Is The Last Airbender Racist

"Some viewers heads are spinning over the look of 'The Last Airbender,' which opens July 1. Not over the fantasy-action 3-D special effects, but over the faces of the main characters, which are largely white in the movie but Asian and Inuit in the popular Nickelodeon cartoon that inspired the film.

Complicating the accusations of racial insensitivity over the casting is the fact that those casting decisions were made by director M. Night Shyamalan, who is of Asian descent himself. In fact, Shyamalan bristles at the accusations and insists that, not only is his cast as multicultural as possible, but also that it's his critics who are the real racists.

The characters in the TV series 'Avatar: The Last Airbender,' created by Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartino, are clearly drawn from Asian and Inuit cultures, from their names to their costumes to their martial arts styles. The hero, Aang, is inspired by Tibetan Buddhist monks. His friends, Katara and Sokka, live in a realm of anoraks and igloos. Antagonist Zuko and his tribe appear as classical Chinese warriors.

In the movie, all four characters were initially cast as Caucasian actors: Noah Ringer (Aang), Nicola Peltz (Katara), Jackson Rathbone (Sokka), and Jesse McCartney (Zuko). Before shooting began, however, McCartney was replaced by Dev Patel, of 'Slumdog Millionaire' fame. That change did not appease the project's critics, who noted that the heroes were still all white Westerners, while the only Asian in the principal cast was the villain.

The clearinghouse for the protests has been the website Racebending, which is calling for a boycott of the film. "American actors of color rarely get to play the hero, if ever," said Marissa Lee, one of Racebending's co-founders, in a statement. "We're really disappointed. Paramount felt that white actors were better suited to play heroes of color than hardworking, underrepresented actors who are actually of Asian or Inuit descent."

Shyamalan has insisted he had no intention of whitewashing the characters. In a recent interview with Indie Movies Online, he went into great detail about the casting choices, which he said were entirely his and not Paramount's. He argued that the complaints didn't look beyond the principal players to note the entire cast, which consists of actors from multiple cultures and racial backgrounds playing the 'Airbender' world's four tribes. Of the protest, he said, "The irony of this statement enrages me to the point of ... not even the accusation, but the misplacement of it. You're coming at me, the one Asian filmmaker who has the right to cast anybody I want, and I'm casting this entire movie in this color blind way where everyone is represented. I even had one section of the Earth kingdom as African American, which obviously isn't in the show, but I wanted to represent them, too!"

Why, then, did he cast white actors in the leads? "Noah Ringer walked in the door -- and there was no other human being on the planet that could play Aang except for this kid," the director said. "To me, he felt mixed race with an Asian quality to him. I made all the Air nomads mixed race – some of them are Hispanic, some of them are Korean." Patel's people had to look like him, too, which is the reason the members of the hot-tempered Fire tribe are all played by darker-hued actors.

With three of the tribes played by non-Caucasian actors, Shyamalan said he felt the fourth group, Katara and Sokka's Water tribe, could be played by white actors. "If you don't have an edict of "don't put white people in the movie" then the Water tribe can be European/Caucasian," he said. So, by his logic, casting white actors as Katara and Sokka was actually an act of inclusion, not exclusion. (It's worth noting here, as Shyamalan has, that the cartoon's adherence to the visual conventions of Japanese anime, including round eyes and light skin, have added to the racial confusion. If the characters are drawn with racially indeterminate features, why shouldn't his casting follow suit?) "

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US General Petraeus collapses at Senate hearing on Afghanistan

Massive sun storms may impact Earth

Massive space storms forecast as sun awakens from ‘deep slumber’
By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 5:38 PM on 14th June 2010

Comments (47) Add to My Stories .
Scientists have warned that massive space storms could be on the way as the Sun wakes from a ‘deep slumber’.


The Sun follows an 11-year cycle of high and low periods of solar activity. It is now leaving a notably quiet phase and scientists expect to see a sharp increase in the number of solar flares as well as unprecedented levels of magnetic energy.


