Can Kidney Stone Be Grey

Jota De navel again

He did it again. My friend John Downing, whom he affectionately called "Jack In" by his initials, has managed again to bring to fruition an enormous intellectual challenge as a battleship. A copy of his "Encyclopedia of Social Media Movement " I just got as a Christmas gift, with 602 pages in a format that will not easily fit into my library, because its dimensions more closely resemble those "coffee -table books (impossible to translate into Castilian as accurate an expression) that are not only big, but beautiful.

I feel honored to have been included on the first page of the book as one of the seven members of the Advisory Board " (Consultative Council), along with Chris Atton, Gabriele Hadl, Joe Khalil, Clemencia Rodriguez and Laura Stein, and I still remember that meeting we had in Austin in early October 2002 to start designing this dream is now reality. Jota

appeal to a host of friends / authors to write the text of the book, no less than 76 responded positively and took charge of the 253 entries that make up the mosaic encyclopedic, through which it is described on more sixty countries (but favors U.S. and the Anglophone world.) I put three grains of sand, with brief text on the video experience of indigenous Kayapo in Brazil (p. 287), Bolivia's mining radio (p. 334) and Women's Video SEWA in India (p. 529).

Despite covering many issues and so much geography, John Downing described the book in the introduction with humility, remembering that everything is in these pages is only the small tip of a gigantic iceberg of communication socially motivated, but at the same time a representative sample of the richness and variety of experiences provided. In the encyclopedia has sought to privilege the voices of the south, the authors include among many women (almost half) and highlight the literature that in other languages \u200b\u200bon those experiences with little information in English. In addition, the task has been to show some media experiences repressive social movements, such as Radio Mille Collines dark Rwanda, responsible for encouraging genocide.

communication from the Australian Aborigines (with starting the "A" in this encyclopedia) to the means used by the Zionist movement (which closes with the "Z" of the book), to protest the new song Catalan, the Soviet-era samizdat graffiti of May 1968, or escrache Argentina, this book is itself a huge wall of communication Alternatively, a giant multicolored quilt, which is framed by a rainbow diversity of communication forms that civil society has been organized to express their desires, their claims or protests.

All examples are tributaries of the multiple definitions that are handled in communication research: alternative media, community, participatory, grassroots, independent, underground, radical, tactical, etc.

The book is beautiful, and not only for its content and format, but because it has been put together will, to articulate to those 76 employees in all regions, participating with enthusiasm and conviction, secure the leadership of John Downing.

This is not a book to be read from beginning to end is a reference book, like any encyclopedia, but the difference here is that the reading of texts is a joint venture, instills optimism and hope in the future because shows that despite the abuse of legal position dominant in the world and the apathy of those who fit into society dehumanized by consumption and opportunism, there are many others joining in libertarian-inspired projects.

know John Downing from early 1980, when we showed up at his office at Hunter College in New York a mutual friend Juan Flores. Since then we joined a close friendship, and we've been lucky enough to match over the last thirty years in many places outside of the "Big Apple": Washington, Barcelona, \u200b\u200bMexico, Porto Alegre, Barranquilla, Sydney, Medellín and Austin, where he lived for 13 years, with Ash, her companion while working as director of the Department of Radio, Television and Film at the University of Texas.

Many of these meetings in different parts of the world have been under NuestrosMedios network, which John Downing is founder with Clemencia Rodriguez and Nick Couldry. From our first meeting in Washington in 2001, we continued to find in various regions with other members of this network of scholars, activists and artists is very interesting that exists in the field of communication for social change.

His book "Radical Media" (first edition 1984, second edition 2001) which surprisingly has not been published in Castilian but if in Portuguese, was a very important contribution in the English language literature on alternative media, and popular protest in the world . When Thomas Tufte and I were preparing the "Anthology of Communication for Social Change" (2006), no doubt for a minute and include a text John Downing, "Community, democracy, dialogue and radical means" in the English edition and two years later a translation of the chapter to the Castilian edition.

In a previous project no less ambitious (which partnered with Denis McQuail, Philip Schlesinger and Ellen Wartella), "Sage Handbook for Media Studies" (2004), Jack De convened 31 authors to write original texts about media and communication, including film, music, advertising, collective and individual narratives, a look from multiple perspectives: history, economics, technology, ethics, hearings, academic research, and of course culture. My contribution to these 630 pages was a chapter on community media: "The Long and Winding Road of Alternative Media", unpublished in Castilian.

From 2004 to 2010 John was a professor in the College of Mass Communication and Media Arts at the University of Carbondale (Illinois) and Founding Director of Global Media Research Center. He is also Vice-President of the International Association of Media Communication Research (IAMCR). With his work as a teacher, researcher, with the number of books and articles published and their membership in multiple networks and professional bodies, John DH Downing ends an extraordinary career in the academic field of communication and today is dedicated to responding to invitations that have made a visiting professor at several universities worldwide.

