Adam Curtis Documentaries

Adam Curtis has made some of the most fascinating contemporary documentaries for the BBC. He uploads them to the Internet so that one does not have to purchase them, and they cover a wide range of topics. The two films which our readers might fin most interesting are The Century of Self and The Trap. Century of Self is preoccupied with Freud's theories concerning the unconscious, and his nephew Edward Bernays' development of public relations. The use of desire over need is discussed in its application in American media and advertising. The Trap - What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom is concerned with the concept of freedom in contemporary society.

Three Weeks in France

Bart: So basically, I met one good French person.
(The Simpsons, S01E07 The Crepes of Wrath)

Previously, my only experience with France was a one day trip to Strasbourg to visit one of the capitals of the European Union. The European Union, trademarked as indecisive, decided to split the capital between Brussels and Strasbourg, costing millions of euros a year for taxpayers. Conveniently, this made one of the capitals close enough to where I was studying to warrant the teacher to have our whole class spend the day on a bus. This is the only thing I remembered from the trip, other than that I fell asleep in the front row of a presentation and woke up to a German politician taking questions from our class. My stay in the city for the day was pleasant, everyone was very friendly, despite my comprehensive knowledge of the French language being "Merci", "Je suis la jeune fille", and "Omelette du fromage".

A three day stay in Paris and the rest of the time in Tours has been more encompassing. By no means am I an expert in French culture, but to get an idea of a country you have to immerse yourself in it for a while. Endlessly entertaining are those that tell you how culturally enriching their seven day trip to London, Paris, Frankfurt, Rome, Pompeii, and Barcelona was. That is not to say, three weeks is not a very long time either. As I mentioned before, my lackluster knowledge of the language and culture makes me think everyone is always talking about cheese, because it stands out as one of the words I know. In all fairness here is all I know about French history:

• German and French people are terrified that one of them is gonna swim across the Rhine and kill the other.

Some drunk dude in a bar writes a song that becomes the national anthem.

Napoleon swims across the Rhine and there's a party under the Brandenburger Tor.

Napoleon sits in the snow outside of Moscow and then someone puts him on an island.

A bunch of people break into the Bastille and set free all the political prisoners and prisoners.

France sends troops and the Statue of Liberty to America, meanwhile Thomas Jefferson chats up some 'demoiselles. Five years later Americans forget either event happened, or that our politicians use to speak more than one language.

Germans swim across the Rhine and kill a bunch of French people. 

Germans swim across the Rhine again and kill a bunch of French people and Jews, then they take pictures at the Eiffel Tower. 

Tom Hanks leads a small group of American soldiers through war torn Europe in search of Matt Damon, along the way single handly winning the war in a decisive battle in some small European town or something.

The first McDonald's opens in France.

French people publicly mock fast food, while privately soliciting McDonald's three times a week.

France elects a socialist president. A French political science major in my political science class mistakenly admits that she does not know who which party the president of France belongs to. Americans who have never left the country complaining about Socialist France are accidentally a little bit correct.

As you can see, I am not well versed in the subject. Born in the 90's, growing up we were told that the French were snooty cowards that hated Americans, specifically after the invasion of Afghanistan. In high school, the well off children at the Catholic school I attended would complain about how rude the French people were. Between these off hand remarks, and Fox news telling us how we needed to boycott French cheese and wine, one would get the impression that it is not a nice place to go to.

Fortunately, I have been staying with my girlfriend, who besides speaking French nearly fluently, has also lived here for some time as a teacher. The very first observation one will make is that there is an understandably very different reaction to speaking French and yelling in English. In line at a Christmas market vendor, the body language of the workers was photogenic in the worst way possible when an eastern European man tried yelling an order in English. We were right after, and as my girlfriend told the man what she wanted in French, the laborer handed her the order and said "C'est pour la Madamoiselle". And once again, that has been my experience for the most part, nice helpful people.

On the other hand my girlfriend's outlook is comparable to Bart's. She has had to deal with mountains of paperwork, finding an apartment, and working in the school system here. One of the problems with getting out of the U.S (or anywhere) is that you're an outsider, and if you don't speak the language fluently (learned it before age seven) the other fluent speakers know almost immediately. My favorite story of hers was when she asked her French friend what he didn't like about America and he said "Your religion, your president (Bush), and McDonald's". And when she retorted "doesn't your roommate eat there"? He replied "Yeah, he goes there every Sunday"!

