3 Life-Changing Truths from 3 Years of Minimalism. Egyptian and Tunisian Revolutions in Carl Sagan's "Earth the Pale Blue Dot" Asylum: Inside the Haunting World of 19th-Century Mental Hospitals. By Maria Popova What straitjackets have to do with Eames chairs and the mutations of policy ideals. One of the 19th-century’s most notorious socioarchitectural phenomena were the “insane asylums” that housed the era’s mentally ill — enormous and stunning buildings whose architecture stood in stark contrast with the ominous athmosphere of their inner workings. Fascinated by this phenomenon and its ghosts, photographer Christopher Payne set out to document the afterlife of those baleful buildings in Asylum: Inside The Closed World Of State Mental Hospitals — a compendium of images that peel away at a lost world and, in the process, offer a provocative portrait of the history of our (mis)treatment of the mentally ill.
A foreword by iconic neuroscientist Oliver Sacks (remember him?) Frame the photographs in a sociocultural context of how these institutions evolved and what role they came to play, both in their time and in our reflections on history. Autopsy theater, St. Via NPR Share on Tumblr. Beavis & Butthead In Real Life. Prepare to have your dreams haunted for some time with these busts, which portray how MTV's recently-rebooted iconic head-banging twosome would look if they actually existed in this world.
Makeup and Effects Artist, Kevin Kirkpatrick has done a disturbingly-brilliant job bringing Beavis & Butthead's adolescent vacuousness to life. You will never look at them the same way again. See more photos below! [Source] Wendell Berry: Consciousness And The Creaturely Life. Photo: Courtesy of Indiana University Wendell Berry says eating food from your own place makes you one flesh with that place. "This, in so far as it’s conscious," he adds, "is profoundly intimate. " Wendell Berry occupies a unique place in American literary culture. Born in Kentucky in 1934, he has stayed close to his roots in caring for the land that his ancestors settled almost 200 years ago.
One of the preeminent philosophers of place, a leading advocate for environmental stewardship, and a fierce critic of agribusiness, he first came to literary notice as a poet in the 1960s. Since then, Mr. More: Listen to the complete interview with Wendell Berry on WFIU’s “Profiles.” In part one of a three-part conversation, Berry begins by talking about the farm he maintains in Port Royal, Kentucky. Farmer And Writer Mostly, we grow grass and trees and we have a small sheep flock and a fairly good vegetable garden, and we harvest a good bit of our fuel from the woods. To Be Made Of Your Place. The Rap Songs Of The Arab Spring : The Record. The Gift of Good Land « Practicing Resurrection. The Gift of Good Land by Wendell Berry “Dream not of other Worlds …” Paradise Lost VIII, 175 My purpose here is double.
I want, first to attempt a Biblical argument for ecological and agricultural responsibility. Second, I want to examine some of the practical implications of such an argument. The second task is obviously related to the first, but my motive here is somewhat more personal. Proper Ends Some of the reluctance to make a forthright Biblical argument against the industrial rape of the natural world seems to come from the suspicion that this rape originates with the Bible, that Christianity cannot cure what, in effect, it has caused. Professor White asserts that it is a “Christian axiom that nature has no reason for existence save to serve man.” But these early verses of Genesis can give us only limited help. It is certainly possible that there might be a critical difference between “man’s purposes” and “man’s proper ends.” The Promised Land is not a permanent gift. The Idea of a Local Economy | Wendell Berry. 'The idea of a local economy rests upon only two principles: neighborhood and subsistence...
" by Wendell Berry A TOTAL ECONOMY is one in which everything—“life forms,” for instance,—or the “right to pollute” is “private property” and has a price and is for sale. In a total economy significant and sometimes critical choices that once belonged to individuals or communities become the property of corporations. A total economy, operating internationally, necessarily shrinks the powers of state and national governments, not only because those governments have signed over significant powers to an international bureaucracy or because political leaders become the paid hacks of the corporations but also because political processes—and especially democratic processes—are too slow to react to unrestrained economic and technological development on a global scale.
How are they to protect themselves? And then, perhaps, one begins to see from a local point of view. . → Purchase from Amazon.com. Pete Brook: Prison Photography on the Road. Animated Soviet Propaganda. By Maria Popova What warthogs and vultures have to do with the most critical polarization in world politics.
