 |
| Giraffe at the Henry Vilas Zoo Madison, WI August 2010. Credit: Erin Podolak |
Now I know special interest stories are important, getting the personal angle that appeals to the audience’s emotional side is a great way to sell as story, but now the BBC is writing about giraffe love? I think everyone will sleep easier tonight knowing the Gerald the Giraffe has a new girlfriend. To think people are worried about the future of journalism. Bachelor giraffe in bristol finally gets a girlfriend.
I was greatly amused by the article “Moonlighting As A Conjurer of Chemicals” by Natalie Angier for the New York Times. It is about Sir Isaac Newton and how in addition to giving us the laws of gravity and inventing calculus among other solid scientific findings, he was also very interested in alchemy.
Yup, alchemy – turning lead into gold? I liked the article because Angier did a good job of describing why someone of Newton’s genius would believe that alchemy is real. I also love science history, so overall that probably explains why I found this fascinating. I also love the title.
I also find this greatly amusing, and I was reminded of it by reading about Isaac Newton:
 |
| Smallpox Virus. Source: Wikimedia Commons. |
Scientists are reporting that the rinderpest virus has been wiped out. This marks the second virus to be eradicated by humans, the first was smallpox. Although, its not really eradicated because scientists, governments, and god knows who else have samples of small pox, and I’m sure will keep samples of rinderpest too. The BBC Article: Rinderpest virus has been wiped out, scientists say.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about why I chose to specialize in science. Whenever people ask, I typically tell them it is because I was really awful at science itself. This is only a half truth. I was absolutely awful at Chemistry and Physics, but I have always loved and succeeded in Biology and Environmental Science. I know my difficulty in chem and physics was directly tied to the trouble I have with math.
Today in J620 we watched the documentary Seeing Is Believing: Handicams, Human Rights, and the News by Directors Kateria Cizek and Peter Wintonick. The film is a little old, and because it is about technology it is thus a little outdated, but some of the general principles are still pretty interesting.
Video has tremendous power in terms of reporting human rights issues, both for good and for ill. In the film journalist Joey Lozano follows the Nakamata, a group in the Philippines that are given a video camera by the human rights group Witness, to help document their struggle to reclaim their ancestral lands from sugar cane producers. Lozano serves as a go between for the native people and the media, teaching them how to use their camera and helping them take their footage to the mainstream media in the Philippines to get attention for their cause.
This would be the good side of the power of video, it helped the Nakamata document violence that was being perpetrated against them, and helped to ward off violence once it was well known that they had a camera available. On the flip side, the film also showed that violent extremist groups also have access to video and use it to recruit new members and spread their own messages. The film specifically showed videos made by the Taliban and Neo-Nazi groups.
It was an interesting film, but at the same time I don’t think its exactly a revolutionary idea that video is a powerful communication medium. Since the film was made, I think that film has just increased in power for the good and the bad groups around the world. In doing my own research on the film, I also learned that Lozano died in 2005 of cancer. Its sad in its own right, but in the context that a disease took down a man that survived an assassination attempt, I find his story particularly moving.