Bethany Beach Delaware

The difference between life and death

Brazilian Wax Free Scenes

The magic of Tournier

My friend Walter Tournier is a magician. I always knew, but now they know everybody. In No. 2038 of Calle La Paz, in Montevideo, between light and shadow, behind heavy black curtains, had organized the plot of a conspiracy of love and creativity. In their study

animated film a team of twenty people work-and play-to create an animated feature film Selkirk, the real story of Robinson Crusoe, which we see in mid-2011 and will no doubt be a great gift for those who love good cinema. The effort included in the post-production teams of Argentina (in charge of the sound) and Chile (in charge of funds and digital sets).

Flaco

Walter Tournier

Tournier I visited in late October, I was in his studio, where a long corridor from the entrance of the house to the back exhibits in-dash walls drawn storyboard, the film, with hundreds of images representing sequences that make up the film, some already filmed as evidenced by the photos, some in process, still represented in black and white drawings. Color gradually invades the wall, a sign that the characters come to life and the film progresses.

This is the most ambitious project that Walter has developed. In Selkirk, the castaway on life that inspired the novel by Daniel Defoe, crowns a filmmaking career precise and a perfectionist, which has spent decades of his life with dedication and deep love of art (and here the term fits like fits). In other words, the life of Hank is and has been the animation, to the point that he it could be a character. Idea to his disciples, including the skinny on the story as a "cameo" of those who loved Hitchcock.

The youth team of Walter is one of the main issues of the project: "The idea is that they replace us, they continue to work with animation." Many of these young people were trained in the training workshops given by Hardy and today are the creative and technical support of production of the film.

addition of enthusiasm and harmony that floats in the air, what impressed me most in the animation studio is the detail and perfection with which they work. The face of each character is modeled several times in latex and silicone caring even microscopic details, and discarding the pieces with impurities. Below the bench is a "dead box" where the sides are falling out well or not broken while off its mold. Laura "Lala" Severi-art director and partner Walter gave me one side of Selkirk, who looks at me with empty eyes as I write.

Young creators of Selkirk

Medium day the entire team took a break to share the gnocchi in a large pot that had been prepared Doña Susana Buenaventura. Sitting around a long succession of technical plastic tables and chatting animatedly creative, jokes and party are thrown to someone, "there's always a birthday, we are many." The atmosphere is jovial, that of a large family where the patriarch Flaco is a close, accessible, simple.

In successive rooms of the house, converted to animation studio behind the heavy black curtains have built four sets with the main sites where the characters come to life: the warehouse and the captain's cabin of the pirate ship, beach Juan Fernández archipelago where Selkirk was abandoned for four years in 1690, and the tavern of the pirates. Here is the magic, are achieved movements that seem impossible. "Care to kick the camera tripod, which is going to trash the whole scene" prevents Flaco.

Walter Tournier and Juan Andres Fontan

Four pirates around a table with jars provide beer in the animation by Juan Andres Fontan beer splashed on table when they hit the jars. The effect achieved using small pieces of yellow cellophane, and all this while had to move their faces, arms and bodies of the four pirates. In another scene a coin is tossed in the air, shot from above shows how the coin up is enlarged while turning on itself. How did this effect? The currency had been attached to a piece of wire that spun and then was erased electronically.

Many details are feats of animation: a knife through the air and nailed to a mast, a parrot that flies flapping their wings, the reflection of a beach in the tiny lens of a telescope, pirate flag flies wind, sparks of clashing swords, a tear falling, or the pirate ship on choppy ridden waves. Everything here is movement, everything has depth of field and thickness. All this you can see on the excellent website film, do not miss it.

What little I know about the art of animation "stop motion" helps me to appreciate these wonderful achievements on the screen last only one or two seconds, and that very few viewers will appreciate in perspective.

We are far from animated films of least resistance to television has accustomed us with flat images, fixed funds scenery, the characters dull with little movement and no depth, poor drawings made of paperboard, cut crude as South Park, whose success seems to be based solely on the word vulgar, a kind of masochism highbrow.

In Selkirk the use of digitally generated effects are minimal, is reduced to the special effects and background scenery. Everything else is the work of skilled craftsmen who give life to characters that are not larger than 20 centimeters tall.

Perfection is such that the mouths of people open and close as they talk in sync with the words recorded by the actors who did the dubbing. The lighting of the scenes are perfect, the sets I suggest that "small is beautiful" (the phrase of the economist Leopold Kohr). Inside each doll is a mechanical structure, an articulated skeleton which allows the characters move.

Walter Tournier and Alfonso Gumucio in 1998

specialized equipment and precision tools watchmaker make each character can perform the same movements as a human being. "Despite the difficulties, as I prefer to use available materials and work space across real and not fictitious as in 3D. Tellingly I like it is closer to reality with a fee scale that marks the human presence, "Walter tells me, and I go from there to the streets of Montevideo with lungs full of fresh air.