There hardly is a time in world history more politically polarized than the 20th century, which divided the globe in two camps — capitalism and communism — divided at the height of the divergence by the infamous Iron Curtain. The Cold War was very much a war of ideologies and each side relied heavily on the ideological unity of its people, often employing the power of the visual arts — graphic design, animation, illustration — to drive its message home. While the U.S. was producing seminal design work under various WPA programs, the U.S.S.R. was busy churning out its own brand of political propaganda art.
Animated Soviet Propaganda: From the October Revolution to Perestroika chronicles the visual legacy of 60 years of Soviet political history between 1924 and 1984. The ambitious collection is divided into four parts, curated not simply by chronology but by recurring themes. The Key To Creativity, According To Steve Jobs. I’ve been viewing the Steve Jobs narration of the ‘Think Different’ ad as well as his 2005 Stanford Commencement address over the past few days. It’s served to inspire me, take on new tasks, and generally try things a bit differently. I’ve felt more creative than I have in recent memory. If you’re not in the mood for a little Steve Jobs multimedia, why not try some good old fashioned text?
Earlier today, Brit Morin (great Tumblr to follow) posted this wonderful quote from Jobs on how he thinks creative minds operate. One of the biggest themes to what Jobs said in many public addresses has been to ‘connect the dots’ and to critically think about everything you do. According to him, that’s a rare trait that many of us do not enjoy. I hope you use this quote to become inspired and to start, well, thinking differently. The Unformatted Text “Creativity is just connecting things. Education’s Dilemma is Form. Salman Rushdie and Facebook’s pseudonym policy. This article arises from Future Tense, a collaboration among Arizona State University, the New America Foundation, and Slate. Future Tense explores the ways emerging technologies affect society, policy, and culture. To read more, visit the Future Tense blog and the Future Tense home page.
You can also follow us on Twitter. What would George Orwell make of Facebook? Photograph by Jerod Harris/Getty Images. When it comes to pseudonyms, Facebook is more egalitarian than the early Soviet Union. That Facebook's stance on pseudonyms may be entrenching autocracies doesn't seem to bother the company in the least. Of course, every company has a stupid policy or two, and Facebook is no exception. This is not to say that privacy is bad currency. All of this is part of Silicon Valley's grand bargain to make consumption as networked and transparent as possible.
It is also stifling, boring, and intolerable. Patrician McCarthy: What's Your Innate Gift? :: Videos :: The 99 Percent. “We make things happen by knowing who we are,” says Mien Shiang Institute founder Patrician McCarthy. Drawing on the Taoist technique of medical facial diagnosis, McCarthy illustrates how the ancient art of “face reading” can shed new light on our own strengths and weaknesses, and help us work with others more effectively. Patrician McCarthy is the first Mien Shiang expert to translate this ancient science for the mainstream American public.
She founded The Mien Shiang Institute to teach the Taoist technique of Medical Facial Diagnosis, Wu Xing (the Five Element philosophy), and Face Reading. In 2000, she created the first university Certificate Program on these teachings in the United States. She has served on the faculties of Yo San University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Los Angeles, and Emperor’s College of Oriental Medicine in Santa Monica, California.For more than 20 years, Patrician has applied the power of this discipline to the modern world.
Mienshiang.com @mienshiang. The Dropout Economy - 10 Ideas for the Next 10 Years. Middle-class kids are taught from an early age that they should work hard and finish school. Yet 3 out of 10 students dropped out of high school as recently as 2006, and less than a third of young people have finished college. Many economists attribute the sluggish wage growth in the U.S. to educational stagnation, which is one reason politicians of every stripe call for doubling or tripling the number of college graduates. But what if the millions of so-called dropouts are onto something? As conventional high schools and colleges prepare the next generation for jobs that won't exist, we're on the cusp of a dropout revolution, one that will spark an era of experimentation in new ways to learn and new ways to live.
It's important to keep in mind that behavior that seems irrational from a middle-class perspective is perfectly rational in the face of straitened circumstances. Next China and the U.S.: The Indispensable Axis. Learn Spanish Free Online | Lessons and Tools. RiP: A Remix Manifesto. By Maria Popova Why you’re an outlaw just by reading this, or how the era we live in will change creative culture forever. It’s no secret we’re big proponents of remix culture around here — and strongly believe that the cross-pollination of ideas, the fundamental backbone of creativity, should be celebrated rather than hindered by copyright law. Which is why we love RiP: A Remix Manifesto, a documentary about copyright and remix culture. Filmmaker Brett Gaylor, of Opensource Cinema fame, digs deep into the flaws of copyright in the information age, exploring the ever-murkier line between content consumers and producers.
