by William Boardman / May 6th, 2021
“America is not a racist country,” Republican senator Tim Scott of South Carolina said in his party’s official response to President Biden’s address to the nation on April 28. There are reasons that should have been a laugh line: Biden did not say America was a “racist country,” the Black senator was rebutting the president’s call for racial justice across all ethnicities, and the reality is that America was founded as a country in which owning and selling Black people was justified and legalized on the basis of the racist doctrine that they were part of an inferior race. Scott didn’t get a laugh. He wasn’t trying to be funny. He was being intellectually dishonest and uttering a coded racist call to the white supremacist cohort of the Republican party that he is tolerant of their different, racist point of view. That’s where denial takes you, into crazy-land. That’s where partisanship takes you, invoking unreality to pander t
Photo courtesy of Canon
Last week Larry Thorpe, a Senior Fellow in the Imaging Technologies & Communications Group at Canon USA, retired following a 60-year career in the broadcast industry. In an interview with
DPReview he talks about some of the technology changes he s seen during that time and how those changes impact the market for still and motion picture cameras today.
Larry began his career with the BBC in London in 1961. In 1966 he emigrated from the UK to the United States to work for RCA, where he developed cameras and other studio equipment, followed by a 22-year stint at Sony, where he worked on cameras and camcorders and became an early proponent for HDTV standards and production systems. In 2004 he joined Canon, where he helped lead the company s efforts to create Cinema EOS.
Emmys: The Daily Show, I May Destroy You Among Recipients of TV Academy Honors
Courtesy of Comedy Central
The annual accolade recognizes programs and producers who leverage the immense power of television to fuel social change.
For Life, I Am Greta, I May Destroy You, Little America, The Daily Show With Trevor Noah, The Social Dilemma and Welcome to Chechnya will be celebrated at the 14th Television Academy Honors, the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences announced Monday.
These seven programs and their producers three documentaries, two drama series, one anthology series and one late night comedy news show have used powerful and innovative storytelling to advance social change and elevate complex issues facing society, the organization said in a statement.
by William Boardman / April 4th, 2021
OK, it’s true that stupid, self-defeating policy toward Iran is an American tradition of more than 70 years standing. And yes, it has had some short-term benefits, enriching the Shah’s thugocracy and its American supporters like the Rockefellers and other oil interests. That’s a plus in some books, just not in Iranian books. There it looks more like colonial exploitation laced with crimes against humanity.
Wait a minute: didn’t they take our diplomats hostage in 1979? As well they might. Get over it. Some of you should be particularly grateful for that hostage-taking, since Iran did the US the great “favor” of holding the hostages till their captivity helped elect Ronald Reagan. Ever since then, most Americans have been the hostages of the American right.
Fukushima Daiichi’s multiple nuclear reactor meltdowns started ten years ago. They are not over. They are not even close to over. Nuclear disasters don’t ever end. The radioactive danger slowly decays over decades, during which it needs constant safety management until radiation measurements are below “acceptable levels.” That’s still not safe. Fukushima continues to be […]