5/30/03:
Love Hotels and other slick photos of places by Peter Marlow.
posted by jeremy @ 9:04 PM
5/29/03:
Megacities - documentary photographer Sebasti?o Salgado on migration and the worlds largest population centers.
posted by jeremy @ 9:42 PM
:
The Paranoid Style in American Politics - a 1964 Harper's article on the history of conspiracy theories - notably including Catholicism, freemasonry, and the popular left-wing press - and scapegoating in the US that's oddly prescient.
posted by jeremy @ 9:23 PM
:
Ticket for what? Almost anything - as local municipalities scramble for funds, NYC police are combing the books for obscure, fine-carrying infractions. Are your newspapers properly bundled? Is the black frame advertising a car dealership around your license plate legal? Is there a bell on your bike? And for chrissake, don't coast with your feet off the pedals or you're out 50 bones.
posted by jeremy @ 9:16 PM
:
On the International Reference Kilogram - a platinum cylinder in Germany which all the world's weights are calibrated by (and why it is becoming ever-so slightly lighter)
The final recommendation will be made by the International Committee on Weights and Measures, a body created by international treaty in 1875. The agency guards the international reference kilogram and keeps it in a heavily guarded safe in a ch?teau outside Paris. It is visited once a year, under heavy security, by the only three people to have keys to the safe. The weight change has been noted on the occasions it has been removed for measurement. "It's part ceremony and part obligation," Dr. Richard Davis, head of the mass section at the research arm of the international committee.
"You'd have to amend the treaty if you didn't do it this way."
Strange that a final scientific holdover from the height of 19th-century secular positivism should be guarded in such an oddly religious way.
[via aberrantNews.]
posted by jeremy @ 9:01 PM
5/28/03:
The Colorado Court, a new low-income housing complex in Santa Monica, will be one of the first residential buildings in the US whose energy is entirely energy independent.
[via socialDesign.]
posted by jeremy @ 8:34 PM
:
Betacorpo.net has got a spiffy new homepage and soon I'll be getting the whole corpo franchise together with this cleaner, easier loading, less-framey, less-imagey design. Pardons and cheers to all that put up with the slight pain-in-the-ass that this site might've been in the past. I'm still learning. Anywho, I'll also soon have my new photos from Rio posted in a revamped portfolio section. Suggestions are always most appreciated.
posted by jeremy @ 8:13 PM
5/27/03:
Michael Moore Hates America -
?Despite the title, the film is not about bashing Michael Moore,? said Producer Carr Hagerman, ?but Moore is a good starting point for showing people why America is great. He has the liberty to trash his own country, and we have the liberty to show people how he is wrong. The film debunks many of Moore?s claims through interviews with people who contradict what he?s saying by their own experiences and life stories.?
This isn't unlike the group of media developers and venture capitalists trying to create a liberal alternative to Fox News (which, I'd presume started as a conservative reaction to a perceived liberal bias in the more established media). While a media source that appeals to conservative values like authority (moral and otherwise) would be naturally expressed to punditry and appeals to "common sense," it seems that using the same means for a more/ less opposed worldview would be contradictory. Likewise, to think that Moore's work is meant to reveal some sort of obscured truth, or is mistaken for truth, or can be trumped by some sort of other more common truth found through the same means is to completely misunderstand his films. Moore's intentions are to show inner obfuscations are usually ignored when we are being transparently presented the "facts" of an issue. Moore accomplishes this by having the production of his films be the subject of his films - we become aware of the agendas that exist behind the production of meaning and develop a greater (and healthier) skepticism behind the more transparent agendas that exist within issues. The ability to make this reflexivity work compellingly is in fact a major accomplishment in the history of documentary, making the mistaken counter-raker's proposed climax of asking Moore to return his Oscar only the beginning of Michael Moore Hates America's anticipated flaws. That and the fact that McDonald's and Wal-Mart ads, patriotic television shows, and the endless celebrations of military heroism would probably be a far more interesting way of "showing people why America is great" if one were so inclined toward that sort of thing.
posted by jeremy @ 7:59 PM
5/25/03:
Subrational eRuptions - New web-based art from Turbulence.org -
The recent, global protests against military aggression in Iraq, in tandem with other growing protest movements, are one example of visual, social resistance to a specific, historical trajectory. But there are, of course, other instances of resistance, where the conflict is not so visually well defined. It is important to look at these occurrences of conflict that receive less attention from our collective optic nerve, as forms of resistance can emerge that encourage authoritarian thought, trading one form of subjugation for another.... The works included here give some entrance points for such conflict to enter our retinas. This is not an attempt to create a "correct" reading for these works, or to "speak" for them, but is merely a desire to provide a specific set of lenses with which to view them.
