Photoethnography.com Blog

Video: Out of Sight

2012-02-07T16:01:59Z

Yesung Lee sent me this wonderful short animation, titled Out of Sight, made by three students who graduated from the National Taiwan University of Arts.

out of sight from kynight on Vimeo.

Watch it until the end.

Love this guide to speaking Suthern

2012-01-19T23:54:48Z

Like the author, I too am in love with the Southern accent: http://www.asiteaboutnothing.net/w_southern.html

Free… free at last! from LinkedIn spam

2012-01-19T23:27:18Z

Yay! Using the info here, I finally liberated myself from that incessant LinkedIn spam:

LinkedIn Customer Support Message

Subject: Add My Email To Do Not Contact List
Hi Karen,

I truly apologize for the delay in my response.

Per your request, I've added your karen.nakamura@yale.edu email address to
our "do not contact" list.

You will no longer receive any email from LinkedIn or our members on this
email address. If you decide at a later date that you want to set up a
LinkedIn account, you will need to first contact
us to have your email address removed from the “do not contact” list.

If you have further questions, please feel free to reply to this message.

Regards,

Jevgenia
LinkedIn Customer Service
Original Contact:
Member Comment: Karen Nakamura 01/17/2012 01:33
Please add my e-mail to your do not contact list. I have no wish to ever use linkedin.
Thank you.

Karen Nakamura

Ethics in TV Journalism - 5th grade version from This American Life

2012-01-14T00:38:04Z

My pal Eric sent me this link:

Some links for further cogitation:

I was trying to find a link to the oft-quoted dilemma of TV news crews in disasters -- keep filming the person being swept away by a river, or jump in to save them. But couldn't. Readers?

Monitoring Tokyo's radiation levels

2012-01-09T14:48:42Z

I've been spending the past couple of months in Tokyo. Worried about the radiation, I brought my DRGB-90 russian geiger counter /dosimeter that I had bought a couple of years ago. Unfortunately, the DRGB is a rather old analogue design and the readings at low (natural background radiation) are rather imprecise. I modified it so that it could hook up directly to an application on iOS called Geigerbot that is a sophisticated click-counter. Set up correctly, it can give you precise microsievert per hour readings. It also interfaces with Pachube which allows historical readings. Now Geigerbot can use the microphone on your iPad/iPhone to detect the geiger counter's audible clicks, but it will of course also pick extraneous external noise.

I wanted to directly interface my DRGB-90 with my iPhone so I could have more precise readings. Unfortunately, the DRGB doesn't have an external speaker jack or any other outputs. I wrote up an article (that I've since moved the actual hacking instructions to another blog) that talks about how to hack it. For this blog, here's the data coming out of the DRGB-90 + iPhone + Geigerbot.

It shows that radiation levels -- at least in my apartment in Tokyo -- is around 0.15 uSv/hr. This is actually lower by a full BED than background radiation in many places in the United States, which averages 0.23 uSv/hr. I haven't taken the unit mobile yet to see if there are any hotspots, but for now I feel less worried about the situation at least in terms of background radiation. I'm still concerned about food as a set of recent revelations make it clear that government and corporate monitoring has been less than ideal in this regard. Unfortunately, measuring food contamination is extremely difficult and not something a consumer can do herself. For more info, see safecast.org.

Call for Entries - Jean Rouch International Film Festival

2012-01-09T06:48:32Z

From my mailbox:

Jean Rouch International Film Festival
CALL FOR ENTRIES

Please, pass this on to your colleagues, friends and students

Dear Friends,

We are very pleased to announce that the 2012 Jean Rouch International Film Festival is now open for entries. We remind you that the deadline to submit a film is 15th April 2012.
This deadline is for all films completed after 1st January 2011 .
You will find the online entry form on our website via:
http://www.comite-film-ethno.net/festival-international-jean-rouch/2012/entry-form.html
We are looking forward to receiving your film submissions.
With our very best regards.

The Organizing Committee
Barberine Feinberg, Françoise Foucault, Laurent Pellé.

The Festival Jean Rouch, previously known as Bilan du FIlm Ethnographique, was created in March 1982 by anthropologist and filmmaker Jean Rouch.
Over the past thirty years, the Festival’s aim has been to showcase the most innovative and relevant trends in ethnographic filmmaking and visual anthropology, and to promote dialogue between cultures.
Organized by the Comité du Film Ethnographique, this international film festival is held in Paris (France). Each year, it brings together filmmakers, academics, students and producers, in an attempt to promote discussions and debates amongst ethnographic film practitioners and their many public, and to favour the diffusion and the distribution of the films.
We welcome documentary films without restriction to theme and length.

