Heidi's Journal

11/18/2008 15:58 #46746

Wed. night movie: The Forgotten City
Category: movie

Just a quick reminder...

Movie: The Forgotten City ***

Wednesday, Nov. 19, 6 p.m. - 8 p.m. Room 108 O'Brian Hall, UB North

The Forgotten City is a soul-stirring documentary taking place in Buffalo, New York, exploring race relations, segregation, crime, and politics. A discussion about race and poverty in the City of Buffalo to follow, lead by Carl Nightingale, Associate Professor of American Studies, and Jim Anderson, Chair of Citizen Action of WNY.

Pizza and pop will be served.

From Millersport Highway northbound, take the Flint entrance to UB North. Take the first left onto Flint Rd., then park in the parking lot right before the loop. Don't park in spots marked "clinic."

For more info:

(map point C:

)

All welcome. Hope to see you there!

11/15/2008 00:49 #46695

what a neat day

After Drew and I tugged & lugged a 4'x2'x3' cabinet up to my 3rd floor apartment (thank you, Drew!!!), I went to his church, did a tiny bit of work (there's no one assigned to envelope 515!) and abused my printing privileges, then went to school and listened to Ralph Nader. His lecture was specifically for law students so I didn't invite y'all.(The room was way over its posted 89-person limit, so crowded I had to sit on the floor!)

His assistant, Matt Z., invited us all to an "after party" at the Ukrainian Cultural Center DNIPRO

and only three students took him up on it, so here's a picture of the "after party"

There was kielbasa, pirogi, the yummy cabbage & noodle stuff, pigs in a blanket (the proper cabbage kind), sauerkraut. (Sorry, no specific food pix.) In the middle of it, he got out a pen and a piece of paper and started scribbling. Then he handed to me and said I needed to read this book:

A view of the ballroom of the Ukrainian Cultural Center with my friend Alisha checking it out.

Like I hadn't already been wishing I had my camera, I went to the Mass Appeal fashion show (see (e:drew,46663)) and wanted it very badly... to take pictures of a very hot (e:janelle), then to take pix of some jaw-droppingly goregous dresses and cute butts and one guy with some fantastic abs. Oh my. It was fun. The two pix I took with the Centro-cam are just blurry.

And then (e:tinypliny) equated Rahm Emanuel with Chanakya

too funny! As if my little mind needed more expanding today :-)

Tomorrow I'm going to the Women's Gifts art/craft show at Babeville. (School? I'm in school? huh.)

theli - 11/17/08 13:28
Heh, I had actually danced on that stage at some point. But that was a long time ago...

Some good memories, some not so good ones... Eh.

fellyconnelly - 11/15/08 09:45
you are chums with Nader now, huh? Good to have friends in .. places!

That WOmen's gift thing looks neat... if I didn't have to work, I'd go check it out!

F

tinypliny - 11/15/08 01:05
That is an amaZING day indeed. How cool you got to go to almost a personal foreign setting dinner with Nader, himself!

I KNOW! (e:janelle) and (e:drew) are an EXTREMELY sexy couple. :)

Since Nader recommended a book, I think I should as well. If you can get your hands on it, I think might find Chanakya's NitiShastra (Niti: Law/Guidelines Shastra: Treatise) very entertaining, honest, non-preachy, colourful and cool. I don't know whether English translations do a good job of the translation from Sanskrit, but its just awesome in its original form. Emanuel, in many ways, lives out Chanakya's writing. He is so "ancient-perfect-Indian" to me

11/12/2008 19:54 #46667

The Forgotten City - moving showing
Category: movie

The UB Lawyers Guild is proud to present a screening of

THE FORGOTTEN CITY

Wednesday, November 19th
6 p.m
O'Brian 108, UB North Campus (by Flint Loop)

A discussion about race and poverty in the City of Buffalo to follow, lead by Carl Nightingale, Associated Professor of American Studies, and Jim Anderson, Chair of Citizen Action of WNY.

Pizza and pop will be served.

The Forgotten City is a soul stirring documentary taking place in Buffalo, New York, exploring race relations, segregation, crime, and politics.

This film is a personal journey of two young filmmakers who forged an unlikely partnership following a 2001 murder; one a friend of the victim and the other a friend of the murderer. Instead of waging war, they embarked on a documentary film project that would take them into the heart of Buffalo's most dispossessed communities and crime ridden streets. The result of their exploration is a documentary film with a raw, hard-hitting, and unblinking first-hand look at the way some live in America. This film brings to light the racial turmoil and economic hardships that have become the lifestyle of so many living in Buffalo's inner city.

