Bg's Random Ramblings And Thoughts 3

[AnneLine]

And... in case anyone has not seen it, the movie Gettysburg is one of the most profound movies I have ever seen.

 

I agree with you, BG, about the comment from Gen. Pickett.  

 

I also love the story that after the end of the war, a black man attended a church service and went up to receive communion.  (this would have been in an Episcopal Church, I believe...)  Without a word, General Lee went up and knelt beside him to take communion.  THAT church was integrated that day.

 

Literally, sometimes it takes one person doing the right thing.

 

 

 

After reading much about that war and that battle, I have ended up with an immense amount of respect for all those who gave their lives on that battlefield.  I would hope all of us could be as dedicated in our own daily battles.  And I hope and pray we never have to do it on another literal battlefield....

 

My personal favorite from the Gettysburg battle has to be Col. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain.   The non-soldier who ended up leading his men to a pivotal victory... through word and example.

 

His speech to a group of mutineers caught my eye when I read The Killer Angels (Gettysburg is the movie based off that historical novel) -- and it makes my heart catch every time I listen to it.  It has to be one of the most profound speeches I have ever heard, in a book or a movie:

 

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kdOKJXfTU4[/media]

 

And in case anyone is interested... here's a link to the WHOLE movie - all 4+ hours of it.  Do it in chuncks, but it is well worth watching.... or reading!

 

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTcaRk0ZRJ4[/media]

 

Blessings for 4th of July to Everyone!!!!

[BG45]

My cousin who shares Missy's name decided to come to the 4th of July picnic after puking through the night before.  3 guesses as to which room in the house I've visited more than once today... :(

 

And I'd never heard that story before AL, but I'm unsurprised (in a good way, that story is amazing!).  Lee, for all his faults, was a true southern gentleman and did not really believe in slavery as much as some of his peers.  He advocated that slaves should be granted freedom if they fought for the Confederacy and many of his personal staff in the field for his horse and food were black, but not as slaves, rather as free men.  His wife may have owned slaves, but from what I've read, he found the practice abhorrent.

 

Chamberlain's speech there was amazing.  :)  I really do respect him as a person and not just a soldier.  Like you said, he was reluctant to get involved, until his students pretty much pressured him to put the money where the mouth was.

 

[truthfinder]

It's been a little while since I took any American history that was before the 20th century, but didn't Lincoln own slaves? Idk, but it comes down to having a system where it is so ingrained, that despite hating it, you don't really know how to the fix the problem - in this case, dismiss slaves without causing other problems. 

[BG45]

Truthfinder, nope Lincoln never did.   That keeps popping up though.  Completely agree though that it did lead to a lot of issues with the dismissal and the ingrained system.  I think that it happened during a period of such upheaval probably helped (granted I'm not a historian); what's one more thing to add to Reconstruction and all?

 

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Even better, my uncle thought he had a skin condition from his meds.  Turns out it's from MRSA.  Highly contagious and anti-biotic resistant!  Guess who cooked the burgers and whose chair I sat in most of the night? 

[truthfinder]

Truthfinder, nope Lincoln never did.   That keeps popping up though.  Completely agree though that it did lead to a lot of issues with the dismissal and the ingrained system.  I think that it happened during a period of such upheaval probably helped (granted I'm not a historian); what's one more thing to add to Reconstruction and all?

 

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Thanks for that link, darn revisionist historians...

[BG45]

You're welcome!  And indeed...I had to check myself, because I was unsure.  We do love teaching Confederate myth down here in the United States...something really well covered in Lowen's "Lies My Teacher Told Me".  Summing up the book in a sentence:  U.S. history textbooks are primarily rosy propaganda where nothing has ever gone wrong or been perpetrated wrongly by our glorious and wonderful United States!

[truthfinder]

I studied American history from a Canadian perspective, and probably the biggest difference I could imagine is how each country teaches about the world wars.  Currently, the Harper government is seemingly trying to portray Canada as the great and glorious - which is definitely different than the narrative of the last decade which taught that just about every important Canadian historic event was successful or unsuccessful depending on the degree of multiculturalism and 'human rights' was present in the scenario. 

[BG45]

It might be, difference wise that is.  And that seems like a rather dramatic shift in looking back in history... o.O

[BG45]

One of Cracked's best in a while, Six Insanely Reckless Media Accusations That Ruined Lives:

 

6) British papers launch a campaign to convince the people a guy murdered his tenant, because he was a bit weird.  How do his neighbors and former students describe him?  A tad weird, but a pillar of the community, one of the best teachers ever, and one of the nicest guys you'll ever meet.

