Skip to main content

Verisimilitude

I was watching The Last King of Scotland the other day and so many things were familiar from my experience in Cameroon. Even though the movie is set in East Africa, the place has far more similarities to West Africa than to North America.

 

But there was one moment that did not ring true, and it took me a while to realize what was wrong. When Idi Amin addresses the crowd after his seizing power, he speaks eloquently and passionately into a crystal clear sound system.

 

Wait—crystal clear sound system?

 

Did any outdoor sound system back in the 70s sound that good, much less ones used in rural East Africa? In Cameroon in the late 2000s, I was not in the presence of any sound systems that did not squawk, squeal, stammer, and static the entire time they were being used.

 

So close, but not quite.

Labels:

Comments

Scottspiel said…
Hehe - you're right on target; although then they would need captions on the screen, as you wouldn't be able to understand what he was saying :)
March 26, 2009 at 6:54 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Winnipeg Transit woes

  “We’ve increased support for municipalities year after year because we know strong communities depend on reliable, stable and predictable funding increases,” Municipal and Northern Relations Minister Glen Simard said in an emailed statement to the Free Press Tuesday. https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/breakingnews/2026/06/23/winnipeg-transit-needs-funding-boost-additional-staff-to-follow-new-provincial-accessibility-regulations-city-report This in answer to City of Winnipeg chair of Public Works Janice Lukes plea for the province to cough up money for the needed upgrades. Listen carefully because these are words I won't often say: I gotta agree with Lukes on this one. If the province is handing down new standards, given their higher capacity for raising revenues, they ought to help the city fund meeting said standards. What Simard fails to acknowledge is that those "year after year" funding increases started at the bottom basement after Conservative cuts and likely h...
Post a Comment
Read more

more journalistic malpractice from Canada's national broadcaster

The government has just rammed through legislation to turn Canada into a police surveillance state where all the democratic and processed based guard-rails have been removed.  They used some legislative loophole to force a vote on amendments without debate at a committee meeting at midnight. But this is what the front page of our national broadcaster's news site looks like. Do you see any mention of Bill C-22? Do you see any word of a midnight SECU session with a forced vote? Do you see any mention of MPs in tears at how democracy is being shredded before their very eyes? Do you see anything removing about all legal protections against having your data intercepted, read and kept on file (in a word of hackers and data breaches)? Do you see anything about how experts in Australia (who have already gone partway down the path Canada has just widened, flatted, and turned into a racetrack) are warning Canadians not to do this? No. The CBC is spineless. Just a mouthpiece for whoever wield...
Post a Comment
Read more

Letter writing success

Last week, several sources linked to a letter appealing to venerable Canadian scientist and nature advocate David Suzuki to withdraw from a supposed climate prize due to its deep ties to an unbashedly colonlialist Israeli organization. The JNF's claim to fame is planting trees in Israel. Pine trees. Non-native trees. Trees that are susceptible to wildfires. Trees intentionally planted atop forcibly-emptied Palestinian villages to try to erase their memory.  The letters worked. Suzuki withdrew. I hadn't gotten around to writing before I got the news. So when a follow up letter to other participants in the prize hit my inbox, I rushed to put my own spin on the letter and sign it. Send your own here I urge you to join David Suzuki in withdrawing from the upcoming Climate Solutions Prize (CSP) festival. CSP was instigated by the racist Jewish National Fund (JNF) of Canada with support from the Israeli government. Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennet announced the launch of CSP...
Post a Comment
Read more