posted by jeremy @ 11:57 PM
:
On Morrisey's unsung legacy (and what he's half-assedly been up to these past few years) -
The first major indie band to cross over into the mainstream, The Smiths jemmied open the floodgates for future battalions of swaggering misfits. The affected androgyny of Suede's Brett Anderson, the nerdy gesticulations of Pulp's Jarvis Cocker and the world-weary paranoia of Radiohead's Thom Yorke all owe a debt to Morrissey's paradigm of the socially alienated pop-star weirdo.
posted by jeremy @ 11:48 PM
:
X + Men = Gay? -
[The X-men movie] becomes blatantly queer-clear when Iceman (Shawn Ashmore) must return to his family home with a group of other mutants. It's here he finally confesses to his family that he is "different." And it's here his mother asks quite innocently, "Have you ever considered not being a mutant?" I actually started to sob in my seat during this scene.
posted by jeremy @ 9:33 AM
:
Natalie and her lovers - a most wonderful photolog -
Natalie was introduced to us at a thriftstore in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. A series of photoalbums were found, containing the lifetime-collection of photographs documenting 1 woman and her friends, her dog, her series of boyfriends...
posted by jeremy @ 9:24 AM
:
posted by jeremy @ 9:01 AM
:
Learning How To Disappear - advice from a "skip-tracer" - someone who's paid to find people who've fled the country - on how to successfully cease to exist and stay that way -
When you go to the bank, you will sit down and open an account.? The person opening the account will call Telecheck which is a service bank used to search whether or not you have any overdrafts left over from other banks.? They will run your name and there will be a record of you in any state that you've open an account in. So any skip-tracer with half a brain will find that account and locate your mailbox at Mailbox Etc. Give the person you open the account with your Mailbox Etc. address. Do not give them a valid phone number or one of your pre-paid numbers.? Like the song says 867-5309 its one number you can't forget and it's a great conversation piece with the banker. Tell them the number won't be in service till next week. posted by jeremy @ 8:52 AM
5/23/03:
I've seen Warren Buffet's recent piece Dividend Voodoo going around the bloggles quite a bit lately, and shall continue here 'cuz it's certainly worth an important look.
posted by jeremy @ 9:16 PM
:
Tonight I've happened upon the most wonderful site I've seen in a good long while.
Rua Vista is a photo site organised in Rio de Janeiro and dedicated to the love of the stroll and the uncanny little punctums that turn up along the way. While I've certainly come across plenty of sites with this sensibility in mind (and I could never find enough of them) this one is extraordinarily cool not only in its Latin American centricity but the author's and contributors' often quirky sense of consistency - love hotels in Rio, Tree adverts in Argentina, uncannily deserted streets one morning in Sao Paulo, 150-year old painted signs persistently painted along the brick walls in Paris, and photos filed as documents of Rio's Rocinha favela, but tellingly shot from the eagle-eye of one of the neighbouring mountains (quite probably the quite tourist friendly hills of Santa Teresa).
And finally, the short video Cruel en el carto by Argentine documentarian Raul Manrupe is a touchingly sad, yet defiantly ridiculous tour of billboards, fetishes, and propaganda in Buenos Aries. Who'da thought dry typology could be this amusing.
posted by jeremy @ 12:25 AM
5/19/03:
La beta updata
So despite this 75-hours-a-week-summer of mindlessly clock-punching my way down to South America, I'm managing to get a little web-site work slowly but surely out of the way, with no small thanks due to advantageous insomnia. Transitional - a blogroll-style archive of a few hundred or so links cluttering up my favourites folder - is now up and running. Admittedly, I don't intend a whole lot of user-friendlyness or precise organisation, but they're all good for a random direction iffin' you need to get outta here.
