Andrew Foltz Morrison

After watching the now-infamous video twice, I’m convinced that it is indicative of postmodernism in every sense of the term. 

• Pastiche. The video has it in spades. It references other forms of media (Tarantino, exploitation films, Thelma & Louise) left and right, while parodying none of them. This is because parody relies on an underlying normative standard, which postmodernism categorically rejects. Instead it merely shows the audience a barrage of media, almost a celebration of how clever the director is for cramming so many references into a single video.
• Consumerism. The product placement is obvious, but it is not portrayed as humorous. The camera lingers too long on each product, and the video knows it, but it still manages to avoid parody. Rather, the video uses these consumer images as an integral part of its aesthetic without any comment on their social context.
• Self-reference. The blatant product placement shows a self-awareness in the video, but this particular brand of ironic detachment harms the video’s ability to make any sort of overall message on its own. Instead it implies that celebrating consumer culture is fine as long as we’re appropriately ironic about it, but this is a largely unintended consequence of the video’s aesthetic.
• Appropriation of identity-based struggle. Lady Gaga is interesting for turning the male gaze back on men, and for portraying women as subjects rather than objects in her videos (albeit still scantily-clad subjects). However, the resistance to power on Lady Gaga and Beyonce’s part is purely individual and brief (it’s very telling that Lady Gaga is bailed out of prison rather than escaping) Behind this initial layer of feminism there is still an individuated desire to become rich, given that Lady Gaga was saved from prison by money. She maintains her glamorous image inside and outside the prison’s walls, an implicit message that “excessive materialism is empowering to women, somehow,” as Alyx Vesey observed. Therefore her kind of feminism is integrated neatly into the agenda of neoliberals, who love to talk about glass ceilings being shattered while heaping disdain on poor women. 
• Incredulity towards metanarratives. Lyotard’s famous description of the postmodern condition applies even here, as it’s difficult to find an overall message or narrative in the video. There is a sequence of events interspersed with pop culture references and product placement, but little else.

Most works of postmodern culture incorporate the ethic of postmodern philosophy with even less critical engagement than postmodern philosophers themselves, and in so doing implicitly endorse the status quo. This video is no exception.

So, I’ll just come right out and say it. I don’t get Lady Gaga. Actually, no. I think I get her. At first I thought I was just being resentful that she got to perform in the Pet Shop Boys medley at the BRIT Awards and I didn’t, but now I just think there’s nothing to get. To take Gertrude Stein out of context, there is no there there.

My immediate problem with her is that she seems to have garnered a lot of attention around her fashion choices. Admittedly, she’s got an interesting look on the surface. Glittery, glam, vaguely militaristic, often without pants. She certainly throws together a spectacle. But my big question is where is the commentary? What is the critique exactly?

How cars are killing us around the world

When it comes to transportation in America, it’s all about the states. State departments of transportation determine how federal highway dollars are distributed. State legislatures choose whether to allow cities and counties to tax themselves for the purposes of improved transportation. And state approval is necessary when regions want to create transit districts. The result: Cities and their suburbs are stuck when they want to plan and finance alternative transportation.

Today’s Washington is not doing enough to stem that state power. Our national leaders are beholden to the interests of state departments of transportation, and that’s a terrible thing.

Indeed, the strength of state governments in making transportation decisions is one of the primary culprits for the highway-dependent state of the American landscape, in addition to the federal urban renewal policies and Interstate Highway legislation that are more typically singled out for blame. This fact comes to the serious detriment of metropolitan areas, which lack the fiscal ability and legal right to make full decisions about their transportation futures.

The most obvious example of the negative consequences of state control over transportation spending is the fact that even though most highway transportation appropriations (called “flex dollars”) can be used for any type of transportation, including transit, virtually all of it is spent on roads construction.

That’s because the politics of almost every state are dominated by rural and suburban constituents, or, in other words: car drivers. The urban transit users, pedestrians, and bike riders are typically at the back of the pack when it comes to representation.

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 9  (IPS)  - The negative fallout from climate change is having a devastatingly lopsided impact on women compared to men, from higher death rates during natural disasters to heavier household and care burdens.

In the 1991 cyclone disasters that killed 140,000 in Bangladesh, 90 percent of victims were reportedly women; in the 2004 Asian Tsunami, an estimated 70 to 80 percent of overall deaths were women.

And following the 2005 Hurricane Katrina in the United States, African-American women, who were the poorest population in some of the affected States in Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi, faced the greatest obstacles to survival, according to the New York-based Women’s Environment and Development Organisation (WEDO).

The 2007 Human Development Report, issued by the U.N. Development Programme, points out that women are particularly affected by climate change because they are the largest percentage - accounting for about 70 percent - of the poor population.

Amy North, a researcher working on gender, education and global poverty reduction initiatives at the Institute of Education in the University of London, told IPS climate change is also exacerbating existing gender inequalities, with a devastating effect on the quality of life of poor women and girls.

In many parts of the world, women and girls are responsible for collecting water and firewood.

As these resources become scarcer in the face of increasingly erratic rainfall, they must spend more time looking for and collecting them, further reducing the time they have available to engaging in economic activities, or attending school, she said.

Women are also the main producers of food, providing 70 percent of agricultural labour in sub-Saharan Africa, and so are particularly affected by reduced agricultural output, North added.