 

5) CNN plasters the face of a woman similar to one killed in Iran all over international television, just because they both looked similar.  The woman whose life they ruined had to bribe her way out of Iran and spent time in a refugee camp thanks to shoddy journalism.

 

4) The Associated Press doesn't bother getting anyone who reads Hebrew to translate a caption out of an Israeli paper and shows an image of an Israeli cop standing over a bloody man, telling the world the Israeli beat this poor Palestinian.  The dad of the "Palestinian" angrily contacted the New York Times to tell them that was his son, an Israeli American, and that evil cop?  Had single handedly waded into an angry Palestinian mob to save his son from being beaten to death, then bandaged his wounds while waiting on an ambulance.  By the time a retraction was issued, AP had managed to enflame the situation in the Middle East.

 

3)  The Toronto Star doesn't bother learning about how to use Facebook and accuses a politician of going to Mexico to enjoy the beach while on "medical leave".  Turns out the politician, having time on her hands after surgery, decided to upload years worth of old photos to Facebook, such as her vacation to Mexico years before.  In its favor, the Toronto Star issued a full page front page apology for their lack of technical expertise.

 

2)  British paper The Sun was engaged in name and shame pedophile tactics...and as was inevitable, named and shamed a completely innocent man.  The man had to flee his home and ended up getting a huge settlement.  As for the reporter involved?  No punishment.  Though a decade later she was part of the huge phone hacking scandal and arrested for her role in it.

 

1)  The media pre-emptively accuses a man of terrorism.  When the Boston bombings occurred, sites like Reddit started doing some (shoddy) detective work and so the media, not wanting to be outdone, kept publishing the internet's "breakthroughs" as their own.  This lead to the likes of the New York Post publishing pictures and claiming "this guy's the terrorist".  The man the paper fingered would turn himself into authorities, who told him they had identified the bombers and he had never even been on their suspect list.  Turns out if you have a backpack, are at a marathon, and have trophies for previous marathons, you're not high on the suspect list, because you're probably a marathon runner.

[truthfinder]

Crazy.  I generally like local journalists, but some of the big papers are concerning for things like this.  And it seems that fact-checking has gone out the window, in a "shoot first" sort of attitude.  

[BG45]

Ditto on mostly liking my local journalists.  One of my cohort's guys had a wife who worked at the local paper and would spend hours verifying things instead of risking it be wrong.  But yeah...fact checking is, apparently, a dying art for some of the bigger ones.  Actually, I don't know if it's this way in Canada, but in 2003 a Florida Appeals Court ruled that it is not the responsibility of the news to provide accurate reporting and that honesty in reporting was more of an FCC policy, but not an enforced law.  The case involved a Fox News reporter who was fired after refusing to show a report that had been edited over 80 times to make a hormone in milk (banned in every other developed nation and a major cancer cause) appear to be benign.

[truthfinder]

I don't actually know what the law is in Canada, but journalists (at least those with the bachelors in journalism) all take ethics courses. Honestly, it doesn't really seem to be a problem here, but maybe it's a Canadian cliche, or at least are fact-checking problems that are minor enough to no really get anyone up in arms.  

[BG45]

Sometimes cliches exist for a reason (and you all have nice positive ones?)?  I think we require Bachelors students to do ethics courses as well in journalism.  Strangely enough, I never once took an Ethics course until the doc program.  At my old university, at the Bachelors they phased a mandatory one in for criminal justice the year after I graduated and ditto with a mandatory one at the Masters level during my first year here.

[BG45]

I'm seriously confusing our poor janitor with the new office.  She's used to skipping it, since it was uninhabited last academic year, plus almost no one is here over summer, so she can skip offices usually.

[AnneLine]

I'm seriously confusing our poor janitor with the new office.  She's used to skipping it, since it was uninhabited last academic year, plus almost no one is here over summer, so she can skip offices usually.

 

One office where I worked, they forgot I was there.

 

It was a Saturday, and the other employee left for the day and set the alarm.

 

But I was still there.

 

I didn't know the alarm was on.

 

I was happily working away when the police arrived....

 

Took a lot of explaining to get them to believe I really DID just work there....