Putting Up, Taking Down, and Taking Off
University of Alaska Anchorage (UAA) art professor, Mariano Gonzales, has a show at Alaska Pacific University (APU) which asks the question "Why are Americans still dying in the Middle East?" and asks visitors to put up their answers on a large white poster. According to Phil at Progressive Alaska, apparently this has embarrassed the President of APU who got his own paper to write a response. No, the question isn't neutral, but for those who believe those deaths are serving an important purpose, Professor Gonzales offered a big piece of paper to convince the world they are right.
War does set up a dilemma. People generally justify their enlisting to patriotic reasons - for those who aren't drafted - and then when they die, their families have the choice of believing their soldier died a hero or died in vain (or worse.) For most, that choice is easy. Even if it doesn't match reality. Anything that challenges that choice pushes a very strong emotional button.
Alaska Report blogger Dennis Zaki reports in an email that he keeps having problems with people using his photos without permission. I've written a bit here about photos and copyrights. It seems Dennis got ticked off enough with Dan Fagan for putting up his (Dennis') pictures without permission that he got Fagan's website (the Alaska Standard) suspended for a bit until the offending picture was taken down. Here's what I got when I went to Alaska Standard on Wednesday.
The site was back up when I checked on Thursday.
A final brief note. I saw in the LA Times yesterday a short piece on Levi Johnston's deal with Playgirl to take off his clothes. I'm a little sheltered here in the big city so I hadn't seen this bit of 'news' when it hit the ADN. With all the free nudes available on line, we know that Playgirl isn't just paying him for skin shots, but for Palin related skin shots. Let's see now - abstinence only education leads to teenage moms leads to teenage dad getting paid to pose nude. Isn't America great?
War does set up a dilemma. People generally justify their enlisting to patriotic reasons - for those who aren't drafted - and then when they die, their families have the choice of believing their soldier died a hero or died in vain (or worse.) For most, that choice is easy. Even if it doesn't match reality. Anything that challenges that choice pushes a very strong emotional button.
Alaska Report blogger Dennis Zaki reports in an email that he keeps having problems with people using his photos without permission. I've written a bit here about photos and copyrights. It seems Dennis got ticked off enough with Dan Fagan for putting up his (Dennis') pictures without permission that he got Fagan's website (the Alaska Standard) suspended for a bit until the offending picture was taken down. Here's what I got when I went to Alaska Standard on Wednesday.
The site was back up when I checked on Thursday.
A final brief note. I saw in the LA Times yesterday a short piece on Levi Johnston's deal with Playgirl to take off his clothes. I'm a little sheltered here in the big city so I hadn't seen this bit of 'news' when it hit the ADN. With all the free nudes available on line, we know that Playgirl isn't just paying him for skin shots, but for Palin related skin shots. Let's see now - abstinence only education leads to teenage moms leads to teenage dad getting paid to pose nude. Isn't America great?