This is sort of something that rings dissonant. I have heard Europeans state that they go great lengths to make sure that restaurants like McDonald's stay away from their monuments, and do not exist every five kilometers like in the U.S. ; this simply is not true: 

Martins Tor in the very center of Freiburg Germany.
Note the McDonald's restaurant underneath. Some
children refer to it as the McDonald's Tor.

McDonald's at Berlin Alexanderplatz

McDonald's at the center of Tours France

In all fairness of the last two pictures, one is in a train station and the other one is near a train station. A quick place to grab a quick bite to eat. What I cannot deny is the frequency at which I see these restaurants in European countries. Freiburg, which touts itself as being a green, student city has two McDonald's, three Starbucks, and a Burger King in the city center. I have also known the same amount of Americans and Europeans that have worked at McDonald's (two each). The truth is that there are some things people ubiquitously love. As unhealthy and greasy as it is, who is going to truthfully state there's nothing at McDonald's they don't like? I can also state from being from a Springfield that Europeans LOVE The Simpsons. "Where are you from? ... Springfield! *gasp* Like The Simpsons!" It's inevitable. My girlfriend, when teaching her students the states, they exclaimed "Les Simpsons" at the mention of Springfield, Illinois. A group of friends relayed to me that when on a school trip to Italy, the people in the restaurant started singing the theme song to the show when they learned which city they were from. The only way I can explain such behavior is that of insecurity which is focused across the Atlantic. At root an American and European have different cultural values, perhaps indulging in something like McDonald's creates a form of dissonance?

Xenophobic is a word that I have seen tied in with French. In public online discussions however, I find that French people take an offense to being portrayed satirically. (No more, I'm sure than any person on the Internet would protest being satirised.) While in Tours, out of the ten or more Turkish run Kebab shops I have seen, seven have had their front windows broken! A recent survey of French people yielded a surprising result that one in seven French people admitted to being racist at some level. All in all, every country has a problem like this, and all across Europe politicians are saying that "maybe letting all these immigrants in was a problem". Just like Americans complaining about "illegals", not many people were saying anything when they needed hard labour at a low price. Of course, these results could mean a lot of things, for example maybe they are more willing to admit they are racist? What I want to highlight here is that as much as America gets lambasted for shitty things, France has no clean record either. For example, an anti-gay protest is scheduled in Paris today. Keep that in mind for your next angst ridden "I can't wait to graduate and move to Paris!" huff.

As for my French cultural experience I find things for the most part similar to when I was in Germany. There are lots of baguettes, and everyone seems to dress their best every single day. This is really all that is different. With Freiburg being so close to France there is a lot of French influence in the city. French wine, cheese, and people are all close at hand, and relatively inexpensive. A long time ago I came to the realization that everyone is the same everywhere. There are cultural, geographic, and environmental differences, but for the most part people like the same things. Societies have the same types of people: there's racists, smart people, fat people, athletic people, thrill seekers, reclusives, etceteria, etceteria, and they all get defined by the political borders that hold them, or something like that...

Bypassing Craigslist Phone Verification

As a preface to this post I would like to say that Craiglist's phone verification system is fascinating to me. Phone phreaking is a topic I have a lot of interest in even if it has now more or less become an artifact of the past. I figured it would be interesting to discuss the various ways one can approach the problem, I do not intend any harm by providing any of this information. If you have any other insights into the verification system, please contact me.


If you do not have a valid US number, and you are trying to post on Craigslist... well you're probably reading this now. There are a few avenues you can try to take to get past the verification step, but all of them are probably going to result in you getting a US number somehow. You can not get past verification without providing the code they give you.

My would-be go-to answer, a 711 pre-paid phone won't work... unfortunately. Craigslist does have guidelines, you will need to keep them in mind:

• You may only try to call a phone number once every five minutes.
• You may only enter the code five times.
• You may only try three phone numbers per account every twelve hours.
• You may only receive three calls per account every twelve hours.

