/ambivalence

Tgiving

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 14:44:18 -0800

Tgiving

Photo

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 14:43:26 -0800

Hannover winter market

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 13:16:45 -0800

Hannover winter market

Sausages in the Hannover Winter Market near my hotel

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 13:14:26 -0800

Sausages in the Hannover Winter Market near my hotel

repostedjunk: jackscoresby: (via beautykills) | I need that...

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 11:05:26 -0800

repostedjunk:

jackscoresby:

(via beautykills)

I need that T shirt!

perfectdefect-input: ANDREI TARKOVSKY | the passion according...

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 10:59:20 -0800

perfectdefect-input:

ANDREI TARKOVSKY | the passion according to andrei

nevver: Less Billboards, More Art!

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 10:53:25 -0800

nevver:

Less Billboards, More Art!

(via fwump)

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 10:41:36 -0800

(via fwump)

Keenan and Conrad, the Brothers Boyd

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 10:38:51 -0800

Keenan and Conrad, the Brothers Boyd

slackmo: iamchrysanthemum: exclamationmark:bunnysuit:jopiedevis...

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 10:36:32 -0800

slackmo:

iamchrysanthemum:

exclamationmark:bunnysuit:jopiedevisboer:

“For hours she danced and sang and flirted and did this thing that’s—she did Marilyn Monroe,” Avedon said later, adding that the white wine helped things along.
“Then there was the inevitable drop … she sat in the corner like a child, with everything gone.” And he clicked his shutter once more.
“I wouldn’t photograph her without her knowledge of it. And as I came with the camera, I saw that she was not saying no.”
The resultant final frame is among the most famous portraits ever made—one that is, as the photographer Vik Muniz neatly put it, “a picture of Norma Jean, not Marilyn.”

Simon Technology Entrepreneur and Potential Yacht Owner

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 10:32:00 -0800

This entire exchange is hilarious, go read the whole thing:

[via Simon Technology Entrepreneur and Potential Yacht Owner by David Thompson]

From: David Thorne
Date: Monday 16 November 2009 3.52pm
To: Simon Edhouse
Subject: Re: Logo Design

Dear Simon,

Disregarding the fact that you have still not paid me for work I completed earlier this year despite several assertions that you would do so, I would be delighted to spend my free time creating logos and pie charts for you based on further vague promises of future possible payment. Please find attached pie chart as requested and let me know of any changes required.

Regards, David.

All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace by Richard Brautigan

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 23:47:00 -0800

I like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.

I like to think
(right now please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms.

I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.

"All of us have a place in history. Mine is clouds."

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 23:43:00 -0800

“All of us have a place in history. Mine is clouds.”

- Richard Brautigan

Spare Change?

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 22:19:21 -0800

[United Homeless Organization, Which Collects Cash by Jugful, Is Sued by New York State]

In Manhattan, they are as common a sight as the homeless themselves: the United Homeless Organization’s street-corner donation tables, operated with little more than a large plastic jug and a worker pleading for coins and bills for the needy.

The workers, clad in aprons bearing the group’s logo, are all homeless or formerly homeless, and the organization says that the donations help pay for food pantries, clothing, detox centers and other services. Skeptical New Yorkers who wondered over the years just where the money ended up wondered just as often if they were perhaps being too skeptical.

[…]

The table workers pay Mr. Riley and Ms. Walker a $15-per-shift fee to use the group’s tables and materials, and keep the rest of what they collect, according to the lawsuit. It said that Mr. Riley and Ms. Walker used the fees as “their personal kitty,” routinely flouted nonprofit and charitable solicitation laws and failed to maintain accurate records of revenue and expenses.

A city license is required to solicit money in public places, but the organization has never applied for one, and the document often displayed at the tables is a copy of its New York State incorporation receipt, the suit said.

The group’s Web site stated that it provides food and clothing to the homeless, but Mr. Riley and Ms. Walker admitted in testimony to Mr. Cuomo’s office that the group has no such programs , the lawsuit said. The organization does not run a shelter, soup kitchen or detox center, and does not give money to other homeless charities, according to the lawsuit. Mr. Riley and Ms. Walker are the only directors on the board.

Maybe I have the wrong approach, but in San Francisco I only give change to homeless people that I have gotten to “know”, because I see them day in day out. And I give $2 to the first one that I see, one per day.

