Pangea Day — sharing stories worldwide

Posted on May 11, 2008 at 4:00 pm

The fist Pangea Day was every bit as heart-warming, inspiring, and thrilling as I had hoped. I was privileged to participate at the Epicenter Church, a new Christian Faith Community located in Rosslyn, Virginia, just across the Potomac River from Washington DC. Pastor Paul Nixon and worship leader Ward Ferguson gave us a very warm welcome. We were a very small group, only nine of us, but through the huge screen we felt very much a part of the thousands world-wide who came together around the modern-day equivalent of a campfire to share our stories.
Pangea Day was like a cross between Live Aid, Woodstock, Oprah, and the Disney park ride “It’s a Small World After All.” It was the dream of film-maker Jehane Noujaim to bring people around the world together by allowing them to share their stories via film. Anthropologist Donald Brown spoke about his inventory of “human universals,” the things that connect all people in all cultures, from rituals and customs around meals, gift-giving, and life cycle events to sharing, insults, and the expression of feelings like mourning, competition, love — even tickling. There were live appearances, musical performances, and interviews, some a little awkward, cheesy, or glitchy, but all well-intentioned, and the four-hour presentation centered on the sharing of stories from film-makers around the world.
Each of the films is only a few minutes long and all are well worth watching. One of my favorites was “The Ball,” the first film shown, from Mozambique, about boys in need of a soccer ball. The funniest included “The Slap” and “Elevator Music,” but the one that provoked the biggest reaction from our group was “Laughter Club,” a mini-documentary about groups around the world who meet just to practice Laughter Yoga. The most poignant and moving films included “Dancing Queen” from India and brief segments from “Operation Homecoming,” with commentary from an American soldier serving in Iraq and Noujaim’s Combatants for Peace, with former soldiers from Israel and Palestine who are working together to find reconciliation and peace.
The most romantic included the wordless “A Thousand Words” and “Mutual Recognition,” an excerpt from Noujaim’s own film that includes an interview with a Sufi couple about what makes their marriage strong. Their message — through words and through their expressions as they look at and listen to one another — is deeply inspiring. Perhaps the film that best summed up the day’s message was “Wallyball,” a mini-documentary about a wall dividing a beach along the U.S./Mexican border. As helicopters and soldiers maintain national security by keeping these neighbors apart, the people enjoying their time on the beach develop a volleyball game across the divider. Be sure to watch for the ice cream truck. It reminds me of one of my very favorite short animated films, “The Hat,” by John and Faith Hubley.
Many of the stories affirmed the universality and connection of human experience. Topics like anger, love, and hope were addressed with brief comments by people all over the world. Some of the stories were about experiences so devastating most of us are unable even to begin to contemplate the devastation and trauma they inflict. Ishmael Beah
spoke of his two years as child soldier in Sierra Leone and his struggle to recover his humanity and transcend the experience, to “learn to transform the war experiences to they were no longer a burden but instructional tools.” Israeli Robi Damelin
and Palestinian Ali Abu Awwad held hands as they came on stage to talk about how the killing of their family members led them to forgive and seek forgiveness and to work for reconciliation and peace.
In a live interview with the former soldiers who appeared in the “Combatants for Peace” film, the Israeli veteran revealed that hours before his mother and brother were shot in a peace demonstration, a powerful reminder that there are daunting challenges ahead. But his appearance, even after that incident, with his new friend and former enemy was an even more powerful reminder that while it may be a long and difficult journey, we have taken the first steps.
Please take a moment to watch some of the films. And make some of your own to keep this conversation going.

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The Return of the Bob!

