At this week's research seminar, Daniel Williams (Swansea University), author of the forthcoming Transatlantic Exchange: African Americans and the Welsh 1845 – 1945 (University of Wales Press), will be talking about: "Paul Robeson, Jazz and the Cold War."
Wednesday February 10, A2.51, 4pm. All welcome.
Super Bowl 2010 has arrived, and the New Orleans Saints face off against the Indianapolis Colts later today in Miami. For the first time, the BBC is screening it live - 10.55pm on BBC1. So how are things shaping up?
At this week's Research Seminar, Geoffrey Morgan will be talking about "Black American G.I.s in WW2 Britain".
Wednesday February 3rd, A2.51, 4pm. All welcome.
R.I.P J. D. Salinger. The New Yorker leads the tributes, gathering encomiums and remembrances from, amongst many others, Dave Eggers, Wes Anderson and Lillian Ross. But maybe The Onion said it best:
In this big dramatic production that didn't do anyone any good (and was pretty embarrassing, really, if you think about it), thousands upon thousands of phonies across the country mourned the death of author J.D. Salinger, who was 91 years old for crying out loud.Also R.I.P Howard Zinn - a tribute by Alice Walker and NPR.
Alvin Langdon Coburn
Joseph Pennell
It's Martin Luther King day, and as The Caucus blog sagely notes, "For the first time, a black president will observe the holiday [...] President Obama and the first lady, Michelle Obama, will participate in a community service event in Washington. They will attend the annual “Let Freedom Ring!” concert at the Kennedy Center." Plenty of media outlets - like Salon - are using the event to meditate on Obama's first year as President, and to comment on the upcoming Senate race in Massachusetts.
Fox, on the other hand, leads with news of a new poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press:
70 percent of white Americans and 60 percent of black Americans “believe values held by blacks and white have become more similar in the past decade.” Those numbers are unprecedented. Clear majorities of black and white Americans are saying that the divide born or racial, cultural and educational divisions is closing fast.They also complain that "the New York Times and Washington Post did not find space in their news columns to tell this uplifting story." In the Guardian, however, Lola Adesioye responds:
A more revealing place to look, certainly more so than polls or media firestorms, is at the fact and figures of minority life in America. There is the 16% African-American unemployment rate, which is expected to soon reach a 25-year high. There is the fact that while the president works on passing a healthcare reform bill, people of colour continue to die at disproportionate rates from diseases such as cancer and heart disease. There is a US education system which continues to fail minority children. While the picture is not all doom and gloom it is clear that the issues which most negatively affect the quality of life of a large number of minority citizens still persist in spite of an African-American president.
Justice would be served, belatedly, if President Obama and Governor Kaine found a way to pardon a man whose heroic effort to free four million enslaved blacks helped start the war that ended slavery. Once and for all, rescue John Brown from the loony bin of history.Second, Senators John McCain and Peter King have been leading a campaign to secure a posthumous pardon for Jack Johnson:
"A posthumous pardon would represent a final vindication to Mr. Johnson's family and to the ignominious stain on our nation's history," McCain and King wrote, "and highlight the achievements of an athlete who was forced into the shadows of bigotry and prejudice" (via the Huffington Post).But even though both houses of Congress passed resolutions urging a Presidential pardon for Johnson, the Justice Department has recently made it clear that this will be unlikely.
Obama has yet to grant a single clemency petition. He also has yet to deny one. Among past presidents, only four - George Washington, John Adams, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush - have taken longer than Obama to grant their first pardon.Writing in the Huffington Post at the end of December, Jacob M. Appel went even further, putting out a call for mass clemency for America's incarcerated:
Our nation is long overdue for a mass clemency of non-violent felons and those unlikely to re-offend. Such a collective pardon and commutation would reunite hundreds of thousands of families, save billions of dollars in incarceration costs, and might foster a national spirit of forgiveness and reconciliation.Is there anyone that you think should receive a pardon, posthumous or otherwise?
Christmas has come early at Containing Multitudes. We are very proud to announce that as part of the Guest Post Ultra-Marathon that he undertook earlier this year, Josh Hanagarne, World's Strongest Librarian, has kindly agreed to write something for us.
Enjoy:
Action Heroes and Huge Arms: Misguided Strength in American Culture
By Josh Hanagarne, World’s Strongest Librarian
Recently I watched the latest installment of the Rambo series. An increasingly elderly Rambo was hiding in the bushes, watching a group of monstrous Cambodian thugs torment some peasants by making them walk through a minefield. Finally, as always happens with good old Rambo, he had had enough.