This could have catastrophic consequences for Earth.

The rings of fire, which have the power of 100 hydrogen bombs, could cause twenty times more economic damage than Hurricane Katrina.


Experts met in Washington DC last week to discuss how to protect Earth from the ferocious flares, which are expected sometime around 2013.

The 'space conference' was attended by scientists, government policy-makers and researchers.


Richard Fisher, head of Nasa's Heliophysics Division, explained: 'The Sun is waking up from a deep slumber, and in the next few years we expect to see much higher levels of solar activity.


‘At the same time, our technological society has developed an unprecedented sensitivity to solar storms.’


Nasa is using dozens of satellites – including the Solar Dynamics Observatory – to study the threat.

The problem was investigated in depth two years ago by the National Academy of Sciences, in a report which outlined the social and economic impacts of severe space weather events.


It noted how people of the 21st-century rely on high-tech systems for the basics of daily life.


Smart power grids, GPS navigation, air travel, financial services and emergency radio communications can all be knocked out by intense solar activity.


But much of the damage could be minimised if there was foreknowledge that the storm was approaching.


Putting satellites in 'safe mode' and disconnecting transformers could protect them from damaging electrical surges.


Preventative action, however, requires accurate forecasting - a job that has been assigned to The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA.)


'Space weather forecasting is still in its infancy, but we're making rapid progress,' says Thomas Bogdan, director of NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colorado.


Bogdan sees the collaboration between Nasa and NOAA as key.


'NASA's fleet of heliophysics research spacecraft provides us with up-to-the-minute information about what's happening on the Sun. They are an important complement to our own GOES and POES satellites, which focus more on the near-Earth environment.'

Cilantro: The Controversial Herb

Why is this ancient, worldly herb so polarizing? There are theories that nature plays a role: Some people may be genetically predisposed to cilantro intolerance. ... For the rest of us, nurture or environment may be a factor.

text size A A A May 25, 2010 When you are a cooking instructor, the last thing you want is for a student to flee your class. It happened to me, but I swear it wasn't my fault. It was the cilantro.

The cooking class featured a Southwest American menu that embraced cilantro. Not 10 minutes into the introduction of the cuisine, one student's eyes began to water and her throat constricted. She admitted she didn't like cilantro, and she believed her reaction was due to her close proximity to the springy bouquets I had placed around my kitchen as edible decoration. She didn't have to ingest it; simply sharing a room with this herb was enough to set off her attack. Apologizing profusely with tears streaming down her face, she clutched her purse and fled my home. There were no other casualties that afternoon, but it did get me thinking about cilantro.

Like politics and religion, cilantro elicits strong opinions. People love it or hate it. For some, it's an acquired taste, thus attracting its share of proselytizing converts, such as myself. Even the name of the plant can be controversial. In the U.S., the leaves are called cilantro, while the seeds are called coriander. In Europe, the leaves are called coriander, while the seeds are also called coriander. To confuse matters further, cilantro leaves are also known as Chinese parsley.

About The Author
Lynda Balslev moved to Paris to study cooking in 1991. She returned to the U.S. 17 years later with a Danish husband, two children and previous addresses in Geneva, London and Copenhagen. During that time, she worked as a freelance food writer, caterer, cooking instructor and food editor for the Danish magazine Sphere. Currently she lives in California's Bay Area, where she writes about food and culinary travel on her blog TasteFood, teaches cooking and is relieved to be speaking English again.

A French Culinary Love Affair

Jan. 26, 2010
Whatever your culinary or linguistic disposition, this is one herb the world apparently can't live without. Featured in the cuisines of the Middle East, North Africa, Europe and Asia, cilantro has a culinary history dating back millennia. Its seeds were found in 8,000-year-old caves in Israel. There are ancient Sanskrit and biblical references to coriander. Even King Tut claimed a piece of the cilantro action with seeds scattered in his tomb. Introduced to the Americas by Europeans in the 1600s, the coriander plant is a relative newcomer to this part of the world. It's been growing like the dickens ever since, making up for any lost epochal time while achieving a prominent place in American Southwestern, Mexican and Latin American cuisines.

