needed jobs. As we see in the clip, the politicians are bought and paid for, and promote policies that defy common sense.

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  6. i'm canadian we are doing dirty oil

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  7. I agree that documentaries are an interesting format. In the very least they offer a shock and awe type of value. To me it's informed entertainment, but it's still entertainment. As long as people know that, then it's fine.

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