The Forgotten City, however, is not simply a film about the problems that plague Buffalo's inner city; it can easily be the story of any American city and is a film that everyone should see.

All are welcome! ***

imk2 - 11/13/08 08:57
i'm going with Faben.

drew - 11/12/08 23:38
I would love to go.

gardenmama - 11/12/08 23:37
My sister has seen this film and said it is excellent! I'm going to try to attend - would very much like to see it.

paul - 11/12/08 22:22
I think I will go depending on my workload that evening.

tinypliny - 11/12/08 20:40
I wish I could come and see this movie... I have heard a lot about it.

But it may have to wait. Life will have to wait. I have a thesis to defend. I have work to do. :( :(

11/11/2008 18:19 #46650

Hypotheticals
Category: school

In my criminal law class, we read a case from England in 1884 where four guys get shipwrecked and are floating about in the sea. One of them is pretty sick and there's no land or other ships in sight, it's been 10 days or so, so two of the guys decide to kill the sick one and eat him. Four days later they're picked up by a passing ship and stand trial for murder. (The fourth seems to protest the killing but eats the body anyway - he's not charged with murder.)

In the notes that follow the case in my book, this hypothetical is posed:

If three cancer researchers were adrift on a lifeboat with a skid-row drunk, would the researchers be justified in killing the drunk to advance social utility?

I had mentioned the hypothetical in the chatter partly because so many of you are or work with cancer researchers. I talked with (e:janelle) about it later that day and she wanted to know what the class discussion was like. I went to class the next day and the discussion was bizarre... one person said that the utilitarian would say to kill the drunk, a retributivist would say that's infringing on drunk's rights. Someone else said that it depends on who is assigning the values of the various people's lives ... what if it's nazis? what if it's the common US jury? many have suggested that in a survival situation that laws no longer apply.

Somehow an alternate hypothetical comes up - what if you're in the boat with Albert Einstein? Someone responds, "I'm vegetarian, but on this boat, I might be the first one to eat Albert Einstein because I'm so hungry!"

blink*

tinypliny - 11/12/08 20:37
You know, for all the politically correct "nuggets of wisdom" we come up with (like randomizing etc), Nature is NEVER politically correct. Nature is also very systematic - but we think its random because we don't know a majority of interactions that go into determining an outcome (any outcome).

Thus, we assume things are all stochastically happening (by sheer chance) - when in fact, it may all be part of one masterplan. We cannot see the big picture because our minds are thinking tiny. We are tiny. Our minds are limited by our severely limited experiences -as an individual, as a race, as citizens of a country, as members of a culture, as a species.

We hardly accept anything beyond our tiny spheres of knowledge. We are reactionary to new influences and thoughts. We don't like change but sing praises about it. Deep down, we find it easy to accept the dogma rather than the paradox. We don't want to be shoved off our complacent ledges.

To add "insult" (if you think change is superior to complacency) to the "injury" (if you think stasis of thoughts is not desirable), we label people who think out of the box as lunatics and view them with suspicion or even lock them away, supress them with force, block our ears and minds when they speak, sneer and jeer at them and judge them by our own insular thoughts and viewpoints.

But since we are politically correct, we also deny any such insularity actively. We want to tell others in our little society how broad-minded and culturally "rich" we are, how superior we are to that morass of the population that does't have the "polish" enough to project an external image that might be diametrically opposite to what they really think. In short, we are all hypocrites and snobs.

If you think about the various viewpoints, that (e:metalpeter) so creatively has thought about, you see a common thread in all of them - the greater good and selflessness. Sacrifice for greater good is a concept that "conventional" evolution rejects. However, newer research is bringing forth evidence that shows that the "sacrifice for the greater good" exists in some form of the other in natural evolution.

Several questions arise if we propound the greater good hypothesis.
a) Was this sacrifice for the greater good self-initiated?
b) Does it count as self-initiation if you killed/sacrificed yourself but were mentally egged on to that suicide by speech and/or body language/ mental processes/ thoughts conveyed to you by the society as a whole (yeah, the very same society that benefits from you dying).
c) Is it really any different from the weak being eliminated? In this case "selflessness" is a weak characteristic.

Things to think about....