”The care responsibilities that fall to women and girls mean that health problems associated with climate change - including an increase in waterborne diseases associated with flooding - often result in them taking on an increased burden of care as they are required to look after sick family members,” she noted.

June Zeitlin, a former executive director of WEDO, has cited a study by the London School of Economics analysing disasters in 141 countries that provides decisive evidence that gender differences in deaths from natural disasters are directly linked to women’s economic and social rights.

AFP -  Haiti’s road to recovery took a new twist Wednesday as a trade group representing private security contractors wrapped up a conference on reconstruction in the earthquake-battered nation.

“You don’t want to look like you’re profiteering off situations like these,” Derrell Griffith, project director at Sabre International, said. “But there is a need and the people need it quick.”

The conference was organized by the Association of the Stability Operations Industry, also known as IPOA, representing some 60 companies working in logistics and security, many of them active in Iraq and Afghanistan.

thesociologist:ihatethismess:

Let’s talk about politics for once. It is common knowledge that in rich societies the poor have shorter lives and suffer more from almost every social problem. In a quite fascinating book, The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always do Better, epidemiologists Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett demonstrate that more unequal societies are bad for almost everyone - the well-off as well as the poor (here is the Guardian review, and here is Nature’s). The remarkable data the book lays out and the measures it uses are like a ‘spirit level’ which we can hold up to compare the conditions of different societies. The differences revealed, even between rich market democracies, are striking. Almost every modern social and environmental problem - ill-health, lack of community life, violence, drugs, obesity, mental illness, long working hours, big prison populations - is more likely to occur in a less equal society. The book goes to the heart of the apparent contrast between the material success and social failings of many modern societies. The Spirit Level does not simply provide a key to diagnosing our ills. It tells us how to shift the balance from self-interested ‘consumerism’ to a friendlier and more collaborative society. It shows a way out of the social and environmental problems which beset us and opens up a major new approach to improving the real quality of life, not just for the poor but for everyone. Last but not least, (at least for the reader of the ICCI’s blog), it is a very good piece of sociology based on cognition and evolution.

Associated Press

Carlos Slim was one of the well-positioned, well-connected individuals in Mexico when structural adjustment policy led to a wave of privatization. His wealth is a direct result of neoliberalism. Though the neoliberal project is that of a restoration of class power and privilege, the power need not go to someone born into the capitalist class- as the “new rich” like Slim demonstrate. Slim’s wealth also demonstrates another key feature of neoliberalism: the primacy of finance capital. Most of his wealth has come from the resale of state-owned enterprises rather than significant investments in production.

…In particular, the research found that the core of Europe—Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Switzerland—has the highest potential accessibility. Europe’s core produces the highest levels of economic output and has the highest population densities. ESPON argues that with such densities, the core has found reason to link their economic hubs (cities) with high-speed rail. These are the places in Europe where they have the greatest returns on investment.

But ESPON also found that high speed rail is starting to increase the accessibility of isolated places such as France’s Tours, Lyon, and Marseille. This is a very important finding for Europe. They have a long-standing policy of social cohesion and balance, striving to create economic sustainability and population stability across Europe. The objective is for areas well beyond core to thrive economically and to dissuade people from migrating in search of jobs. Fiscally, social cohesion translates into investing disproportionately more money into areas not producing sufficient levels of economic output. High-speed rail is but one of the many strategies intending to produce “economic and social cohesion,” states a European Commission report on high-speed rail.

I read Freakonomics, but not its sequel. It’s an interesting read, and the chapter on abortion and crime rates is quite useful for debunking authoritarian “tough-on-crime” arguments. The book does a good job of discussing hidden incentives, but like many other works in contemporary mainstream economics, puts a little too much emphasis on rational choice theory.

I expect that the approach of the second book is rather similar to the first, given that Dubner & Levitt would undoubtedly like another bestseller. Is that an incorrect assumption? If it has a more systematic framework to link social problems together, I’d appreciate reading it, but I think that may be asking too much of a pop economics book.

Begley, on the ethical pitfalls of green living. (via newsweek)

The problem with consumption-as-morality.

Thanks for your kind words.

This isn’t the first time I’ve had this issue, unfortunately. My theme is optimized for display on Chrome, Safari and Firefox in Mac OS X at 1440x900 resolution. Here’s how it looks for me:

I can’t do much to fix the display problems on computers that don’t have the right fonts (futura, lucida sans) installed or don’t do a good job with CSS (in part because of my own limited knowledge of it). I chose the theme because it had many appealing features, including a custom header, custom background, a relatively narrow central column, control over text spacing. and transparency. Of course, these all make it very heavily reliant on CSS, which causes problems for some people. Perhaps my Flavors.me page (under “The Political”) would be more suitable for viewing the posts on your computer? Or if you use an RSS reader you can just grab the feed here. Hope this helps.

http://newleft.tumblr.com/tagged/healthcare

Go back far enough and you’ll find the last glimmers of my misplaced hope in the Democratic party. As far as the current shape of the debate goes, I’m firmly against the bill that’s in the Senate right now. I’m not sure if the mandate to buy health insurance is still in it (which would make the bill far, far worse than doing nothing, as it lacks a public option), as I don’t really tend to follow the nitty-gritty of policy details.