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Communication for Development United Nations

What follows in this note comes to mind because in the last two years I have contributed in a process led by UNESCO to analyze, position and promote communication for development. He participated in several activities in the organization's headquarters in Paris and in Latin America.

At the request of Unesco in Uruguay did a formative assessment of how United Nations agencies in that country implement communication programs for development, as mandated by the General Assembly of the United Nations. The result is that most people do little or nothing in that field. My report is not confidential, as the Unesco regional office has placed on its website. Just one click to download the PDF .

Of all the agencies of the United Nations, whose mandate only communication is the Unesco. Other programs and projects have communication but which is Unesco from the top of its organizational structure, communication sector has the same level as other sectors to justify their initials: education, science and culture.

For research that has encouraged and supported the communication policies, UNESCO stands in the landscape not only of multilateral organizations, but also well ahead of the bilateral development agencies, and above Governments, foundations and NGOs should be the closest to the communication understood as a process of dialogue and participation.

Typically, when institutions say they are committed to the "communication", what they actually do is dissemination of information or even worse, propaganda of their own activities to bolster the visibility institutional. A clear example is UNICEF, much ado about nothing, and I know what I mean after working more than seven years in that organization.

The confusion between information and communication is so prevalent, not only ordinary people but themselves journalists and reporters speak of "mass media" to refer to the media and broadcast. I said in several trials, and in a recent article published in Page 12 (Argentina), the mass media do not exist, that is a lie.

Gustavo Gómez

Unesco understands the difference and symbolic battles waged for freedom of expression, the right to information and communication rights. The three concepts are also often confused, but not so difficult to distinguish their differences: the freedom of expression protects journalists and the media, the right to information is the right of individuals to access information from government institutions and the right to communicate is that we all have to be able to communicate through their own instruments, as so-called community media.

If we make a little history will remember that Unesco fought the battle for a New World Information and Communication (NWICO) following the report of the MacBride Commission (comprising among others, by Gabriel García Márquez), which showed that the major powers world were under strict control of information flows in the world. The evidence was so overwhelming in the report, the United States and Britain withdrew from UNESCO for many years and with all its resources sabotaged propaganda.

that continues to wage battles in recent years Unesco recover the previous history and emphasize the right to communication, promoting For example, new technologies and communication for development in countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Cyranek

Gunther Gabriel Kaplun and

A Cyranek Gunther invitation until late November Regional Adviser for Communication and Information of UNESCO for the Mercosur, recently participated in Montevideo the close of the conference "Communication for Development, Social Change and Participation in Telecommunication Tower ANTEL (Administración Nacional de Telecomunicaciones), a modern building near the port like a boat (much like the huge Burj Al Arab, the seven-star hotel in Dubai). The

event program highlighted the wealth of experiences of communication with a sense of participation and development. Since the state has realized the ambitious Ceibal , which I mentioned in a previous note, by which it has adopted an XO laptop to all students in public schools in the country. Since civil society participatory communication has been enriched with proposals such as TV Tree, and many others.

Experiences mentioned and others are described in chapters of a new book of Unesco which was presented by Gunther Cyranek. With its 500 pages, photographs and an unconventional format, "Communication for development: a tool for social change and participation" contains 30 texts that refer to 'approaches and experiences, "including one of mine where I analyze the role meets the communication for development in the UN system. The entire book can be downloaded in PDF the Unesco website.

The event also featured speakers from the front line, Gabriel Kaplun's friends (who leads the race Communication at the University of Uruguay), Eduardo Rebollo (who does the same at the Catholic University) and Gustavo Gomez, who took a few months ago the role of National Director of Telecommunications in the government of Pepe Mujica, and was formerly the Director of laws of the AMARC. You can download the photos from the event the Unesco website.

Ana María Mizrahi, Gabriel Kaplun, Alfonso Gumucio Dagron, Gunther Cyranek

The conference generated healthy expectations in the media in Uruguay, certainly prone to a progressive concept of communication. The Channel 5, public television, invited us to Gabriel Kaplun, Cyranek Gunther and me to an interview with Ana María Mizrahi on "The News and its context." The photos that live broadcast, which took place in his study "transparent" (glass, on the Boulevard Artigas) can also be downloaded from the website of Unesco.

Moreover

Alfonso Gumucio Dagron

Sebastián Auyanet, del diario El País , me permitió en una entrevista publicada el sábado 2 de noviembre, abordar los temas antes mencionados, porque me parece importante seguir insistiendo hasta que se entiendan.

Este tipo de actividades que apoya la Unesco, relacionadas con la comunicación para el desarrollo se están dando también en otros países de la región, por ejemplo en Ecuador con la participación de CIESPAL. La idea es preparar una masa crítica de documentación, experiencias y debates con vistas a la 12ª Mesa Redonda de Comunicación para el Desarrollo que tendrá lugar en India en 2011.