Friday, May 9, 2008
Belated HI351 Lego Stuff
Lego 2001: A Space Odyssey
Lego Steam Punk
Lego Futurama
Hope you all did well on your exams!
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Dwelling in Possibilities
Dwelling in Possibilities: Our students' spectacular hunger for life makes them radically vulnerable
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Soyuz Superteam
Here's a link to the Soyuz wikipedia entry.
Geek Flowchart
Cape Wind
Here's some video footage of a wind turbine. One of people's problems with them is that they believe the turbines will create a lot of noise. But as you can see....we make more noise than the turbines.
Monday, May 5, 2008
Culture of Comic Books
Sunday, May 4, 2008
Earth Hour
Saturday, May 3, 2008
review terms & essay topics
Daedalus and Icarus Sir Anthony Van Dyck, c. 1620
On the final next week (5/9 at 9 a.m. in CAS 223) you will complete 12 ID questions (out of 12) and write two essays. The ID questions and the essay questions will be selected from the 50 terms & 4 topics below.
Only 12 of the ID terms will be presented, and you will have to answer all 12. The 4 essay topics will be grouped in pairs, and you will have to write on one topic from each pair.
ID NAMES & TERMS:
1 Howard Scott
2 Technocracy
3 Futurama
4 Leo Szilard
5 Trinity
6 Bikini
7 Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
8 Robert Goddard
9 Werner von Braun
10 October, 1957
11 John Glenn
12 Valentina Tereshkova
13 Velcro
14 Tang
15 Apollo 8
16 Apollo-Soyuz
17 Challenger
18 La Mettrie
19 Charles Babbage
20 Alan Turing
21 IBM punch cards
22 "War Games"
23 "Solid State" electronics
24 "Pong"
25 MS-DOS
26 The "1984" ad
27 Moore's Law
28 Philo T. Farnsworth
29 Populuxe
30 Newton Minnow
31 Marshall McLuhan
32 "All You Need is Love"
33 DARPA
34 ARPANET
35 Tim Berners-Lee
36 LambdaMOO
37 Buckminster Fuller
38 eugenics
39 James Watson and Francis Crick
40 Asilomar Conference
41 "12 Monkeys"
42 Diamond v. Chakrabarty
43 Humulin (tm)
44 Human Genome Project
45 J. Craig Venter
46 John Muir and Gifford Pinchot
47 Rachel Carson
48 The Whole Earth Catalogue
49 Solar-Thermal
50 Singularity
ESSAY TOPICS:
w. Consider the changing relationship between human beings and nature as depicted in any three primary sources from the course reading. How does each author depict the impact of new technologies on the landscape, on living things, and on the human body itself? How does each of these works seem to evaluate the impact of human technology on the natural world---as positive, negative, or something else?
x. Consider the cultural and political impact of new technologies and new modes of production / consumption as explored in Paul Boyer's By the Bomb's Early Light and Lizabeth Cohen's A Consumers' Republic. Although both authors concentrate on the period following WWII, what different types of technological change does each view as most influential and why? How might a student of history integrate and expand upon their studies of U.S. culture and politics in the period of rapid technological and social change following WWII?
y. Imagine that you have been given to the opportunity to replace three secondary sources on the HI 351 syllabus with three very easy-to-watch popcorn movies. In order to seize this opportunity, however, you must first make a detailed and compelling case that each popcorn movie you propose to add to the syllabus explores all of the same major issues as each book you propose to subtract---and explores them more effectively.
z. The painting above depicts Daedalus advising his son Icarus on how to safely use the wings he has made for him. As we know from the story, (& from the vapid smile on the boy's face), this advice will not be heeded. In your estimation, is the human race, in its use of new technologies, more likely to follow the fate of Daedalus or Icarus? In you answer to this question, be sure to consider the arguments of those we have read and studied, among them Aldous Huxley and Freeman Dyson, who have taken a clear position on this question. Explain whose writings you find more persuasive, and why.
Friday, May 2, 2008
Yucca Mountain Repository
Link: http://www.yuccamountain.org/archive/legal.htm
Stewart Brand
Buckminster Fuller clips
In the first video, geodesic dome inventor Buckminster Fuller explains his response to the anti-technology or "Luddite" point of view that had gained popularity in the sixties and seventies. The second clip describes the global power grid that Bucky was the first to propose.