Really, we can tell the shape of the debate by who is talking to whom and which groups are being given preferential treatment. President Obama met with representatives from health insurance companies to assure them that his “reform” won’t cut into their profits, virtually guaranteeing that nothing will be done to contain the outrageous costs of healthcare in the United States. As far as I know, Obama didn’t meet with any representatives of the uninsured to allay their concerns about reform. This tells us quite plainly who is going to benefit from the bill taking shape now, as Obama’s position (as pro-corporate as it is) is even to the left of the Senate.

Single-payer, as Obama himself has admitted, would be a better system. He adds the caveat that it’s only preferable if we’re building a healthcare system “from scratch,” but all evidence of costs (as percentage of GDP and on a procedure-by-procedure basis) in social democratic countries shows that they get better standards of care for less. What’s really crazy about this is that single payer is seen as “unreasonable” when it’s becoming increasingly clear that private profit and public health are mutually exclusive.

Edward L. Glaeser, “Why the Anti-Urban Bias?”

Looking backward on my own political development, I now realize that I started to move away from being a liberal Democrat in my high school sociology class, when we learned that suburbs are a severe drain on the urban centers they surround. I knew intuitively, even then, that neither major party in the US was going to do anything about it on their own. It’s also when I started thinking about societal problems spatially rather than just politically.

The interview went something like this:

- Journalist: “How much is a return ticket between Paris and Mantes?”

- Candidate: “I’m not sure…”

- Journalist: “Well, €15.80. How many trains are there between Paris and Mantes per hour?”

- Candidate: “I don’t know at all…”

- Journalist: “You still don’t know, even though you want to become president of the region?… If you don’t know that, you’re not going to become president.”

It was an unfair question posed by a 12-year-old “journalist:” Mantes is the 45th-most-populated city of Ile-de-France, the region in which Paris is located. It would be hard to expect anyone—even someone running for the Presidency of the region—to remember the cost of a train trip there specifically.

Yet the video of the interview with conservative candidate Valérie Pécresse has been making the rounds nonetheless, along with a similar interview in which current socialist Ile-de-France President Jean-Paul Huchon, running for reelection this year, fouls up when asked the price of a metro ticket.

With NJ Transit slashing services and proposing a 25% fare increase, I hope this becomes a part of state politics here.

(via zouave)

Paul Krugman (via azspot)

I’m all for unemployment benefits, but increasing demand is an indirect solution to unemployment. Why do we wait for the money to filter through retailers, who buy products from wholesalers, who buy it from manufacturers? Obviously all of these firms employ people, but they also all skim money off the top in the form of profits. (it can be argued that profit also stimulates demand, but only if there are suitable avenues for investment, which are scarce in a crisis) Instead of stimulating demand, we should simply use that money to invest in infrastructure, which virtually guarantees employment and training for a large part of the workforce. Infrastructure investment also helps to improve sustainability, rather than the inherently unsustainable nature of consumption.

Haha, thank you. It would not be what it is today were it not for many other excellent blogs on Tumblr. In particular, I owe much of my knowledge of political and social theory to Jhnbrssndn, Criticalculture, and Pieto, but I’m greatful to many more.

thesociologist: honeyniss: nerdgasms: socialsciencevisualized: strangemaps

I just got back from day one of the Young Democratic Socialists conference. It continues tomorrow and Sunday. Sunday evening I’ll have a full writeup if I’m not too tired.

azspot:

My gut reaction on reading Marc Thiessen’s new book, Courting Disaster, was: “Why is a speechwriter who’s never served in the military or intelligence community acting as an expert on interrogation and national security?” Certainly, everyone is entitled to a voice in the debate over the lawfulness and efficacy of President Bush’s abusive interrogation program, regardless of qualifications. But if you’re not an expert on a subject, shouldn’t you interview experts before expressing an opinion? Instead, Thiessen relies solely on the opinions of the CIA interrogators who used torture and abuse and are thus most vulnerable to prosecution for war crimes. That makes his book less a serious discussion of interrogation policy than a literary defense of war criminals. Nowhere in this book will you find the opinions of experienced military interrogators who successfully interrogated Islamic extremists. Not once does he cite Army Doctrine—which warns of the negative consequences of torture and abuse. Courting Disaster is nothing more than the defense’s opening statement in a war crimes trial.

A second general strike in two weeks shows that Greek workers are standing up to the bosses’ and bankers’ attempt to force them to pay the costs of a problem the workers had no responsibility for creating: the capitalist economic crisis. This determined resistance is what’s behind the headlines on the financial pages about the euro’s stability and European Union negotiations with the Greek regime.

Two million Greek workers stayed away from their jobs on Feb. 24. Factories, offices, large retail stores, seaports and airports were closed. Workers and youths took to the streets in 70 cities throughout Greece. “Reject the government plan, the rich should pay for the crisis,” read the banner leading the demonstration in Athens.

The militant mood on the street contrasted with the discussions among bank boards of directors, government officials and the capitalist-controlled media throughout the European Union. The EU itself is an instrument of big business, a coalition of capitalists arrayed against the European working class and the nations in the former colonial world. Its ruling-class media try to portray the Greek people in general, especially the workers, as unwilling to work hard and make the necessary sacrifices — to save the capitalist economy.

