Newbytes

Sunday, August 17, 2008

Some news from around the way.

Reality tv (and other media)

Lately I've been watching episodes of America's Best Dance Crew, and while the performances are fantastic, I really started watching them because so many of the crews have Asian Americans on them (actually this season, #2, every crew had at least one Asian American member).
White Party, Black Party: Racial Division in American Politics

In an interview on National Public Radio last week, Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean touted the racial and gender diversity of the Democratic Party to the Republican Party. In what sounded like a slip of the tongue, he momentarily referred to the GOP as the "white party." Paging Dr. Freud.
Korean Mexicans learn more of their Asian roots on visit to Southern California

The young Korean Mexicans had arrived from Mexico City, Tijuana and the Yucatan Peninsula on a recent afternoon and come to a sprawling Lynwood shopping center designed to look like Mexico. As they were dropped off by shuttles, they passed a statue of Mexican independence leader Miguel Hidalgo and a replica of the Angel of Independence in downtown Mexico City.
America's Best Zzzzzzzzz....

If Super Cr3w doesn't win, my waning faith in the MTV generation will officially be nonexistent. It's already hanging on by a mere thread after the elimination of Fanny Pak.
9021…oh, I thought…

I recently read that some gaggle of television producers thought it was a good idea to revisit the concept of following a group of rich white teenagers living their completely inaccessible and unrealistic-to-most-people TV lives. You know, because there haven’t been any shows like that on television since the first 90210 went off the air. Or have there? i haven’t been watching much TV over the past 12 years…
Lao Oral History Archive and other CLS news

The Center for Lao Studies is initiating a Lao Oral History Archive project in 2009.
This project will document and archive the untold stories of Lao refugees in the United States, their struggles and successes, before they are lost forever. Currently, there are almost no existing oral history projects and little academic research that focuses on the ethnic Lao refugees in the US.
ICE Tortures And Kills A New York Homeowner

Hui Liu Ng was a computer professional from Hong Kong working in the Empire State Building and a married father of two US-born sons. Then ICE had its way with him. He was detained last year and swept into the nightmarish and sadistic prison/deportation system.
NASA and the missing Indian children

When I saw this headline on Monday I couldn’t help but laugh a little: Four [Indian] Kids on NASA Trip Go Missing. I mean, I know NASA is occasionally accused by some crackpot (even well-respected crackpots) of covering up info about aliens, but the idea of foreign kids going missing on a NASA field trip is a whole new kind of conspiracy (wrong kind of aliens). Here is how things unfolded.