Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince looks to be destroyed. The people need more doctors. I’ve heard about one major hospital that was destroyed, so it must be very bad.
Doctors Without Borders is in Haiti to set up clinics for treating the injured. You can donate now for that.
Most of the capital of Haiti, Port-au-Prince, has been destroyed by a magnitude 7.0 earthquake that hit yesterday. Bodies are lying in the streets. The death toll is expected to be enormous and the survivors need immediate help. The Red Cross is taking donations and sending teams to Haiti. You can donate to the Red Cross International Response Fund. Also, giving blood is always one of the very best things you can do because it fills the blood banks and can be used almost anywhere.
You can also donate to Doctors Without Borders, which is putting medical personnel on the ground in Haiti to assist in saving lives.
Hack n Mod has a fascinating DIY instruction manual for building a Star Trek phaser that shoots Blue Ray laser light. I’m not interested in actually building a Star Trek phaser that shoots real laser light at all. But I’m interested in the whole idea of posting about how one would do such a thing. The images are interesting. I like phasers and would probably use one to take over the entire world. If you build one of these things, please do not shoot yourself or anyone else in the eye with it.
Polaroid has used the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas to announce a new line of classic instant film cameras! Called the Polaroid PIC-1000, the camera will work with 10-packs of instant film just like the great old Polaroid cameras of the past. This is a very smart move by a company that looked supremely dumb a few years ago when it canceled the best product it had ever created. It was almost as dumb as Volkswagen canceling the Bug.
But no worries, we will have our instant pictures back. Not even digital cameras are instant. Not really. You have to plug them into your computer or printer or something and get your files sorted out and then you may need to do a some digital color correction on them. But with a Polaroid, you point click and enjoy the little whirring sound for a few seconds. Then you hold your picture and watch it come to life! There’s absolutely no good reason why digital should not coexist with analog technologies. The main difference between working with film and working with digital, as I see it, is this – with digital you know pretty much exactly what you are going to get when you take a picture. With analog film you never know what you are going to get. There’s a wonderful fuzzy zone filled with error and chance that Polaroids allow you to enjoy. Each picture is a little surprise.
This is a clip from a documentary film, Meanwhile, a butterfly flies, about filmmaker Jonas Mekas. He shares a few thoughts about culture, country, poetry and what those things really are.
Jonas Mekas is one of our great independent filmmakers. He spent years writing a film column in the Village Voice. He founded the Anthology Film Archives in New York City. He makes lots of films with small cameras that he can carry almost anywhere he goes. That is, by the way, how filmmakers should be working today. If a filmmaker needs a truck, he or she is making a commercial. I found this via the exceptionally brilliant underground film site, Bad Lit.