— …?

For my fellow film nerds, Deep Discount is having a Buy 1 Get 1 Free sale on Criterion Collection DVDs.  A sale like that on Criterion discs is pretty rare so I'd jump on this one.

http://aldaily.com

What about southern Iraq's important archeological sites - the ones that had been looted? Well, the looting was an urban myth... more

She was the new Chomsky, the young woman to re-invent politics for a new generation. Then came 9/11... more

Psych departments won't teach Freud, nor is Marx taught in econ, while Hegel hardly figures in philosophy. In the mall of education, they are now boutique thinkers... more

LET'S CHANGE THE MOOD FROM SAD TO GLADNESS


http://www.4shared.com/file/55795729/224ccdee/GLADNESS.html


josephine_foster_this_coming_gladness

Name : Holidays 2008
Media : Acrylic on canvas
Size : 50 x 60 cm
19” x 23”
Price : 40 $

I decided to do a little slideshow for my Post-Materialist slot in the Times this week -- basically, these are all the chairs I photographed this year, crammed into a short YouTube video with a somewhat rushed commentary.



Judging by the comments, while some found 5000 Years of Chairs in 5 Minutes "very interesting", others were mystified. "What’s the point?" demanded Steve, apparently some kind of academic, "If I received this presentation from a student, I would fail him/her." Jared's jab was more sly: "The anticipation of a conclusion or insightful comment kept me on the edge of my seat the whole time!"

I figured people wouldn't want a ton of editorializing in a little slideshow of chairs, but for the record here's the thinking behind the piece.

1. Things are just as valid and interesting when they're in use out in the world as they are when they're new and standing in a showroom, and possibly more so.

2. This is what Rem Koolhaas called (in a recent edition of Domus D'Autore) "post-occupancy design" -- the stuff that happens to design after it's left the designer's workshop (and architecture after it's left the studio) is the real test of its quality and character. Occupancy and use shouldn't see the designer and the architect melting away. They should stick around, take notes, and take photos. The processes of time and decay can be beautiful. The way people use stuff and adapt it can be instructive.

3. You don't have to buy stuff to be smitten with it -- public furniture that we just see on our travels (and maybe photograph) is worth writing about too. That's one of the things The Post-Materialist is all about.

4. There's also the idea that things come full circle: the slideshow takes us from paleolithic stone benches on the island of Orkney to modern concrete benches in the same place. There's a "before industrial design" and an "after industrial design", and they look remarkably similar. That's something I think Jan Lindenberg's Sweatshop 2.0 project was about -- coming up with chair design that deconstructs the distinction between amateur and professional, between the past and the present, between new and secondhand... and between shelves and chairs!

5. One word: recycle!

Finally, though, the slideshow is a little tribute to the dizzying diversity of forms out there, and about the kind of beauty -- or ugliness, or oddness -- that compels you to turn your camera on an inanimate object. Do I get to graduate from your course now, Steve, whatever the hell it is?

Sadly i dont quite know if this is the right community to be asking for this but im curious if anyone has uploaded any of Clara bows movies? Im extremely intrested in It and Wings, and pratically any clara bow movie. So im woundering if anyone could upload these films or direct me into the right direction on finding them. Thank-you in advance ♥

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/sport1/hi/football/teams/c/chelsea/7515194.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/c/chelsea/7515194.stm

New Chelsea signing Deco pleads with Didier Drogba to remain at Stamford Bridge.

 i could love him.

Moss World By Night.Mp3
Occitania.Mp3
(on rebec and drums)

 

Sigh.

The trailer for Watchmen makes me very sad. It's so painful to see a graphic novel like that get turned into another trying-too-hard-for-darkness wham-bam-kablooey Comix Book Movie.

We all knew this would happen, right?



Laff.