Suddenly, one of the Cambodians gets an arrow through his leg. He screams and reaches down to grab it. Another arrow flies through his head, knocking him off his feet…and then he falls onto a land mine and explodes. Rambo emerges from the tree line and notches another arrow, his biceps flexing in slow motion with the effort.
This is a truly American moment in an action movie.
Strength, size, and fitness
Many Americans equate physical size with strength. Our image of a “strong” man is often that of a puffed-up bodybuilder posing on a stage. These bodybuilders go to great lengths to make themselves more muscular. Many of these methods are unhealthy; some are illegal, such as steroid use. And yet, many of these 300 pound monsters wouldn’t be able to do five pull-ups if their lives depended on it.
Too often, the American concept of strength is to make a body look more athletic, while actually reducing its athletic abilities. What we call “fitness” is often perceived as having abs that would be at home on the cover of a magazine.
As one of my coaches has said over and over, fitness is the ability to do a specific task. That task could be throwing a discus, swinging a hammer, pushing a truck out of the mud, or any other number of things. But real fitness is not about appearance. It is about being cultivating strength that can be used.
Gyms
People were getting stronger long before the invention of fancy exercise machines. But walk into most gyms in America and your eyes will glaze over as you look at rows and rows of useless machines. Everything must be “cutting edge” and “new wave” and “hydro-this-or-that.” Argh. Nothing is necessary to get strong besides a barbell, some plates, and something to do pull-ups on.
Actually, not even that. There are people who have cultivated extraordinary strength with their own bodies alone. But it’s hard for anyone to make money doing bodyweight training, so they create products, the gyms buy them, and the people by and large accept them because they do not have the knowledge to sift the good fitness information from the bad.
The Heart of the problem
We worship action heroes instead of the guy who can do 30 pull-ups. We want to fight in the UFC instead of correcting our own posture and strengthening our bodies so that we can age gracefully. We prefer big arms to strong hearts and lungs, and six pack abs to a body that works well as a unit.
And the people at the top of the strength industry pretend that getting strong and healthy is confusing and esoteric. The normal American couldn’t possibly improve themselves without their help, and so they make a fortune selling magazines full of garbage information and supplements that do nothing.
Don’t get me wrong. I love Rambo, Conan, The Terminator, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rocky, John McClane, and GI Joe. But with the possible exception of Arnold, I don’t rely on any of them for my health needs.
Most Americans think that they need help to figure this stuff out. As long as they think that being on the cover of a magazine is the best proof that they are in shape, they’re not going to make much progress.
About the Author: Josh Hanagarne is the twitchy giant behind World’s Strongest Librarian, a blog about living with Tourette’s Syndrome, kettlebells, book recommendations, buying pants when you’re 6’8”, old-time strongman training, and much more. Please subscribe to Josh’s RSS Updates to stay in touch.
This Thursday, as part of Ian Laws' "American and Vietnam" module, novelist and Vietnam War veteran Edward Wilson (A River in May, The Envoy) will be talking about "The Vietnam War: Imagined and Remembered." All are welcome, so spread the word.
Thursday December 10, 11.00-12.00 in ARTS 01.03.
Two very different portraits of university life in America. First, as part of their Pinched: Tales from an Economic Downturn series, Salon presents "I live in a van down by Duke University", Ken Ilgunas' account of his experiences, well, living in a van by Duke University:
For some, van-dwelling may conjure images of pop-culture losers forced into desperate measures during troubled times: losers like Uncle Rico from "Napoleon Dynamite," or "Saturday Night Live's" Chris Farley who'd famously exclaim, "I live in a van down by the river!" before crashing through a coffee table, or perhaps the once ubiquitous inhabitants of multicolored VW buses, welcoming strangers with complimentary coke lines and invitations to writhing, hairy, back-seat orgies.In contrast, this week's This American Life profiles Penn State - recently crowned #1 party school in America:
In my van there were no orgies or coke lines, no overweight motivational speakers. To me, the van was what Kon-Tiki was to Heyerdahl, what the GMC van was to the A-Team, what Walden was to Thoreau. It was an adventure.
Living in a van was my grand social experiment. I wanted to see if I could -- in an age of rampant consumerism and fiscal irresponsibility -- afford the unaffordable: an education.
So we wondered: What is it like to be at the country's top party school? This American Life producers spent a recent football weekend at Penn State to figure this out. There, we learned the definition of "fracket" (think frat plus jacket); the best way to clean up beer cans after a big party (snow shovel); and how hard it is to get college kids to drink less (really hard).So how does these stories compare to your experiences, at home or across the pond?