Have to see what I do once I get settled into NYC. I certainly won’t give money to an operation like United Homeless, unless a real charity takes that on.

The southern Philippines has been plagued for years by...

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 22:07:00 -0800

The southern Philippines has been plagued for years by secessionist and Islamist insurgencies. The United States sends $1.6 billion annually in military and economic aid to the Philippines, with much of it aimed at a shadowy Islamist group, Abu Sayyaf, which has ties to Al Qaeda.

The authorities said that this week’s election violence had nothing to do with those groups, but that it was rooted in rivalries among local clans that the government had empowered as a way of combating the insurgents. One clan, the Ampatuans, is considered the closest political ally of Mrs. Arroyo in that part of the southern Philippines.

There are at least 250 political dynasties scattered throughout the Philippines, according to the Center for People Empowerment in Governance, a nonprofit group. For many of them and particularly those in the south, politics is literally a blood sport, with the clans’ power and income riding on the outcome of elections. As a consequence, violence has become a fixture of elections here; at least 126 died in the 2007 elections and 189 in 2004.

(via Philippine Election Deaths Rise; Arroyo Declares Emergency)

Butchers with butcher knives participate in religious rituals...

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 17:42:24 -0800

Butchers with butcher knives participate in religious rituals before slaughtering buffalos during a mass sacrifice ceremony at Gadhimai temple in Bariyapur, about 70 kilometers (43 miles) south of Katmandu, Nepal, Tuesday, Nov. 24, 2009. Hundreds of thousands of Hindus gathered at a temple in southern Nepal on Tuesday for a ceremony involving the slaughter of more than 200,000 animals, a festival that has drawn the ire of animal-welfare protesters. (AP Photo/Gemunu Amarasinghe) (via Festival of mass animal sacrifice begins in Nepal - Boston.com)

By Gemunu Amarasinghe, Associated Press Writer / November 24, 2009

Official Charged With Closing Guantánamo Quits

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 17:31:54 -0800

Official Charged With Closing Guantánamo Quits:

Phillip Carter quits, claiming nebulous personal issues. Recently, Gregory Craig, White House counsel in charge of detainee policy, also resined.

Looks like people are abandoning this mess, since Obama is not going to meet his promises.

Why Rebuild in New Orleans?

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 17:27:32 -0800

The NY Times wants to rebuild on the Gulf Coast:

[via Don’t Forget the Gulf States]

The recession has wreaked a special kind of havoc in the Katrina-ravaged Gulf states, where the effort to rebuild housing for low-income workers and their families is in danger of coming to a halt. Unless Congress acts quickly, more than 70 different housing developments totaling more than 6,000 units might never get built. That would be terrible for the Gulf region, which needs a lot more affordable housing and a large low-wage work force to drive its recovery.

The NY Times and many other liberal observers have a strangely old school minset about the Gulf Coast. Whe we know that more sever hurricanes are coming, and that the are shouldn’t be caarrying the population that it does, why advocate rebuilding? We should have public policy to move people away from the Gulf Coast shores, inland.

There is a weak case to be made for keeping promises made, but the promises are dumb. Let’s double down, move people away, embed them in working communities, give them jobs, whatever.

Studies have shown that the deep South has the lowest social capital of any part of the US, and depopulating it is actually a social good.

Sweet Potato v Yam

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 16:43:49 -0800

[via You Say Potato, I Say Yam]

The yam, a large hairy tuber that bears no botanical relationship to the sweet potato, grows mainly in tropical and subtropical climates and is of primary importance to many West African societies. From Ghana to Nigeria, yam festivals celebrate the desire for a bounteous harvest and the continuity of life. In languages of the West African coast, including Wolof in Senegal and Umbundu in Angola, the tuber is so popular that some variant of the word “yam” simply means “to eat.”

Slavers transporting captives from those areas on the Middle Passage provisioned themselves with yams sufficient for the voyages. But once ashore in more temperate America, the slaves found that the African tuber was unavailable, and thus substituted it with the sweet potato — leading to centuries of botanical and gastronomic confusion. (More recently, though, true yams imported from the tropics have become available in ethnic markets in this country.)

soupsoup: Happy Thanksgiving!

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 16:40:53 -0800

soupsoup:

Happy Thanksgiving!