The smog in California hangs like a blanket over the city, and now there’s more proof that it’s not just environmentally destructive – it’s making Californians sick! A study just out by RAND — a non-profit research group dedicated to public policy issues — says that the air pollution in California is causing over $193 million in hospital based medical care each year. The medical costs are mostly related to respiratory illnesses such as asthma and pneumonia. Over two thirds of the costs are covered by government run medical programs like Medicare and Medi-Cal.

I get the feeling that a lot of the money we spend on healthcare is simply mitigating the effects of pollution (air or otherwise) on our bodies.

Looks like the censors lost this time after all. Good.

Here’s a rundown of what happened: Late last week, Republican Sen. Jim Bunning filibustered a bill to extend federal unemployment benefits, arguing that the government needed to add a provision stipulating how it would pay the $10 billion tab. As a result, the Transportation Department has announced it’s going to furlough 2,000 employees (though it could be double that) without pay — including people like federal inspectors that keep state construction projects going. The job cuts will come from the Federal Highway Administration, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and the Research and Innovative Technology Administration.

What else does this all mean? We’ll likely see a total shutdown of federal funding for road, bridge, bike-ped, and transit projects, since a short-term extension of the Highway Trust Fund was attached to the dead bill. The government will also halt the processing of funds for stimulus construction work, which means the remainder of the ARRA money will sit gathering dust. And to top it all off, the federal spigot will be dry for state-based road safety groups such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD).

artfortune:

“Earn” “Less” “Work” “More” were the words read on banners that hung from the Beaux-Arts building in central Paris that satirized Nicolas Sarkozy’s campaign slogan “Work more to earn more”. They were deemed “too explosive” and condemned to a an unambiguous censorship as they were taken down just hours after being displayed.

“I come from China and we know what to expect there but I would not have expected this kind of brutal censorship in France,” Ko Siu Lan, the artist, said after residing two years in France before returning home in Beijing.

It’s easy to claim that the economic crisis did a better job deconstructing the ideology of privatization than the work of any economist. After all, we saw the damage done, we understand that regulation is necessary, that markets can’t always provide the best good for everyone, that the government neglected its duty. It’s almost conventional wisdom at this point. But does that really describe the assessment of the situation?

David Harvey observed that “…if you say neo-liberalism is about consolidation of class power… we’re seeing the further consolidation of it right now, rather than the lessening of it.” Neoliberalism as a class project is alive and well, as the bailouts indicate. As far as ideology is concerned, not much more progress is being made.

Of course, on the right, the relentless critics are saying once again that poor people caused the housing crash through the Community Reinvestment Act, that “we can’t spend our way out of a recession,” that we should abolish the Federal Reserve, and all other manner of ruthlessly pro-rich policy. But it’s not them I’m really concerned with, because they count few actual economists and writers among their number (it’s mostly politicians and TV personalities). Besides, they’d be saying this regardless of the state of the economy- the crisis has only affected their volume.

The mainstream writing about the economic crisis now carries some appeals to responsibly (and perhaps, regulation), but the primary criticism of CDOs and securitization, which were the devices that ultimately led to the crisis, is that the SEC rated the resulting financial innovations improperly, causing investors to be unaware of what exactly they were buying. Though the assessment is undoubtedly accurate, the force driving it is still a reliance on the neoliberal favorite of rational choice theory. If investors knew what they were really getting, they never would have bought these derivatives. The criticism is not on the fictitious nature of the securities, merely the lack of information surrounding them.

Additionally, some of the same economists who were calling for globalization and unfettered free trade now seemingly seeing the error of their ways. “No one has addressed the ‘too big to fail’ problem that was at the core of the crisis. Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, and a host of hedge funds have already gone back to their old ways of making money, and have used their resources to hire legions of lobbyists to block new regulation they don’t like. Now that the stark fear of last winter has passed, so too has the popular anger that’s necessary to overcome their behind-the-scenes clout,” Francis Fukuyama wrote late last year. It’s a remarkably accurate assessment, but unfortunately Fukuyama runs exactly the wrong way with it and uses it as prima facie evidence to insist that “history is still over.” Capitalism is the best system, still the only game in town- we simply went about it in the wrong way.

Fareed Zakaria wrote in 2002 that the global economy was “teflon,” that globalization was in everyone’s interests, that unfettered trade of commodities and capital was the key for prosperity. Now he’s saying that government policy to prop up businesses continues to distort the market. The implicit assumption here being, of course, that an undistorted market will provide for everyone more equitably. Additionally, he claims the central problem with healthcare is not that millions are uninsured, but that we have a system that encourages “overconsumption.”

President Obama is calling for a spending freeze. The Democrats argue that the public option’s greatest benefit is not its ability to provide health insurance to people, but that through competition it will keep private insurance honest. Everyone’s still talking about helping the economy instead of helping people directly. We’re supposed to place trust in private for-profit entities instead of the state or independent social networks. The assumption that the state should only become involved in matters when and where markets fail goes largely unchallenged (the “state of the gaps,” if you will), despite calls for greater regulation and spending.

