Currently viewing the tag: "Politics"

A Voice from the Inside

By On December 29, 2018

My 5 year old son turned me on to this great vlog, MN Millennial Farmer.  The videos are simple, straight-forward, and informative. The big takeaway: Farmers are  people who can do everything from Engineering to Chemistry to Botany…but also grow food.

This video was interesting because he spoke to the Trade Wars from the perspective of one directly affected by the negotiation. Open your mind. Listen to the man.

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Crummy Member Benefits: Get Checks with the NRA Logo

By On February 21, 2018

I can’t think of anything more odious than the NRA. Recently, there’s been some chatter on the net regarding a boycott of the companies that do business with these terrorists.

On an aesthetic note–where are you in your life when you need to have NRA embossed checks?  What message are you trying to send?  Maximum dipshit?

See the list below, but most people think Fed Ex is the natural choice.

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Who gets to tell the story?

By On November 12, 2016

One of the problems with telling other people’s stories is that you bear the responsibility for the telling.  Technology invites each of us to tell our story in many mediums.  When is it stealing?  When is it exploitation?  When is it empathy?  When is it giving the gift of meaning–the only gift writers have to give?  Language, that puckish knave, can sometimes express meaning well outside of the writer’s good intentions.  That is why to write is both brave and foolish.   For me, the act of empathizing with another human, of becoming them in my imagination, of wresting meaning from brash reality, that is the payoff.

Still, times change.  We must listen to others and take heed.  Here: http://nyti.ms/1XRvsz8

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Why So Serious?

By On November 10, 2014

As many are fond of pointing out, The Fool in Shakespeare’s plays is the one figure that may speak freely against authority.  While the rest of a king’s court is sycophantic, the fool’s role in court is privileged because he is honest.  We are meant to be  in awe of this fact.  After all, free speech is democracy’s most favored virtue and to see it exercised by one with so little social power pleases a modern audience. But really, this Fool is a dramatic innovation, not a political one.

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The Prison Investment System

By On July 18, 2012

As a child, I rarely saw a prison except on television. Now, I see them more often and in the most populous of areas—beside a strip mall or industrial park or along the highway.  The modern prison is not the gothic stone façade projecting doom and despair.  Now they are bland, dull buildings with a modicum of razor wire and very thin, unbreakable windows.  They blend into the background of the surrounding communities like schools and the DMV.   Still, I shudder at the sight of them, not so much because I fear escapees, but rather because I fear the bureaucracy of the prison system itself.

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Fashion Police

By On April 26, 2012

Men’s fashion presents an exciting mixture of both the political and the aesthetic; aesthetic because the way all fashion excites the senses; political in the sense that Mary Louise Pratt means it: the body is a contact zone, a social space in which culture meets and grapples with itself.

Looking at sites like MaleFashionAdvice or shows like Queer Eye makes me think that now more than ever men are liberated to openly embrace fashion—or more precisely—liberated to now speak of the conscientious fashioning of their appearance.  It wasn’t so long ago that GQ was an industry magazine meant for the wholesaler and haute couture was the language of the privileged class.  In some ways we have see the democratization of exclusiveness, if for no other reason than it is better for the bottom line.

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You Are What You Read

By On January 20, 2012

There was talk during the Bush administration of examining library records.  Librarians were right to resist such inquiries on the grounds that such a intrusion in the civil liberties of readers would endanger the ability for free discussion of ideas.  However, some part of me wished to see the results of an exhaustive survey of what people were reading from libraries.  Which books were reserved, by whom, and how often.  This is the kind of data that would speak volumes about our culture.  Only recently has such information even been theoretically available.  And yet, of course we should not look at such data.  Though I like to sometimes imagine that the Librarians of the world know exactly what we are reading and thus know who we are, or worse, who we would like to be.

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