An old 4-part series from the BBC. Have a look, Parts 2, 3, and 4 after the jump. Some scary stuff.
Not to be a downer here, but I wanted to note the passing of a really intelligent and inspiring man, Tony Judt. His awful struggle with ALS was covered in the media until his demise… was a shitty disease to die from. I’ve been reading some of his articles for a while now… his views were most enlightening and humanistic, and he wasn’t afraid to say it as it was. An old interview with him can be see here.
In light of MIA’s recent redhead persecution video, which was a bit of an overpriced joke, I thought I’d share a music video that is chock full of “controversial” imagery, most of it real and current. The first 40 seconds or so are quite strong. Nicked this from the most excellent Pampelmoose…
A quick post to say- now is the time to let the FCC know they need to stand up for the general public vis a vis Net Neutrality. Let them know here. Or go straight to the FCC’s website. They are asking for input on this issue. What has essentially happened to radio and television (a total ripoff of the American public) is now happening with the internet as well. Read more info on it here, which should get you mad if you aren’t already. Also a recent article via Wired.
I have to apologize for the sloooow pace of content on NewDandyism over the last week. I’ve been doing laps around China while Ninski shipped off to his homeland to see the F1 Grand Prix du Canada.
I have to tell you that I’m a bit exhausted. Here’s the list of my travels for the last week… NYC, Hong Kong, Dongguan, Hong Kong, Dongguan, Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and know I’m getting set to go back down to Dongguan again.
There has been a noticeable lack of men’s style content on the site lately and that has to do with the fact that we are feeling a bit uninspired at the moment. I was hoping this trip would spark some excitement in me but it just hasn’t. I want to be surprised and I’m finding more and more there are no surprises. Hopefully it is just an issue of the moment and things will turn around.
Fortunately for Ninski, he was infinitely inspired by his trip to Montreal and I know he will share some thoughts with you on his experience at F1.
Thanks NotCot for such a great post. Looks like Prisons are getting nicer all the time, with more natural light than usual. Of course it still screams “concrete dungeon” what with it’s bland exterior and slit windows, but it’s a step forward anyways. Oh look, there are even a few buggy-whip trees planted!
Nuclear Power isn’t safe. When it goes tits up, we end up with ghost towns, death and illness for thousands of people (and for many generations), contaminated land and wildlife… a massive toll in every way. Truly not worth the risk -however small proponents say it is. Chernobyl, twenty four years on. There is a mad rush (and big pressure) to build more of these plants, but we need to keep saying no to them. It’s just not worth it.
Chris Ware truly is a genius cartoonist/illustrator/social commentator. Ninski’s post last week about Ware’s rejected Fortune magazine cover reminded me of his string of stellar covers for the New Yorker.
I was at a barbecue over the weekend in which inevitably, at least among men, computers and electronic gadgets came up in conversation - it’s like the 21st century version of car or sport talk. Give me car or sport talk any day, but nothing puts me to sleep faster than computer/gadget talk. So I did what I typically do when such topics come up - I take a contrary position to whatever the passionate participant is saying just to fuck with them. And that’s exactly how this conversation was going until they began preaching the gospel of connectivity and all the benefits of having the ‘world’ at their fingertips wherever and whenever - Googling, Facebook mood ring-ing, Tweet-ing, Yelp-ing, Blogging, “there’s an app for that©” culture. And that conjured up some real opinion from me.
I immediately thought of Chris Ware’s Halloween cover for the New Yorker you see here above - the children’s faces draped with masks, the parents faces draped with the light of their hand-helds. They’re so ‘connected’ their lives are simply passing them by. The message - pull your head out of your ass, er, gadget, and live. On your death bed you’ll regret not living more in the moment, not that you didn’t Tweet that you were ’sooo craving a cheeseburger’ more often.
The weather is beautiful in NYC today - I’m going outside.
Bill Moyers is sadly now off the air. What a huge loss for journalism.
Check out his final show here. It’s a very enlightening episode, highlighting citizen activists in Iowa, and recent protests on Wall Street. Encouraging stuff. We need more of this, not less.
What an awesome big fuck you to Fortune-types. Lovely. Sad that a magazine of this stature can’t stand a little heat, or rather, truth. I wonder if Chris was hoping his cover art would be rejected. See his beautiful artwork here.
What a pathetic waste of time and resources. I would much rather we invest in making sure everyone has real, beautiful views from our homes. Don’t fall for this- it’s a dead end trap. If you don’t understand what I mean, well, I can’t help you.