«Всё,
поддающееся оценке
и исходящее из первопричины,
проявляясь на различных уровнях природы,
полностью удовлетворяет потребности постигающего»,

Каббала


в рамках I Московской международной биеннале молодого искусства и III международного молодежного проекта М’АРСово ПОЛЕ "Пустой знак"

17 июля 2008 - 31 июля 2008
Москва, Пушкарёв переулок, д.5

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/sport1/hi/football/teams/c/chelsea/7514670.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/c/chelsea/7514670.stm

Inter Milan president Massimo Moratti has claimed that Frank Lampard has given the Italian club his "approval", but Chelsea reiterate that they will not sell.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/sport1/hi/football/eng_prem/7514540.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/eng_prem/7514540.stm

The FA charges Man Utd defender Patrice Evra for improper conduct following United's Premier League defeat to Chelsea in April.

Receiving two magazines in the mail yesterday sparked this...

What were your favorite magazines when you a youngster and what are they now.

http://aldaily.com

Obsessive stalker, an impotent husband, lover of young boys: to some, the creator of Peter Pan was an evil genius. But to others... more

The divine Homer. So how will you have him? In the earthy, rough-hewn words of Fagles, or with the nobility of Pope?... more

The police, courts, and prisons are charged with solving social problems, but their only tools are powers of arrest and imprisonment. We need a new way... more

Two things Click Opera is always banging on about -- how money doesn't equal happiness, and how life in the Anglosphere sucks (largely because money doesn't equal happiness) -- were underlined this week by two reports about the quality of life in Britain and America. First, on Wednesday, U-Switch released their European Quality of Life Index, a survey of life in ten European countries ranking them according to 19 variables, including income, tax, the cost of essential goods and services, and the weather. Despite having the highest household incomes in Europe, Britain and Ireland were ranked lowest for quality of life, at 9 and 10 respectively. France and Spain came highest.



Life in Europe's two English-speaking countries -- which both saw huge market-driven economic booms over the last decade -- was rendered miserable not just by poor weather (Britain gets 17% less sunshine than the European average) but by diesel prices 18% above average, Europe's second-highest unleaded fuel prices and its third highest gas (49% higher than the European average) and electricity prices, as well as by Europe's highest food and property prices. So although British families earned £35,730 (more than £10,000 above the European average of £25,404) per household per year, high prices ended up putting them way behind the lower-earners on the continent in terms of quality of life. Winning the money race, it seems, isn't at all the same thing as winning at life.

Of course, how you spend your money is key. Britain spends less on health and education than its European neighbours; just 8.1% of British GDP goes on health, compared with over 10% in France and Germany. As a result, Britain has only 2.5 doctors per 1000 residents, compared with 3.4 in France and 3.5 in Germany. As for education, Britain puts 5.5% of GDP towards that; the Danes, for instance, spend 8.6%. British people retire later than anyone else in Europe and get fewer holidays (just 28 days a year, compared with Spain's 36). They live shorter lives -- life expectancy in the UK is 78.9 years, compared with 80.9 in France and 80.7 in Spain.

So there it is. Britain and Ireland have the highest average incomes in Europe, but come bottom in terms of quality of life. British households earn £35,730 but are miserable. Spanish households earn on average just £16,800 a year, but low taxation and cheaper prices make that money go a lot further, and other factors -- sunshine and a whole different approach to priorities, let's call it l'art de vivre -- make life much better in the Latin countries. "Clearly, when it comes to the good life, income is less important than free time, sunshine and cheap commodities," concluded one report of the findings.



America also scored poorly this week, this time in a report entitled The Measure of America funded by Oxfam America, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Conrad Hilton Foundation. In a piece entitled US slips down development index, the BBC summarised the report: "Americans live shorter lives than citizens of almost every other developed nation... the US ranked 42nd in the world for life expectancy despite spending more on health care per person than any other country." The US has a life expectancy of 78 (the same as Britain's), but vast inequality between its richest and poorest groups. It has more children (15%) living in poverty than any other advanced nation, and the most people in prison. One in four Americans are now officially obese. They also underperform educationally: "25% of 15-year-old students performed at or below the lowest level in an international maths test -- worse than Canada, France, Germany and Japan".

