April 2008 Archives

Its in the papers. Its on cable news. Its the topic of conversation. China. Over the last couple of years the world community has begun to see China as not only a growing financial powerhouse, but one that is beginning to have a growing influence around the globe.

We all want to learn more about this culture and where it is headed. Beginning on Sunday, the channel will begin its profile of China by airing a night's worth of programming related to the leader in the East. The night will also feature the premieres of The Great Wall at 9p and The First Emperor. Thats not all. Wednesday night we will focus on what we can expect from the Olympics this summer when we profile the Beijing Olympic Stadium at 9p and The World's Largest Casino at 10p.

Rebecca Erbelding

Researcher, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

I work with new and incoming collections at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Most people react to this with surprise-"The Holocaust ended more than sixty years ago--is there really anything left to collect?" Absolutely. We are continually adding new collections--an average of 400 a year, ranging from microfilm to documents to personal items--and are actively seeking new material that can enhance our knowledge of the Holocaust. This is a critical time. Holocaust denial is on the rise and the eyewitness generation is disappearing. These collections will act as the voices of the survivors, liberators, and witnesses when they are no longer with us.

In December 2006, I received a letter. I get lots of letters and emails and phone calls from people who have material they would like to show us. My colleagues and I respond to everyone who contacts us--we are able to tell the donor whether we would be interested in a particular collection, provide them with information, or can help them find a more suitable museum if their items lie outside of our scope. I responded, and within weeks Karl Hoecker's photo album of his experiences at Auschwitz from May 1944 to January 1945 arrived at the Holocaust Museum.

Greg Chapman
Research

I had the chance to sit down with Producer Erik Nelson from Creative Differences and Nat Geo Channel's Senior Vice President of Programming Michael Cascio and talk about this Sunday's premiere of Nazi Scrapbook From Hell. The film uncovers a part of the Holocaust that was once thought to be unrecorded, but thanks to Washington D.C. Holocaust Museum and Erik's work there is now documentation and photographic evidence of what life was like behind the fences of the death camp at Auschwitz. This film profiles a series of contrasting photos - one series portrays the banality of evil, while the other profiles the horror of life behind the wire.

Greg: What was it like for you personally being part of unearthing such a unique historical artifact?

Erik: The artifact was donated to the USHMM, so, it existed and was being analyzed well before we began the film. Our contribution to the scholarship and the on-going analysis was the forensic history work that placed Hoecker on the killing ramp.

Greg: What was your first reaction when you first looked at these photos?

Erik: Not so much shock at the banality of evil, but shock at the NORMALCY of evil. It looks like they are all enjoying a typical day at the office, when what they were really doing was killing thousands of men, women and children daily, and routinely. That routine is what this album and film is all about.

Michael: To me, the photos are perplexingly normal. The fact that these Nazis were simply taking a break from their job - killing millions of Jews - and enjoying life just a stone's throw from Auschwitz is just too weird for words.

Tuesday April 22 is Earth Day 2008. All over the world people will be discussing how to make an environmental difference in the world. National Geographic is no different, in fact the National Geographic Society have been stewards in this effort for decades. Tuesday night the channel will be airing a program called State of the Planet 2008.

This program will address the stage that the global climate is currently in and where it is all heading. It chronicles the ups, downs and the progress that the global community has made over the past year. Tune in and you will be sure to learn something new that you haven't heard before. Click here to view videos related to our environment, global consumption, and climate change.

This week the channel brings out an eclectic grouping of documentaries for all of you to check out. Some will be compelling and some will defy the logic, but regardless of topic the shows will give you a point view that makes you feel like you are the one exploring and investigating. From the humanitarian crisis in Darfur shown in The Devil Came on Horseback to defying the logic of engineering in an Ice Hotel in Oslo, Norway, this week's slate of shows is sure to feed you information that will satisfy your curiosity need.

Thanks to Henry Ford, we’ve become an auto nation. The car has transformed the landscape. It has enabled us to work in one place and live someplace else. Although our nation has only 5 percent of the world’s population, we have 30 percent of the world’s cars. We shape our lives around the car. We’ve built freeways and cities for it. Life without it is unimaginable.