When the whole financial system tanked I was in support of propping up the “too big to fail” players. My only reason was to keep the economy from collapsing. I believe the bailouts worked, but its been a harsh and bitter pill, and it’s become obvious that the everyman has been completely screwed over in this process. Reading an article such as “Looting Main Street” makes me sort of wish we had let all the banks and wall street firms collapse and fucking burn. Of course doing that would put some hurt on them, but we’d probably be in a depression by now, and average people would be suffering far more than the traders and Execs. But still, reading about how badly they’ve done over people makes me furious, and cutting off ones nose to spite “them”… well, it becomes actually thinkable. By compensating for their actions with few strings attached, and demanding little in terms of rule changes to our unfair and corrupt financial systems, we just encourage more irresponsibility, more callousness. It’s mind boggling really.
A quote from this Rolling Stone article:
“The destruction of Jefferson County reveals the basic battle plan of these modern barbarians, the way that banks like JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs have systematically set out to pillage towns and cities from Pittsburgh to Athens. These guys aren’t number-crunching whizzes making smart investments; what they do is find suckers in some municipal-finance department, corner them in complex lose-lose deals and flay them alive.”
I had recently heard about this video, but only just watched the (short) version now. It is sickening. It is harrowing. What is going on with the world? Of course war is not a pretty thing, ever. But this trigger happy “engagement” of civilians is extremely disturbing. The cold, flippant comments by the attackers are shocking. There is nothing new here in terms of what they are doing- its been done by every warring nation across the span of human history. What is new though is the business of war has become more sophisticated, more deadly, and more sanitized (for those doing the killing). Modern warfare offers up a strange double-edged sword. On the one hand new technologies allow for impartial, unblinking gunners to mow down distant targets that are viewed intimately through digital zooms. A boon for the pro-military set and for statisticians counting kill rates, but a step back for humanity. On the other hand these developments also (sometimes) creates a very ugly, yet truthful record which could motivate a public to resist their gov’t’s militaristic intentions. It strips all pretense of glory from the idea of “War”, which is a good thing. I wonder if avid FPS players see this is as shocking, or would the reaction be blase? Do the fans of “strong military” see this as business as usual, or could they also feel disgust and horror after viewing this clip?
A big bravo to Wikileaks for releasing this. People need to know, and be educated.
I first heard about Murray Hill Inc. on NPR (listen to it here). What they are doing is just hilarious… clever, biting humour targeting a very serious problem facing this country. Hats off to the guys at MHI for dreaming this up.
I love this talk by Dan Barber. Especially the last bit, where he really cuts through the bullshit laid on us by big Agribiz and the Bill Gates’ etc. In my opinion he is speaking the truth and getting at the core of it with his closing words- seen below.
(note: when he says “chicken to fish”, he’s talking about feeding fish pellets made of chicken bits…)
What we need now is a radically new conception of agriculture, one in which the food actually tastes good. But for a lot people, that’s a bit too radical. We’re not realists, us foodies. We’re lovers. We love farmers’ markets. We love small family farms. We talk about local food. We eat organic. And when you suggest these are the things that will insure the future of good food, someone somewhere stands up and says, “Hey guy, I love pink flamingos, but how are you going to feed the world? How are you going to feed the world?”
Can I be honest? I don’t love that question. No, not because we already produce enough calories to more than feed the world. One billion people will go hungry today. One billion — that’s more than ever before — because of gross inequalities in distribution, not tonnage. Now, I don’t love this question because it’s determined the logic of our food system for the last 50 years.
Feed grain to herbivores, pesticides to monocultures, chemicals to soil, chicken to fish, and all along agribusiness has simply asked, “If we’re feeding more people more cheaply, how terrible could that be?” That’s been the motivation. It’s been the justification. It’s been the business plan of American agriculture. We should call it what it is, a business in liquidation, a business that’s quickly eroding ecological capital that makes that very production possible. That’s not a business, and it isn’t agriculture.
Our bread basket is threatened today, not because of diminishing supply, but because of diminishing resources, not by the latest combine and tractor invention, but by fertile land, not by pumps, but by fresh water, not by chainsaws, but by forests, and not by fishing boats and nets, but by fish in the sea.
Want to feed the world? Let’s start by asking: How are we going to feed ourselves? Or better, How can we create conditions that enable every community to feed itself? To do that, don’t look at the agribusiness model for the future. It’s really old, and it’s tired. It’s high on capital, chemistry, and machines, and it’s never produced anything really good to eat. Instead, let’s look to the ecological model. That’s the one that relies on two billion years of on-the-job experience.