Next up - currently sorting through another few hundred or so frames of negatives shot from my weeks in Rio de Janeiro last winter. Hopefully I'll get some scans done this week. I've put a up a couple of samples, mostly to test this pop-up script, but also because these two images in particular surprised me when they first appeared in the proof sheets. I've always been fond of empty street scenes, a la Atget, but realised in Rio, complexly populated as it is, there's just no such thing as emptiness anywhere (even at 5am).
|  |
| While randomly snapshooting and still unconsciously trying to empty out the frames, the few figures that still appeared inside seem, in the image, so fragmented, as if behind a backdrop or a blue screen. It recalls one uncannily noticing people wandering into the background of vacation pictures. I then also wonder where my own image has travelled off to. I've plenty of other frames with this strange detatchment.
|
I expect to have at least a little digi-portfolio of many other Rio images, and possibly some better re-organisation of Betacorpo.net done by the end of May. Critiques are always welcome and appreciated. Tchau tchau.
posted by jeremy @ 12:09 PM
5/18/03:
Lula's biographer -
Catholic priest, theologue and longtime friend and advisor of president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Frei Beto, autographed copies of his new book, a biography entitled, "Lula: A Workingman in the Presidency." According to Frei Beto, one of the country"s best-known members of the progressive wing of the Catholic church, the Zero Hunger program is a modern equivalent of multiplying bread, like Jesus Christ did in the Bible. "I think this is the first time in history a president has made such a clear and Christian policy decision in favor of the needy," he declared. Money from the sale of the book will be donated to the Zero Hunger program.
That's certainly another way for public policy to also appeal to popular religious sentiment.
In comparison to -
Bush Aims at Contraception
...Bush is putting Christian conservatives in charge of fighting AIDS and instructing the nation's youth in matters of sex.... Former congressman Tom Coburn of Oklahoma was appointed co-chair of the presidential Advisory Council on HIV and AIDS. Coburn is a vociferous opponent of using condoms to prevent AIDS.... "Compassionate conservatism," it seems, means that death is preferable to sex, for teen-agers or by anyone who is not married and monogamous. It apparently means believing that condoms are a greater danger to the women of the world than AIDS, even though the United Nations says that in Africa alone, half of the 4 million new AIDS cases annually are among women.
Bush, Marvin Olasky, and Compassionate Conservatism
To opponents who charge that [concentrating funding to faith-based organization] will set social programs back a century, Mr. Olasky [a spiritual advisor to Bush and author of Compassionate Conservatism] pleads guilty. This, he says, is exactly the point.
"Historically, what we've found is the most useful kind of poverty-fighting is spiritual," he said in an interview yesterday at his home in the hilly suburbs of Austin. "If I've been any use in this process, it's [been by] bringing up some history and showing how in this country we knew how to fight poverty, through compassion that's challenging and personal and spiritual. And we forgot that in the 20th century."
Mr. Olasky and his followers believe that poverty is not caused by a lack of money, but by a lack of moral values on behalf of the poor. As such, they see welfare as a poor alternative to religion.
"When I've gone around and talked to guys who've been homeless for a long time or are alcoholics or addicts, when they do come out of it, nine times out of 10, in my experience, it's a religious transformation," Mr. Olasky said. "When you're thinking about helping the people in the greatest need, then it doesn't happen except through a type of religious transformation."
posted by jeremy @ 11:49 AM
:
Braziluminating - a just-sprouting new weblog from S?o Paulo on what Brazilians think about what foreigners think about Brazilians. Muito engra?ado.
[via blogaliza??o.]
posted by jeremy @ 11:48 AM
5/14/03:
Last week La beta corpo took a trip through the eater of meaning. This week, we get Pornolized which, though a lot less beautiful ("La Thrushmore Corpo"), is even more amusing.
posted by jeremy @ 12:08 AM
5/13/03:
Photographing Saddam - rephotography and the quite mind-boggling array of political image-flotsam quickly disappearing from Iraq.
posted by jeremy @ 11:54 PM
:
20 Days in Spring - an appropriate and failure-filled memorial to March 2003.
posted by jeremy @ 8:57 PM
:
More on Hothouse...
WBEZ this morning mentioned both the closing of Hothouse and the nearby Buddy Guy's Legends. The first was ordered closed by the Department of Revenue for licensing problems, the latter by the Board of Health because rats were found near the kitchen. The Chicago Tribune has finally run a story about both clubs [login:Betacorpo pw:Betacorpo]. A Chicago Sun-times article only mentions Buddy Guy's but ran a small summary of the incident last Sunday.
According to the Tribune article, Hothouse only had a theatre performance license that allowed limited liquor sales. The owner's response is that "there's really some technical issue with a license, the appropriate way to handle it is for the city to make a call during business hours and request that we take care of the problem."