Posted on May 6, 2008 at 6:00 am

Silent star Louise Brooks had an iconic bob haircut that gave her image a power and vitality that almost a century later still seems both classic and contemporary. Two movies opening this month give us heroines with hairstyles that hark back to Brooks’ sleek look.
In “Speed Racer,” Christina Ricci plays Trixie, the courageous and devoted romantic interest for the title character.
And in the new Indiana Jones movie, Cate Blanchett sports a bob for her role as one of the movie’s villains. cate%20blanchett.jpg
But perhaps in addition to Louise Brooks, there may be one other iconic inspiration….View image

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Burger King promotes inappropriate film

Posted on May 3, 2008 at 8:00 pm

It infuriates me when fast food companies promote PG-13 films by giving away tie-in toys to children. Burger King is now giving away toys for children as young as three to promote “Iron Man” a movie with “intense sequences of sci-fi action and violence” (according to the Motion Picture Association’s rating board) and opens with a joke about the main character having sex with twelve different Maxim cover models. These toys are intended to get kids to want to see the film. They are also intended to encourage parents to think that the movie is appropriate for children. Oh, and the movie has some jarring and intrusive product placement when the main character says what he most wants when he returns home is a cheeseburger and we next see him holding something that says Burger King.
The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood has called on Burger King to stop giving Iron Man toys to children. CCFC’s Director Dr Susan Linn, author of The Case for Make Believe, said, “When it comes to marketing to kids, Burger King wants to have it their way; linking its brand to a blockbuster film clearly trumps any concerns about children’s wellbeing.” You can let Burger King know how you feel about this issue by calling 305-378-3535 Monday-Friday 9-5 Eastern time.

Talking to kids about Miley Cyrus

Posted on April 29, 2008 at 4:47 pm

Fifteen-year-olds make some poor choices. But while they may feel like the whole world is watching, usually it is just family and friends. Miley Cyrus is not just a fifteen-year-old. She is not even just a superstar, though she did have the top grossing concert tour in the country last year. She is also a brand. Over one billion dollars worth of merchandise featuring Miley and the character she plays on The Disney Channel’s “Hannah Montana.” The success of those products depends on her squeaky clean image and parents have been reassured repeatedly that Miley is a sensible, responsible girl with grounded parents and that she will not create the embarrassment of former Disney stars like Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, and “High School Musical’s” Vanessa Hudgens. But Miley has hit the headlines with some photos taken by Annie Leibovitz for Vanity Fair. By the tabloid Lohan/Spears standards and even the far lesser escapade of Hudgens, whose private nude photo for a boyfriend made it onto the Internet, the Cyrus flap is quite mild. The photo that has attracted the most publicity shows her bare back, holding a sheet up to her front.
Miley has apologized with a statement released by her publicist. “I took part in a photo shoot that was supposed to be ‘artistic’ and now, seeing the photographs and reading the story, I feel so embarrassed. I never intended for any of this to happen and I apologize to my fans who I care so deeply about.”
This is an opportunity for parents to talk to young children who are Miley fans — and to listen to what they have to say — about some important issues. First, make sure they know that everyone makes mistakes and it is how we respond to them that matters. We take responsibility for our actions (including apologies as appropriate), do our best to fix whatever we can, and learn to do better. Ask them why they think Miley made this mistake and what they think of the way she responded.
Let them know that it is all right for them to continue to like her. Loyalty to friends and family is an important value, and all of us need to learn to forgive and be forgiven for our mistakes. But it is also all right for them to like her less if they believe that she made some bad choices.
Remind them that they should never feel that they need to do what an adult tells them if it makes them uncomfortable — even if the adult is a famous photographer working for an important magazine. We want them to feel safe but we also want them to know that not everyone is as protective of them as those who love them. And let them know that bodies are nothing to be ashamed of, but a photograph that may seem perfectly innocent to the one whose picture is being taken may be seen differently, especially if the person in the photo is 15, not 10. In the era of Facebook and YouTube, a reminder that we have to think about what is in the minds of the viewers, especially strangers, and not just the people making the picture is a good idea as well.