The entire cilantro plant is edible, including its root. The seeds, known as coriander, are the dried ripe fruit of the plant, frequently used whole for pickling and spicing, or toasted and finely ground into the dried spice also known as coriander. Dried coriander seeds bear no resemblance in flavor to the fresh leaves. Fresh coriander leaves are delicate and lacy, imparting a unique soapy aroma that either attracts or repels, depending on which side of the cilantro fence you sit. Cilantro leaves are best served fresh and used as a final flourish to dishes, because their fragility does not lend well to the heat of cooking.

Cilantro is easy to grow, which helps to explain its abundance. It is a hardy annual herb and a member of the parsley family, related to other lacy-leaved plants such as fennel, dill, chervil and carrots. It bolts quickly in warm temperatures, so it's best grown in the spring or fall. As soon as it flowers, it makes seeds that can be harvested and replanted. With some planning and routine, cilantro can grow all season long.

So, why is this ancient, worldly herb so polarizing? There are theories that nature plays a role: Some people may be genetically predisposed to cilantro intolerance. This can manifest itself in an intense aversion to the aroma and flavor of the leaves, and, in rare cases, a physical reaction similar to my student's. For the rest of us, nurture or environment may be a factor. Chances are that if you were raised in a culture where coriander is a kitchen staple, you are a cilantro lover. If you had little exposure, cilantro might take some getting used to. It's worth the effort. Fueled by culinary curiosity, I have grown to love cilantro. Now, pots of coriander grow year round in my California garden, and I frequently cook with it while happily considering myself a cilantro convert. If King Tut passed into the afterlife accompanied by coriander seeds, then this herb is worthy of our respect

Scientist make synthetic cell

Scientists are reporting that they have made a living cell from DNA that was originally synthesized in a lab. This isn't quite a synthetic organism. But the result is an important, and some would say troubling step on the road to creating life in the lab.

Craig Venter is the scientist behind the effort. Many scientists have strong opinions about Venter, but even his detractors will admit he's a man who thinks big.


Venter and his team have been working to create a synthetic cell since 1995. The idea is to use the 4 chemical constituents of DNA — named A, T, C and G — to put together a synthetic genome. Then they would put that synthetic genome into a cell, and have it direct the cell as it grew and multiplied. Now they've has succeeded.

Venter says there were two enormous hurdles to accomplishing his goals. First, he needed to figure out how to make a very big piece of DNA. Most chemical synthesis techniques stop working when you get to a few thousand of DNA letters. That means you can't copy a whole genome — you have to do it in parts.

But Venter says, "we wanted to make something close to a million." Solving all the chemistry has taken much of the last 15 years.

Venter and his colleagues eventually solved this problem by putting smaller fragments of synthesized DNA first into bacterial cells where they assembled into large fragments, and then into yeast cells that stitched those fragments together.

The second hurdle was figuring out how to transfer that large chunk of DNA into a cell without breaking it. To begin with, he wanted to show he could transfer a working chromosome from one species of bacteria to another.

Synthesizing Life

So he took the genome from a simple cell, a small bacteria called Mycoplasma mycoides, and spent several years trying to transfer it's genome into a related species, Mycoplasma capricolum. He finally succeeded.

"So it was the capricolum cell, with the mycoides genome in it," says Venter.

After he cleared those two hurdles, the last step was to make an exact copy of the mycoides genome in the lab, and transfer that synthetic genome into capricolum.

It took several more years of work, including determining a more accurate DNA sequence for the mycoides genome, to get the system to work. But now, as he and colleagues report in the journal Science, they've done it.

But this isn't really a new life form, says Jim Collins, a synthetic biologist at Boston University. "Its genome is a stitched together copy of the DNA of an organism that exists in nature."

Collins says Venter has created something remarkable, but it's not creating life.

