Owner: blixity URL:http://blixity.wordpress.com Join Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2008 19:40:17 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: a collaborative blog on the intersections of culture, capital, and media. news and commentary on the politics of aesthetics and the aesthetics of politics by artists, writers, and critical thinkers. Site statistics:Click here
BayWords: Uncensored Blogging from The Pirate Bay 2008-04-17 19:11:37 The Pirate
Bay, a controversial Swedish group that runs the “world’s largest BitTorrent tracker“, continues its daring and defiant quest to liberate file-sharing on the Internet by launching a new blogging service called BayWords. Expanding its persistent defense of freedom of speech and uncensored, open-source web, The Pirate Bay started BayWords to provide bloggers with [...]
Read more:Blogging
Ratzinger in America 2008-04-14 18:46:52 Joseph Ratzinger, aka Pope Benedict XVI, head of the Vatican State and 265th Holy Father to Roman Catholics around the world, is headed for America
this week. His itinerary begins on 4/15-17 in Washington DC and ends with 3 days in NYC (there goes the weekend…) These are challenging times for his church (and the [...]
Giving It Away 2008-04-13 21:07:04 Two recent articles on charitable giving in the U.S.: Saturday’s e-NYTimes published “Charities Seek Donors to Replace Wall Street”, which made me go back to a Slate article a couple months ago, “The Facebook Philanthropos”. The NYT article iterates philanthropy’s golden rule: 90% of money raised comes from 10% of (wealthiest) donors. The Slate article [...]
Read more:Giving
Visualizing Information 2008-04-08 19:33:26 Visualization is IN. More specifically, the practice of visualizing statistical data or quantitative information through the use of computer technology is cropping up everywhere. Two articles of note: “The Best Tools for Visualization” on ReadWriteWeb (3/08), and “Data Visualization: Modern Approaches” on Smashing Magazine (8/07, less recent but worth visiting). There’s “Design and the Elastic [...]
Olympic Protests Hint at a Global Revolution 2008-04-07 13:06:42 Just as the IOC’s decision to host the XXIXth Olympic
Games in Beijing signaled a massive shift in the global balance of power and capital, so has it pried open the floodgates of a transnational movement for revolutionary change. This is an unprecedented struggle for multiple worlds that has multiple authors, multiple constituents, multiple visions [...]
Read more:Protests
, Global
Junot Diaz Speaks 2008-04-05 12:51:44 Yesterday at 7pm at the Village Community School: Listened with awe to Junot Diaz read from two of his major published works to date, “Drown” (1996, a collection of short stories) and “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” (2007, novel). Diaz gives me hope that the structures and institutions that restrict, antagonize, and exclude [...]
Cargill’s Brave New World 2008-04-03 17:44:37 This Cargill ad on msnbc.com yesterday read: “Cargill is helping new ideas emerge from nature. Find out how at cargillcreates.com“. So I clicked.
The site’s predominant color is green, a direct allusion to nature and sustainability (envy and inexperience, too, but that’s another story). The tagline reads “collaborate > create > succeed”, followed by “TM” for [...]
Read more:Brave
, World
, Brave New World
2008 Beijing Olympics: Free Tibet 2008-03-28 00:35:18 The torch has been lit for the XXIXth Modern Olympiad which opens in Beijing
, China on 8/8/08. Its slogan “One World, One Dream” promotes a globalized neoliberal hegemony where individuals share a single vision. Shockingly blatant and fascist in its call for autocracy (as opposed to democracy, which would translate into a “Multiple Worlds, Multiple [...]
Read more:Olympics
, Tibet
Vogue Cover Sparks Racial Charges 2008-03-26 19:42:39 Basketball superstar LeBron James and Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bundchen are featured on April’s cover of Vogue. In early March, the choice seemed to spark media interest mainly because James is only the third man to grace the cover of Vogue in the title’s 116-year history (following Richard Gere and George Clooney). Today, however, the choice [...]
Read more:Cover
, Sparks
, Racial
Scion Gets Personal 2008-03-25 15:39:24 Toyota’s hipster brand Scion
is now letting “enthusiasts” (i.e., their most loyal customers) personalize their own coats of arms, following the growing commercial trend of strengthening bonds with target audiences by allowing them to customize their own experiences. Lynnley Browning describes Scion’s move in a New York Times article today:
“…In making their personalized crests, Scion [...]