Comité du Film Ethnographique
Festival International Jean Rouch
Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle
36 rue Geoffroy Saint Hilaire - CP 22
75005 Paris
festivaljeanrouch@gmail.com
http://www.comite-film-ethno.net

___________________________________________________________________________________

Scam: Beverly Hills Time "review"

2012-01-02T04:05:25Z

As a faculty member of an Ivy league, I get a lot of crazy e-mails. This one seemed legit at first:

Dear Professor,
The Beverly Hills Times Magazine is considering running an article on the hypotheses, biography, and pictures located at [redacted]. We are asking for your assistance because your extensive expertise was brought to our attention. …
Our main goal at this point is to determine whether there is any established scientific evidence that tends either to support or invalidate the hypotheses. We would also consider publishing one of your own articles as trade for your contribution. We are interested in opinions from multiple fields of expertise. If you do not have time please feel free to forward this to a colleague.

but there were too many red flags. I decided to see if there was any legitimacy to it, and it turns out that there isn't: http://icbseverywhere.com/blog/2010/03/how-to-live-forever-or-i-get-email/

While not a phishing attack, malware, or a Nigerian prince with the last name of Nakamura, it's still a type of link bait scam. Avoid.

And don't feed the trolls.

Communication with your daughter (in Japanese only)

2011-12-20T06:59:46Z

While we're on the topic of fictional skits, my pal Nana sent me this one. It's in Japanese only. It depicts some fathers who are having trouble communicating with their teenage daughters using their keitai cell phones.

http://www.nhk.or.jp/neo/contents/catalogue/movie/ct_mv_003.html

(Right now, I'm watching the first season of Louie, so it's particularly amusing to me).

Photos: Jamie Beck e Kevin Burg's Cinemagraphs

2011-12-20T02:12:01Z

I'm not sure how I feel about this mix of static and motion image that Jamie Beck and Kevin Burg are calling cinemagraphs. Some are quite beautiful like this one below, others are a bit more meh.

See more at: Jamie Beck e Kevin Burg – Cinemagraphs

Careers: So you want to join the Human Terrain System Teams?

2011-12-20T01:42:54Z

Careers: So you want to get a PhD in the humanities?

2011-12-20T01:32:54Z

From TheProfessorIsIn, much of the same could be said about PhDs in the social sciences...

And nine years later...

The Sky is a Gradient

2011-12-19T20:44:05Z

I'm (JCR) exploring web design and a new life lately, and/so these sky pictures touched a nerve. Beautiful, simple, and well designed. Click here to see some of the photographer's other beauties.

Via Minimalissimo.

Careers: The Professor is In

2011-12-19T05:54:17Z

One of the graduates of our PhD program (hi Nana!) turned me on to Karen Kelsky's blog and website, TheProfessorIsIn. Kelsky used to be a tenured professor in the field of Japan Anthropology, then dropped out to become a paid academic consultant. The advice she gives on her site is cogent and insightful:

My position is, rather: go in not just with “your eyes open” (as so many Ph.D. program apologists insist) but with a strategy and a game plan. Calculate your chances from start to finish, and maximize them with strategic choices about *which* program, *how much* funding, *what* topic, *which* advisor, *how much* TA-ing, *how* to cut corners, *when* to be selfish, *where* to network, *how* to schmooze, *where* and *when* and *how often* to publish. And so on. Find the job ad for the type of position you want and make every decision based on reaching that goal. Get out quickly. Don’t count on your advisor. Don’t fixate on the dissertation. Protect yourself. Collect your own set of transferrable professional skills.

People wanting to go to graduate school as well as those in grad school should definitely check her site out. Here's the direct link to her blog: http://theprofessorisin.com/pearlsofwisdom

Elyn Saks on schizophrenia

2011-12-17T09:12:08Z

I somehow missed this great article about Elyn Saks' book, The Center Cannot Hold:

In 2007, after years of weighing the possible risks, Elyn R. Saks, a professor of law at the University of Southern California, published a memoir of her struggle with schizophrenia, “The Center Cannot Hold.” It became an overnight sensation in mental health circles and a best seller, and it won Dr. Saks a $500,000 MacArthur Foundation “genius” award.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/health/23livesside.html

Femtosecond shutters speed new cameras

2011-12-13T04:27:30Z

Thought the 1/2000 second shutter on your camera was fast? The NY Times reports on a new generation of scientific cameras with shutter speeds in the femtoseconds -- two-trillionths of a second -- fast enough to catch light moving as a wave: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/13/science/speed-of-light-lingers-in-face-of-mit-media-lab-camera.html

I want to know if I can retrofit it to my Leica III. :-)