The Chicago Tribune also adds that controversy behind the band at Hothouse last Friday - Orquesta Aragon, who apparently "sparked past protests from anti-Castro forces in Chicago" - factored into the decision. The city flatly denies this. From talking to others, some suggest that the city is trying to save face after the E2 nightclub disaster earlier this year where 21 people were killed in a stampede that was exacerbated by numerous building code violations. However, these situations have hardly a thing in common.
posted by jeremy @ 8:22 PM
:
Domestic Violence Photography -
Documentation by photography is an important and powerful tool in the investigation of domestic violence crimes. When injuries resulting from domestic violence are promptly and adequately documented, it is possible for prosecution to occur without the victim's testimony.
Penetration and reflection of light on the skin is a function of wavelength. Shorter wavelengths such as UV do not penetrate the skin very far before it is reflected back to the camera. Therefore a high resolution picture of the skin surface is possible. This works well for bite marks, cuts, scratches and scars. This is not a good technique to apply to bruises unless the blood accumulation is very close to the skin surface....After an assault, the victims' injuries may be photographed any time within the next two to five days. Visible light penetrates deeper into the skin than UV light and is sufficient to document most bruises. The addition of special wavelength sources and special filters can improve the visualization of the injuries by enhancing the blue color and improving the contrast against the normal skin tones."
The article, solely a technical overview of forensics photography for injuries, describes the ideal situations for adequately isolating a body's particular condition, mostly only in terms of how lightwaves and film react to skin color. But also, in these terms, the camera becomes a site for re-enacting an earlier violence, or substituting violence as a means for reproducing it. And I can't help but sense a rather violent subtext ("penetrating light... penetrating deeper") in such otherwise dry language. A quite complexly loaded writing.
posted by jeremy @ 12:30 PM
:
Unemployment: Is it for you? -
"I think you'll do fine as long as you're someone who thrives on stress. And boredom. And hunger. And stress," says Tracie Nervosa, a former teacher, speaking from a pay phone in Helpus-Dammit, Vt., where she had been hunting for loose change. "For me, the appeal of unemployment is the fact that you never know what's going to happen next. One day, you're racing from one pointless networking meeting to another, the next day you're still in your bathrobe in the middle of the afternoon watching reruns of "The Golden Girls" and snacking out of the cat food dish. It's very creative. Today I'm going to be selling my blood at various plasma centers, auctioning my children on eBay, meeting friends for Community 'Panhandling in the Park' Day -- and I still have to be back here by noon so I can let in the sheriff for my eviction."
posted by jeremy @ 11:03 AM
:
An alarm...
I don't suppose I have all that many readers in Chicago, but for any who are, the following will be some truly heinous news.
Hothouse, the quite venerable non-profit art and music space, also a rallying point for various activist performances, was shut down mid-performance last Friday night by police citing improper licencing. The owners, who maintain that all of their permits are up-to-date, suspect an undue police crackdown with political motivation. An e-mail I recieved from a local Amnesty International chapter more specifically suspects police retaliation against the anti-war protests and other activist organizing in the past months, culminating with a blockcade on Lake Shore Drive last March.
The following is the statement from Hothouse's web site -
HOTHOUSE SHUT DOWN IMMEDIATELY PRIOR TO SOLD-OUT PERFORMANCE OF LEGENDARY CUBAN BAND ORQUESTA ARAGON
At 8:45 p.m. Friday May 9, ten undercover officers of the Chicago Police Department ordered HotHouse, 31 E. Balbo, and its management to cease and desist all operations, claiming the non-profit performing arts venue was operating with improper Public Place of Amusement licenses.
At the time of the citation, HotHouse was transitioning from a 7 p.m. performance to a sold-out 10 p.m. show of the legendary Cuban charanga band Orquesta Aragon. A crowd of ticketholders to the 10 p.m. performance had formed an orderly line outside the venue in anticipation of the concert.
HotHouse management asserts that all licenses for the venue are in good standing and proper order. Management believes that the raid, which will cause untold financial losses to the venerable non-profit cultural center, was politically motivated.
The crowd of ticketholders, many of whom had come from as far away as Nebraska to see the rare performance of the Cuban orchestra, left the premises in an orderly manner. The patrons of HotHouse, along with its management and supporters, are looking to the City of Chicago and its agencies for answers.