The film echoes the excellent REMIX panel from a couple of months ago, featuring CreativeCommons founder Lawrence Lessig and the now-iconic Shepard Fairey. RiP deals with the absurdities of copyright law — did you know, for example, that you have to pay royalties every time you sing Happy Birthday in a theater, restaurant or any other public space? Share on Tumblr. Brain Pickings | Remix. 04 FEBRUARY, 2014By: Maria Popova Is genius a mosaic of “magpielike borrowings”? It has been said that everything is a remix. Even Mark Twain maintained that “all ideas are second-hand, consciously and unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources.”
But while it may be a matter of degree rather than kind, surely there must be a difference between unabashed plagiarism and the inevitable derivativeness of acknowledging that everything builds on what came before. In the altogether fantastic Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington (public library) — one of the best biographies and memoirs of 2013 — Terry Teachout reveals that for the beloved composer, who was already a man of curious paradoxes, this creative duality was as palpable as the line between plagiarism and originality was blurred.
Not only was Ellington inspired by the sounds and styles of his musicians, but he plucked bits and pieces from their solos and wove them into his compositions. Oh, he’d steal like mad, no questions about it. Freire's Critical Consciousness. Poke to the Future. Deep, deep within the shadowed recesses of a Menlo Park conference room, Facebook executives are probably gazing into a crystal ball right this second and asking two questions of staggering importance to their livelihood: (1) How do we monetize without incurring any breaches of confidentiality or any of the lowered performance levels customarily connected to aging? (2) Why does it sound as if we’re talking about an older male prostitute?
But when it comes to determining Facebook’s future, the rest of us don’t need a crystal ball. We don’t need one because we know the site’s future is, for the most part, already here. Whether it be the Tunisnami or The Social Network or Betty White’s hosting Saturday Night Live or the raging popularity of Facebook-derived evidence at divorce trials, we’ve seen how the strangely bland yet strangely fascinating Web site can re-draw maps both global and local. Secondly, Facebook has taught us enthusiasts how to deal with envy. And what of the future?
Chrisbrogan.com — Learn How Human Business Works - Beyond Social Media. Rap represented in mathematical charts and graphs. Iceland Crowdsources Its Constitution. As it drafts the country's new governing document, Iceland's Constitutional Council is turning to social media sites to make the process transparent and to collect input from the public. The council has made a draft of the document available online and is accepting recommendations for amending it. "It is possible to register through other means, but most of the discussion takes place via Facebook," Berghildur Bernhardsdottir, a spokeswoman for the constitutional review project, told the Associated Press. Recommendations need to be approved by local staff before being passed on to the council and posted online for discussion, but suggestions then approved by the council are added to the draft of the document.
Suggestions from the public that have been added thus far include livestock protection and a clause that specifies who owns the country's natural resources (the nation), according to the AP. Image courtesy of iStockphoto, KeithBinns. Resource and Risk Youth Sexuality. Archives | Trouble With Diversity. Monday, October 02, 2006 Some Notes on Equality and Diversity, Liberalism and Conservatism Posted by John Holbo on 10/02/06 at 12:44 PM I’m planning to do my part, contributing to our Michaels book event but – unfortunately – my book never showed in the mail.
Thus I am obliged to write about material available elsewhere. If at any point I am unfair to Michaels, or repeat points he makes as if they are my own, I am sure – surrounded, as I am, by those who have read his book – my post will be duly updated. My impression, derived primarily from the TAP sample chapter, is that academia looms large in Michaels' account. Just as puzzling [as certain curiously categorical dismissals of race as a contemporary problem] is what Michaels means by “the left” — which, in his telling, greatly loves cultural identity and tacitly ignores economic inequality. I'm not going to bother to speculate further until I've read the book. Permanent link • (6) Comments Permanent link • (21) Comments Wolfe continues: I. Wendell Berry. Culture & Education: A Unifying Vision by Terrell Heick on Prezi. Five Manifestos for the Creative Life. The Video Game 'Call Of Duty' Sets Sales Record : The Two-Way.
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