Look to Miguel, farmers like Miguel, farms that aren’t worlds unto themselves, farms that restore instead of deplete, farms that farm extensively instead of just intensively, farmers that are not just producers, but experts in relationships, because they’re the ones that are experts in flavor too. And if I’m going to be really honest, they’re a better chef than I’ll ever be. You know, I’m okay with that, because if that’s the future of good food, it’s going to be delicious.
Well, I guess we all have to grow up sometime. Plus move to the burbs, get new teeth and a bland getup. It’s just the contrast from youth to maturity is so much more exaggerated in a character like Shaun Ryder…
Here is the grown up version of Shaun, present day…
Plus, a wee doc for those interested in Mr. Ryder
I am a huge fan of architect Christopher Alexander.
Here you’ll find a fascinating and compelling debate he had with the Peter Eisenman back in 1982. It speaks volumes. How does simple reason argue against complex philisophical systems? Alexander did very well but the establishment as a whole, and the public as a whole, have gone with Eisenman’s way of thinking. Peter’s comment (near the end of the debate) that “How does someone become so powerful if he is screwing up the world?” is a funny justification and point of defense. Of course, as we see in the world today, just because an individual is powerful or successful does not mean they are right, or doing the right thing. Yet our society constantly reinforces that notion- The cream rises to the top. That belief ignores that the cream could be curdled or toxic…
Damon Winter/The New York Times
I wanted to provide our readers with information on how you can help assist with disaster relief in Haiti. There are many organizations that are helping, but we want to recommend the following for the information they provide, the assistance they send to the affected regions and their ability to accept donations specifically directed towards Haitian Earthquake relief.
We send our thoughts and well wishes to any of you with family or friends in the areas affected by the recent events.
Red Cross - You can go to their website or you can text “HAITI” to “90999″ and a donation of $10 will be given automatically to the Red Cross to help with relief efforts and charged to your cell phone bill. (verified by the U.S. State department)
Direct Relief, Unicef, and World Vision are also very good options.
I’d rather not go into a retrospective of the year but in the just over 3 years NewDandyism has been on the web a lot of things have changed - with us and the world - and I can’t begin to pretend to tell you I know exactly where things are headed. But what I wanted to do as the year winds down was address a few topics and answer few questions we have been hearing a lot from you, our readers.
Many of you have asked if we have lost some of our politically fire since Obama was elected president.
That’s a difficult one. Yes, it has been too long (2 months) since our last truly politically driven post. And there are a few reasons. The first reason is simple, sometimes we get so engulfed in what we actually do for a living, design, that we ourselves aren’t staying as informed as we’d like on all issues. And we are not ones to spout off without knowledge of a topic.
The second and most important reason is that although we are coming up quick on a full year of Obama in office, we wanted to give the administration of change a chance to actually do some changing before we begin to publicly judge. Up to this point we have been more than frustrated with Obama’s first year but still have a ton of hope he will soon escape the political mud.
But being involved in the process is not just about talk but action as well. And although we have not been as vocal here, we have been doing our part, however small, to better the world we live in by donating time and money to the causes we believe in. There are a ton of ways we can all be involved and we’re going to try to do a better job of keeping you aware the options out there.
Lately we have been hearing a lot of questions about our evolving style on the site - what’s up with that?
Yes, what is up with that? I’ve alluded to this a few times over the last few months within posts but let me collect all my thoughts here on the subject - well, it’s pretty simple, everyone’s style evolves, even if ever so subtly. We are designers after all and we are in a constant internal struggle with pushing the boundaries and what the end user is willing to accept. Through this process we are continually exposing ourselves to new ideas, experiences, and inspiration. It is inevitable that our lives will shape our style. We are no trend whores but to think that how we dress today will be how we dress forever is unrealistic no matter how “trad” we think we are. We have always pushed for investment shopping not just out of our on style philosophy about buying clothing and objects that will stand the test of time but also, and most importantly, because we are eco conscience people and hate the thought of more product being manufactured that is inevitably headed to the landfill.
All that being said, we do have a proven track record of understanding what will be trending and you can see some of those influences in our content. But sorry to all you industry folk that visit us regularly, we will not be giving any free trend reports here. However, we will continue to bring you our perspective on the things we love and find interesting.
Who are you guys?
Another good question. We forget sometimes that not everyone is in our industry that visits ND and that many of you are not truly sure who is writing all this opinionated dribble. I don’t do New Year’s resolutions but I will promise you that we will get our shit together and finally fill in the blank that is our “who” page.
For those of you that have not discovered our email address on that “who” page, you can email us with all your thoughts, questions, or feedback at contact@newdandyism.com.
So cheers to 2009, and wishing all of you a prosperous and adventurous New Year.