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Radioactive Waste Converted Into Inert Substance
A group of Russian researchers in collaboration with the Israeli’s Environmental Energy Resources (EER) have developed a reactor that converts radioactive waste into inert byproducts. Although there were many who thought that this is not possible, Itschak Shrem from the Shrem, Fudim and Keiner, an investment company, announced the breakthrough at a press conference in Tel Aviv.
Treescrapers?
This website called Inhabitat has a ton of really cool green technologies on it. check it out.
JYL
Green Consumerism?
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Craziest Green Technologies
BU's Environmental Grade Deflation
Real Trekkie Tricorder Invented
New handheld medical scanners coupled with regular cell phones resemble "Star Trek" tricorders and could see what ails you with a push of a button.
The invention, using off-the-shelf cell phone technology, would allow medical scanners could boldly go where none have gone before — to the aid of the roughly three-quarters of the world's population currently without access to ultrasounds, X-rays and other imagers used for everything from detecting tumors to monitoring fetuses.
In addition to offering medical scans in developing nations, the devices "could find their way in ambulances, or rural clinics," said Boris Rubinsky, a professor of bioengineering at the University of California, Berkeley.
Medical imagers are typically bulky combinations of scanners, processors and video monitors. Rubinsky and his colleagues instead physically separated these components, so the most complicated elements of imagers — the powerful computer processors — can reside at a remote central location.
The researchers next devised a simple portable scanner that could plug into a cell phone. The phones transmit the raw scanning data to the processors, which create images to relay back for viewing on the cell phone screen.
Cheaper approach
The surprisingly simple setup is described in the April 30 issue of the journal PLoS ONE.
The scheme would significantly lower the cost of medical imaging because one processor facility could serve multiple imagers.
"You could be out in the middle of a remote village and still have cell phone access," said researcher Antoni Ivorra, also at Berkeley.
The portable scanner was hooked up to a cell phone with a USB cable and tested on a gel-filled container that simulated breast tissue afflicted with a tumor. Diseased tissue conducts electricity differently than healthy tissue does. The image that was sent back had the simulated tumor clearly visible onscreen.
Simple and flexible
These devices could work with any cell phone that can send and receive pictures or audio and video clips.
"The size of the data in the study was only six kilobytes, which is ridiculously small," explained researcher Yair Granot at Berkeley. "A one sentence, text-only e-mail message is bigger than that."
Rubinsky noted that "people are able to watch full movies on their iPods" so cell phone screen sizes should not be a major impediment.
In the future, ultrasound scanners could also couple with cell phones. Just the ultrasound scanner "might cost about $1,000, while a whole ultrasound machine with all the other components might be about $70,000," Rubinsky told LiveScience. "We could take medical imaging and possibly benefit the entire world."
Simply donating existing medical scanners to the world's poorest regions is not a viable, long-term solution, Rubinsky said.
"More than half of the medical equipment in developing countries is left unused or broken because it is too complicated or expensive to operate and repair," he explained. "We set out to develop something that locals could sustain on their own, as well as something that is relevant to local economies and technologies."
Broad implications
These portable scanners "could open up whole new avenues of health care for the developing world," Rubinsky said. "Health professionals in rural clinics could affordably get the tools they need to properly diagnose and treat their patients."
Although diagnosis and treatment of roughly one-fifth of all diseases can benefit from medical imaging, "this advancement has been out of reach for millions of people in the world because the equipment is too costly to maintain," Rubinsky said. "Our system would make imaging technology inexpensive and accessible for these underserved populations."
The scanners could have broad applications in the developed world, too, he said.
"Health professionals in rural clinics could affordably get the tools they need to properly diagnose and treat their patients," Rubinsky said. "If you had a car accident, you could put a cap on the hat of the victim in the ambulance, and before the ambulance even gets to the hospital, all the information can go through the cell phone, maybe to spot if that person has internal bleeding in their head."
http://www.livescience.com/technology/080430-cell-phone-medical.html
Hybrid Myths and Theories
http://www.thedailygreen.com/living-green/blogs/cars-transportation/clean-car-myths-46011308
Some concerns about biofuel technology
The article touches upon both the pros and cons of such a technology, and questions whether or not biofuel technology can end up being an enivornmental detriment (instead of being an environmentally friendly alternative to fossil fuels).
Pros and Cons of Genetically Engineered Foods
California's going Solar
Also, FedEx has teamed up with British Petroleum (Believe it or not) to install solar panels on the roofs of its California facilities (Link). The facility in Oakland generates 80% of its total consumed electricity from its rooftop solar panels. If more businesses follow the steps taken by FedEx, then the burning of fossil fuels and other non-renewable resources that pollute the Earth will be diminished.