Read more:Personal
Anonymous Blogging 2008-04-18 18:20:26 A tangential follow-up to yesterday’s entry on uncensored blogging:
Ethan Zuckerman (co-founder of Global Voices Online) published a very thorough how-to guide titled “Anonymous Blogging
with Wordpress and Tor”, a free downloadable pdf available on the Global Voices Advocacy* website. Recognizing the dangers certain people face when they express themselves openly in certain environments, Zuckerman also [...]
Obama’s “Unity” = China’s “One World One Dream” 2008-04-19 17:43:59 Insight Analytical’s Friday post on Obama
’s ongoing “Unity
” campaign linked to an article written by Barry Grey for WSWS back in January 2008 (before the New Hampshire primary and in response to a conference on bipartisan unity). As IA notes, Grey’s article raises a critical issue. Titled “The U.S. Elections: In whose interest is the [...]
Read more:China
, World
, Dream
, One World
Bolivia’s Evo Morales Opens Forum on Indigenous Peoples 2008-04-21 19:56:59 As the Clinton-Obama media spectacle roars on and the papal smoke leaves our post-9/11 air, the 7th Session of the United Nations Permanent Forum
on Indigenous Issues opened today with barely a whimper. Evo Morales
(Bolivia
’s first indigenous President) led the opening ceremony at UN Headquarters this morning, launching a two-week long discussion on the [...]
Read more:Peoples
, Evo Morales
Political Speeches As New Form of Ad Space 2008-04-27 22:35:25 On Gawker, Towleroad, and Mother Jones: Video footage of Obama making his concession speech after losing Pennsylvania shows three guys, all clad in Abercrombie & Fitch T-shirts. The one on the left seems particularly well-prepared for television coverage, his “Fitch” being the largest visible brand on the screen (even beating the Obama campaign’s own slogan [...]
Read more:Space
Florida Moves To Ban Bull Nuts 2008-04-26 11:44:42 Motorists in Florida
may soon be banned from hanging fake bull nuts to accessorize their vehicles. In Reuters yesterday:
“Senate lawmakers in Florida have voted to ban the fake bull testicles that dangle from the trailer hitches of many trucks and cars throughout the state.
Republican Sen. Cary Baker, a gun shop owner from Eustis, Florida, called [...]
The Future of Technology: “Charlie Rose by Samuel Beckett” 2008-04-28 20:00:11 Saw this on newteevee and it blew my mind (something a video project rarely does). Here’s “Charlie
Rose by SamuelBeckett
”: a brilliant, rather-eerie, must-see 3min-37sec video by artist/filmmaker Andrew Filippone Jr. (Hitting replay just compounds the experience of a Beckettian loop. A taste of the future of technology.)
[...]
Read more:Future
, Technology
Bush 2003: Major Combat Operations in Iraq Have Ended 2008-05-01 23:15:15 5 years ago today Bush stood on the deck of aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln. Under the now infamous “Mission Accomplished” banner, he pridefully declared:
“Major
combat operations in Iraq
have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed…
In the images of falling statues, we have witnessed the arrival of [...]
California’s Loyalty Oath vs. Individual Freedoms 2008-05-02 18:53:42 The LA Times ran an article today: “Teacher Fired for Refusing to Sign Loyalty
Oath”. It seems that 38-year-old Wendy Gonaver has been relieved of her teaching posts at California
State University/Fullerton because she declined to sign an oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State [...]
Read more:Individual
David Lynch on Mobile Movies 2008-05-05 00:18:47 Tech and telecom companies around the world have been betting big on the next frontier: mobile. Today, the NYTimes reports that mobile TV is spreading in the U.S. and Europe as more and more people are watching direct broadcasts on their cellphones, and more and more companies are investing in infrastructure, devices, and programming. Japan [...]
Read more:David
, Lynch
, Mobile
Oh, Say, Can You See: The Madness of Men In Blue 2008-05-06 22:37:05 I was all set to blog about Iron Man, cyborgs, and militarized exoskeletons tonight, but saw this report on Newsvine and decided this heavier fare was more critical. AP reports on a WTXF-TV Fox video showing three men being pulled over, dragged out of their car, and beaten by a blue swarm of cops last [...]