"Some Americans are living anywhere from 30 to 50 years behind others when it comes to issues we all care about: health, education and standard of living," wrote Sarah Burd-Sharps, the report's author. Asian-American males have the best quality of life and black Americans the lowest. The place with the highest human development index in the US is Manhattan, the place with the lowest is Mississippi -- which also happens to be the state with the highest obesity levels.

The exact relationship of money to the problem is ambiguous. For American website ZDNet Healthcare "the bottom line is that in the U.S. your lifespan is closely correlated with your bank balance". For UK newspaper The Independent, "despite an almost cult-like devotion to the belief that unfettered free enterprise is the best way to lift Americans out of poverty, the report points to a rigged system that does little to lessen inequalities".



What the newspaper reports didn't go into is the wider question of how philosophy has shaped these results -- specifically the philosophy underpinning Anglo-Saxon capitalism. For that, you need to turn to Tristram Hunt's BBC Radio 3 Sunday Feature about Adam Smith, Ideas -- The British Version: The Free Market. Standing in front of Bank station and the Bank of England, Hunt describes "a landscape of commerce and enterprise -- high end restaurants, chic retail boutiques, corporate HQs, and the sense of money at work. What this landscape is about is the free market.... The wheels of commerce are at work; a de-regulated process of exchange and contract that's creating wealth all around me." It's also creating poverty, and not just the financial kind.

It's okay that you all missed my birthday. Really, it is. It meant nothing to me to stand there in the dark at the Hexagon, a darkness intermittently illuminated by the glow of my cell phone as I received your texts telling me you wouldn't be making it.

It's been a month now, and you still haven't asked what I'd like for my birthday. That's okay, too. I know you're busy. I'm a grown up, and I know we all have things to do!

The fact that nobody came has little or nothing to do with the near breakup of my relationship after I sulked off of the CD release show because "nobody cares, nobody, not even you".

But the fact is, you could all make it up to me.. I know just what I want this year.

http://www.thenewyorkerstore.com/product_details.asp?sitetype=1&sid=122751&did=8§ion=books?mscssid=4T4GMAE13CR09HF7WUCU93G57HKED4BE&sitetype=1

buy it for me, or i'll buy it for myself for christmas with all the money i saved on your presents.

Вышел 5-й выпуск журнала литературного авангарда "Другое полушарие":

http://drugpolushar.narod.ru/DP052008.htm

В номере: Анна Альчук, Сергей Бирюков, Amanda Stewart, Philip Meersman, Георгий Геннис, Борис Гринберг, Света Литвак, Рафаэль Левчин, Дмитрий Зимин, Эдуард Кулемин, Евгений Степанов, Александр Моцар, Валерий Мишин, Наталья Рубанова, Владимир Герцык, Сергей Кынчев, Алексей А. Шепелев, Татьяна Бонч-Осмоловская, Виктар Жыбуль и мн. др.

Will Durant, in his book The Story of Philosophy, argues that “if we really believed in determinism we would . . . abandon ourselves at once to the immense fatality which uses us as marionettes” (670). Durant asserts that the primary appeal of determinism is its logical simplicity and symmetry. This appeal has little draw for the masses, for “they do not ask, Is this logical?-- they ask, What will the practice of this philosophy mean for our lives and our interests?” (Durant 671). I agree with Durant’s assertion that determinism breeds fatalism, but I question his belief that deterministic thought has no appeal for the masses. Quite on the contrary, I feel that the historical persistence of different breeds of determinism, from Calvinism to scientific materialism to Marxism to Freudianism, stems from the fact that it provides a relief from the awesome responsibilities of consciousness and intelligence.

( Read more... )

http://aldaily.com

John McWhorter's artistic pantheon has room for Brahms, Duke Ellington, Cole Porter, and Billy Strayhorn. As for Rap... more

American lawns cover an area about the size of New York State. Every year, $40 billion is spent on their upkeep... more

Is the U.S. finished? Well, all those think tank theorists, public intellectuals, and elite media experts seem to think so. How could they be wrong?... more