Benedict Cumberbatch, Chiwetel Ejiofor in “12 Years a Slave.” 12 Years A Slave hurt. Emotionally, sometimes even close to physically, it was painful to watch and that’s putting it mildly. The film pulled no punches when dealing with the harsh realities of America’s slave trade and the evil acted out by those who took part in it. The tells the story of Solomon Northup , a free African-American from Saratoga, New York, who is drugged, kidnapped, and sold into slavery in 1841 by men he thought he could trust.
Solomon witnesses firsthand the malice of slave traders as he is passed from master to master as a piece of commerce, experiencing treatment unlike any he had ever received in his life.Showcasing such horrors as rape, murder, brutal whippings, and lynching, the film doesn’t shy away from the cruelty slaves endured. Rather, it thrusts such cruelty into the forefront, forcing the audience to behold just how dreadful and terrifying life could be for slaves. 12 Years confronts its audience boldly and does not let up. It was a movie (easily “Best Picture” quality) that left me speechless as I stared at the credits, blown away by what I’d just witnessed.One of the more captivating moments is when Solomon — and by extension, the audience — meets Master Ford (, pulling off a deft Southern accent). Ford is kind in comparison to the rest of the cruel lot, but the film goes out of its way to remind us of his true character. Solomon himself almost gets fooled, telling fellow slave Eliza, “Ford is a decent man.” “He is a slaver,” she responds defiantly, but Solomon still defends the man.
“Under the circumstances,” he begins, but is cut off: “Under the circumstances, he is a slaver.”It’s this sort of reminder that keeps 12 Years A Slave grounded, and keeps its audience from relativizing what they see before their eyes. Certainly some audience members felt the same way about Ford that Solomon did, allowing him some leeway because of the “circumstances of his time.” But Eliza’s response confronts viewers with the fact that no matter what the circumstances, subjugating and degrading others, as in the case of slavery, is wrong.Just as when the camera pans to reveal our nation’s capital as Solomon is first captured and sold into slavery, the film challenges us not to distance ourselves from what we see on screen. We need to recognize slavery not only as something that happened in history, but something that happened in the history of our country and to not allow such prejudice and callousness to occur again. It’s not something that’s going to be, but at the same time it is.We must realize that, though we’ve done away with slavery in the United States, the attitudes and stereotypes that surrounded it still pervade our culture to this day. In our everyday lives we encounter the same racism that fueled the slave trade, from the to the to something as innocuous as a. Advertisements themselves can be littered with. Racism is not a thing of the past, as much as we may wish for it to be.Just as slavery was entrenched in the American South and normalized, systems of oppression continue to exist in our society, and we cannot be complacent.
Moments in the film like the conversation between Solomon and Eliza force us to not only view the past from a different angle, but also to re-evaluate where we stand in the present. How often are we like Solomon and convinced that things aren’t that bad? Like Eliza in the film, we cannot excuse injustice, no matter the veneer it may hide behind. When we see racism in our communities, schools, churches, popular culture, and even our own families, we must address it. We must change it.
12 Years Cycle Kazakh Food
We must examine the systems in today’s society that keep people — no matter their race, income, education, gender — from being all that God created them to be. This is not always easy work, but it’s work God calls us to do. We must take the spirit of Eliza with us from the movie theater and into a world that needs more prophetic voices to bring about true change.Where do we start? With ourselves. The changes we hope to make need to flow from within. If we want to encourage others to treat everyone equally, we must first model that behavior in our own lives.
Tuneup itunes. By broadening our own understandings of race and challenging others to do so as well, we can be the prophetic voices of our time. Get involved with an organization already working on racial justice issues in your community. Become more informed by about the history of race in the United States and having conversations with others about what you learn. I have a book (and movie) suggestion for you.
We're about half way down in the waning years of Cycle 24. We're currently on a 9 day stretch with zero sunspots, the first such stretch since 2010.With the number of sunspots dwindling, we've seen little F layer propagation on frequencies above 25MHz in the last 2 months, and that downward trend is likely to continue. As we approach minimum in 2018(ish), frequencies above 15MHz will only open sporadically and usually thanks to Sporadic E or Trans-equitorial low angle F layer propagation for a couple weeks on either side of the Equinoxes.In addition to the impact on the higher bands, the mid bands like 20m and 30m will no longer stay open all night, though they will generally continue to produce good DX during the day even at solar minimum.
During the minimum of cycle 23, 20 meters rarely failed to open in the afternoon.The lower solar activity actually improves conditions on 160m, 80m, and to some extent 40m, as there will be less D layer absorption, so those bands will open earlier in the evening and stay open later in to the morning than they have in the past few years. They will also experience fewer ionospheric disturbances and geomagnetic storms as solar activity tapers off.This cycle was unusually quiet, and the previous minimum was unusually and unexpectedly protracted, so most predictions regarding the various trends and extremes of cycle 24 have so far proven to be inaccurate. It's difficult to say for sure how deep this minimum is likely to be, or how long it will last, but it is safe to assume that the occasional article that pops up claiming we're entering a new Maunder Minimum or the like are just psuedo-scientific rantings. This cycle caught everyone off guard, and proved just how bad we are at predicting these things.Historically, if we look at the we can see that while cycle 24 was quite weak, if we look at the cycles before it, there is a clear cyclic trend that dates back to at least the late 18th century. It would appear we're entering a low point in that larger cycle, but it seems likely that cycle 25 and 26 will rebound somewhat or be about the same. Given the rapid descent from the peak in 2014, however, it seems safe to assume this will be another unusually long minimum. $begingroup$ Thanks for explanation.
Where is an easy accessible free software to predict opening between two points, on certain band/time/date? Is the best or there are other similar? Apart from WSPR, is there any system that actually measure propagation on a long term basis? To what extend does prediction software agree with actual measurements,like WSPR? What software is available to 'analyze and distill' raw WSPR measurements into 'visualization chart' (or similar) showing openess (signal level/probability of success) between two points on certain band/time/date? $endgroup$–Jul 3 '16 at 14:42.
$begingroup$ The comments are very limited for space, so I can't answer most of your questions very well. VOACAP is good but has trouble with sudden changes like flares. There are other sites like Propnet.org and PSKreporter that can give real time propagation info. Software can only tell you conditions, actual measurements are extremely situation/equipment dependent, so they are never very precise, and there are scripts and programs that can analyze WSPR data in various ways. You can find some of those on the WSPR forum or with a google for 'WSPR database visualizations' or similar.
$endgroup$–Jul 4 '16 at 19:06. According to this chart, 2016 was not the solar minimum.
We appear to be at or very near the minimum right now. However, we won't know for sure until some more time passes.Yesterday on, the following information appeared:THREE WEEKS WITHOUT SUNSPOTS: The sun has been blank for 21 days-3whole weeks without sunspots. To find an equal number of consecutivespotless days in the historical record, you have to go back toJuly-August 2009 when the sun was emerging from an unusually deepsolar minimum. Solar minimum, welcome back!Space weather forecasters have long wondered, will the next solarminimum (2018-2020) be as deep as the previous one (2008-2009)?Twenty-one days without sunspots is not enough to answer thatquestion. During the solar minimum of 2008-2009, the longest unbrokeninterval of spotlessness was 52 days, adding to a total of 813intermittent spotless days observed throughout the multi-year minimum.The corresponding totals now are only 21 days and 244 days,respectively. If this solar minimum is like the last one, we stillhave a long way to go.At the moment there are no nascent sunspots on the solar disk, so thespotless days counter is likely to keep ticking.
Stay tuned for moreblank suns.