As of noon, Monday May 12, HotHouse remains closed. Management wishes to thank our supporters, friends and peers for their overwhelming support in the wake of Friday's unexpected closure. At this time, the future of HotHouse and its upcoming performances remain uncertain. Pending response from the City of Chicago's Department of Revenue, HotHouse management is working closely with its legal counsel and board of directors to hasten the reopening of the venue. Please check back frequently for updated, official information about the status of HotHouse.
A posting on Chicago Indy Media says roughly the same thing.
The owners also indicated that this incident is costing them $30,000 from refunded shows, plus eventual legal fees, and greatly jeopardizes the continuation of this institution. They are asking for donations through their website.
This is truly an amazing cultural resource in this city that is often so apathetic to its own artists - in fact, the Department of Cultural Affairs itself would say as much [scroll down]. Though media coverage of this incident is of course non-existent, see the following Chicago Tribune review of various jazz performances from Brazilian artists that took place two weekends ago to appreciate how much of a disturbing loss this might be -
By far the most effective show unfolded Saturday night at HotHouse, where the veteran vocalist Flora Purim and percussionist Airto Moreira, her husband, made their first joint local appearance in years. Crowds stretched nearly a city block along East Balbo Drive long before showtime, Chicagoans clearly recognizing the value of hearing Purim and Moreira in an intimate, club setting.
This most likely uninitiated reviewer could be describing any night at Hothouse - a very eager capacity crowd lining up for rare and quality music, from artists often brought in from parts of Latin America or Eastern Europe that are otherwise underrepresented in the US, let alone Chicago, giving one of the'r career's best performances in an inspiring and intimate little space. It disgusts me that certtain powers in this city, one trying to emerge as an international centre with the most hackneyed ways, would meanwhile ruin one of it institutions for some political spite. However, if you live here and have even the slightest political awareness, this should come as little surprise. I'm immediately remembering a story from a few years ago about many small storefront theatres in Chicago's outlying neighbourhoods being interrupted mid-performance for fire-code violations. This sudden sweeping interest in fire-codes suspiciously coincided with the city debuting its centralised downtown "Theatre District" with the more lavish, syndicated Broadway offerings.
I'll be collecting more links, if any, when I find them. If nothing else, I want a record of how this city can be allow the destruction of rare cultural value to placate its own quite heavily corrupted inner politics and crooked police - another longstanding Chicago institution.
posted by jeremy @ 1:56 AM
5/12/03:
The mostly quite paranoid life of world's most published author/ xenophobe
Jack Chick.
posted by jeremy @ 8:59 PM
:
Speculative Grammarian - an online journal devoted to the "neglected field of satirical linguistics." - on grammer and black markets:
After we had gone through the entire alphabet, she convinced me that free trade was a good thing. And yet, she insisted that linguistic relativism was the scourge of humanity. "If the word 'I' were removed from the English language and replaced by 'we'," she told me, "it would lead to the collapse of Western civilization."
"Well, what about the fact that the second person singular and plural pronouns have already merged?" I queried.
"Have they really?" she asked. "I hadn't noticed. But maybe that accounts for the welfare state. You're a very clever fellow to have thought of that."
Still struggling with my Portuguese, I've been wondering why there's no Voc?s in English. I mean, a second-person plural is not a seemingly arbitrary extra like gendered nouns. So many times, us English speakers reach for a second-person plural and end up with the wretched "you guys." Perhaps the collapse of the welfare state coinciding with a president from Texas will officially evolve the pronoun "y'all" into American English. I couldn't begin to describe the irony.
posted by jeremy @ 7:05 PM
5/11/03:
"President Bush's address to the American people announcing combat victory in Iraq deserved to be marked with solemnity, not extravagance; with gratitude to God, not self-congratulatory gestures. American blood has been shed on foreign soil in defense of the president's policies. This is not some made-for-TV backdrop for a campaign commercial."
| -Senator Robert Bird
link
|
posted by jeremy @ 7:34 PM
:
Space Age Pop a Go Go! - 100 pages of essential bachelor listening.
posted by jeremy @ 7:22 PM
:
Orphaned Snowmen - everyone's workplaces should be this amusing.
posted by jeremy @ 7:15 PM
5/8/03:
Broken Wrist Project - a very stylish hodgepodge of writing and throwbacks to hand-drawn graphic art re-technologised into a some quite efficiently designed web animations. The Angry Coach section provides particular amusement.
