Archive for the ‘Documentaries’ Category
The begining of history?
Interesting article here from the BBC website by Sci-fi author Charles Stross - in it he suggests that ‘history has only just begun’ because while we can guess at the ‘wide stuff’ the day to day minute of peoples lives are largely unknown.
His idea? As I can figure it its that with modern technology being what it is future history students may use my blog, facebook and bebo accounts to reconstruct my life (or at least a significant portion of it anyway). Its an interesting idea but I’m not sure if its totally convincing….
My lack of belief lies mainly on the grounds of whether the technology he talks about will ever become fully available and even if it does finding the time to figure it all out would be ridiculous. I mean, in some ways I’m reminded of an issue of Warren Ellis’ future set ‘Transmetropolitan’ comic where the lead character points out that even big business or government groups hardly even bother to hide information becuase the sheer amount of information they release by themselves is nearly impossible to follow and that’s without contextualisation - so even if it Stross’ idea is the right one it may be a case of ‘drought to a flood’…
Michael Moore’s TV Nation (man I wish this theme capitalised words in the post title’s)
I’ll admit straight off the bat that I like Michael Moore - I know all the points for claiming that he gets in the way of his own story, that his portrayal of the facts in question has been called to account and so on. And yet, despite this I find that his targets often deserve a lot of whats coming to them so….
Strangely after reading this book seems I have to say that while this book does not lack a lot of these flaws (in my humble opinion) its not as bad, maybe because its from somewhat before Moore became the household name he is today. The book covers a number of the various segments that Moore did on the show ‘TV Nation’ along with a bit of the story behind the book and some parts about the show after it finished. If your in any way familiar with Moore’s style the content of this wont be that surprising - the basic strategy is ”absurdity + corporate jerks/injustice = mockery and entertainment”. Though to be fair, that’s not all of what this show was about and its a bit unfair to label it as such.
Some of the segments cover small things - like how the residents of Greenwich used the fact that they were rich to get away with closing a public beach for their own private use or setting off car alarms outside the car alarm company’s CEO’s house. Others, despite their absurdity have a much more serious point - Crackers, the Corporate Crime-Fighting Chicken is a ridiculous concept yet the stuff he fought against in the show - unsafe baby-walkers, lead pollution and the use of ’scab’ labour are all serious issues and their being addressed was worthy of note. Among my personal favorites in the book were the visit to the former USSR to try and buy the nuclear missile that was aimed at Detroit and the ‘health care Olympics in which Moore compares the health care systems of Cuba, Canada and America - Cuba wins but the network changes it to Canada. All of which makes you wonder how many other news/documentary pieces are changed because ‘we can’t say that (for political reasons) on TV’. You also see the genesis of ‘Sicko’ in that particular piece btw.
The final chapter on the show itself covers the censored episodes - one about extreme anti-abortionists (as an aside Louis Theroux of the ‘weird weekends’ fame was the reporter who covered that segment) and again just referencing the ‘health care Olympics’ again, part of the reason that clip was censored was no advertiser wished for the piece to air near their ads. The ’savings and loan scandal’ - where they find out that nearly none of the men who had robbed all the money suffered for it at all and a few other clips.
The last bit I want to quickly talk about is the TV Nation opinion polls - which are vaugely absurd alright but do give you an insight into many Americans mindset - such as not wanting Puerto Rico to become a state becuase it would ‘mess with the flag’ to the fact that 15% of Prozac users wanted Dan Quale back because ‘Al Gore wasn’t funny enough and that while only 16% of Americans believe that ‘people are out to get them’, 46% of those own guns.
On a final note regarding the ‘fact checks’ heres a rebuttal to the ‘fact checks’ done by CNN lately…
A really really good argument for assuming global warming is real…
Have to admit - I don’t see any major weaknesses in his argument - yes it oversimplifies for conveniences sake but….
summer reading
‘Inspired’ by my friend Cethan and his bebo blog on summer reading I decided I’d give the same idea a shot. For those of you who have never been in my room at home (the vast majority of you I hope) there has been a pile of books by the radiator beside my bed for several years - it is a very big pile.
the pile of books 2
Now, I’m not certain that trying this will actually work but what I’m going to do over the summer is try to read as many of these books as possible… Given that I start a new job Monday and will be working all summer (hopefully) whether I’ll even make the halfway mark is open to debate. But I’m going to give it a shot.