Read more:Madness
Artist: “Louis Vuitton is trying to stop my Darfur campaign!” 2008-05-07 23:58:12 Artistic expression, social responsibility, and corporate property rights hardly ever (IF ever) mix. More often than not, the entity with the biggest money bag wins. A story has been slowly snowballing for the past couple weeks: Last October, Danish artist Nadia Plesner started an image-driven campaign called “Simple Living” to help raise public support for [...]
Read more:Artist
, Louis
, Darfur
, Louis Vuitton
How Much Oil Would Freud’s Painting Buy? 2008-05-11 20:43:38 Speaking of oil money, I was wondering how much oil Lucien Freud
’s “Benefits Supervisor Sleeping” (pictured in yesterday’s post) might buy in today’s economy. The painting is expected to sell for a record $25-35 million at the PostWar and Contemporary Art auction at Christie’s NY this Tuesday.
Let’s take the high end of $35 million. At [...]
Read more:Painting
Contemporary Art Auctions This Week: Recession-Proof? 2008-05-10 20:20:35 Next Tuesday and Wednesday, NY auction houses Christie’s and Sotheby’s (respectively) hold their Spring sales for Post-War and Contemporary
art. Smaller lots and tighter selections at both houses indicate cautious optimism as the U.S. economy continues to dip and the art market opens up to buyers from Russia, the Middle East, and of course China, [...]
Read more:Proof
Gnarls Barkley’s “Going On” Video 2008-05-12 02:30:12 The perfect picker-upper for a dreary Monday morning. From Gnarls Barkley
’s new album “The Odd Couple“, released in March. This video was shot in Jamaica, directed by Wendy Morgan, and uploaded to YouTube just a couple days ago. As with the band’s Grammy-winning, genre-busting first album, “St. Elsewhere”, the song can be purchased at their [...]
Read more:Going
, Gnarls Barkley
How Much Oil Would Top 5 Paintings Sold at Christie’s Buy? 2008-05-14 00:53:28 Christie’s Postwar and Contemporary Art Auctions closed tonight. And yes, Lucien Freud’s “Benefits Supervisor Sleeping” now officially holds the auction record for a living artist. Estimated to go for between $25-$35 million, the painting went for $33,641,000. As a followup to my post a couple days ago, here’s a tally of the top five paintings [...]
Read more:Paintings
, Christie
Robert Rauschenberg Died Last Night 2008-05-13 13:21:09 Robert Rauschenberg, one of America’s most famous contemporary artists, died of heart failure Monday night in Florida. Perhaps best known for his mixed media assemblages in the 1950s, which he called “Combines“, Rauschenberg rejected traditional art disciplines. He remixed painting, sculpture, photography, silkscreen printmaking, performance, technology, commercial materials, and Read more:Robert
, Night
Bacon’s Triptych: Most Expensive Artwork Sold at Auction 2008-05-15 02:27:41 Sotheby’s Contemporary Art evening auction brought in $362 million tonight. (Last night, Christie’s Postwar and Contemporary Art evening auction brought in $331.4 million.) This painting, a triptych by the late Francis Bacon
sold for $86.3 million to a “private European phone bidder”, breaking the auction record for a contemporary artwork. It is now the most [...]
Read more:Triptych
, Artwork
, Auction
California: Ban on Same-Sex Marriages Ruled Unconstitutional 2008-05-16 12:59:09 No ought from an is. David Hume said that in the 18th century. Just because a thing is the way it is (up until now) does not mean it ought to be that way (into the future).
Yesterday, the Supreme Court of California
overturned two state laws that restricted marriage to unions between a state-approved man [...]
The Madness of Manchester Riots 2008-05-19 06:00:33 A couple weeks ago, I blogged about the madness of a few cops in Pennsylvania caught on video. This post is about the madness of football fans and the riots that erupted in Manchester last Wednesday. The city was hosting the UEFA Cup final and had set up television screens around the city center for [...]
Read more:Madness
Microsoft: The Robots Are Coming 2008-05-18 17:53:47 Microsoft Research announced the winners of its “Robots Among Us” request for proposals, a program that looks into the growing field of human-robot interaction or HRI. The eight winning projects were selected from 74 submissions from academic researchers in 24 countries and will split US$500,000 in funding. Each project attemps to further integrate social, intelligent [...]
Read more:Microsoft
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