Red Necks Turn to Green
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2008/writers/brant_james/04/23/nascar.green/index.html
Has U.S. Science Lost Its Competitive Edge?
Sally Ride, the first U.S. woman astronaut, spoke at the symposium, arguing, "I feel that we're like Wile E. Coyote, chasing the roadrunner off the cliff and then looking around and realizing that there's no foundation under our feet." Most comments at the event were in response to the powerful 2005 report Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Eco-TV
Here is a video of an interview of someone from Philips explaining how it works.
Here is a video of the TV winning an award from the 2008 International Consumer Electronics Association meeting in Las Vegas from January 7-10.
Enjoy! Doesn't this make you want a really nice quality, environmentally friendly TV?
Yeah...me too.
The Lorax
Green Car Technology
Synthetic Fuels Corp with link
Synthetic Fuels Corp
video trailer for Earth: The Sequel
Today I will hand out a brief section of Earth: The Sequel, a new book by Environmental Defense Fund founder Fred Krupp.
Krupp argues that innovations in clean energy represent an economic opportunity vastly greater than the revolution in personal computers and the Internet. His book explores recent innovations in genetically engineered biofuels, solar, wind, geothermal, and other new technologies.
For more about the confluence of new technologies and environmentalism, check out Break Through by Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Neuromancer
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
This is the scene from Jurassic Park in which they debate on the ethics of the technology developed in the park. Jeff Goldblum and Laura Dern's characters are both fearful that man has gone to far and that the scientists are playing with things they do not fully understand.
This is an excerpt from George W. Bush's state of the union address in 2008. Bush argued against the use of embryonic stem cells for personal ethical reasons. He asked Congress not to pass any laws which allowed for the "unethical use of stem cells", including the cloning of human lfe, which many people see as the next step in the evolution of biotechnology.
Here is a link to an article published in Scientific American in March of 1997 in response to the cloning of Dolly the sheep. The author illustrates the infinite promise Dolly held for the scientific community, as well as the infinite controversy.
A Clone in Sheep's Cloning
"Steak without Cow": PETA to offer prize for "in-vitro" meat production
NY Times in 2005: "Celera to Quit Selling Genome Information"
Saturday, April 19, 2008
Tron, RoboCop, Ghostbusters: Sweded
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Haymarket Affair
The Haymarket Affair was an event that captured the nation's attention in the final years of the 1880's. The following is an example of the kind of bomb which was thrown at the police unit attempting to break up the demonstration at Haymarket Square on the night of May 4th, 1886 in Chicago. The bomb wounded sixty officers and killed one, Mathias Degan.
In the trial that followed, eight men connected with anarchist and labor advocacy publications were tried and convicted as accessories to the murder of Degan. Their conviction largely hinged on evidence that they were the ideological heads of a general conspiracy to overthrow the existing social order. The only man of American birth among the convicted was Albert Parsons, who volunteered in the Confederate Army during the Civil War and was connected to the mainstream labor advocacy union the Knights of Labor. Here is a picture of his wife, Lucy Parsons a woman of Native American, Mexican and Black ancestry who understandably petitioned strongly for her husband's pardon.
While there would be no pardon for Parsons, in 1893, the liberal Governor of Illinois, John Altgeld, did pardon three of the original eight defendants implicated in the Haymarket Affair. The following cartoon depicts one opinion that Altgeld had put the social order in harm's way by granting clemency to the anarchists.
Going back two classes ago...
Paper Extension and Quiz
Also, I will be giving our third reading quiz on Thursday, April 24th.
Friday, April 11, 2008
Russia open monument to space dog Laika
By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV, Associated Press Writer Fri Apr 11, 1:58 PM ET
MOSCOW - Russian officials on Friday unveiled a monument to Laika, a dog whose flight to space more than 50 years ago paved the way for human space missions.
The small monument is near a military research facility in Moscow that prepared Laika's flight to space on Nov. 3, 1957. It features a dog standing on top of a rocket.
Little was known about the impact of space flight on living things at the time Laika's mission was launched. Some believed they would be unable to survive the launch or the conditions of outer space, so Soviet space engineers viewed dogs' flights as a necessary precursor to human missions.
All dogs used in the Soviet space program were stray mongrel dogs — doctors believed they were able to adapt quicker to harsh conditions. All were small so they could fit into the tiny capsules.