The List.
I’m mostly going to be reading these in whatever order I feel like. Let us know if anything is quite good. As an aside (read) beside a book means I have already read it but for some reason (either its very good or I’ve forgotten the bulk of the book) I’m rereading it. (*) beside a book means I started reading it (and didn’t finish it for some reason) or it’s short stories and I’ve only read some of it or its a history/politics book and I only read parts the first time around. As a last bit of list making I’m going to break the list into three - comics, fiction and non-fiction.
Fiction
1) Shadows - edited by Charles L. Grant
2)Right on time - Pauline Mclynn
3)Rumors of the undead - Steve Niles
4)Trainspotting - Irvine Welsh
5)Collected ghost stories - M.R. James
6)Modesty Blaise - Peter O’ Donnell
7)Fear and loathing on the campaign trail ‘72 - Hunter S. Thompson (read)
8)Captain Outrageous -Joe R. Landsdale
9The Butcher Boy - Patrick McCabe
10)Earl Aubec - Michael Moorcock (*)
11)Trevayne -Robert Ludlum
12)Starship Troopers - Robert A. Heinlein (read)(also one of the best books ever written)
12)Time enough for love -Robert A. Heinlein (*)
Comics
13)Flash Gordon Vol 1. - Mac Raboy (*)
14)The Spider - King of crooks - Jerry Siegel (he of Superman fame)
15)A distant soil - vol 3. - Colleen Doran
16)Ghost World - Daniel Clowes
17)Buddy go home! - Peter Bagge
18)Buddy’s got three moms - Peter Bagge
19)Buddy bites the bullet -Peter Bagge
20)Excelsior! - Stan Lee (not actually a comic but aimed at comic readers so…)
21)X-men Legends - Stan Lee (editor)
22)The Frightful Four
23)Epileptic -David B.
24)McSweeny’s Quarterly Concern - Issue no.13. - Various
25)Definitive Shi Vol.1 - Billy Tucci
26)Essential Thor Vol.2 - Stan Lee and Jack Kirby (*)(appearently - I don’t remember starting this at all)
27)Essential Incredible Hulk - Stan Lee and Herb Trimpe
28)Showcase Presents Justice League of America - Mike Sekowsky, various.
29)The chickens are restless - Gary Larson (read)
30)Random Acts of management - Scott Adams
31)Essential Astonishing Ant-Man - Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Don Heck
32)Micky Parade Geant - Various (this is a French Disney comics collection gotten for me by an ex, oh about 3years ago now.. its actually kind of sickening as a comics fan as its 300 pages in a format about the size of a normal novel
Fiction
33)The lake house - James Patterson
34)Bad Men - John Connolly
35)Exploring English -Gill and Macmillan
36)Bare Bones - Kathy Reichs
37)The Trojan Women and other Plays - Euripides
38)The Aeneid - Virgil
39)The Odyssey - Homer
40)The War of The Flowers - Tad Williams
41)The Nature of the Beast - Frances Fyfield
42)Resident Evil - Genesis - Paul Anderson and Keith DeCandido
43)V for Vendetta (the book of the film) - Steve Moore
44)Fool Moon - Jim Butcher
45)Harvest Home - Thomas Tryon
46)Alchymist - Ian Irvine
47)Chimaera - Ian Irvine
48)The Soprano Sorceress - L.E. Modesitt, Jr.
49)Darkness Rising - L.E. Modesitt, Jr.
50)The Shadow Sorceress - L.E. Modesitt, Jr.
