Some Interesting Things I Read Today (28 July)

related tags: #ShortReading

Absolutely disgusting that the University of Southern California (along with University of California, San Diego; the University of Maryland, Baltimore; and the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston) were selling bodies that were gifted to them, giving themselves a profit (on bodies they had largely obtained through donation) while also using the bodies for things that their former owners might actually not have consented to when they opted to donate their body (as most people do so for the training of HOSPITAL medical staff, for the development of new medical techniques, or for the continuance of some forensic learning).

Most people do not consent to freely giving their body, which was donated with a purpose, so that it can be sold to the US miliary and then used in training genocidaires.

Review by Emily Wilson, known for being the first woman to translate The Odyssey into English, on Christopher Nolan's film. Definitely worth a read, I think, even if you don't plan on watching the movie. This kind of highlights a frequent problem in most retellings, but it's understandable that it'd exist in a Nolan film:

Many of the film’s implicit values directly contradict those of Homer’s poem. Deception, warmongering, extramarital sex, cruelty to animals, abusing women and yearning for honour – all perfectly fine in the world of Homer – are, in this version, very bad. This is not in itself a problem, but it is a problem if the film’s own values and vision don’t hang together, and if the characters’ motivations don’t make sense on their own terms.

After learning in the above review that this was a thing that happened, a friend sent this article written by a Sahwari man discussing the fuller context to this issue (such as how Sahwari are not allowed to document their everyday life under Moroccan occupation).