6th Annual Wild and Scenic Film Festival
The Wild and Scenic Film Festival arrives to awe and inspire in Ventura tomorrow Friday March 13 and Saturday March 14 at the Poinsettia Pavilion on Foothill Road in Ventura.
Hosted by the Ventura Hillsides Conservancy, the film festival celebrates outdoor adventures and human interactions with nature–and serves as a membership drive. Join or renew at the $50 level and get four tickets to the show. Individual tickets are $10 each–if any are left. Read more…
Wrecking Crew Gets Wide Release March 13
Finally, after years of waiting, The Wrecking Crew, a truly great musical documentary, is being released in theaters on March 13.
The Wrecking Crew may have been the greatest band there ever was, and yet it was never really a band at all, writes Ron Wells.
For this Wrecking Crew was the name given to the fantastic studio musicians living and working in Los Angeles in the the 1960’s when rock and roll was really beginning to take off. The songs they worked on are an iPod full of hits that is the sound track for everyone who grew up during this period, or even for those who grew up much later and have still heard the music played on radio, television, or even YouTube.
ACLU Sues NSA; Books Tackle Surveillance
Thank you for your childhood.
Did you know that every time you email someone overseas, the NSA copies and searches your message? Whether anyone has done anything wrong or not? And that the NSA can hold on to your email for three years and or longer? Or that the NSA records EVERY single phone call made in TWO countries?
- What’s next?
- Are we headed to a dystopia future as depicted in 1984 or The Giver?
- If so, how fast? Are we really safer when we give up our privacy?
As we know from Edward Snowden and the documentary CitizenFour, the NSA has already invaded our privacy far more than most people know or are comfortable with.
According to the ACLU, the NSA routinely seizes and copies the communications of millions of ordinary Americans: Read more…
Surveillance States Place Us In Prison
“Humans can be manipulated to obey. As information and communications technology creates a surveillance state, I’m worried that fear of terrorism will create a system where police officers and soldiers will obey the computer-generated decisions that appear on their optical head-mounted displays,” writes John Twelve Hawks in his Salon.com essay “New surveillance states have placed us in an invisible prison”
In “New surveillance states have placed us in an invisible prison,” John Twelve Hawks discusses Edward Snowden’s terrifying revelations about how the National Security Agency and Great Britain’s GCHQ use spy technology on all citizens and how various corporations monitor our activities as well in order to market more efficiently to us.
Edward Snowden’s story has been told effectively in the Oscar winning documentary CitizenFour (reviewed here; watch here.
“Anyone who steps back for a minute and observes our modern digital world might conclude that we have destroyed our privacy in exchange for convenience and false security,” Twelve Hawks writes.
“Thoughtful women and men on every point of the political spectrum are beginning to realize that surveillance technology has shifted the balance of power between institutions and individuals.
“So what are we supposed to do?” he asks. “How can we avoid becoming just another bar-coded object tracked within a World of Things?”
Twelve Hawks argues we need to stand up and fight against it before it is too late:
“The new surveillance states have placed us in an invisible prison,” Twelve Hawks concludes. “If we wish to break free, we need only to step forward and open the door.”
Upper left hand corner
- Your student ID number NOT your name
- Instructor’s last name
Introduction
- Mention author and title of the article
- Thesis that is a response to one of the topics above
Body Paragraphs
- Topic sentences
- Specific examples and support from the reading and your own experience
- Quote or paraphrase article at least once in the body
- Your analysis of the evidence
Transitions
- Between paragraphs
- Within paragraphs
Conclusion
Length
- 2 pages handwritten
- 1.5 pages typed (double-spaced)
As today Sunday March 8, 2015 is International Women’s Day, and as each Sunday I post an Interesting fact about the number 53, I went in search for an interesting fact about the number 53 and women.
And I found it! In fact, I found a few. But there’s no denying that the most important fact I found is that women comprise 53% of the US population (learned that here). Read more…
Give Up Cold Indifferent Heart for Lent says Pope + Ojai Mardi Gras Party for a Purpose
“Our heart grows cold,” wrote Pope Francis in the 2015 Lenten message. “As long as I am relatively healthy and comfortable, I don’t think about those less well off. Today,
this selfish attitude of indifference has taken on global proportions, to the extent that we can speak of a globalization of indifference.
It is a problem which we, as Christians, need to confront.” Read more…
Recipe: Pecan Pie with Rum and Chocolate
The Depression and the Dust Bowl sent my grandparents’ families to California, but they never changed how they ate: fried chicken, flour gravy, biscuits, and cornbread with sorghum molasses—and pecans. Read more…
Wish me luck! Today I applied for a World Nomads scholarship to travel to Sri Lanka as a food blogger!
If you are looking for a few good books to read this spring, books where the authors are exploring issues of identity, crossing borders, overcoming obstacles, and living living sin fronteras, and look no further than these:
- Borderlands/La Frontera by Gloria Anzaldúa
- Violence Girl by Alice Bag
- Life by the Cup by Zhena Muzyka
- Always Running by Luis Rodriguez
- Wild by Cheryl Strayed
Creativity: The Practice of Our Own Nature
Billy Collins, US Poet Laureate 2001-2003, says that “Poetry offers the highest level of imaginative freedom of any writing. It doesn’t have to stick to its topic.”
“The poet seeks to get lost in the woods of his own imagination,” according to Collins.
art predator 