Crazy Gary Busey: Understanding the Power of Internet Fame

http://tosh.cc.com/blog/2009/08/26/gary-busey-time

North Korea and the Interview: Teachable Controversy

Threats by hackers, with alleged connections to the government of the Democratic People's  Republic of Korea (DPRK), forced Sony to postpone the release of the film the Interview. Additionally, the film faced criticism for blatant racism and orientalism (a favorite historical buzz word). Watching the film after all the hype, maintained the expectations I held for a Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg film. The film is an excellent exploration of themes of totalitarianism, dictatorship, censorship, propaganda, manipulation, racism, orientalism, and media manipulation, set to the real world controversy surrounding the film itself. The film itself contains mature themes such as drug use, sexual imagery, and course language. Thus the film would be intended for a mature class at an advanced level. Through watching students will obviously find biases and the themes I have listed in a current popular culture format. Students, through critical analysis, will be guided to self-reflection, the ultimate goal of all teaching.

The Interview. Relevant Controversy and Advanced Ideas Students Can Easily Grasp, Interpret, Analyze, and Reflect Upon!!!

Check out the story:
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Interview_%282014_film%29

Image:
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Interview_%282014_film%29#/image/File:The_Interview_2014_poster.jpg

Using Primary Documents Found Online

Primary Document Analysis

Often in the course of history, primary documents have changed the course of history and human relationships. Primary document analysis is one of the most essential tasks of a historian and thus that of the history student. To analysis a document is not only to glimpse another period of time but to empathize with another's perspective. Students should examine all primary documents with six points in mind: content, citation, context, connections, communications, conclusions. Content, that is, what is the main idea of the document? Citation, that is, who is the author and when was it created? Context, that is, what was going on in the world, region, or the locality where the document was created? Connections, that is, to prior knowledge. Communication, that is, perspective; is the source reliable? Conclusions, that is, how does the primary document contribute to our understanding of history? These points will enable students to better understand historical information through primary documents which generated the initial historical questions generated by historians and information utilized by historians. Most of the essential historical documents are available on-line, transcribed from other languages and placed into a readable format as well!   

This document is a passenger manifest.

Content: The document was designed to track the movements of people into the country during an era of immigrant expansion.

Citation: Canadian government official during the 1920's.

Context: Mass movement of people from other lands to new opportunities in Canada, and other so-called 'new-worlds'.

Connections: Whatever may exist.

Communication: The source is generally reliable as it records information in a straight forward form, but note people commonly changed their names to anglicized versions, other countries created poor identity papers, people occasionally gave incorrect birth dates or baptism dates as their birth dates. The information is also highly generalized, what exactly constitutes the ability to read in a language? How was it tested? Was it even tested? 

Conclusions: A reader can locate familial relations, locations, important dates, and other pertinent information, such as ability to read, write, and speak and in what language.  

Orientalism and Indiana Jones

Orientalism is a used by scholars to describe the depiction of aspects of Middle Eastern and East Asian cultures (Eastern cultures) by people from the West. Edward Said's landmark academic text Orientalism published in 1978, highlights the general patronizing Western attitude towards Middle Eastern, Asian and North African societies. In Said's insightful analysis, the West essentializes these societies as static, undeveloped, lazy, feminine and thus fabricating a view of Oriental culture that can be studied, reduced, and depicted. The Occident (West) can thus transmit an image of the Orient through popular culture back to the Orient to be learned by the Orientals. This is the internalization of oppression. Juxtaposed on the fabricated image of the Orient is the idea of Western society as developed, rational, hardworking, and masculine. To help students understand the fabricated image of Eastern cultures a video analysis of an obviously biased depicted of the Orient such as Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Students should notice how people who are not European are depicted, what false foods are eaten in the east, the settings the characters find themselves in, etc. To understand complex historical concepts, students should engage in an analysis which readily highlights the principle arguments of a concept.

To understand why an idea was first created, one must study the author as Edward Hallett Carr once said: "Study the historian before you begin to study the facts." Further, one must understand the historical context in which it was first created.

Folding Paper

Once again access to information has changed the way I think of the space around myself, check out the video below. Fold A Piece Of Paper In Half 103 Times And It Will Be As Thick As The UNIVERSE!

Source:
http://www.iflscience.com/space/fold-piece-paper-half-103-times-and-it-will-be-thick-universe

Bitcoin: Open Source P2P Money: Kind of Interesting

Bitcoin uses peer-to-peer technology to operate with no central authority or banks; managing transactions and the issuing of bitcoins is carried out collectively by the network.

Courtesy of Wikipedia

Bitcoin is a software-based payment system described by Satoshi Nakamoto[note 1] in 2008,[4] and introduced as open-source software in 2009.[5] Payments are recorded in a public ledger using its own unit of account,[6] which is also called bitcoin.[note 2] Payments work peer-to-peer without a central repository or single administrator, which has led the US Treasury to call bitcoin a decentralized virtual currency.[9] Although its status as a currency is disputed, media reports often refer to bitcoin as a cryptocurrency or digital currency.[10]

Bitcoins are created as a reward for payment processing work in which users offer their computing power to verify and record payments into the public ledger. Called mining, individuals or companies engage in this activity in exchange for transaction fees and newly created bitcoins.[11] Besides mining, bitcoins can be obtained in exchange for fiat money, products, and services.[12] Users can send and receive bitcoins electronically for an optional transaction fee[13] using wallet software on a personal computer, mobile device, or a web application.

Interesting Watch:

Three Dimensional Printing

The technology while revolutionary will inevitably be slow to permeate most schools and classrooms. The rendered objects would be excellent for topographical models in geography and history. Constructed models could serve future classrooms as a platform and be an ongoing project which crosses curriculums. To build sections at a time could contribute to a community in the school and outside. Students could also construct historical artifacts which would require intensive research and allow museum plethora of objects to be collected and utilized for future classes.  Recreating key historical objects and devices could bring history alive for serious students and allow those students interested in the science and technical aspects of learning to engage meaningfully. Precision instruments, which normally would run exorbitant amounts of money, such as sextants and compasses, could be reconstructed by students. Already lessons and units are being written to facilitate the new technology, hopefully soon I can engage with this new medium.