"We don't know enough biology to create or synthesize life," says Collins. "I think we're far removed from understanding how would you build a truly artificial genome from scratch."

Even so, Venter's accomplishment of using DNA created in the lab to control a cell's behavior is bound to raise questions about whether the work is morally acceptable. That's a discussion bioethicists have been having for some time.

Inevitable Dilemmas

It's not as though we suddenly got to the point where particular moral questions are raised here that weren't already present in the field, says Gregory Kaebnick, a scholar at the Hasting Center, a bioethics think tank.

Kaebnick says there are two basic concerns about what Venter and others in the new field of synthetic biology are doing. First, that one of these synthetic organisms will escape from the lab and run amok. And the other is whether this kind of work crosses a line where humans start playing God.

"Up until now, organisms have come into being on their own as it were, they've evolved on their own." But Kaebnick says Venter's work says that may not longer be the case. "And for some that's a troubling development.

But for Venter, that's exactly the point of doing the work in the first place.

"We decided that writing new biological software and creating new species, we could create new species to what we want them to do, not what they evolved to do, says Venter.

Venter has founded a company called Synthetic Genomics where he intends to use these new species to do things like make new fuels and new vaccines.

For the moment, Venter and his colleagues are the only ones with the money and techniques to do this kind of genomic manipulation. But others are working in related areas, and a new world of synthetic microorganisms might not be far off.

Disputes continue over adoptions

"Russia believes that only an agreement that contains effective tools for Russian and U.S. officials to monitor the living conditions of adopted Russian children will ensure that recent tragedies in the United States will not be repeated," he said.
But the Russia Education and Science Ministry, which oversees international adoptions, said it had no knowledge of an official freeze. A spokeswoman for the Kremlin's children's rights ombudsman said that organization also knew nothing of a suspension.
And in Washington, the U.S. State Department said the administration had gotten conflicting information when it sought clarification from Russian officials about the status of adoptions. Spokesman P.J. Crowley said the U.S. was continuing to seek clarification. "Right now, to be honest, we've received conflicting information," he said.
The boy's return — with little supervision or explanation, aside from a note he carried from his adoptive mother saying he had psychological problems — outraged Russian authorities and the public.
Russia has a large population of abused and neglected children, many of them the children of alcoholics. Many of these children wind up living in large institutions, because adoption by Russian families is still relatively uncommon.
But as Russia has prospered over the past decade, the fate of these children, especially of those sent abroad, has increasingly been the focus of concern.
Russian lawmakers for years have suggested suspending foreign adoptions, citing a few high-publicized cases of abuse and killings of Russian children adopted by U.S. families.
The Tennessee woman who sent back her adopted Russian son last Thursday claimed she had been misled by his Russian orphanage about his condition.
Russians were outraged that no charges were filed against her in the United States.
"How can we prosecute a person who abused the rights of a Russian child abroad?" the children's rights ombudsman, Pavel Astakhov, said in a televised interview Wednesday. "If there was an adoption treaty in place, we would have legal means to protect Russian children abroad.
Some 3,000 U.S. applications for adopting Russian children are now pending, according to the Joint Council on International Children's Services, which represents many U.S. agencies engaged in international adoption.
But the numbers have declined sharply in recent years — with only 1,586 U.S. adoptions from Russia last year, compared with more than 5,800 in 2004.
The decline is due in part to concerns by U.S. parents about reports of fetal alcohol syndrome and other problems faced by some Russian children.
Thousands of American adoption advocates had hoped this week to petition Russian and U.S. leaders to prevent the halt in adoptions announced Thursday. Poignant pleas from would-be adoptive parents were included in an online petition, signed by more than 11,000 people and addressed to President Obama and his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev, the council said.
U.S. officials appeared willing to consider Russia's demand for a formal bilateral adoption pact, after years of resisting such entreaties while arguing that an international accord called the Hague Convention would be sufficient once Russia ratified it.
"We're willing to talk about some sort of bilateral understanding where we would ensure that these kinds of things could not happen," the U.S. ambassador to Russia, John Beyrle, told CBS television this week.
Crowley said that the group of U.S. officials from the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security will be traveling to Moscow this weekend for meetings early next week with Russian officials to clarify the situation.
"We're really going to Moscow next week to address what are serious and legitimate concerns about our processes regarding adoptions between Russia and the United States," he said. "We certainly think that there are many thousands of Russian children who are not adopted by Russian families; we have the same objective as Russia has: to find loving, safe and permanent homes, some of which would be here in the United States."