Disallowed numbers:

Some phone numbers are not usable for phone verification, including the following:

• phone numbers from outside the U.S. or Canada
• pre-paid mobile numbers
• toll-free numbers (area codes 800, 877)
• some Voice over IP (VOIP) phone numbers (including Cricket, MetroPCS)

About a year ago I tried verification through Skype, and it did not work, so I would not recommend wasting money trying this step unless something has changed since this article was last posted (11/14/12). Getting a 800 number is a hastle in itself anyways. Perhaps a mailbox on a non-800 number phone system would work though. Maybe getting the verification to dial in to a conference call? Once again if you know anything about this, email me from one of the links above.

A method which used to work was using Virgin mobile phones, because you could change your number online for free. They now charge $10 each time you want to do this. However if you post on Craiglist often this could be worthwhile to you as it is likely that making multiple posts within 48 hours of each other will end up with your ad not getting published, even if they tell you otherwise. Services like Textplus has been suggested to me in the past but I have never used it. Use at your own discretion, for all I know it's a terrible virus that texts all the pictures on your phone to the "Mom" contact in your phonebook.

If you do have a problem with your ad not showing up, you can try calling Craigslist here:

Phone: 415-566-6394 
Phone: (408) 988-6395
FAX: 415-504-6394 
Toll Free: 800-664-0633

...however it will be impossible to get in touch with a human.

Another simple option is to ask your American friend to register using their phone, after all most people still have landlines laying around anyways. Alternatively there are suppliers out there that will try to sell you verified numbers. I would recommends against this as Craigslist now has you reverify your number repeatedly if need be. This method also counters the Virgin Mobile method as well. If you are still interested in purchasing a number, you can try googling "PVA accounts". Ironically, asking an American is probably your best bet. If you live near a pay phone that still exists, you could try getting the verification code through it too.

Let me know if ANYTHING here was helpful at all.

The Obscenity Case Over ‘Penis Landscape’

(This is a paper that I originally wrote in 2008 for freshman year writing, I have made revisions based on the notes given to me from the professor after receiving my grade, as well as other miscellaneous changes such as grammatical corrections, and the addition of pictures. You can find the This American Life episode here, and the track Tales From the Trial from The High Priest of Harmful Matter is available on Spotify. There are no sources provided, because we were supposed to use 'signal phrases'. )

Poster of Penis Landscape, Original by H. R. Giger

            The story here I am about to share is about a musician who the government tried to censor. In the eighties when the PMRC and Tipper Gore tried to repress the American music industry, many small independent artists who would have trouble defending and representing themselves in a court of law were particularly targeted. This is a specific case of a punk rock musician who was singled out.

In 1986 the Los Angeles police department raided the home of Jello Biafra. Biafra, whose real name was Eric Bouher, better known as the lead singer for The Dead Kennedys, was asleep when the raid took place. He tells of the whole incident himself in the spoken word album “The High Priest of Harmful Matter”. The nine police officers that showed up with a search warrant told Biafra that he was under suspicion of distributing harmful matter. The officers didn’t find drugs or guns, they found records; which is exactly what they were looking for. What would follow in a year and a half would be a three week long court case that eventually would be thrown out by the judge.

            The specific record the police were looking for was ­Frankenchrist by the Dead Kennedys. Every Frankenchrist album comes with an insert poster done by H.R. Geiger entitled “Penis Landscape”. While many people might not know him, Geiger won an Academy Award for set design on the movie Alien, as well as the Oscar for best effects. When the deputy chief of Los Angeles County, Michael Guarino saw the insert, he knew right away he had an open-shut obscenity case.

Dead Kennedy's 1985 Frankenchrist
LP, complete with warning sticker.

When the police left Biafra’s home they had three copies of the Frankenchrist album, three copies of the Geiger poster, and Biafra’s private mail as well as business paper work; not only from his home, but also from Alternative records, the record company that Biafra owns. Biafra was one of four people charged with distributing harmful matter, including a wholesaler, a guy who worked at Alternative Tentacles, and a 67 year old man who owned the factory that pressed the albums. Each could expect maximum of a year in jail and a two thousand dollar fine for what the Dead Kenndys had to say with an album. On top of that the Dead Kennedys would be blackballed from any music distributor; otherwise that distributor or retailer would be subject to similar fines for carrying “harmful matter”. The only reason the record store where the album was purchased was not prosecuted, was because they had already taken all Dead Kennedys albums off their shelves.

