April 30, 1975 was the Fall of Saigon. The Viet Cong were closing in South Vietnam and American helicopters were going back and forth taking more than enough Vietnamese people to their navy ships. This was the day the United States military stopped helping the south. Here, my grandmother is holding the Republic of Vietnam’s flag before the communist changed it to the red flag with the gold star. Today, this is the only flag Vietnamese-Americans associate with. If someone were to hold the communist flag here, from experience, they would be judged and criticized. My family sacrificed so much to receive freedom here in the states and I am forever grateful.

We were talking about several movements and also about movements that fight for the right of gay couples.

this reminded me of the Christopher Street day in germany, which is a huge event for the homosexual community. They walk through streets and celebrate their rights but also to raise awareness of the inequality in other countries. In the end they all gather in berlin  in front of the Brandenburger Tor , which is an historical building in germany, and people hold speeches and music is played. I think this event is very important since it is very popular in germany and it takes place in front of a historical building, therefore they can raise a tremendous amount of awareness for they movement and community.

This week in lecture Putnam discussed the Watergate Scandal and how the “plumbers” flushed out potentially harmful information. In addition, they also snuck into the Watergate office complex secretly in order to attain information. Similarly, this past week my dorm was watching the film Harry Potter and there was a scene in which Harry and his best friend Ron snuck into the library using an invisible cloak in order to attain secret information. This scene immediately made me think about the Watergate scandal and I was pretty surprised as to the similarity between both occurrences.  

This is what was used to process the earliest internet sent messages, Think of them as the ancestor of the antenna for your cell or the modem for your computer. Its’s called an Internet Message Processor, and was developed by the us government in response to concerns over the advance of technology by the Soviets during the 70s era of the cold war. The war pushed the development of much of the tech that we use today, from the internet, to the planes in the sky, to the cameras that made the Avengers movie that I can’t see cause I need to study.

This is from an episode of The Fairly Odd Parents which is a show I watched when I was a kid.  It popped into my head this week when the professor in large lecture mentioned code name “Deep Throat.”  Deep Throat was an anonymous informant that told two reporters at The Washington Post inside information about the Watergate Scandal during the time of the Nixon Administration.

In this episode of the The Fairly Odd Parents there is an informant named “Deep Toot” that informs Timmy’s parents about an issue he is dealing with.  I personally just thought it was funny that it finally clicked why Tootie was called “Deep Toot” in this episode.  I guess that every other time I learned about the Watergate Scandal I just forgot about this episode.

MACROHACK Christian Mejia

This week in class, Dr.Putnam spoke briefly about Martin Luther King Jr., mostly on how he was assassinated. This sparked a memory i had in elementary through middle school, where around the time we were learning about black history, the teachers showed us a video called “Our Friend, Martin”. The hour long video is an animation that depicts present day students who go back in time to historic events during Martin Luther King Jr.’s life. They have real footage of some of the events in the video and at the end we see Martin Luther King Jr. get shot (in animation) and then live footage of his funeral proceedings.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=298432jRbhw

-Nick Thips-

https://apictureofpolitics.wordpress.com/2012/04/13/223/

The picture itself is a street painting of what looks like a depressed artist holding painting materials, who just painted a sign saying “CANCELLED” over the words “follow your dreams”. The format that this image takes is a photograph (JPG) of a street painting. The artist responsible for creating this particular painting is the widely renowned, pseudonymous artist and political activist who goes by the name Banksy. Personally, I think that the primary intention of this street painting was to draw attention to societies’ tendency to discourage people from pursuing their aspirations. Often times contemporary society sways young kids away from following their passions in life and instead encourages them to get “real jobs”. I think that Banksy’s chief goal was to bring this issue of the world oppressing peoples’ genuine ambitions to light. The painting appeared in May of 2010 within the underprivileged, Chinatown region of Boston, Massachusetts. In addition, the image of the actual painting is not pixelated and actually captures the quality of it precisely. Despite the fact that it is just a photograph of the actual work, it still accurately preserves the image in high definition. Adding on, the dimensions of the actual painting itself is right around five to six feet in both width and height. However, this particular photograph of Banksy’s work is 49.76 KB in terms of its’ size. I undoubtedly think that this painting was created in more of a modern context in order to really reach out and speak to the people of this present-day in age. As soon as we were assigned this mini-essay/macro-hack I knew immediately that I wanted to do a street painting by Banksy. When it came down to choosing which one of his works I was going to dial in on, I Google-searched “contemporary Banksy” due to the fact that I wanted an image that sort of spoke to the people in a modern fashion. Finally, I chose this image not because I simply thought it looked intriguing or physically appealing, but for two of the following reasons. First, I consider myself to be a definite advocate of Banksy and the messages that he strives to emit through his artwork. Second, I personally stand behind the belief that one of societies’ most damaging characteristics is its’ tendency to oppress and objectify individuals who pursue their true aspirations. I believe that this particular painting, epitomizes and displays the severity of this issue and acts as a sort of call to action directed towards humanity as a whole to put an end to this destructive trend.

http://www.archives.gov/historical-docs/todays-doc/?dod-date=223

You have seen this iconic war image on numerous occasions and is considered one of the most duplicated photos across many media platforms, and includes a US postage stamp. This photograph was taken by Associated Press photojournalist Joe Rosenthal on Mt. Suribachi, after US Marines took the Japanese island of Iwo Jima after days of battle on February 23, 1945. The image above is a hi-res download (186 KB jpg.) of the original which is currently being held in US Navy records. Looking closely you will notice it is a copy of the original, meaning it remains untouched, non-cropped, grainy and in black and white. Imperfections exist probably from the negative development and age of the negative.

I was watching a documentary on the Smithsonian Channel which highlighted U.S. Memorials created and located near our nations capital. One of the many discussed was the United States Marine Corps War Memorial located in Arlington,VA., which is a 3D sculpture based on Rosenthal’s photo titled Flag Raising on Iwo Jima. During the program I learned that he won a Pulitzer Prize for the photo and I realized I really did not know anything else about it, so I started digging online. I went to Google and found many links just by searching “Iwo Jima Flag.”

This was actually a picture of a 2nd flag raising, and staying true to American- go big or go home– style, the first flag was deemed to small. After Rosenthal missed the first raising he was traveling up the summit to shoot the flag and ruble when he stumbled upon the second flag raising. He quickly snapped the shot without knowing truly if he got the the image he was hoping for. According to an article by Thom Patterson of CNN, the negatives were sent to Guam for processing and by the time Rosenthal saw his published work in the Pacific region, five or six days later San Francisco had released it all over the US being seen by millions of Americans, which during those days it was considered to have “gone viral.” The photo represented the the momentous occasion of a win in the Pacific theatre during WWII and was used to spread morale and sold many, many war bonds.

I have only been to Arlington, VA. one time and regretfully I only viewed the the US Memorials from a car window at night. The most striking was the Iwo Jima Memorial and the following image is close to what I remember from my visit. The five Marines and one Navy sailor continue to give me goosebumps.