New documentary exposes ugliness of modeling

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"End of the Line" documentary takes on overfishing

A new documentary by director Rupert Murray follows journalist Charles Clover as he travels the world investigating the state of the world's ocean fisheries.  His findings are dire: an end to seafood by 2048 if current practices continue.

So, grim facts, stern warnings, and adventure on the high seas.  Should make for good viewing.

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"Food, Inc": If you knew, you might not want to eat it

A new documentary from Michael Pollan (In Defense of Food), Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation) and director Robert Kenner takes on the US food supply-chain is due to be released in June.  I have a feeling we'll want to skip the popcorn while watching this one.

 

The film's website is here, and here's a glowing review on Civil Eats.

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Douglas and Stone team up for "Wall Street 2"

We have re-run many other details of the financial scandals and panics of the late Eighties; so why not redo the film that symbolized them all?

Hat tip to Tim Haab at the

Environmental Economics

blog, who also shares the clip here from the original film: Douglas's "Greed is good" speech.

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MTV remaking itself for a new, less-than-gilded age

In the face of slipping ratings, the boys and girls at MTV and Viacom think that the "millennial" generation is looking for more substance, less escapism, in their television. 

 

While they're not exactly dropping their current crop of escapist, cynical fare (such as The Hills and, dear Lord, Paris Hilton's My New BFF)  they are introducing new shows featuring actual performing arts, altruism and civic engagement. 

 

Together with their falling ratings, MTV executives looked at sociological research that indicated that today's MTV audience is more socially engaged, less cynical, and less materialistic than those coming of age a decade ago.  NYTimes: "In the era that was passing, [MTV General Manger Stephen] Friedman said, “the humor was more cynical, the idea of community seemed earnest and not cool. It’s the opposite now.”  

 

Sadly, there's nothing to indicate that this change of direction is permanent for MTV: the current cultural shift is compared by Van Toffler, President of MTV Networks, to the late 1990's shift from Grunge to Britney Spears.  Which is to say, when a new, shallow, materialistic, escapist zeitgeist arrives, MTV will be the first to stuff the flannel shirts of altrusim in the trash.

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Nationalized banks: wait your f@#king turn.

From Funny or Die, a glimpse of the new, DMV-like Nationalized Citibank. WARNING foul, filthy language ensues...

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Film: The Age of Stupid

March 15th sees the carbon neutral launch of a climate change film that aims to reach the parts other climate change films have not.

The premiere will take place in London's Leicester Square and simultaneously at 64 cinemas across the country.

"Pete Postlethwaite, who stars in the film as an archivist in 2050 looking back at the opportunities mankind had to stop climate change, will arrive in a solar-powered car. Other celebrities will arrive in electric vehicles, low-CO2 cars or on bicycles at the premiere on 15 March. Stars will be discouraged from flying to the premiere to avoid accusations of hypocrisy after the recent spat between transport secretary Geoff Hoon and actor Emma Thompson over Heathrow's third runway."

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The Second Life of Cardboard: Repurposing Top 3

Refreshing ways of breathing new life into cardboard beyond the obvious call for recycling – because recycling may be smart, but repurposing into something of greater cultural value is, well, far smarter.

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Get a life, get some sleep

Just because we can work round the clock nowadays, it doesn't mean we should. Sleep researcher Neil Stanley says many of us are working too many hours, and working the wrong hours, and are paying a high price for it:

"Good sleep is vital for good physical mental and emotional health - but unfortunately we seem to live in a society that has forgotten this fact.

In terms of healthy living, sleep is as important as good diet and exercise.

Why do we go through life feeling this tired?

Poor or inadequate sleep can have serious consequences on overall health and wellbeing and has been shown to lead to lower immunity, poor performance and mood changes.

In the longer term, inadequate sleep is associated with a greater risk of a number of diseases, such as heart disease, depression and diabetes."

Being able to access the internet 24/7 means that increasing numbers of us can work 24/7, either on our jobs or household and personal tasks like billpaying and correspondance:

"When I was growing up in the 1970s, Tomorrow's World each week promised us a future where, due to advances in technology, there would be so much leisure time that we would have to come up with new ways of amusing ourselves.

Unfortunately what was created by all this new technology was the 24/7 society.

Technology never sleeps, and thus people can work around the clock - whether they are in the office or at home.

The long hours, information overload and stresses associated with 21st Century living negatively affect our sleep which, in turn, is detrimental to our health, work performance and even our relationships."

In addition to the health risks posed by lack of sleep, decreased productivity and safety also result. Numerous studies have proved that working longer certainly does not translate into higher productivity, and studies of worker and driver safety repeatedly demonstrate that being tired is as dangerous as being drunk:

"It has been reported that tired drivers now cause more deaths on European roads than drunk drivers, and yet whilst it has become socially unacceptable to be drunk behind the wheel or in the workplace it is almost a matter of pride that we believe we can function properly when tired.

Yet you would not want a drunken surgeon operating on you or a drunken train driver taking you to work, so why would you accept a tired one? "

Finally, of course, there is the damage that lack of sleep does to your work/life balance, your social life, and let's face it, your love life. Spaced-out, cranky people make terrible parents, friends and lovers, after all.


There are also important consequences of poor or inadequate sleep which negatively affect the way we feel and perform during the day.

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Read: In Defense of Food

Michael Pollan (The Omnivore's Dilemma) has a new book out, and in it, he advises us to Eat Food. Yes, Mr. Pollan, I already do that, one might be tempted to answer.

But Pollan goes on: from his website: "[Most] of what we're consuming today is not food, and how we're consuming it -- in the car, in front of the TV, and increasingly alone -- is not really eating. Instead of food, we're consuming "edible foodlike substances" -- no longer the products of nature but of food science. Many of them come packaged with health claims that should be our first clue they are anything but healthy. In the so-called Western diet, food has been replaced by nutrients, and common sense by confusion. The result is what Michael Pollan calls the American paradox: The more we worry about nutrition, the less healthy we seem to become."

Pollan advocates a return to eating simple, unprocessed food, prepared by hand, while sitting at a table, preferably with loved ones. And in the process we should pay attention to where our food is coming from and how it is produced:

"Pollan proposes a new (and very old) answer to the question of what we should eat that comes down to seven simple but liberating words: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. By urging us to once again eat food, he challenges the prevailing nutrient-by-nutrient approach -- what he calls nutritionism -- and proposes an alternative way of eating that is informed by the traditions and ecology of real, well-grown, unprocessed food. Our personal health, he argues, cannot be divorced from the health of the food chains of which we are part."

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