posted by jeremy @ 9:04 PM
5/7/03:
See my previous post put through this absolutely incredibly delightful little web-toy called the Eater of Meaning (found on Wood S Lot) -
7.9.42
Leakage Homeomorphisms Witching it - on Musts Ames, creed andalusian corinthianize vigilant -
Forcibly Pakistani in paradoxes, loser accessory to finley serum is neil simulating theodore mistakes of display, northampton miniature falsity frothy theirs U.S. ward on terminations. Allegedly overtime Newark Yorker City, Pakistan are pronounce of small business: medallion pragmatism, bodybuilder, responder andromache, in Firing' casher, a complimenter stories in Sheppard Bay. Forensic thereupon, maintains accretion to creating andromeda otherworldly finland serbian is a matriculate of surrendering.
positives by Jerking at 4.5.18
Way more amusing than the online English-to-Portuguese translator that renders my name as Po?os do Jeremy.
posted by jeremy @ 7:42 PM
:
Leave Home Without it - on Muslim Americans, credit and corporate vigilance -
For Pakistanis in particular, losing access to financial services is neither simply the misfortune of discrimination, nor minor fallout from the U.S. war on terrorism. All over New York City, Pakistanis are proprietors of small businesses: medical practices, bodegas, restaurants and, in Firdous' case, a computer store in Sheepshead Bay. For them, maintaining access to credit and other financial services is a matter of survival.
posted by jeremy @ 6:51 PM
5/6/03:
The transcript of a radio interview from 1983 with author and anti-fascist subversive Primo Levi.
posted by jeremy @ 1:43 PM
:
On CIA Covert Operations in the European Arts Scene -
The Congress for Cultural Freedom is widely considered one of the CIA's more daring and effective Cold War covert operations. It published literary and political journals such as Encounter, hosted dozens of conferences bringing together some of the most eminent Western thinkers, and even did what it could to help intellectuals behind the Iron Curtain. Somehow this organization of scholars and artists--egotistical, free-thinking, and even anti-American in their politics--managed to reach out from its Paris headquarters to demonstrate that Communism, despite its blandishments, was a deadly foe of art and thought. Getting such people to cooperate at all was a feat, but the Congress's Administrative Secretary, Michael Josselson, kept them working together for almost two decades until the Agency arranged an amicable separation from the Congress in 1966.
With that in mind, see also - US complacency damaging American intellect.
posted by jeremy @ 1:30 PM
:
From Al-Ahram Weekly -
Washington will have to face up to the harsh reality of Iraq's complex political and social landscape: as vanquisher of Saddam's regime, it aims to reconstruct the country, which entails staying around. As liberator, though, it must be responsive to Iraqi wishes.
What are the options? If US forces leave Iraq abruptly, anarchy and chaos would reign. Stay too long, they will face an anti-imperialist backlash. Hold elections for a new government too fast, and an Iranian-style Islamist regime would probably come to power. Station an occupation force there, and national resistance would rear up.
Many analysts fear that Bush, who is touting his administration's efforts to sow the seeds of democracy in the rubble of Saddam's toppled dictatorship, will soon realise the difficulty of setting up a full-fledged democracy in Iraq and might, instead, opt to pave the way for another Iraqi strongman. Such a possibility should not be ruled out. After all, nation building can hardly be considered the United State's best export.
posted by jeremy @ 12:08 PM
5/5/03:
A new cool tool - the Geo-bytes IP Locator reveal the location of (just about) any IP address that you plug into it. Now I know where you all live.
posted by jeremy @ 6:47 PM
:
From a Spitting Image post on the dizzyingly mute proportions of the US's underground economy -
Marijuana, pornography and illegal labour have created a hidden market in the United States which now accounts for as much as 10% of the American economy, according to a study. As a cash crop, marijuana is believed to have outstripped maize, and hardcore porn revenue is equal to Hollywood's domestic box office takings....
Hardcore pornography in the shape of videos, the internet, live sex acts and cable television is now estimated to generate around $10bn, roughly the same amount as Hollywood's US box office receipts.
