Mr. Boulanger, Computer Teacher

I certainly wish they paid more heed to this advice in dushi Curacao!

you don’t want to lose everything at the flick of a switch…

Yann Arthus-Bertrand is a French photographer who has become very famous for his splendid aerial photography (1) throughout the world. We saw his exhibit in Chicago, and each time he cares to display his work in public places so that everybody has access to his vision for free. The power of his photos comes from a detailed description for each shot in which he explains the world context of the photo.

He has now gone one step further by filming a spectacular movie about our entire planet. As you can imagine, being a photographer, the cinematography (2) of his movie is beautiful from beginning to end. Once again and because he wants as many people as possible to understand the issues at stake, he is releasing his documentary on June 5th (for the UN world environment day 2009) without any copyright. This means you can watch it for free, distribute it to whomever you want, play it wherever you want and even make remixes of it! so please download it from home-2009.com.

Photo © Yann Arthus-Bertrand

Watch the introduction by yann at ted.com.It’s really funny because he has a very strong French accent (you can put the subtitles on).

Watch the entire movie on youtube and share it with facebook.

A quote to remember: “You know the problem: we don’t want to believe what we know”.

(1) Aerial photography: Photography taken from an airplane

(2) Cinematography: The art or technique of movie photography, including both the shooting and development of the film.

Pavan discovered this great video depicting the production of bubble gum. Did you know bubble gum is made out of plastics? Do you know why it’s pink? Follow this video to find out the answers to these questions.

Depict: to represent

Sree sent a very informative video about the changes taking place in the industry of fishing. New fishing techniques deplete entire areas of the fish regardless of sustainability. The trawler fishing boat are so destructive that their path can be traced by satellite! Nothing bigger than 3 cm make it through their nets.

Deplete: to empty out

Sustainable: capable of being continued with minimal long-term effect on the environment

After a good discussion with another student regarding the role of media in education and the distortion of  reality through stereotypes (1), Johanna comes at the right moment with this fantastic video. You will see in this video how a newscaster for Diet.com who spends her life training towards the perfect body still requires some Photoshop touch-up to be magazine-worthy. Never forget that when you are looking at a magazine “99.99% of all celebrity photos are photoshopped.” An artificial reality is not what you want to based your real-life standards upon. Instead of focusing too much on an ephemeral (2) physical appearance, it is much more important to build a warm, positive, open-minded character, attractive to many more people than a clear skin!

This is a second spot Johanna added to the list which will remind you that fast-food is not happy food.

(1) Stereotype: A general mental image of a group or class of people that is usually oversimplified. An advertiser may feature a stereotypical user of his product in order to encourage the audience to identify with the user. For example, housewives are often used in advertisements for cleaning products.

(2) Ephemeral: Lasting for a markedly brief time. Living or lasting only for a day, as certain plants or insects do.

This excellent song from Tom Lehrer (he has a few other funny ones such as his version of the tango…) was sent to us by Divina who is obviously making some great discoveries on the Internet and earning some extra credit. Well done Divina! The song itself is a stop-motion animation made with a lego character moving to the tunes do the Elements song by Tom Lehrer. You can easily do stop-motion animation at home with a digital camera and Windows Movie Maker.

This video discovered by Amrit follows the fascinating whale shark underwater. It also earns Amrit the first extra-credit for the Life -Explorers section!

For the love of water (2008) is an essential documentary to understand how scare our water resources are and discuss whether access to water is truly an inalienable human right.

inalienable: incapable surrendered or transferred

a rather short-sighted human perspective tends to forget where the earth boundaries came from and where they are going. which country are you from on this ever changing map?

tectonics: the branch of geology studying the folding and faulting of the earth’s crust