            The next day the district attorney said that prosecuting the Alternative Tentacles label was “a cost effective way to prosecute”. By singling out an independent label it was easier to enforce the censorship the Parents Music Resource Center headed by Tipper Gore had in mind, rather than go after a multimillion dollar record company such as Time Warner, Sony or Universal, and their musicians such as Prince or Madonna. Rather than pay the fine, Biafra fought the case which ended up costing him over eighty thousand dollars. Fortunately, not only was the No More Censorship Defense fund put into action where fans from all over the world sent in money, but a California criminal justice lawyer toke Biafra’s case for free, the ACLU sent a lawyer as well.

            The trial itself dragged on for three weeks in L.A. Testimony was given by a young girl who said that the album was purchased for her little brother as a Christmas present by her mother, and that the album had been opened by someone before Christmas. This is allegedly when the mother then seen the Geiger painting. The mother then sent the artwork to the Los Angeles district attorney’s office. The reason why this story seems so bizarre is because it’s not true. Years later Guarino alleges that he had found and listened to the Frankenchrist album himself and thought it would be an easy case to take on. After three weeks, the media had turned the case into a joke and the jury was hung, in favor of acquittal. When Guarino wanted to retry the case, the judge threw it out.

In 1995 on the Chicago Public Radio show This American Life, Guarino and Biafra talked on the phone. Guarino had in his own words “changed his ways”, apologized to Biafra and said that at the time he thought he was doing the right thing and thought he had the moral high ground in the case. The funny thing was, Biafra thought he himself had the moral high ground as well. After a while the reporter that did the story, David Segal, said “the two started talking like old war buddies” and “it was hard to get a word in edgewise”. In the background a recording on their phone conversation can be heard where the two discussed everything from politics to going out and getting dinner with Guarino’s son, who incidentally ended up being a huge Dead Kennedy’s fan.

            So in the end Biafra and company got off, and in the process won a civil liberties battle on free speech. Had they lost, all Dead Kennedys material would have been deemed “harmful” in the state of California, if not the country, and anyone charged with distributing it would have been fined and possibly jailed. Guarino would have then gone on a harmful matter slash censorship triad and gone after other artists, and though it took three weeks, Biafra stopped him dead in his tracks. Jello Biafra fought the law, and Jello won.        

---

Documentaries

Dear Readers,

I have been hard at work with the college guide, and the first draft will be sent out to be proof read soon.With all of my time normally dedicated to the site going towards this side project, I decided that the site is long overdue for an update. While you wait, here is a list of documentaries that I have not only seen, but highly recommend:

American Drug War
Film produced by Kevin Booth, long time friend of comedian Bill Hicks.It concerns partially with the issue of the CIA bringing cocaine into the coutry in the eighties.
link.

Beer Wars
Independent documentary about microbreweries in the US.
link. (US only)

Cocaine Cowboys
About the rise, and fall of cocaine runners in Miami.
link.

Ecstasy Rising
Narrated by Peter Jennings before his death. About how Ecstasy helps in curing port traumatic stress disorder. Also discusses what the perceived health risks of ecstasy were, to what they turned out to actually be.
link.

FrontLine: Anything
Frontline covers a plethora of trending subjects, and allows you to watch them all for free on their site.
link.

Good Copy Bad Copy
About mash-up culture. Contains interviews with Gregg Gillis.
link.

GG Allin - Hated
Documentary on the "Shock Rocker" GG Allin done as a NYU film project. Shows many of the vulgar things that he was known to do.
link.

Guerrila: The taking of Patty Hearst
Comprehensive doc on the Patty Hearst case. I used this as a starting point on learning about it for a project I did on this legal case.
link.

Louis Theroux's America's Most Hated Family
I highly recommend any documentary by Louis Theroux. In his Weird America series he lives with American families, or persons that he, or the British people find of interest. In this case it was the notorious Westboro Baptist Church.
link.
 
Hunt for General Tso
This is actually a short TED Talk about the history of General Tso's chicken, and Ameircan Chinese food in general. I was thinking about saving for a post on lectures I recommend, but if I ever do that, I will probably post it again because I like it so much.
link.

Into The Wind, The Story of Terry Fox
About amputee marathon runner Terry Fox. It's what I suggest to anyone who says they could never run a mile in their life.
link.

Making a Killing: The Untold Story of Psychotropic Drugging
Fair warning, this one is alarmist documentary. However, I think it makes a good point of showing the pharmaceutical companies as just another drug dealer.
link.

OUTFOXED: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism
Criticizes the Fox News channel, and accuses it of consumer fraud.
link.