The 2-year-old Laika was chosen for the flight just nine days before the launch.
Stories about how she was selected varied: Some said Laika was chosen for her good looks — a Soviet space pioneer had to be photogenic. Others indicated the top choice for the mission was dropped because doctors took pity on her: Since there was no way to design a re-entry vehicle in time for the launch, the flight meant a certain death.
"Laika was quiet and charming," Dr. Vladimir Yazdovsky wrote in his book chronicling the story of Soviet space medicine. He recalled that before heading to the launch pad, he took the dog home to play with his children. "I wanted to do something nice for her: She had so little time left to live," Yazdovsky said.
The satellite that carried Laika into orbit was built in less than one month after the Soviet Union put the world's first artificial satellite into orbit on Oct. 4, 1957.
Due to last-minute technical problems, Laika had to wait for the launch in the cabin for three days. Temperatures were low, and workers heated the cockpit through a hose.
When Laika reached orbit, doctors found with relief that her heartbeat, which had risen on launch, and her blood pressure were normal. She ate specially prepared food from a container.
According to official Soviet reports, the dog was euthanized after a week.
After the Soviet collapse, participants in the project told the real story: Laika indeed was to be euthanized with a programmed injection, but she apparently died of overheating after only a few hours in orbit.
Several other dogs died in failed launches before the successful space flight — and safe return to Earth — of the dogs Belka and Strelka in August 1960.
After a few other flights with dogs, the Soviet Union put the world's first human — Yuri Gagarin — into space on April 12, 1961.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080411/ap_on_re_eu/russia_space_dogAtomic Bomb culture
Sorry, had a link wrong, had to re-post
http://www.orau.org/ptp/collection/spinthariscopes/ring.htm
Thursday, April 10, 2008
American Environmental Movement
This is a National Geographic article from 2002 marking the 40th anniversary of Rachel Carson's book "Silent Spring" which is considered to be the starting point of the modern environmental movement.
The following is a video focusing on Gallup Poles that show the views of Americans towards the environmental movement as well as how much individual Americans are doing to help the environment.
Perspectives on Technology
Others fostered concerns about the course of technological progress. During the development of nuclear power, supporters of atomic energy attempted to quell fears through propaganda films: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbB2EMOTunk
Technology has developed to a point where it simply can no longer be rationally avoided or feared. Here are Time magazine's picks for essential 20th century innovations: http://www.time.com/time/time100/builder/tech_supp/tech_supp.html
One World: First Live Global TV Broadcast
Nuclear Ethics
Consumerism and Identity
In my paper I will be exploring the connections between advertising and identity and comparing the real world example to Huxley's portrayal of identity in Brave New World. One of my secondary sources, The Conquest of Cool, describes different advertising campaigns from the 1960s and the ways these ads subverted convention.
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Social Darwinism and Morality
This first article argues that the effects of social Darwinism are largely overstated by historians such as Hofstadter, and that Christian morality and economics made more of an impact on business life than social Darwinism. The article also mentions the anarchist Kropotkin, who we discussed briefly in class.
This second article discusses the social Darwinist tendencies of one of Donnelly's more widely-known contemporaries - Mark Twain. While many of Twain's early works have an optimistic tone, many of his later works take on a more pessimistic undertone emphasizing competition and struggle.
This cartoon clip shows Felix the Cat attempting to find a link between man and monkeys. Although created in 1920, after social Darwinism's popularity had largely faded and evolution was becoming more widely accepted, the cartoon still mocks the idea that man could descend from apes, while also emphasizing the role of struggle among the animal kingdom. In the clip, human society is placed upon the monkeys, reversing social Darwinism's attempt to apply animal practices to human society. In the end, it is the monkey who refuses to accept that he could possibly be related to man, rather than the other way around.
This first article argues that the effects of social Darwinism are largely overstated by historians such as Hofstadter, and that Christian morality and economics made more of an impact on business life than social Darwinism. The article also mentions the anarchist Kropotkin, who we discussed briefly in class.
This second article discusses the social Darwinist tendencies of one of Donnelly's more widely-known contemporaries - Mark Twain. While many of Twain's early works have an optimistic tone, many of his later works take on a more pessimistic undertone emphasizing competition and struggle.