Expelled: Intelligence Welcome (part 2)

Posted on April 21, 2008 at 6:00 pm

Ben Stein has accomplished his goal — he has people talking about how we decide what will be taught and studied as science. If he has accomplished the feat of getting people thinking and listening as well, that will be a great achievement.
The problem is that the people at the farthest reaches of the two approaches to the issue are not just not listening; they are not speaking the same language. One side says: science is about what we can test, measure, and prove according to settled and established principles of the scientific method. The other side says: we think that should include the idea of Intelligent Design. One side says it would be like teaching French in geometry or going to a pizza parlor and ordering a car. The other side says that those distinctions are not important. Both sides feel impatient and not listened to.
Ben Stein is trying to make the argument about freedom of speech instead of the scientific validity of the concept. He says that Intelligent Design might be right or wrong, but why not include it in the conversation? The science community says that there are many ideas we do not teach in science: astrology, phrenology, alchemy. For them, this is not an issue of freedom of speech. Intelligent Design is not excluded because people do not like the idea. It is excluded because it cannot be tested according to the scientific method. Intelligent Design is deduced from the complexity of biological structures and the unresolved areas that science has yet to (and may never) reach. Until it can be tested, measured, and proven according to the same protocols that all of science is constantly subjected to, it is excluded. Not every exclusion is an act of censorship. Sometimes it is the exercise of judgment based on the merits. As Valerie Tarico (raised as a fundamentalist, now a writer for exchristian.net, the Huffington Post and other publications, said, “somebody needs to gently remind Stein and his creationist cronies that they haven’t been expelled from school, they flunked.”
Or, as noted in the Kitzmiller decision:

hile ID arguments may be true, a proposition on which the Court takes no position, ID is not science. We find that ID fails on three different levels, any one of which is sufficient to preclude a determination that ID is science.
They are: (1) ID violates the centuries-old ground rules of science by invoking and permitting supernatural causation;
(2) the argument of irreducible complexity, central to ID, employs the same flawed and illogical contrived dualism that doomed creation science in the 1980’s; and
(3) ID’s negative attacks on evolution have been refuted by the scientific community.
As we will discuss in more detail below, it is additionally important to note that ID has failed to gain acceptance in the scientific community, it has not generated peer-reviewed publications, nor has it been the subject of testing and research. Expert testimony reveals that since the scientific revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries, science has been limited to the search for natural causes to explain natural phenomena.

Intelligent Design supporters might like to change the scope or definition of science, but until they do, or until they find a way to subject Intelligent Design concepts to the kinds of tests required by the scientific method, they will not be able to call it science.
Both the people in the movie and the people criticizing the movie have taken some extreme positions. Stein tries to tie Darwin to the Holocaust. The twisted minds behind Nazi genocide perverted any ideas they used. Some on the side of science go to extremes in arguing that because science cannot prove there is a God, the concept is a “delusion.” These are a distraction from the real question and only show that the issue is one that can inspire a lot of emotion.
The real question is not whether Intelligent Design is true or even whether it is an idea worth studying and discussing. The only question at issue here is whether it is science, and both science and law have determined that it is not.
One thing that troubles me in particular is when people dismiss the other side by name-calling, most absurdly claiming that Judge John E. Jones III, who decided the Kitzmiller v. Dover case (finding that Intelligent Design is not science) is a liberal activist who parroted (one commenter even said “plagiarized from”) the ACLU because they do not like his decision. Jones is a Republican who was appointed by George W. Bush. As all judges do, he relied on the materials submitted by the parties to draft his decision. It is activist judges who depart from the filings made by the parties to create their own arguments in a judicial decision.
Another thing that troubles me is the inability or unwillingness of some people on both sides to state the other side’s position in a way that is acceptable to them. That is an indispensable element of making a credible argument. You can tell a great deal about the validity of an argument and the credibility of the person making it by how he or she treats the other side. Sarcasm? Insults? Distortion? Generally indicators of uncertainty and emotion triumphing over logic.
As I noted in my comments, I do not see a conflict between the scientific understanding of the origins of life and Intelligent Design. To me, one picks up where the other leaves off. Scientists admit that they do not know what force was behind the origin of life and are unlikely to find out — using the scientific method. Intelligent Design is one way to think about what the possibilities are. One is science and one is religion, philosophy, and metaphysics. Put it this way: Whether God created life is the subject of philosophy and religion. Why God created life is the subject of philosophy, religion, political science, literature, anthropology, and more. Science is not about the whether and the why of creation but the how.
We are not going to settle the argument here. But I ask the people who care so much about this issue to think carefully about what it means to know something and how we choose what and who we believe. And I ask them to remember that it is easier to listen to those who express their views with kindness, patience, and respect.

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