Arcticle about the dropping cost of Solar Power cells:
http://www.salon.com/tech/htww/2008/06/23/grid_parity/index.html?source=rss&aim=/tech/htww
-m
Monday, June 23, 2008
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Tank Man
Can't make beer today, but wanted to post a tidbit for discussion to the blog, anyway, that was fascinating to me on multiple fronts.
China is obviously on a lot of people's minds these days, and not just the people in China. I happened upon an excellent film on PBS program Frontline last night entitled "Tank Man", which explored the history of the Tienanman massacre, and speculated on the fate and whereabouts of the man in the famous images from that event ... not only in terms of personal history, but in terms of China's current economic and political state.
There was a very interesting contrast drawn in the fim between the student uprisings of 1989 and the response of the government since then, focused around mostly economic reforms. When you really examine the impact of these reforms upon the average worker, though, the contast with what life is like for the average citzen or worker really contrasts with the original spirit of "Communism" and workers rights, to say the least.
The other fascinating topic here, tied to this theme, was the censorship of media present in China today. Probalby not suprising to anyone, I know ... but it's effectiveness was astounding in an interview with a group of students from the same Bejing university that formed the heart of the Tienenman protest group just 20 years before. The fimmaker showed these modern students a copy of the infamous "Tank Man" picture, and not one of them recognized it or had much idea what it was about ... or professed to, at least. Helps you appreciate how much we take for granted what we can Google, vs what they can't.
Some interesting examination of the role American complies such as Cisco, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google played and continue to play, which is probably old news to many of you.
Here is a link to an interview with the filmmaker, which should give you a pretty good feel for the topics discussed, including trying to balance fair and truthful journalism with Chinese handlers while filming over there.
You can also watch the full movie from that PBS site, if you are so inclined. It was over an hour and a half long, but very interesting bit of recent history and perspective on China.
One final topic just briefly touched on in the documentary ... to many in the West, the image above exemplifies resistance against military force against all odds ... but very briefly, the Chinese government itself used the images on broadcasts to make the case of restraint on it's part ... after all ... they did NOT run over Tank Man ... and they certainly could have. Wheter or not he was executed afterward is a matter of open debate.
Still ... would coallition forces in Iraq show such restraint if a "peaceful citizen" stood in front of a US tank?
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