But life with it comes at a cost.

Cars are complicated machines, requiring natural resources and high technology to manufacture. Human Footprint not only looks at the footprint of one person’s lifetime of driving, but also looks at the actual footprint of a typical American car.

A driving nation:
- The average American will own an average of 12 cars in a lifetime.
- We each drive an average of 11,000 miles a year — that’s 627, 000 miles in a lifetime — which is 25 times round the world.
- On that journey, we’ll use 31,350 gallons of gasoline — enough to fill three large fuel tankers.
- The 200 million cars that drive on America’s roads and highways will be replaced roughly every 17 years.
- Americans use a quarter of the world’s oil, and it takes half of that to fuel all of our cars — that amounts to 10.5 million barrels of oil every day.
- The United States also pumps half of the world’s carbon dioxide fumes into the air each year.
- The family car can contribute to nearly six tons of carbon emissions a year, and over a driving lifetime this adds up to 360 tons for each vehicle on the road.
- If all the vehicles in the United States were a nation, their combined carbon footprint would be the fifth largest of all the countries on earth.

Where do our cars come from?
Did you know the parts of your car may have travelled farther than the complete car will ever drive?

Good Evening Everyone -

Thanks for joining look forward to hearing from all of you....

Lets start with an easy one - What was it like filming all over the country with all different slices of sXe culture?

David Smith: Filming sXe around the country showed us how diverse and multi-faceted this movement is. Also how strongly each side of Straight Edge feels about the way they approach this idea. Most importantly, though, it gave us a window into growing up in America right now -- a complex, sometimes baffling, often alienating experience. It was interesting to see an alternative in Straight Edge and interesting to see where it came from and where it seemed to be heading. There is no one answer.

rob says: Thurston Moore (the narrator, of sonic youth fame) is straight edge? anyone have any credible info on that?

David Smith: Thurston Moore is not Straight Edge, but he was around during the formative days of it and knows all the major players. The music scene was tightly knit.

Dan Gonyea
Student, Northeastern University

A Friday night on a college campus in Boston is quite the experience, filled with plenty of young adults getting drunk and doing things that only their point-and-shoot cameras will remember. Every Saturday morning I wake up to the sweet silence of empty streets and solace of no lines at the supermarket; everyone is too hung over to roll out of bed and roam the campus. My choice is to have a more enjoyable and modest lifestyle for myself. I have a girlfriend, a full-time job, a curriculum I'm pursuing for a bachelor's degree, and an apartment of my own. Nights are spent either working on my webzine Future Breed, photographing concerts, playing games with my friends, or going out into the city.

When I discovered what straight edge was, it came across as quite militant and pointless. I remember having specific disdain for the kids who posted on message boards online saying, "I'm bored. Anyone want to go find some hippies on the street and beat the hell out of them?" Those posts had a lot of replies from kids who were interested. It disgusted me and seemed like a very immature scene. It was a matter of me just looking in all the wrong places.

We have clothes for every occasion -- from formal dinner parties to Saturday hiking trips, each event in our lives has corresponding attire. Party dresses, shoes, handbags, suits, jackets, blouses and jeans; conservative, formal, casual or trendy -- we've got them all. But imagine all of the clothes you will wear in your lifetime hung on one 30-foot-high wall. Human Footprint does just that.

What does our lifetime closet hold?
- On average, Americans buy 48 new pieces of clothing a year.
- On average, each garment lasts three years.
- Our need for the latest fashion has produced a $345 billion clothing business in the United States.
- This means that every man, woman and child in the country spends an average of $1,000 a year on new clothes, and likely throws away 68 pounds of clothing each year.
- At any given time, a man will have seven pairs of jeans -- and an average of more than 25 T-shirts.
- Over a lifetime a man spends $52,972 on his wardrobe.
- American women own an average of 19 pairs of shoes at any one time.

Inside: Straight Edge Premieres Wednesday, April 9th at 10p et/pt. And remember to join the conversation by submitting questions and comments during the premiere here on the NGC Blog.