@(e:ajay): Sure. That is why vegetarians universally get less (any form of) disease than carnivores.

heidi - 11/12/08 18:54
I love everyone's comments! The "right" answer is to have some randomizing process, draw straws, roll dice, to pick who gets killed & eaten. Seriously.

metalpeter - 11/12/08 18:29
Very interesting. I didn't read the entire first case from the link but I got the general point. I don't know as I would want to eat someone who was sick and with out cooking the meat that could have been deadly itself. The third guy couldn't have stopped the other two even if he tried and he didn't do anything wrong so I see why he wasn't tried.

In terms of the second case who says that the drunk isn't better then the Cancer Researchers. We hear that and assume they are good, but what if they are not good. Maybe the drunk from skid row stays out of peoples way and doesn't cause any problems, besides why kill the drunk he most likely has a bottle or two with him to use as weapons and besides how much of a drunk can he be if he got onto the boat on his own. I would say kill one of the cancer researchers because you have 3 of them. Hey maybe since they are supposed to be about saving others then one of them selves should give them selves up to save the other 3. That is unless of course some knows how to catch fish then that person can save everyone and stays alive at all cost.

ajay - 11/12/08 13:11
Kill the vegetarian. It's not like he's going to survive....

tinypliny - 11/11/08 19:30
From an evolutionary perspective, the weaker one is always the one to go/or preyed upon. The living species cannot advance without this tenet.

@jbeatty: Remember the hypothetical case of being stranded on an islad with the toothpaste and dal? (FYI, (e:mike) would eat the toothpaste) Well, here you have no choice, either you eat the sick, or die. If you too weasly about the scenario, then techhnically, and mentally, you are the weak one and the others with a different mental make-up would eliminate you.

paul - 11/11/08 19:25
I think I would trick and kill the strongest one. They probably taste way better.

jbeatty - 11/11/08 18:27
Eating the sick one just sounds like a bad idea. When I go to Wegmans I certainly don't look for the piece of beef that looks grey.

11/06/2008 13:51 #46573

Scientific holidays?

The religion & science thread made me want to ask you other science-y folk... do you have a set of holidays?

As a longtime atheist, I get uncomfortable celebrating the traditional set of holidays because of their religious significance. (I still participate in some of them, but it always feels weird, ya know?) So I have my own:

Solstices & equinoxes
3/14
4/20
Memorial Day weekend
my birthday
Labor Day weekend

heidi - 11/11/08 18:20
Duh! How could I forget Halloween???

I'm on the fence about New Years.

tinypliny - 11/06/08 20:49
Yeah, don't mislead poor foreigners.

james - 11/06/08 20:43
Well Jim. The true story of Halloween is known by two pan handlers who accosted me on Halloween night in Albany.

Waiting for a bus the man walked up to me and shouts "HEY! Do you know the true meaning of Halloween?"
"Why, no. No I don't"
"You see, it comes from the word 'Hallow' meaning hallow. And the word 'Ween' meaning ween."

At that point a second drunk pan handler walks up and shouts "HEY! That isn't the true meaning of Halloween."

The two proceed to argue and begin shoving each other while I duck into a disgusting bar to escape their whiskey scented argument.

jim - 11/06/08 19:56
Who here knows the TRUE story of Halloween?

jim - 11/06/08 19:55
Halloween!

metalpeter - 11/06/08 18:18
What no Steak and BJ (blow job)Day and no Sweetest day what is wrong with you?,HA. You need science to know how to cook the steak with out getting food posioning and the same thing for making candy.

The two Holidays I can think of that would fit in are Columbus Day (a day off) So what that he got lost and didn't use his navagation devices correctly. Then that leads Thanksgiving. If the Indians didn't teach "The White Man" how to grow crops here and how to live in our winter they would have died, many times over so I guess you could count those days.

drew - 11/06/08 16:59
Don't forget about mol day. 9/23

I think that memorial day is a religious holiday, but only because I consider American civil religion another religion.

Not that I don't like 3 day weekends.

tinypliny - 11/06/08 14:10
I celebrate every Saturday as the glory of having a weekend is a fairly new thing in my life. Every weekend I have to contemplate in wonder and disbelief at the fact that I don't have to go anywhere. :) I had school/work on all Saturdays (and sometimes Sundays at the hospital) back home. It seems like a sudden liberation after 25 years of lost weekends.

Birthdays aren't a big deal back home. I think I got my first birthday cake three years back when my friend brought it into my office. It was so hilarious, I thought she had gone nuts or something before I realized it was my for my birthday.

I celebrate science moments when I read some extraordinary and then go around the department spreading the news. :D