This cartoon clip shows Felix the Cat attempting to find a link between man and monkeys. Although created in 1920, after social Darwinism's popularity had largely faded and evolution was becoming more widely accepted, the cartoon still mocks the idea that man could descend from apes, while also emphasizing the role of struggle among the animal kingdom. In the clip, human society is placed upon the monkeys, reversing social Darwinism's attempt to apply animal practices to human society. In the end, it is the monkey who refuses to accept that he could possibly be related to man, rather than the other way around.
Populism in late nineteenth century America
This link is an interesting look at the Wizard of Oz as a populist parable.
This political cartoon shows how the effects of major economic depressions on the individual laborer.
This political cartoon shows how the banking system was holding down the poor farmers, who had no choice but to revolt in response.
Technology in the modern era: Utopia or Dystopia?
Technology Today: Utopia or Dystopia? – Technology and the Rest of Culture
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2267/is_n3_v64/ai_19952021/pg_1
Reproductive Technology: Utopia or Nemesis?
http://www.dhushara.com/paradoxhtm/reprod.htm
Korea’s High-Tech Utopia, Where Everything is Observed
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/05/technology/techspecial/05oconnell.html
All of them give an interesting insight into the effects of technology in modern culture (and the effects that future technology, if pursued vigorously, will have on society in the years to come). Most specifically the authors of each provide a view, either positive and negative, on how technology today can be either a tool or detriment to society. In particular, the last article about proposed building of Korea's High Tech Utopia is a short, but facinating read. It briefly gives an outline of all the high technology that would be implemented in this futuristic city, eerily bringing to mind a technological utopia not that far off from the one found in Ralph 12 4C 41+.
Defining Limits of Humanity
This link features an interview with Aldous Huxley in which he discusses the relationship between science and humanity and argues that the two need to be intrinsically linked for the survival of humankind.
This is a video discussing the nature of war in modern society and arguing for the necessity of peace.
This is a product I stumbled upon while researching reactions to the development of nuclear weapons. I found the product fascinating as it highlights the acknowledgment of the inability for humans to effectively control modern technologies.
The Consumer's Sublime
First here is a video of Walt Disney World's Main Street, USA in the Magic Kingdom Park. It is a replication of the 1940s(ish) New Orleans, (scaled down 1/3, including all buildings), bringing consumers back to a time of nostalgia and more carefree attitude. Behind all these facades are shops galore, as seen in the last bits of the video. (Really people, watch it, Disney makes people happy :))
Here is the main excerpt I will be focusing on in Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation. Please scroll down to Hyperreal and Imagery. It talks about Disneyland and how it is trying to replicate reality, by doing so it discards the real world we live in, trying to replace it. It is very interesting (and a short read!)
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/Baudrillard/Baudrillard_Simulacra.html
Here is a video of Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas, where there is the facade of the Great Roman Empire. However, all it houses are high end designer stores and replications of sculptures that once inspired awe. (Still really pretty though! Enjoy!)
Life Under the Atomic Cloud
Conelrad - a website dedicated to all things atomic, with links to all kinds of articles and pictures about the era.
Academic Info - A website which contains information regarding the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Also, here is a link to a video portraying the culture which surrounded the beginning of the cold war and the fears of a nuclear strike by our enemies
JYL
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Apollo I, Challenger, and Columbia tragedies
A student asked today about casualties of the U.S. space program. This site has some excellent information on the subject.
City Life In The 1900s
In his 1890 novel Caesar’s Column, Ignatius Donnelly presents his futuristic vision of
http://www.archives.gov/research/american-cities/
http://www.infoplease.com/spot/skyscraperhistory.html
http://www.livingcityarchive.org/htm/framesets/decades/fs_00s.htm
War Games
Fear of and Optimism for Technology in Early 1900's
Details the predictions Science Fiction writers such as Gernsback made and continue to make in the present. These writers shaped their predictions using currently known scientific fact. Some were so accurate, the writers were followed by the FBI.
http://archives.cbc.ca/war_conflict/cold_war/topics/274/
This CBC Television report examines the power of nuclear weapons and one couple's view on the prospect of capitulating to the 'godless Russians.'
http://www.genealogy.com/76_life1900.html
A brief look at the attitudes of people living in the early 1900's, emerging technology, economic conditions.
Monday, April 7, 2008
The effect of weapons of mass destruction
Archive.org (http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=atomic%20bomb) has a lot of great video footage of bombs being tested.
Atomic Archive.com (http://www.atomicarchive.com/index.shtml) has practically everything I ever want and need to know about atomic weapons.
Radiation Effects (http://www.atomicarchive.com/Effects/radeffects.shtml) I want to also compare the injuries of the people in the text to real life.