It’s quite disconcerting to see these ideas being reconstituted so quickly after the crisis, and the ideological capitulation that comes with the insistence that “there is no alternative” to capitalism is both irresponsible and intellectually bankrupt. We can reclaim public discourse from the neoliberal trap by redefining the terms of the argument. We can ask questions like “what is an economy for?” and “how will capitalism continue to sustain the growth it needs to survive?”, questions which the pervasive ideology of privatization has a considerable deal of trouble answering. The key is not to let the mainstream vocabulary and ideology limit our imaginations.

Larrisa MacFarquhar, “The Deflationist: How Paul Krugman Found Politics”

This feature article in the New Yorker does a really good job of explaining (albeit indirectly) how much neoliberal rhetoric pervades mainstream economic thought.

jhnbrssndn: adamquinn:

The American people are nowhere nearly as reactionary as many middle class liberals I know insist. For what its worth (not all that much in America’s corporate managed dollar democracy), popular U.S. attitudes on key policies and values have long stood well to the left of both of the two dominant U.S. political parties, the investor class, and the nation’s “mainstream” (corporate) media. Contrary to pundits’ routine description of the U.S. as a “center-right nation:”

* 71 percent of Americans think that taxes on corporations are too low (Gallup Poll, April 2007), 66 percent of Americans think taxes on upper-income people are too low (Gallup Poll, April 2007) and 62 percent believe corporations make too much profit (Pew Survey 2004).

* 77 percent of Americans think there is too much power concentrated in the hands of a few big companies (Pew Survey 2004), 84 percent think that big companies have too much power in Washington (Harris Poll 2007), and two-thirds think that “big business and big government work together against the people’s interests” (Rasmussen Reports, 2009).

*A majority of American voters think that the United States’ “most urgent moral question” is either “greed and materialism” (33 percent) or “poverty and economic injustice” (31 percent). Just 16 percent identify abortion and 12 percent pick gay marriage as the nation’s “most urgent moral question” (Zogby, 2004). Thus, nearly two-thirds (64 percent) of the population think that injustice and inequality are the nation’s leading “moral issues” (Katherine Adams and Charles Derber, The New Feminized Majority [Paradigm, 2008], p.72).

* Just 29 percent of Americans support the expansion of government spending on “defense.”  By contrast, 79 percent support increased spending on health care, 69 percent support increased spending on education, and 69 percent support increased spending on Social Security (Chicago Council on Foreign Relations [hereafter “CCFR”], “Global Views,”2004).

* 69 percent of Americans think it is the responsibility of the federal government to provide health coverage to all U.S. citizens (Gallup Poll, 2006) and 67 percent “think it’s a good idea [for government] to guarantee health care for all U.S. citizens, as Canada and Britain do, with just 27 percent dissenting” (Business Week, 2005).

* 59 percent of Americans support a single-payer health insurance system (CBS/New York Times poll, January 2009) and 65 percent of Americans respond affirmatively to the following question: “Would you favor the government offering everyone a government-administered health insurance plan – something like the Medicare coverage that people 65 and over get – that would compete with private health insurance plans?” (CBS-New York Times, September 23, 2009)

Anyone else thinking of going?

BAGHDAD — Abu Mahdi al Mohandas is one of more than 6,000 candidates who are running in the Iraqi parliamentary elections next month, but he’s probably the only contender who won’t set foot on the campaign trail for fear of a U.S. assassination attempt.

“I was told, officially, by the speaker of parliament and a high-ranking Iraqi official that it’s preferable I don’t show up before the election because they couldn’t assure I would be protected,” Mohandas told McClatchy in a rare, two-hour telephone interview Wednesday from Tehran, Iran. “Since 2005, the Americans have conveyed a message through an Iraqi mediator that they’ll kidnap or assassinate me.”

(emphasis added)

I haven’t posted much about the Iraq War, but whenever I read about stuff like this I don’t know whether to be terrified or simply laugh with disgust.

Here’s a desktop-sized (1600x1200) version of the Limits to Capital cover, if anyone wants it. I might make another one incorporating the spine and back cover.

All credit for the original design goes to Corporation Pop.

“Metropolis is a quirky and very abridged narrative history of the city of Charlotte, North Carolina. It uses stop motion video animation to physically manipulate aerial still images of the city (both real and fictional), creating a landscape in constant motion. Starting around 1755 on a Native American trading path, the viewer is presented with the building of the first house in Charlotte. From there we see the town develop through the historic dismissal of the English, to the prosperity made by the discovery of gold and the subsequent roots of the building of the multitude of churches that the city is famous for. Now the landscape turns white with cotton, and the modern city is ‘born’, with a more detailed re-creation of the economic boom and surprising architectural transformation that has occurred in the past 20 years.

Charlotte is one of the fastest growing cities in the country, primarily due to the continuing influx of the banking community, resulting in an unusually fast architectural and population expansion that shows no sign of faltering despite the current economic climate. However, this new downtown Metropolis is therefore subject to the whim of the market and the interest of the giant corporations that choose to do business there. Made entirely from images printed on paper, the animation literally represents this sped up urban planners dream, but suggests the frailty of that dream, however concrete it may feel on the ground today. Ultimately the video continues the city development into an imagined hubristic future, of more and more skyscrapers and sports arenas and into a bleak environmental future. It is an extreme representation of the already serious water shortages that face many expanding American cities today; but this is less a warning, as much as a statement of our paper thin significance no matter how many monuments of steel, glass and concrete we build.”

fuckyeahtheorists:

“The spectres of Marx are haunting you.” Graffito from Florida State University.