This is all in response to Eric Schlosser's (author of Fast Food Nation) new book Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in America's Black Market
Other linkage -
[Also from Spitting Image] - a Village Voice interview with Mr. Schlosser.
a reviewof Reefer Madness
a succinct history of the US's drug war as relating to pharmaceuticals and counterculture
and a more thorough paper "Toward a Rhetorical Genealogy of the War on Drugs"[.pdf].
posted by jeremy @ 12:44 PM
5/4/03:
Flat and slightly disconcerting large-format photos by Edward Burtynsky treat industrial landscapes like an uncanny geology.
posted by jeremy @ 10:29 PM
:
From True porn clerk stories -
Contamination is everywhere. I see people sneezing onto the tape cases. They cough wetly into their palms right before handing me change. They squeegee out their ears with their pinkies. They forget about the security cameras downstairs and pick their noses with wild abandon and astonishing force. Still, the only thing that realy freaks me out is the semen. Well, OK, the lubricant freaks me out too, but I'm pretty sure that's because of the implied presence of semen.
The only thing we can do is use the hand sanitizer. I use it so much that I lose all finger traction and can't open our plastic bags. I've had days when I've used it so much that I can't even make fingerprints on the glass countertop. It freaks me out, but the thought of not using it is worse.
posted by jeremy @ 8:07 PM
:
Randomly generated links to other Chicago weblogs. I'd add la beta corpo, but I'm outta this dirty town... soon... soon....
posted by jeremy @ 8:03 PM
:
Which Enemy of the Christian Church are you? - I don't mean to perpetuate those ceaseless javascript quizes - I'm too old for such things - but you gotta hand it to this clever teenager.
posted by jeremy @ 7:58 PM
5/2/03:
From an interview with Al Franken -
Continuing with the subject of good and evil, Carolyn Risher, the mayor of Inglis, Fla., recently issued a proclamation banning Satan from her three-square-mile town. If you could ban Satan from a three-square-mile area, where would it be?
Are you asking this of everyone you talk to?
No, just you.
Three square miles, or circular? Can it be a radius of three miles?
It can be a radius. We can play fast and loose with this.
OK. Um, boy, that's a tough one.
It is a tough one, and you only get to pick one area to ban Satan from.
OK, hold on. Um, Battle Creek, Mich.
Why there?
I eat a lot of cereal.
posted by jeremy @ 9:28 PM
:
Best New Words for 2002 -
The more skittish end of linguistic creativity was evident in nominations for grid butt (marks left on the buttocks by fishnet pantyhose), neuticles (fake testicles for neutered pets), sausage fest (a party with more males than females), and unorthodox entrepreneur (a panhandler, prostitute, or drug dealer in a Vancouver park), diabulimia (loss of weight by a diabetic skipping insulin doses), and dialarhoea (the inadvertent dialling of a cell phone in a pocket or handbag).
These are the final results in various categories:
Most likely to succeed: Blog.
Most useful: Google.
Most creative: Iraqnophobia.
Most unnecessary: Wombanisation (feminization).
Most outrageous: Neuticles.
Most euphemistic: Regime change.
Phrase of the Year: Weapons of mass destruction.
These are from lexographer Michael Quinion's modest but wonderful World Wide Words site - hundreds of witty essays on the odd and trivial quirks of English words - like how the uses of the word Banana trace back to a 19th century vaudvillian; why willy-nilly, while sounding quite informal, is actually a Middle English holdover; or how the phrase Shock and awe, as we know it, is actually being misused.
[thanks, Howard.]
posted by jeremy @ 9:25 PM
5/1/03:
Rolling Back the 20th Century - William Greider on Bush as neo-conservatism's third wave -
Maybe what the right is really seeking is not so much to be left alone by government but to use government to reorganize society in its own right-wing image. All in all, the right's agenda promises a reordering that will drive the country toward greater separation and segmentation of its many social elements--higher walls and more distance for those who wish to protect themselves from messy diversity. The trend of social disintegration, including the slow breakup of the broad middle class, has been under way for several decades--fissures generated by growing inequalities of status and well-being. The right proposes to legitimize and encourage these deep social changes in the name of greater autonomy. Dismantle the common assets of society, give people back their tax money and let everyone fend for himself.
posted by jeremy @ 8:31 PM
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Marcelo Min - street photos from Sao Paulo.
posted by jeremy @ 8:31 PM
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President Gore: A Look Back
- fascinating "concept fiction" if there was. Definitely have a look.
posted by jeremy @ 8:31 PM
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98-107 - a new project from artist John Haddock - consists of paper mache figures of each congressperson who voted for the Patriot Act.
Thanks to James also for digging up the link to ISP's - appropriated porn images reconstructed to omit the original figures - which I've been trying to find for months.
posted by jeremy @ 8:31 PM
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Women and War - an online photo portfolio from Actionaid.org.
posted by jeremy @ 8:30 PM
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