51)The Devil you know - Mike Carey
52)Angels and Demons - Dan Brown
53)The ‘Caine’ Mutiny - Herman Wouk
53)Sister Alice - Robert Reed
54)I, Robot - Isaac Asimov
55)Isaac Asimov’s Robot City 5 -Rob Chilson
56)Isaac Asimov’s Robot City 6 - William Hu
57)The Garden of Rama - Arthur C. Clarke
58)Cradle - Arthur C. Clarke
Non-Fiction
59)White Mughals - Willaim Darlymple
60)Branded - Alissa Quart (*)
61)Fat Land - Greg Critser
62)The Middle Mind - Curtis White
63)Stalingrad - Joachim Wieder
64)Political Philosophy - Adam Swift
65)Nothing Is Impossible - Christopher Reeve
66)Twentieth Century Ireland - Dermot Keogh
67)Politics in the Republic of Ireland - Coakley and Gallagher
68)The Diary of Ma Yan - Ma Yan
69)This is Paradise! - Hyok Kang
70)Balthasar’s Odyssey - Amin Maalouf
71)After Daybreak - Ben Shephard
72)Secret War Heroes - Marcus Binney
73)The Great Philosophers - Brian Magee
74)In the time of madness - Richard Parry
75)The Longest Battle - Richard Hough
76)The Rise of Western Christendom - Peter Brown
77)An Army at Dawn - Rick Atkinson
78)The First World War - Malcolm Brown
79)World War 1 - Various
80)From Weimar to Wall Street - Various
81)Depression and Dictatorship - Various
82)Europe - a History - Norman Davies (*)
83)The Globalization of World Politics - Baylis & Smith
84)History’s Great Untold Stories - Joseph Cummins
85)Introducing Machiavelli - Patrick Curry (read)
86)U.S Diplomacy since 1900 - Robert Schulzinger
87)The KGB in Europe and the West - Christopher Andrew and Vasli Mitrokhin
88)No Logo - Naomi Klein (*)
89)The Boer War - Thomas Pakenham
90)Concise History of the Modern World - William Woodruff
91)The Bolshevik Revolution - E.H. Carr
92)The War of the World - Niall Furguson
93)American Government and Politics - Robert Singh
94)The Shackled Continent - Robert Guest (*)
95)Unspeak - Steven Poole
96)The Vote - Paul Foot
97)America, Russia and the Cold War - Walter LaFeber
Fiction (again)
98)The Reality Dysfunction - Peter F. Hamilton (*)
99)The Neutron Alchemist - Peter F. Hamilton
100)Darkly Dreaming Dexter - Jeff Lindsay
101)Coalescent - Stephen Baxter
102)Phase Space - Stephen Baxter (read)
103)Paycheck - Philip K. Dick
104)Minority Report - Philip K. Dick
105)Stardust -Neil Gaiman
106)Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
107)Accelerando - Charles Stross
108)Thunderball - Ian Fleming
109)Dr. No - Ian Fleming
110)Mars 3 - Fuyumi Soryo
111)Tokyopop sneak peaks 2005 vol 1 - various
112)Tokyopop sneak peaks 2005 vol 2 - various
113)Monument - Ian Graham
114)The Endymion omnibus - Dan Simmons (*)(I’ve not been mad about this - hence its unfinished nature, but The Hyperion Cantos which Simmons did is genius - one of the best books
115)Dante’s Equation - Jane Jensen
116)The Mammoth Book of Extreme Science Fiction - Mike Ashley(*)
117)Best New Science Fiction 16 - Gardner Dozois
118)Best New Science Fiction 18 - Gardner Dozois
119)Paranoia - Joseph Finder
120)Ken Macleod - Engine City
121)The Cornelius Quartet - Michael Moorcock
122)Heartfire - Orson Scott Card
123)Shadow of the Hegemon- Orson Scott Card
124)Shadow Puppets- Orson Scott Card
125)Shadow of the Giant- Orson Scott Card
126)The Portable Door - Tom Holt
127)In Your Dreams - Tom Holt
128)The Millionaires - Brad Meltzer
129)Congo - Michael Crichton
130)Something Rotten - Jasper Fforde
Non-fiction (Again)
131)Bears Can’t run downhill - Robert Antwood
132)Micro-Nations -lonely planet
133)The paupers cookbook - Jocasta Innes
Update: Right I’ve had quite a while and so far my list has been progressed by seven books, at the rate I’m going this may be finished in two summers time… Possibly. Books I’ve actually gotten off the list are in italics now
Continuing the zombie theme
From the ‘Shaun of the Dead’ lads… Don’t know what this is from, maybe ‘Spaced’. Fun stuff.
Power and Control: LSD in the Sixties
This is a Four part documentary by Aron Ranen left on Youtube. It’s very interesting stuff.
Theres slight overlap between the different clips but it makes following it easier.
It’s about 40 minutes in total.