Hunter Stabler, exquisite papercutting artist: “
Papercutting artist Hunter Stabler is an absolute X-Acto master. Above left, ‘Baba Yaga Misquotes the Face to Steeleye Span,’ W24′ x H36,’ Hand Cut Paper. Above right (and detail at left), ‘Magick Kruller Alefbet Lamen of the Golden Dawn,’ W27′ x H35,’ ink and graphite on hand-cut paper and Color-aid mounted on Plexiglass. Hunter Stabler (via Phantasmaphile)
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My Blackberry is not working: “
Video Link. Ronnie Corbett and Harry Enfield star in a sketch from The One Ronnie. (Thanks, Simon!)
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This helpful Venn diagram was created by Chartporn. [via Laughing Squid.]
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The London Review of Books checks out President G.W. Bush’s memoir, Decision Points:
Occasionally, someone on Team DP will insert a lyrical phrase – the tears on the begrimed faces of the 9/11 relief workers ‘cutting a path through the soot like rivulets through a desert’ – but most of the prose sounds like this:
‘I told Margaret and Deputy Chief of Staff Josh Bolten that I considered this a far-reaching decision. I laid out a process for making it. I would clarify my guiding principles, listen to experts on all sides of the debate, reach a tentative conclusion, and run it past knowledgeable people. After finalising a decision, I would explain it to the American people. Finally, I would set up a process to ensure that my policy was implemented.’There are nearly 500 pages of this…
A spot of Foucauldian analysis follows of Team DP, that being the authorial voice in both print and presidency: ‘There are no decision points in Decision Points… [instead] a space into which the writing subject constantly disappears.’
‘Damn right,’ I said [LRB via Metafilter]
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The past year’s 12 editions of Vogue covers, overlaid: “
This is the shroud of Vogue, made from the last 12 editions of the magazine, overlaid.
(Via Book of Joe)
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Invaders from Mars: “
“Voting doesn’t change anything — the politicians always win.” ‘Twas not always so, but I’m hearing variations on that theme a lot these days, and not just in the UK.
Why do we feel so politically powerless? Why is the world so obviously going to hell in a handbasket? Why can’t anyone fix it?
Here’s my (admittedly whimsical) working hypothesis …
The rot set in back in the 19th century, when the US legal system began recognizing corporations as de facto people. Fast forward past the collapse of the ancien regime, and into modern second-wave colonialism: once the USA grabbed the mantle of global hegemon from the bankrupt British empire in 1945, they naturally exported their corporate model worldwide, as US diplomatic (and military) muscle was used to promote access to markets on behalf of US corporations.
Corporations do not share our priorities. They are hive organisms constructed out of teeming workers who join or leave the collective: those who participate within it subordinate their goals to that of the collective, which pursues the three corporate objectives of growth, profitability, and pain avoidance. (The sources of pain a corporate organism seeks to avoid are lawsuits, prosecution, and a drop in shareholder value.)
Corporations have a mean life expectancy of around 30 years, but are potentially immortal; they live only in the present, having little regard for past or (thanks to short term accounting regulations) the deep future: and they generally exhibit a sociopathic lack of empathy.
Collectively, corporate groups lobby international trade treaty negotiations for operating conditions more conducive to pursuing their three goals. They bully individual lawmakers through overt channels (with the ever-present threat of unfavourable news coverage) and covert channels (political campaign donations). The general agreements on tariffs and trade, and subsequent treaties defining new propertarian realms, once implemented in law, define the macroeconomic climate: national level politicians thus no longer control their domestic economies.
Corporations, not being human, lack patriotic loyalty; with a free trade regime in place they are free to move wherever taxes and wages are low and profits are high. We have seen this recently in Ireland where, despite a brutal austerity budget, corporation tax is not to be raised lest multinationals desert for warmer climes.
For a while the Communist system held this at bay by offering a rival paradigm, however faulty, for how we might live: but with the collapse of the USSR in 1991 — and the adoption of state corporatism by China as an engine for development — large scale opposition to the corporate system withered.
We are now living in a global state that has been structured for the benefit of non-human entities with non-human goals. They have enormous media reach, which they use to distract attention from threats to their own survival. They also have an enormous ability to support litigation against public participation, except in the very limited circumstances where such action is forbidden. Individual atomized humans are thus either co-opted by these entities (you can live very nicely as a CEO or a politician, as long as you don’t bite the feeding hand) or steamrollered if they try to resist.
In short, we are living in the aftermath of an alien invasion.
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National Geographic: Ten weirdest animals of 2010: “
The tube-nosed fruit bat, AKA ‘Yoda Bat,’ is one of the ten weirdest newly discovered animals of the year, according to National Geographic’s editors. Others include the T. Rex leech, sneezing snub-nosed monkey, and the pink handfish. ‘Ten Weirdest New Animals of 2010: Editors’ Picks‘ (Thanks, Marilyn Terrell!)
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Tic-Tac-Toe: “
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WikiWecaps: “[YouTube video Link]
Joe Sabia of Get Whirled offers this hilarious and appropriately instructive recap of the Wikileaks saga as it has unfolded over the last few weeks.
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