Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Doug digs “Timeframe” at Telfair

We thoroughly enjoyed the three interactive video works by Daniel Shiffman at Savannah’s Jepson Center for the Arts. Shiffman describes Timeframe:

In the late 19th century, Englishman Eadweard Muybridge photographed progressions of animal and human movements, capturing the beauty of motion imperceptible to the human eye. Timeframe takes inspiration from Muybridge’s work, unlocking the frozen frames of his motion studies with live video. The viewer is invited to witness him or herself inside a grid of one thousand and twenty four frames of video, his or her movements rippling across and around the screen.

Doug gets into it:

Cynthia Tucker on Troy Davis

In the AJC today:

In studying cases of innocent people who have been wrongly convicted, University of Virginia law professor Brandon L. Garrett has concluded that erroneous identifications by eyewitnesses are, by far, the leading cause, occurring 79 percent of the time. (Garrett examined 200 cases of people later exonerated by DNA evidence.) All six of the Georgia men who have been exonerated by DNA evidence were convicted because of faulty eyewitness testimony.

But, in Davis’ case, there is more than just the 11th-hour remorse of prosecution witnesses who now say they were pressured by police or influenced by news reports. There is also the genuine regret of a woman who saw something important that night but withheld the information from police.

Tonya Johnson now says she was sitting on the porch when she saw a man running from the direction of the Burger King. She watched as he hid two guns behind the screen door of the abandoned apartment next door. She says he returned later, panicked and sweaty, and asked her: “Is he dead?”

When police questioned her, she never mentioned the man. She was afraid of him and afraid of the police, as well. “They weren’t nice,” she told the AJC. “You did all you could to avoid them.” But now she believes her silence may have helped to send an innocent man to death row.

MacPhail was cut down doing his duty; he left a multitude, including two young children, to mourn his loss. But, as deeply as they have been wounded, it could hardly help them - or us - for the state to take the life of another innocent man. If Georgia insists on putting someone to death for MacPhail’s murder, it ought to make sure it has the right man.

LATER: The state Board of Pardons and Paroles will hold another clemency hearing on August 9 to listen to 14 witnesses. Fax the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles on Troy’s behalf. The number is (404) 651-8502.  Or via Amnesty International here.

USA Today on defining teens as sex offenders

In a piece about states criminalizing kids for consensual sex, here’s what is said about Georgia:

Officials who say punishment has gone too far cite the case of Genarlow Wilson, who is serving a 10-year sentence in Georgia for receiving oral sex at a party from a 15-year-old girl when he was 17.

“We’re reliving the crucible,” says New Hampshire state Rep. Lee Hammond, a Democrat. Once on a public registry, he says, a teen’s future can change dramatically. “You can hang up a lot of careers.”

“There’s been a sea change in attitudes about juvenile sex offending,” says David Finkelhor of the University of New Hampshire’s Crimes Against Children Research Center. He says schools and therapists take even lesser incidents, such as touching, more seriously. [...]

Some state officials say teens, even in consensual sex cases, deserve what they get.

State Sen. Eric Johnson, a Republican in Georgia, disagrees with colleagues who say Genarlow Wilson was unfairly punished. “There’s no evidence anyone is in jail because two young lovers got overheated in the back seat of a car,” he says.

Muppets move to Atlanta

NYTimes:

ATLANTA, July 24 - Time’s fun when you’re having flies, Kermit the Frog once said. And how time has flown: Kermit, or more precisely one of the many puppets that have played Kermit, will be retired to Atlanta on Wednesday, part of a major gift being made by the Jim Henson Foundation.

The flippered phenom, who began life as a scrap of fabric cut from a green coat discarded by Jim Henson’s mother, will be presented to the Center for Puppetry Arts here. He is a symbol of a large gift of Mr. Henson’s work that will be donated to the center and exhibited in a planned Jim Henson Wing, said Cheryl Henson, president of the Jim Henson Foundation. [...]

The Center for Puppetry Arts was offered the Henson Foundation archive because of its long history with the Jim Henson Company. Alongside Kermit and Miss Piggy (dressed as Rhett and Scarlett), Jim Henson cut the ribbon at the center’s opening in 1978, and the center’s collection already includes the Pigs in Space from “The Muppet Show.” Another factor favoring the center was its plan to expand and complete an already impressive collection of international puppets.

The institution is “the prime center of puppetry arts in the country and really has been for a long time,” said Eileen Blumenthal, a professor of theater arts at Rutgers and author of the book “Puppety, a World History.”