Technocracy
Part One - http://youtube.com/watch?v=I9ps5vJrIxM
Part Two - http://youtube.com/watch?v=icPOfVeISi8&feature=related
The Technocracy website from Vancouver also gives a great glimpse into what Technocracy stands for. Here is a link to the FAQ page, a good place to start - http://www.technocracyvan.ca/faq.html
Information on the history of technocracy can be found at their main website. Here, I've linked to a page which describes the foundation's history back to 1921.
http://www.technocracy.org/origins-1.htm
A Brave New World and Technocracy
Tarzan of the Apes
http://www.archive.org/details/TarzanoftheApes1918AndyDivx
Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster
http://ia341219.us.archive.org/3/items/DraftSupermanWeeklies/Superman.pdf
The First "Perfect" Man
http://www.openlibrary.org/details/sandowgetsphysicl00sanduoft
Alan M. Turing
http://www.turing.org.uk/
"Expert System" Practicing Law?
AI Cited for Unlicensed Practice of Law
Thinking Big: Robotics in the 21st Century
Video
Transcript
Sunday, April 6, 2008
The Bomb Project
Atomic Films
Enjoy
Thursday, April 3, 2008
Blog Assignment II: Post 3 links related to your paper topic
Between now and next Thursday (April 10), find three links (to a relevant article, blog, video, etc.) that are related to your paper topic and post them on this blog. As you may rememember from our blog tutorial in January, www.archive.org is an excellent source for historical materials, including video clips.
Satellites, Cosmonauts, and Astronauts
U.S. Newsreel on Sputnik launch downplays Cold War angle and calls Sputnik "one of the great scientific feats of the age."
Here's a color video of several early Soviet launches, including Sputnik 1 and Sputnik 2 (Laika's mission).
Here's a video of Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin's 1961 launch.
Ten months later, NASA launches John Glenn into orbit.
This video is a 1968 educational film (brought to you by Kodak) that profiles Robert Goddard and highlights contemporary model rocket clubs. (despite its posted title, there's nothing here about John Glenn).
Friday, March 28, 2008
Godzilla and the Bomb
Here is a 2005 New York Time piece by Brent Staples on the story behind the Japanese film Gojira, and how it was re-worked into to American "Godzilla, King of the Monsters"
an excerpt:
Film directors who once stood helpless while studios recut their movies can now console themselves with "directors' cuts" put out on DVD. This option was not available to the influential Japanese director Ishiro Honda, whose 1954 classic "Godzilla" - known in Japan as "Gojira" - made a household name of the towering reptile who stomped a miniature Tokyo into the ground while raking the landscape with his fiery thermonuclear breath.
A fire-breathing reptile is pretty much the same in any language. But the butchered version of the film that swept the world after release in the United States was stripped of the political subtext - and the anti-American, antinuclear messages - that had saturated the original. The uncut version of the film is due out on home video early next year, and should push serious Godzilla fans to rethink the 50-year evolution of the series. It should also show them that they were hoodwinked by the denatured Americanized version that dominated many of their childhoods in the late 20th century. At the same time, Godzilla fans are on the edge of their seats about a new film that should be released in the United States soon.
The original "Gojira" was never intended as a conventional monster-on-the-loose movie. Nor did it resemble the farcical rubber-suit wrestling matches or the domesticated movies (with Godzilla cast as a mammoth household pet) that the series degenerated into during the 1960's and 70's.
As the historian William Tsutsui reminded us in last year's cult classic, "Godzilla on My Mind," the 1954 movie was a dark, poetic production that dealt openly with Japanese misgivings about the nuclear menace, environmental degradation and the traumatic experience associated with World War II.
The nuclear annihilations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were still fresh in mind when the famous Toho Company embarked on the "Gojira" project in 1954. But Japanese fear of nuclear catastrophe was given fresh impetus in the spring of that year, when the United States detonated a huge hydrogen bomb at Bikini Atoll in the central Pacific. Japanese fishermen aboard a trawler were exposed to nuclear fallout. Japanese consumers panicked and declined to eat fish after irradiated tuna was found to have slipped into the nation's food supply.
In the film, the H-bomb blast awakens and irradiates a dinosaur that has somehow escaped extinction. The reptile strides ashore and begins his trademark devastation of the Tokyo landscape. The nuclear antecedents were not at all lost on Honda, a World War II veteran who passed through the bombed-out city of Hiroshima and witnessed the damage firsthand. Honda later said that he envisioned the fiery breath of Godzilla as a way of "making radiation visible," and of showing the world that nuclear power could never be tamed.