Jeremy Nelson
Police Officer

Straight Edge just kind of found me. I was not looking for it. I grew up in a semi-poor family, unlike a lot of typical Straight Edger's. My mother worked long days, at multiple jobs, to buy the necessities of life. She was a good mother who loved her kids. My father was a drug addict alcoholic who frequented the local jail. I don't have a lot of memories of my father sober. It seems that every story I have starts out with, "This one time when my dad was drunk!" So at a young age, I made the conscious decision to never do drugs and alcohol. The very thought of becoming my father was fear enough to keep me away from them.

Inside: Straight Edge Premieres Wednesday, April 9th at 10p et/pt

When we are drinking our morning coffee, a soda at the movie theater or a beer with a friend, we rarely stop to think about all of the beverages we will drink in our lifetime. But when you put them all together, the numbers are impressive. With no special effects, Human Footprint lays out the actual milk, soda, beer and wine we will drink over a lifetime. From pints of milk surrounding a house to pints of beer surrounding a fountain to bottles of wine covering the front lawn of a typical American home, we begin to see just how thirsty we are. And our human footprint goes beyond the actual consumption of these liquids -- each one of them has to travel from somewhere, and most likely will leave something behind when we are finished, such as cans and bottles.

Milk - Each of us will drink three pints of milk a week, adding up to 168 pints a year and 13,056 over a lifetime. To produce that milk, the United States is home to 65,000 dairy farms that house 9.2 million cows. That's more cows than there are people in the state of New Jersey.

Beer - On average, an adult American will drink 13,248 pints of beer. The United States has 1,400 breweries that convert 4.7 billion pounds of barley malt and 5.9 million pounds of barley into 6 billion gallons of beer.

Inside: Straight Edge Premieres Wednesday, April 9th at 10p et/pt

Post your comments below or keep the conversation going in the NGC Community.

In today's world, the pressures of being young can be overwhelming. Eighty percent of high schoolers have tried alcohol; seventy percent have smoked cigarettes; and almost half have used some sort of illegal drug.

Over the next week the NGC Blog will highlight this culture in America to shed light on some may know and perhaps on what a lot of us dont' know. Below is the first passage from author Ross Haenfler who lends his expertise in Inside: Straight Edge that is premiering Wednesday, April 9th at 10:00p

Ross Haenfler
Author of Straight Edge: Clean Living Youth, Hardcore Punk and Social Change

Straight edge holds many different meanings to the various individuals who claim the identity. For some, it is a way of resisting peer pressure or a family history of substance abuse. Others see straight edge as a challenge to alcohol and tobacco companies, whom they see as intentionally promoting harmful substances to youth. Still others view abstinence as a means to self-actualization or growth. Some see straight edge as a wholly personal choice, but others believe that claiming the edge identity is, in part, a way of collectively challenging the status quo. Straight edge slogans, seen on t-shirts and tattoos, include "One Life Drug Free," "True Till Death," "Poison Free," "XXX," "Above the Influence - Against the Grain," and "XstraightedgeX."

My own involvement with straight edge began at age fifteen sometime in 1989. I had experimented with alcohol and tried fitting in with the drinking crowd, but hated the idea of having to drink in order to fit in. A friend who often sported Xs on his hands in our Spanish class lent me a Minor Threat record, invited me to a show, and introduced me to the punk rock world. The scene was filled with musicians, artists, activists, skaters, and other nonconformists - I immediately felt like I was home. Since then, I have attended hundreds of shows in many different scenes, met even more kids, corresponded with edge kids all over the world, and listened to thousands of songs by edge bands.

Like many "older" straight edgers, I struggle with several aspects of the scene. The contradiction between straight edge's anti-sexist yet male-dominated themes frustrates me; I dislike the hyper masculinity and violence perpetrated by a few tough guys; and I think the progressive ideals movement often espouses such as environmentalism, animal rights, and anti-racism could play a more central role in the movement and in participants' daily lives. Without a sense of creating something beyond the scene, straight edge risks being little more than a clean-living fashion trend or a nice temporary hang out for kids prior to adulthood. While there is nothing wrong with that, I think the movement can potentially be much more. Yet for all my critiques, I believe straight edge has been a positive force in the lives of many thousands of kids. Nearly twenty years after making the decision to claim straight edge I have no regrets.