The Two Escobars
Shows how Pablo Escobar was directly involved in the rise of Columbia's national soccer team, and the role his life played in the shooting of soccer player Andres Escobar.
link.

The Union
Doc about the marijuana industry.

link.

VBS TV: Anything
Vice TV's Travel Guide is more provocative than anything I have ever seen in the mainstream media; specifically the North Korea, Liberia, episodes.
link.

Waco: Rules of Engagement
Makes a strong argument that the United States government outright killed the Branch Davidians.
link.

Propaganda

Not many of the articles on this site pertain to the site description under the title: "A site concerning language learning and the influence of language on non-linguistic behavior." I leave it there because... well what else would I put?

I figure that this article on American Propaganda by Noam Chomsky belongs here because it has a lot to do with that title description, sans learning:

"The Vietnam War is a classic example of America's propaganda system. In the mainstream media--the New York Times, CBS, and so on-- there was a lively debate about the war. It was between people called "doves" and people called "hawks." The hawks said, "If we keep at it we can win." The doves said, "Even if we keep at it, it would probably be too costly for use, and besides, maybe we're killing too many people." Both sides agreed on one thing. We had a right to carry out aggression against South Vietnam. Doves and hawks alike refused to admit that aggression was taking place..."

"During the Vietnam War, the U.S. propaganda system did its job partially but not entirely. Among educated people it worked very well. Studies show that among the more educated parts of the population, the government's propaganda about the war is now accepted unquestioningly. One reason that propaganda often works better on the educated than on the uneducated is that educated people read more, so they receive more propaganda. Another is that they have jobs in management, media, and academia and therefore work in some capacity as agents of the propaganda system--and they believe what the system expects them to believe..."

"Dark Psychology"

As far as I can tell there is no definition for the term "dark psychology". If I had to guess, I would say that it is something along the lines of; "the influence on people to do things they normally would not do in the first place through exploitation of irrational and unconscious fears". Does anyone else think this is also a fitting description for advertising? (Recently a new website popped up called "darkpsychology.co", but as far as I can tell it is a spam blog. How appropriate.) Quebec's ban on Fast-food advertising reduced fast-food expenditures by 13 percent per week in French-speaking households. Even the price of a product may affect your perceived quality of it.

Woman in particular have been assaulted with ads, informing them of problems they did not know they had until the they were told so:

The gist of the article is that U.S. women were browbeaten into shaving underarm hair by a sustained marketing assault that began in 1915. (Leg hair came later.) The aim of what Hope calls the Great Underarm Campaign was to inform American womanhood of a problem that till then it didn't know it had, namely unsightly underarm hair.
Link.

Another example: vaginal cleansing advertisements. I am certain your vagina is not supposed to smell like a fresh meadow.

There is a BBC documentary called The Century of The Self which touches upon all of this. It is about Edward Bernays, Sigmund Freud's American nephew that; helped tie smoking to the woman's rights movement, increased Betty Croker sales by adding an egg to their instant mix, worked for Woodrow Wilson, and established the idea that people needed objects to express their inner self to others. Simply put, he was able to influence large amounts of people through linking products with the unconscious fears of people.
This is the exploitative foundation that modern advertising has been built on top of.

Foreign Radio

One of the things I cannot stand when I listen to the radio in a different country is the amount of English language music that is played. In Mexico it was Bob Marley, and in Germany it was sixties music like the Beegees. You expect to hear a lot of music in the native tongue but that is not really the case. I guess it has to do with the fact that American culture is an exported good. On the other hand the 2600 Magazine editors have an episode up on their radio show Off The Wall on Norway and Norweigen radio. Throughout the episode they play songs from the radio there, which has a surprising variety of music. Maybe I'm just not going to the right places?

You can usually get away with listening to news radio. Itunes, under "radio" and then "news/talk radio" or "international/world" has a huge amount of foreign radio stations which are streamed to your computer. For some reason though you cannot search the lists, which is kind of a pain in the ass. Hopefully they will update this in the near future.

There are plenty of free language learning podcasts out there. I know a fair amount of German ones. Some of my favorites are put out by Deutsche Welle, which is more or less news site for German language learners. They also put out German news podcasts which are spoken spoken slowly which is great for intermediate learners. Do any of you know of any other good podcasts or news sites for language learners?