It’s difficult to say for sure. I first picked it up last summer, having never read Marx before, and it took me a while (until this past winter, to be exact) to actually dive in to the text. I feel that with the help of a professor like yourself they could do it without too much trouble. Is the class a broader political economy class or is it just about Marx and Capital? Harvey just published his Companion to Marx’s Capital, so depending on what the scope of the class is that might suit it better.

I chose this book’s cover as the blog’s new icon both because I love the design and because it’s my go-to text for political economy. Anyone with more than a passing interest in Marxian economics should pick it up- it really is the best exegesis of Marx and Capital around.

The cost of pollution and other damage to the natural environment caused by the world’s biggest companies would wipe out more than one-third of their profits if they were held financially accountable, a major unpublished study for the United Nations has found.

The report comes amid growing concern that no one is made to pay for most of the use, loss and damage of the environment, which is reaching crisis proportions in the form of pollution and the rapid loss of freshwater, fisheries and fertile soils.

Later this year, another huge UN study - dubbed the “Stern for nature” after the influential report on the economics of climate change by Sir Nicholas Stern - will attempt to put a price on such global environmental damage, and suggest ways to prevent it. The report, led by economist Pavan Sukhdev, is likely to argue for abolition of billions of dollars of subsidies to harmful industries like agriculture, energy and transport, tougher regulations and more taxes on companies that cause the damage.

I’m pretty thoroughly convinced that externalities like these are necessary for the functioning of the economy, and that terrifies me.

TEDxAtlanta - Ellen Dunham Jones - Retrofitting Suburbia

David Brin (via azspot)

This is a bad reading of Marxian economics. Marx didn’t argue that the capitalist class propels development on its own- it is coerced to by the market. Simply put, capitalists who fail to invest in expanding their business operation at a commensurate pace with other capitalists will find themselves out of business, and therefore find it necessary to keep pace with the investment of other capitalists (by nature, capitalism is an expansionary system). Marx further differentiates himself from contemporary supply-side economists by noting that when too much surplus capital exists without profitable avenues for investment, a crisis occurs. This position holds that demand plays a role in capitalist investment- and it vastly differs from the neoclassical approach. Supply-side economics, when coupled with the neoclassical approach (as it very often is), maintains that if firms and individuals have the right incentives and information, a stable equilibrium will be reached between supply and demand in the realm of capital investment. Marx, in his theories of crisis formation, was very skeptical of this possibility, and he argued that such stability can only be reached through crisis, calling crises “momentary and forcible solutions” (Capital, vol. 3).

For those wondering, the “self conscious post modernist treatise on the fucking lady gaga video” referred to in the last post is my own.

jhnbrssndn:

littleorphanammo:

i just read some kind of self conscious post modernist treatise on the fucking lady gaga video and I’ve had it.  I have fucking HAD FUCKING IT.

I can not fucking handle it anymore.  No more.  It’s fucking insane and outrageous and ridiculous. I’ll see you guys in a week or two.

*slams door*

Don’t let the door hit you on your Inability to Read, Follow Links, or Engage Critically with What Others Post on your way out!

ZING

What’s your deal, tumblr?

You’re quite welcome. It’s a very wide range of stuff, but it’s all very good.

Klaxons - As Above, So Below (Justice Remix)

Does this ruin my leftist cred?

fuckyeahtheorists:

The Coup, “Dig It”

Especially for the Marxist scholar-cum-hip hop nerd, this is an important song.

“Presto, read the Communist Manifesto/Guerillas in the Mist/A Guevara named Ernesto”

and

“(Won’t get no calluses)/Cause I’m spittin’ dialectical analysis.”

Wolf Parade - It’s A Curse

Danger - 7:46

This is my favorite Danger track.

2:36

justinfinity:

ledgergermane:

azspot:

As Cashmore explains, the human brain acts at both the conscious level as well as the unconscious. It’s our consciousness that makes us aware of our actions, giving us the sense that we control them, as well. But even without this awareness, our brains can still induce our bodies to act, and studies have indicated that consciousness is something that follows unconscious neural activity. Just because we are often aware of multiple paths to take, that doesn’t mean we actually get to choose one of them based on our own free will. As the ancient Greeks asked, by what mechanism would we be choosing? The physical world is made of causes and effects - “nothing comes from nothing” - but free will, by its very definition, has no physical cause. The Roman philosopher and poet Lucretius, in reference to this problem of free will, noted that the Greek philosophers concluded that atoms “randomly swerve” - the likely source of this movement being the numerous Greek gods.

“Conditional Free Will” is likely a better way to put it. We do have to power to choose, but usually the options that are socially condoned whether we want to believe it or not.

Maybe it will make a lot more sense to everyone else if science started to look at the physical world as a result of consciousness, instead of backing themselves up in this little corner of their so-called ‘objectivity’ and leaving out consciousness - the very ‘thing’ we use to observe the so-called physical universe - to come to a insane conclusion that there is only physical, so one might see the two are actually the same.

The Roman philosopher and poet Lucretius, in reference to this problem of free will

Since when is free will a problem? Only with the insane human individuals that are spawned from the ones trying desperately to control this world.