He also told an interviewer: "Believe it or not, we naïvely hoped that the end of Godzilla was going to coincide with the end of nuclear testing."
That was clearly a tall order for a monster movie. But Honda's message never had a chance because most of the world never received it. The American company that bought the rights to distribute the film in this country cut a large chunk from Honda's original film and rearranged the plot. . . .
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Clothing of the Future
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9eAiy0IGBI
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Brave New World 1956 CBS radio play
Here is an audio file of the 1956 CBS radio play of Brave New World, narrated by Aldous Huxley. Here is the recent Los Angeles Times article indicating that the upcoming film version of the novel will be directed by Ridley Scott. As I said in class, you may use this novel as a primary source in your historical methods paper.
Monday, March 17, 2008
Prospectus
Your main goal is to analyze an issue raised by one of the primary sources and to compare and evaluate how two different historians address that issue. For instance, if you started w/ Donnelly's Caesar's Column, your topic might be Victorian responses to the social dislocations caused by the industrial revolution. For your two secondary sources you might use John Kasson's Civilizing the Machine and Leo Marx's The Machine in the Garden. You would likely start with a discussion of the issues raised by your primary source (Donnelly) and then compare the methods and perspectives that Kasson and Nye bring to bear upon those issues. In your comparison of their perspectives, you would ideally reveal something of your own perspective, e.g. Kasson's right and Marx is wrong, or vice versa, or they're both wrong, etc. Another example of this might be Ralph 124C41+ and comparison of two books on consumerism or technological utopianism; or Ape and Essence and a comparison of two books on cultural responses to the advent of nuclear weapons; or Neuromancer and a comparison of two books on the growth and impact of the Internet. In any of these cases, the bulk of your paper would be a comparison of your secondary sources, but your primary source would establish and illustrate the basic issues that those secondary sources address. This is an unconventional assignment for a 300 level course, so I'm asking people to produce a prospectus now in order to get these questions on the table early. The prospectus won't be graded, but it should give me a fairly clear idea of what sources you intend to use and why.
Saturday, March 8, 2008
Reminder: Paper Prospectus due in class on 3/18
Remember, your primary source options are:
Donnelly, Ignatius. Caesar's Column
Gernsback, Hugo. Ralph 124C41+
Huxley, Aldous. Ape and Essence
Gibson, William. Neuromancer
Thursday, March 6, 2008
The Birth of the Comic Book
Men of Tomorrow by Gerard Jones provides some excellent background on Hugo Gernsback, science fiction "fandom", and the birth of the comic book.
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Midterm Review: Terms and Themes
Icarus
Babel
Prospero
The New Atlantis
Monticello
The Age of Reason
"Report on Manufactures"
F. C. Lowell
"The Celestial Railroad"
The Market Revolution
"What hath God wrought?"
Vicksburg
The Eads Bridge
"The Brick Moon"
Haymarket
Prince Cabano
Chicago, 1893
"The Dynamo and the Virgin"
Modern Electrics
The Armory Show
"Scientifiction"
RADAR
Fritz Lange
Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster
THEMES:
Religion, science, and technology in American culture from the age of Deism to the age of Social Darwinism.
Differing portrayals of race, class, and gender in Donnelly's Caesar's Column, Gernsback's Ralph 124C4+ and Fritz Lange's Metropolis (consider our discussion of both the German and U.S. versions of this film).
The Natural and the Technological Sublime in nineteenth century American culture.
The "consumer's sublime" as described by David E. Nye and depicted in the work of Gernsback and Donnelly.
Friday, February 29, 2008
Fritz Lang's Metropolis
Here is a timeline of the production and release of Fritz Lang's Metropolis, in both Europe and the U.S. Notice that those dancing scenes got the film banned in Turkey.
Here is a detailed review linking Metropolis to the cyberpunk SF genre.
Here is a plot synopsis from IMDB:
The film is set in the year 2026, in the extraordinary Gothic skyscrapers of a corporate city-state, the Metropolis of the title. Society has been divided into two rigid groups: one of planners or thinkers, who live high above the earth in luxury, and another of workers who live underground toiling to sustain the lives of the privileged. The city is run by Johann 'Joh' Fredersen (Alfred Abel).
