A quite incredible 360º panorama by Australian photographer Peter Murphy of an equally incredible mirror room, Fireflies on the Water, by the great Yayoi Kusama. Anyone in Sydney, Australia, can see this work at the Museum of Contemporary Art until June 8th. For the rest of us, this panorama is the next best thing.
Platform21’s Repair Manifesto opposes throwaway culture and celebrates repair as the new recycling.
With our new project, Platform21 = Repairing, we seek to make repairing cool again – with your help. Let the manifesto inspire you, comment on it or add to it. Rediscover the joy of fixing things and share your most ingenious repair, your tips and your tricks. You could present them in person later, or see them on our website or in the exhibition that opens on Friday 13 March.
This project is about sharing knowledge and skills. Together we can start a movement, one that isn’t new per se but has been forgotten. So if you know a way to save a product, let us know by emailing info [at] platform21.com.
Via Core77.
Science fiction pioneer Philip José Farmer died today. Farmer was the man who introduced sex to sf with his first published story, ‘The Lovers’, in 1953. Decades before The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen there was the Wold Newton Universe. Hugely prolific, he was one of the few authors capable of writing Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan in the style of William Burroughs (‘Jungle Rot Kid on the Nod’). Audacity and intelligence are always in short supply; he’ll be missed.
Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight crunches the polling figures:
We all know that Michael Phelps was on something. But perhaps he was also onto something. Three recent polls show that Americans are more sympathetic to the idea of legalizing marijuana than ever before.
The first poll, conducted last week by Rasmussen Reports, has 40 percent of Americans in support of legalizing the drug and 46 percent opposed. The second, conducted in January by CBS News, has 41 percent in favor of legalization and 52 percent against. And a third poll, conducted by Zogby on behalf of the marijuana-rights advocacy group NORML, has 44 percent of Americans in support of legalized pot and 52 percent opposed.
That all three polls show support for legalization passing through the 40 percent barrier may be significant. I compiled a database of every past poll I could find on this subject, including a series of Gallup polls and results from the General Social Survey, and could never before find more than 36 percent of the population (Gallup in October, 2005) stating a position in favor of legalization. (More.)
And speaking of Michael Phelps, how’s this for a business headline? Dumping Phelps Over Bong Rip Damages Kellogg’s Brand Reputation.
Out of the 5,600 company reputations Vanno monitors, Kellogg ranked ninth before it booted Phelps. Now it’s ranked 83. Not even an industry-wide peanut scare inflicted as much damage on the food company’s reputation. (More.)
Brian Eno: The well of freedom is running dry
The Independent, Friday, 20 February 2009
Nobody bothers about civil liberties until they’ve gone. As the old country song warns: “You don’t miss your water till your well runs dry.”
We are letting the well run dry, allowing little bits of our civil freedoms to be chipped away by paranoiac governments who assure us we can trust them – and consistently betray that trust.
We are gradually sacrificing what has taken hundreds of years of civilisation to achieve, which is a condition of some kind of liberty. It may not be evident to everyone yet, but we have lost so much freedom in the past 10 years. When the Government passed its “anti-terror” laws, it reassured those who campaigned against them that they would only ever be used in the most extreme circumstances.
But these are completely vague laws which enable a government to arrest almost anybody for almost everything.
Within a couple of years they had been used to eject an 80-year-old heckler from a Labour Party conference, to arrest a woman for reading out the names of British soldiers killed in Iraq, and to freeze the assets of Icelandic banks in England. This is the problem with vague legislation of this type: it invariably gets called into use whenever anybody does anything that the Government finds embarrassing or the police find inconvenient.
It criminalises the behaviour of concerned citizens and thereby encourages disengagement and apathy. By preventing people from taking part in critiques of governance it increases the gap between rulers and ruled: it is fundamentally anti-democratic.
I worry about initiatives like identity cards and computer databases because they could be a step towards a police state, with completely innocent people being held in custody because of software malfunctions.
It is incredibly sad that these moves towards a police state should have happened under a Labour government. Gordon Brown should think about the serious problems that need to be solved – such as climate change – and direct his government’s efforts towards that.
Related:
• Revealed: the full extent of Labour’s curbs on civil liberties
• Liberty in Britain is facing death by a thousand cuts. We can fight back
Christian psychopath Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church turned up at Shawnee Mission East High School in Prairie Village, Kansas, last week, hoping to spend a day with his hate-addled family harassing the populace with their wretched slogans. The Phelps’s are used to receiving a vigorous response at many of their assemblies, especially when they try and picket the funerals of soldiers killed overseas. But even they must have been surprised when the entire school turned out with their own placards and slogans repudiating the anti-gay venom which is the only message the Westboro Baptist Church has to give to the world.
Their message didn’t sit well with many students at the high school where, according to student Jake Davidson, there is a Gay and Straight Alliance at the school and students elected a homecoming king in 2007 who was openly gay.
“Everyone is equal whether you’re gay or straight,” said Davidson, a 16-year-old junior from Leawood and an organizer of the student protest.
“It’s really cool that everyone wants to be involved and take a stand against this. It doesn’t surprise me that everyone wants to help out.” (More.)
See that, Fred? That’s the future, and it’s laughing at you because you look ridiculous.
Small Hours at Reading University, 1978.
Certain Surprise, Rockpalast, Germany, 1978.
I’d Rather be the Devil, Old Grey Whistle Test, 1973 (crap video but a great performance).
(Software is throwing a fit back here so embedding is screwed. Go and browse for his clips. He was great.)
Patrick McGoohan as Number Six.
“I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.”
The Prisoner, which ran for seventeen episodes from 1967 to 1968, was the best original drama series there’s ever been on television. Period, as Harlan Ellison would say. Best because it grabbed the format of the TV adventure series with both hands and subverted the expectations of the audience and the people who were paying for it. Best because it dared to do this at a time when there was little precedent for experiment in a medium that was barely a decade old. Best because it had something important to say while still being entertaining. And best because it had Patrick McGoohan in the central role at the peak of his acting career.
New poster by Shepard Fairey. Via Towleroad.
“Last Tuesday night was a bitter-sweet celebration. We came together to witness the first black man who will become our president, yet watched in sadness as Florida, Arizona, Arkansas, and California all voted down equal rights for all citizens.
“This is not a four-state issue. This is an issue of equality across America. Stand up and make your voice heard! Visit the main www.jointheimpact.com to learn more, or read our mission statement.”