What the hell what a biologist know about consciousness, anyway? He’s indoctrinated and trained to see everything at a biological perspective - within his own consciousness. Now how fucking insane is that? Now, if he’s going to following what it is he preaches, I would suggest to him to not trust a thought in his head, as it obviously isn’t his own thoughts (and it really isn’t), but just random flickering of bio-electrical forces.

The brain isn’t the source of consciousness, it is the conductor, like I’ve said many times before. Consciousness ‘itself’ created these pathways in our biology, and is the pathways… not just merely traveling through them. Of course, this “scientist” knows nothing of the difference between body consciousness and mental consciousness. We don’t consciously have to think to beat our hearts, or replicate our blood cells, the intelligence and consciousness of nature already has that worked out for us, so the mental consciousness within the biological vehical is free to live his will in this life.

The way we think about ourselves, how we identify and relate to ourselves, and how we choose to live our lives DOES reflect on our physical body (as most people identify themselves as a physical body).

I’m extremely disgusted and disappointed with science.

Limitations on human perception prevent science from answering these kinds of metaphysical questions fully. I don’t fully agree with “reality is a product of consciousness,” but our experience of physical phenomena will always be mediated by consciousness and therefore even the most rigorous evaluation and methodology of observation will be limited for that reason alone. The fantasy and blindness of scientism like that on the part of this biologist is that one day science will be able to paint a complete picture of all known phenomena. It’s not a widely held belief among philosophers of science (though some scientists still hold on to it). Interestingly, there seems to be some disagreement between cognitive scientists and neuroscientists as to whether or not metaphysical libertarianism (free will) is true, and its extent if it is. But this is getting out of my depth, having never formally studied cognitive science. Regardless, the debates will continue, especially since Cashmore hasn’t really said anything new, at least as it concerns metaphysics.

This is what I did with my bus ride this morning.

I was helping a friend brainstorm names for his drinking team yesterday, and I suggested “the dictatorship of the broletariat.” This caused me to immediately think of the classic pun “Broseph Stalin,” but it started me on socialists. Here are the others that came to mind:

Fidel Castbro

Ebro Morales

Hubro Chavez

Broam Chomsky

Bro Chi Minh

…and so on.

fuckyeahalternativeart:

Calvin and Hobbes.

praxismakesperfect:

(via powersof10)

This is Serra, right?

GPOYW: New kicks edition.

My Myers-Briggs type indicator has changed from ENFP to ENTP over the past year. I think it might be the classes I’m taking.

DatA - One in a Million

Jane Oliver

fuckyeahmashups:

The Hood Internet - Decalogue (Dr. Dre vs. Radiohead vs. Missy Elliott vs. Daft Punk vs. Ludacris vs. The New Pornographers vs. Kelis vs. The Rapture vs. Twista f/ Kanye West vs. Arcade Fire vs. Three 6 Mafia vs. Sufjan Stevens vs. T.I. vs. Peter Bjorn and John vs. Rich Boy vs. LCD Soundsystem vs. Lil Wayne vs. Hot Chip vs. Jay Sean vs. Phoenix)

newsweek:

Love this. (via @bupkispaulie)

Anyone still use it?

Moleskine, page 1.

nosex:

andrewfmorrison:

I’m deterritorializing the subaltern! I’m intersubjectivizing their supranational anti-hegemonic potentialities! I have no idea what any of these terms really mean, and I can’t possibly clarify them!

ha, i can’t do this right now! i am currently having an argument on this very matter: me trying to defend postmodernism. this actually prompted me to post the foucault-chomsky debate because i really think that there is a value & a purpose in postmodern thought, even if that value makes more ambiguous an already complex world. i think foucault is unique in the sense that he is an exceptionally coherent postmodern thinker, & i think it’s important to recognize that not all postmodern writing is exceptionally obfuscated. but, also, i want to make a case for difficult writing: it is a poetic, artistic appreciation. as much as postmodernist thinkers want to propose theory, they also want to encompass a feeling & an anxiety within their writing itself (a sort of confirmation of content in form). being a huge fan of barthes, for me the complexity of some writing serves to increase the “plurality” of the text, allowing for a freer association, a more radical approach to meaning & interpretation. language is a difficult thing, & centralized meaning often mistakes human experience. this is to say, the modern thinkers & the continental tradition are both full of certainty in ontological & metaphysical problems, but that certainty, i feel, is antithetical to the human condition: full of anxiety, confusion, conflict, and paradox. deconstruction solves a lot of problems, i feel, against an institutionalized intuition (a feeling designed by our society). knowledge & ignorance are not as distinct as we academically permit, human & animal, free & determined, abesnt & present, social progress & reversion. it’s not that postmodernism has abandoned meaning, it is that it argues for a radical reinterpretation of the function & origins of meaning. this allows for a reexamination, a reevaluation of central problems which have continued to go unsolved or unsatisfactorily explored. we can begin to find answers in unexpected places. to me, these sorts of ambiguities & difficulties are exciting & are, in the very least, worth study.

not to mention, making up words is a lot of fun.

From my understanding of continental works, it seems intuitively that there is nothing necessary about the verbosity of its writing- the issues covered could easily be expressed in less lofty language, even if we allow for the possibility of multiple interpretations.