DOE - Fossil Energy: Solid Oxide Fuel Cell Technology

DOE - Fossil Energy: Solid Oxide Fuel Cell Technology

Images show gushing geysers on Saturn moon - Space.com- msnbc.com

Images show gushing geysers on Saturn moon - Space.com- msnbc.com: "Like sprinklers hidden beneath the surface, a series of geysers — more than previously thought — are gushing water ice from fissures near the south pole of Saturn's icy moon Enceladus, new images reveal."

Bloom Debuts Clean Energy Power Box -- Clean Energy -- InformationWeek

Bloom Debuts Clean Energy Power Box -- Clean Energy -- InformationWeek: "The company says its 'power plant-in-a-box' is a breakthrough in fuel cell-driven clean energy, but some question whether the price is too high.
By Antone Gonsalves
InformationWeek
February 24, 2010 03:20 PM

Bloom Energy debuted on Wednesday its highly anticipated power plant-in-a-box that supporters claim represents a breakthrough in clean energy produced from solid oxide fuel cells.
The company unveiled the Bloom Energy Server, dubbed the 'Bloom Box,' at eBay's San Jose, Calif., headquarters. Attendees at the highly orchestrated media event included California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and former Secretary of State Colin Powell."

NASA Looks to Fly Commercial

NASA Looks to Fly Commercial
Irene Klotz, Discovery News

Aug. 14, 2009 -- NASA will spend $50 million of federal economic stimulus funds to seed development of commercial passenger spaceships; however, a presidential panel reviewing the U.S. space program says that may be just the beginning.
According to the recommendations of the U.S. Human Space Flight Plans committee, which delivered its preliminary findings to the White House on Friday, NASA should set aside $2.4 billion between 2011 and 2014 for rides to the International Space Station on commercial U.S. carriers.
"There are companies that would love to move forward with orbital launch service on their own, using only private funds, but it just wouldn't happen for many, many years," John Gedmark, executive director of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, a Washington, D.C.-based industry trade group, told Discovery News. "What the government funding would do is basically allow these companies to accelerate these efforts."
With the government as a base customer, commercial firms would be able to develop an array of new markets for orbital launch services, including tourism and scientific research, Gedmark added.
"When you have multiple companies doing this as part of their core business, you open the doors for all sorts of things that you can do in space," he said.
The agency has $50 million available for firms to flesh out plans to provide astronauts rides to and from space station, which orbits about 225 miles above Earth. Proposals are due by Sept. 22.

NASA is retiring the shuttle fleet after seven more missions to complete construction of the orbital outpost. The current plan is to buy rides from the Russian government until a new U.S. spaceship, called Orion, debuts in 2016, or so.
The panel reviewing the space program, however, sees another path.
"We'd like to get NASA out of the business of flying people to low-Earth orbit," said panel member and former astronaut Sally Ride.
Fifty firms told NASA they were interested in the work, including United Space Alliance, which operates the space shuttles for NASA, and Lockheed Martin, which is designing the shuttle replacement spaceship. Among the dozens of smaller firms that contacted NASA were Space Exploration Technologies and Orbital Sciences Corp., both of which are developing cargo ships to fly to the station under NASA contracts worth $500 million, and the secretive Amazon-backed firm Blue Origin.
Absent from the list was Virgin Galactic, which plans to offer suborbital passenger space flights out of Mojave, Calif., beginning in 2010 or 2011.
"There are a lot of companies interested in what could become a new commercial spaceflight industry," Gedmark said.