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“How to Boil a Frog” – the movie
Jon Cooksey, How to Boil A Frog
Welcome to How to Boil a Frog! An online funhouse of video, info & opportunities to make friends, fun and trouble while saving civilization! Scroll down (and down and down) to find our always-changing collection of 5’s – 5 movies, 5 articles, 5 books and so on. Only what you need to know in the time you’ve got to know it! And you’ll also find:
FREE mini-interviews with experts who’ll tell you who’s screwing us, how much trouble we are REALLY in, and what we need to do to save our butts.
FREE mini-documentaries on some of our local issues, done with the HTBAF brand of snarky humor…and micro-documentaries for those that are really pressed for time!
FREE Flash animation on the topix of the day
& your OWN CHANCE TO CHANGE THE WORLD – join the People’s Video Project and help start a revolution…because that’s all we’ve got time for!
* And don’t forget to sign up for our mailing list so you’ll know when more FREE goodies are coming up – plus you’ll be first to get news about the
How to Boil a Frog movie! We’re in production now for release in 2009.
Click these links for:
Info on what the movie’s about
A list of experts we’ve interviewed – all will eventually show up on the site!
Your very own downloadable HTBAF movie poster!
(May 2009)
Just watched a rough version of the coming full-length documentary “How to Boil a Frog” – it looks like a classic. We hope to get some reviews posted in the next few weeks. Jon Cooksey tells us that trailer will be on his site soon.
You can get a flavor for the movie by looking at the clips and weird stuff on the site. Cooksey is a comic and TV writer who has a sophisticated understanding of peak oil, etc. and some dynamite ideas about social change.
Thanks to Kathy McMahon (“PeakShrink”) for the tip!
-BA
Science Fiction From Below
Mark Engler, Foreign Policy in Focus
Tapping into a long tradition of politicized science fiction, the young, New-York-based filmmaker Alex Rivera has brought to theaters a movie that reflects in new ways on the disquieting realities of the global economy. Sleep Dealer, his first feature film, has opened in New York and Los Angeles, and will show in 25 cities throughout the country this spring.
Set largely on the U.S.-Mexico border, Sleep Dealer depicts a world in which borders are closed but high-tech factories allow migrant workers to plug their bodies into the network to provide virtual labor to the North. The drama that unfolds in this dystopian setting delves deep into issues of immigration, labor, water rights, and the nature of sustainable development.
… M.E.: Your main character, Memo Cruz, is from rural Mexico, from Oaxaca. In many ways, the village that we see on film is very similar to many poor, remote communities today. It doesn’t necessarily look like how we think about the future at all. What was your conception of how economic globalization would affect communities like these?
A.R.: One of the things that fascinates me about the genre is that, explicitly or not, science fiction is always partly about development theory. So when Spielberg shows us Washington, DC with 15-lane traffic flowing all around the city, he’s putting forward a certain vision of development.
Sleep Dealer starts in Oaxaca, and to think about the future of Oaxaca, you have to think about how so-called “development” has been happening there and where might it go. And it’s not superhighways and skyscrapers. That would be ridiculous. So, in the vision I put forward, most of the landscape remains the same. The buildings look older. Most of the streets still aren’t paved. And yet there are these tendrils of technology that have infiltrated the environment. So instead of an old-fashioned TV, there is a high-definition TV.
… a lot of times we use the word “futuristic” to describe things that are kind of explosions of capital, like skyscrapers or futuristic cities. We do not think of a cornfield as futuristic, even though that has as much to do with the future as does the shimmering skyscraper.
M.E.: In what sense?
A.R.: In the sense that we all need to eat. In the sense that the ancient cornfields in Oaxaca are the places that replenish the genetic supply of corn that feeds the world. Those fields are the future of the food supply.
For every futuristic skyscraper, there’s a mine someplace where the ore used to build that structure was taken out of the ground. That mine is just as futuristic as the skyscraper. So, I think Sleep Dealer puts forward this vision of the future that connects the dots, a vision that says that the wealth of the North comes from somewhere.
(13 May 2009)
Also at ZNet.
Dating Guide for the Left-Wing Writer
Paula Cerni, Dissident Voice
Writing, as Virginia Woolf said, is like sex. You may try your hand at it, but to do it well takes flair. These days, however, left-wing authors get pitiful results. Let’s face it — the communist, the socialist, the anarchist and the plain radical aren’t the hottest material around, partly because they’ve messed up too many times, and partly because of the Che Guevara t-shirts.
In desperation I’ve put together this brief guide — just follow three basic steps to win back your reputation in style.
Step 1: Look for a Serious Relationship
You’re a mature and serious author, not a serial dater, so don’t be so self-centered that you forget why you write. Write only about things you really care about. If you do, you’ll want to say something true and valuable about them; if you don’t, you’ll turn everybody off.
Sorry, but you can’t cover up a poor performance by going on and on — a text that is long as well as dull is unbearable. Gary Provost said it — ‘writing gets more interesting as it acquires precision, not length.’
If your commitment slacks, you need to work harder. Do your research. The more you know about your topic, the more irresistible you’ll find it.
(11 May 2009)
Advice holds true for all writers, conservatives and peak oilers included. I would add:
- No rants! They may be therapeutic to write, but quickly become boring.
- Look for a subject or a slant that is uniquely yours – your upbringing, job, special interest.
- Tell stories (assuming they have a point and are related to the subject).
Technical pieces need a little more structure:
- Introduce the subject in the first few paragraphs. Tell us why we should bother reading the piece – why is it important to us?
- Sum up the main points and their implications in a conclusion.
- Define technical terms and abbreviations.
- Explain the meaning of graphs and equations. The paraphrasing does not need be exact – just a general idea for us non-math types.
-BA
Author: Much of the public just doesn’t “get” science
Mark Rahner, Seattle Times
Chris Mooney, author of the forthcoming “Unscientific America — How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens our Future,” will be involved in a panel discussion this evening at the Pacific Science Center.
—
… Q: What are the most serious examples — apart from presidential candidates who indicated they didn’t believe in evolution?
A: Evolution is one of the screaming-out issues where you’ve got clear scientific illiteracy, in the sense that almost half the public believes that the Earth is less than 10,000 years old. Even more disconcerting are polls showing that Democrats and Republicans are completely divided about the nature of reality. If you’re a Republican and you’ve had a higher education, you’re much more likely to believe that global warming isn’t real. If you’re a Democrat or independent with higher education, you’re much more likely to believe that it is.
Q: But science exists independently of whether or not you believe in it.
A: Oh, absolutely. And the problem is that people don’t think that they’re anti-science, but there’s so much misinformation out there that they can basically go and shop online for any scientific opinion they want, including one that’s completely contrary to the mainstream understanding, and then they’ll quote it back to you self-righteously, thinking that they know something.
Q: The Bush administration suppressed climate-change science and both blocked and misinformed people about stem-cell research. But you contend Obama’s pledge to restore science to its rightful place doesn’t automatically add up to a happy ending. Don’t you believe in hope?
A: [Laughs.] I’m all for hope and I have great hope in the administration. … Long-term problems relating to education, the role of science in the media, the evolution battle … it’s not one that the president has shown any inclination to wade into, but it’s one of the longest-standing science risks that we have in the country. So it’s great that they’re going to give more money to science, that they’re going to improve science education, that they’re going to rejigger the government process so that science can’t be misused. But in terms of science and the American public, that’s a bigger issue.
(14 May 2009)