The greatest strength and weakness of analytic philosophy is that it strives towards modesty in its claims. It leaves the masterful, elevated prose to literature (a domain of human creativity which suits those considerations much better, in my opinion), and the conclusions about the human condition to the aforementioned literature, art, music, et cetera.

Good philosophy, in my opinion, works between the various domains of human knowledge rather than above them. This is why you’ll find very few in the analytic tradition that identify themselves as a philosopher singularly; most will say they work in the domain of aesthetics, or the philosophy of science, or epistemology, or the philosophy of literature, and so on. When done right, philosophy will allow us to refine the methodological approach of other domains of knowledge, become aware of their scope and limitations, and perhaps identify an appropriate context for their conclusions. But it won’t do much on its own to help better or more original work be done in those other domains of knowledge.

I would say the focus on objectivity in analytic philosophy goes back at least to Kant, who identified most clearly in his Critique of Pure Reason the faculty of human reason. I think that continental philosophy makes far too much out of particularity and subjective experience, elevating it practically to the point where it becomes the most important facet of human experience (the worst offender being Lacan’s distinction between reality and the Real that Žižek and his ilk lean on very heavily in their work). Though of course there are limits on human knowledge and perception, the continental philosophers allow an awareness of these limitations to pervade their thought to the exclusion of other considerations.

Continental philosophy seems also to have an almost exclusively anti-authoritarian, left-leaning bent to it (which I have no complaints about; it’s probably why I’m drawn to it to begin with). However, its desire to subvert the existing structures of power in society is frustrated by its own approach- by using such complicated and technical writing it practically condemns itself to irrelevance for the vast majority of society.

Nonetheless, there is some common ground here. Good philosophy in the analytic tradition will allow for a “radical reinterpretation of the function and origins of meaning,” with the example springing to mind most readily being W.V.O. Quine’s “Two Dogmas of Empiricism,” one of the most celebrated papers in the history of analytic philosophy. Philosophers of language continue to ask the question “what is meaning?”- the debate is far from settled. They study some of the ambiguities you speak of. We see continued debates on these subjects in all domains of analytic philosophy, a consequence, in part, of the move away from logical positivism in the second half of the 20th century. These debates, however, are not grounded in subjectivity or experience- and that is what makes them interesting, in my opinion. If we take subjectivity to be the point of departure for philosophy, then we at least partially prevent it from having an independent public meaning.

I very much admire the continental philosophers’ awareness of social context, but I still think meaningful truths are possible independent of such social context. I realize that part of the particular approach of continental philosophy stems out of an awareness that for centuries (and even still today, though to a lesser extent) “objective” meant “rich white male’s perspective,” but I think they took that awareness in the wrong direction. Instead of working to minimize this bias in perspective (a worthy goal for anyone in pursuit of objectivity), and reclaim notions of objectivity for everyone (instead of defining it in privileged terms, thus truly making it objective), they claim that objectivity is largely a myth, an unattainable goal. This has almost turned philosophy into a game of competing ideologies, with rhetoric getting in the way of truth that philosophy should strive for.

I’m deterritorializing the subaltern! I’m intersubjectivizing their supranational anti-hegemonic potentialities! I have no idea what any of these terms really mean, and I can’t possibly clarify them!

“Actually, I’m more of a baritone. I was only able to match your voice with the use of this bat-auto-tuning amplifier.”

criticalculture: jenniferanne:

(via towerofsleep)

…for being better at being “men” than most men.

Tilt/Shift and Time Lapse always make a great combo.

Wu-Tang vs. The Beatles - Got Your Money

Best tweet? Probably.

Three O’Clock High / 4h30

This one is a close second, though.

Fist of Legend/3h16

This is probably my favorite entry to Danger’s bostleg tournament so far.

The Unicorns - Thunder & Lightning

(with thanks to Kel)

Last night I dreamed that I had somehow registered for a class that I never attended. I only found out about the class because I got an email letting me know my grade on the first exam was an F. I then spent the rest of the dream figuring out how to withdraw from the class. It was even more unsettling than the tornado dream.

scudmissile:

I’ve had this happen to me before. It’s awful. (by pictures for sad children)

Done before, and better, by Bill Watterson:

Wilco - Via Chicago

Friedrich Nietzsche: Twilight of the Idols (via fuckyeahphilosophy)

Isn’t the general mistrust of all systematizers itself a system?

(via andrewfmorrison)

//Not really. A lack or absence of a system is not a system in itself… Nietzsche is paving the way for a multitude of systems, each unique to the individual.

(via lukesimcoe)

I mean at a more basic level the basic human pattern of generating an abstraction (i.e. the very process which allows characterization of someone as a “systematizer”) is itself a system. Cognitive processes are systems that are not necessarily unique to each individual.

Friedrich Nietzsche: Twilight of the Idols (via fuckyeahphilosophy)

Isn’t the general mistrust of all systematizers itself a system?

Lou Reed - Perfect Day

I thought I was someone else

Someone good

Beach House - Walk in the Park

Birdman & Lil Wayne vs. Black Rock - Stuntin’ Like Black Rock

Transformers vs. Daft Punk – Robot Rock

(via laughingsquid, r2witco)