The beautiful and evangelical figure Maria (Brigitte Helm) takes up the cause of the workers. She advises the desperate workers not to start a revolution, and instead wait for the arrival of "The Mediator", who, she says, will unite the two halves of society. The son of Fredersen, Freder (Gustav Fröhlich), becomes infatuated with Maria, and follows her down into the working underworld. In the underworld, he experiences firsthand the toiling lifestyle of the workers, and observes the casual attitude of their employers (he is disgusted after seeing an explosion at the "M-Machine", when the employers bring in new workers to keep the machine running before taking care of the men wounded or killed in the accident). Shocked at the workers' living conditions, he joins her cause.
Meanwhile his father Fredersen consults with the scientist Rotwang (Rudolf Klein-Rogge), an old companion and rival. Fredersen learns that the papers found with dead workers are plans of the catacombs and witnesses a speech by Maria. He also learns that Rotwang has built a robotic gynoid. Rotwang wants to give the robot the appearance of Hel, his former lover who left him for Fredersen and died giving birth to Freder. Fredersen persuades him to give the robot Maria's appearance, as he wants to use the robot to tighten his control over the workers. Rotwang complies out of ulterior motives: he knows of Freder's and Maria's love and wants to use the robot to deprive Fredersen of his son.
The real Maria is imprisoned in Rotwang's house in Metropolis, while the robot Maria is first showcast as an exotic dancer in the upper city's Yoshiwara nightclub, fomenting discord among the rich young men of Metropolis. After descending to the worker's city, the robot Maria encourages the workers into a full-scale rebellion, and they destroy the "Heart Machine", the power station of the city. Neither Freder nor Grot, the foreman of the Heart Machine, can stop them. As the machine is destroyed, the city's reservoirs overflow, flooding the workers' underground city and seemingly drowning the children, who were left behind in the riot. In fact, Freder and Maria have saved them in a heroic rescue, without the workers' knowledge.
When the workers realize the damage they have done and that their children are lost, they attack the upper city. Under the leadership of Grot, they chase the human Maria, whom they hold responsible for their riot. As they break into the city's entertainment district, they run into the Yoshiwara crowd and capture the robot Maria, while the human Maria manages to escape. The workers burn the captured Maria at the stake; Freder, believing this to be the human Maria, despairs but then he and the workers realize that the burned Maria is in fact a robot.
Meanwhile, the human Maria is chased by Rotwang along the battlements of the city's cathedral. Freder chases after Rotwang, resulting in a climactic scene in which Joh Fredersen watches in terror as his son struggles with Rotwang on the cathedral's roof. Rotwang falls to his death, and Maria and Freder return to the street, where Freder unites Fredersen and Grot, fulfilling his role as the "Mediator".
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Hugo Gernsback, author of Ralph 124C41+
Here's a concise and informative article on the early career of Hugo Gernsback. And here's a Time magazine profile from 1944.
Friday, February 22, 2008
Background on the Haymarket Affair
This short article on the website of the Chicago Public Library provides some excellent background on the Haymarket Affair---an event which clearly inspired many of the themes in Caesar's Column. Here's an excerpt:
Through much of the 1870's and 1880's Chicago was a leading center of labor activism and radical thought. Early in 1886 labor unions were beginning a movement for an eight-hour day. Union activists called a one day general strike in Chicago. On May 1 many Chicago workers struck for shorter hours. An active group of radicals and anarchists became involved in the campaign. Two days later a shooting and one death occurred during a riot at the McCormick Reaper plant when police tangled with the strikers.
On May 4 events reached a tragic climax at Haymarket Square, an open market near Des Plaines Ave. and Randolph St., where a protest meeting was called to denounce the events of the preceding day at the McCormick Works. Speakers exhorted the crowd from a wagon which was used for a makeshift stage. Mayor Carter Harrison joined the crowd briefly, then left, believing everything was orderly. Toward the end of this meeting, while police were undertaking to disperse the crowd, a bomb was exploded. Policeman Mathias J. Degan died almost instantly and seven other officers died later.
The following day, under the direction of State's Attorney Julius Grinnel, police began a fierce roundup of radicals, agitators and labor leaders, siezing records and closing socialist and labor press offices. Eight men were finally brought to trial for conspiracy.
Despite the fact that the bomb thrower was never identified, and none of these eight could be connected with the crime, Judge Joseph E. Gary imposed the death sentence on seven of them and the eighth was given fifteen years in prison.
CAS HI 351: Technology & U.S. Popular Culture
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