The godfather

Posted on February 12th, 2007 by Antoine.
Categories: Videos, Technology, Site Meta, Anecdotes.

A bit of a mixed bag today.

Firstly, I am proud to announce that I am the new godfather for a young lad in England who was recently born to some wonderful parents, one of whom is my best friend from high school. Perhaps when he is old enough I can communicate with him via webcam and impart my wisdom to another little being who will probably know more about computers than I ever will.

A couple of cool vids to check out today - the first is an interesting web 2.0 montage put together by a group of faculty and students calling themselves “digital ethnographers”. It’s not too long, check it out if you have a couple of minutes to spare.


If you have more time, check out this documentary on Google, which touches on the dangers of a search engine monopoly in which one company controls the flow of information.

Personally, I don’t think Google is the next big brother, although it is kind of alarming that you can see your own car parked in your driveway on Google Earth. Still, it’s not like the images are running in real-time or anything.

My posts have been sporadic because I have been working on another online project, which I will unveil soon, hopefully within the next few days…

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Grab some popcorn, grab your iPod

Posted on December 19th, 2006 by Antoine.
Categories: Videos, Podcasts.

I had to share these two awesome pieces of media, even though I’m technically supposed to be stoically hacking away at my 500 page burden. First of all, Wade Davis, the popular anthropologist, spoke recently at U.B.C. Do yourself a huge favour and take a listen to his beautiful lecture. Put it on your iPod. Listen on the bus. Listen while you work.

Secondly, somebody recommended this documentary to me a short while ago: The Yes Men. About some internet savvy activists who set up spoof sites, such as this one, a spoof site of the official World Trade Organization home page. Check them out. See any differences?

Here is the documentary in it’s entirety. Break out the popcorn, this is a good one.

Well, back to work.

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With thunder in his voice

Posted on December 6th, 2006 by Antoine.
Categories: Videos, Politics.

This topic interests me because I lived for a year in South Korea in a little town close to the border. I went up to the border on more than one occasion and even have a piece of the barbed wire fence dividing North and South Korea. I’m waiting for re-unification. That piece of wire could be as momentous as having a piece of the Berlin wall. Anyway, if you have a minute to spare, check out this hilarious example of North Korean propaganda. In North Korea, legend has it that Kim Jong Il was born on top of a sacred mountain. The clouds opened up, and he came down from heaven…

In reality, Kim Jong Il was born in a Russian military camp. I should point out that the above video would be taken quite seriously in North Korea. If you have more time, then be sure to watch this fascinating documentary on Kim Jong Il and the Nuclear arms conflict. What I found especially fascinating is the way he infuses spiritual determinism into his political platform. He has set himself up as a sort of deity who is a father figure to the North Korean people. This representation is entirely congruent with Confucian ideology on hierarchical family structures where the nation is equal to a family and the father must always be obeyed.

Kim Jong Il started out in the communist party making propaganda movies and musicals and was said to have a lot of “girlfriends” in the industry. It’s incredible that there are still dictators like this in the world.

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Stanley Milgram’s unethical experiments on human torture

Posted on November 24th, 2006 by Antoine.
Categories: Videos, Science.

We watched this video in our research course today. I managed to track down the original 1962 video and am posting it here because it is absolutely fascinating. Ever wonder wonder how much pain somebody will afflict on another merely because they were told to do so by an authority figure? Stanley Milgram, observed the Nuremberg Trials and wondered the same thing. How could so many Nazis, seemingly decent, ordinary people, justify the slaughter of others. They said that they were “just following orders”. Stanley Milgram conducted the following experiment in the United States, confident that the results would show that Americans were vastly more humane than Europeans.

That wasn’t the case.


obeissance: milgram experiment
Uploaded by lejob

The results are startling and a grim reminder that people will do just about anything, just because they are told to do so. Even more disturbing is that this kind of research was allowed to take place back then.

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The politics of Tetris

Posted on November 19th, 2006 by Antoine.
Categories: Videos, Politics.

Here is a rivetting Channel 4 (BBC) documentary on the inventor of Tetris and the subsequent war between Nintendo and Atari over its console rights. This was so good I couldn’t tear myself away. This is not a documentary about a simple game, it’s a commentary on Russian bureaucracy and power plays between capitalism and communism.

From Russia with love

1 comment.

May the (organic) farm be with you

Posted on November 15th, 2006 by Antoine.
Categories: Videos.

This is one of the best promotional videos for organic vegetables that I have ever seen. And once again, let me stress that, with a little determination, even Star Wars geeks can write for Alive magazine.


Need I say more?

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Halloween

Posted on October 30th, 2006 by Antoine.
Categories: Videos.

I’m having some trouble uploading at the moment, but I will start the upgrades to this site soon. On Saturday we went to the Parade of the Lost Souls in East Vancouver. Here is a little taste of what it was like. It’s not the greatest video clip, but I wanted to experiment with posting clips.

2 comments.