On Facebook
In exchange for making our social lives more convenient, Facebook enters into a relationship with society such that it has the power to transform our sociality into commercially useful information, turn our relationships into market research and use that data to anticipate and shape our future selves with the ads it calculates that we should be presented with. It manages our friendships and then processes the data interrelationships to guide the process of how we subsequently develop our identities through its site.
On Hunger
Half the world will go to bed hungry tonight. Interestingly, among hunter-gatherer's whose lives have barely changed in 40,000 years, hunger is seldom seen. Thus, this (and not the stone age) is an era of hunger unprecedented.
Now, in the time of material over-abudnance, starvation is not merely an overlooked, sadenning outlier. No, it is much more than that: it has become a necessary institution. For it is always true that as material goods accumulate, people suffer, victims of the very goods they helped accumulate, and which now enslave, victimize, and starve them. Simulatenously, they create an unceasing desire for more, and so doubly increase our hunger.
The history of humankind is this: once upon a time we lived in a world of plenty, because our needs exactly matched our available resources. Things were going well until one day someone decided to start hoarding. Agriculture (i.e., animal and plant hoarding), buildings, fat people, and facebook naturally followed (note these are all forms of hoarding behavior).
On The Coming Of The Apocalypse
The White Horse (Liar)- Bill Clinton
The Red Horse (warmonger)- George Bush
The Dark Horse (brings economic despair) -Barack Obama
The Pale Horse (world war) - Sarah (Pale)in
Immense Solar Activity. Calendars ending. Aztecs. 2012
The Evidence Is Overwhelming: The Apocalypse is Coming...
This grand cycle of evolution will culminate
winter solstice, December 21, 2012 AD. More here
No Motto Please, We're British
Some time during the year of 2007, it was proposed by one Gordon Brown that the British adopt a 'national motto' to sum up the 'values' of our great nation. Of course, it went absolutely nowhere, but the public nonetheless were given the opportunity to have their fun with it. The Times held a motto competition, for which members of the public were invited to give 'suggestions' as to how best express what it is that binds us as a nation. The highlights are as follows:
“Dipso, Fatso, Bingo, Asbo, Tesco”
“Britain, a terribly nice place”
“Less stuffy than we sound”
“Stubborn to the point of greatness”
“Promoting ahistorical unity myths since 1066”
“West Lothian was my undoing”
“Once mighty empire, slightly used”
“Your nation, ruined by Labour”
“Going down with Brown”
“Americans who missed the boat”
"We strive for valiant defeat"
"Let’s discuss it down the pub"
"Sorry, is this the queue?"
"Drinking continues till morale improves"
"In America we trust"
Last but not least, my personal favorite:
"At least we’re not French"
I'm Not The Only One
This video would be sublime perfection were it not for the presence of one Yoko Ono and her stare of death.
On the political mobilization of nature in seventeenth-century French formal gardens.
Could anything possibly be more obscure?
And, yet, the importance of this phenomenon should not be underestimated. The formal garden, one of the most disturbing examples of man's obsession of tailoring nature to fit his own narrow, symmetrical, consumption-orientated mind, is in dire need of re-evaluating. As any human being compos mentis is aware, nature's political mobility seeks to achieve this.
Ne humanas crede.
Think about it.
Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditiones habes
Or the importance of keeping Latin learning alive.
From bbc.co.uk:
Councils ban use of Latin terms.
A number of councils in Britain have banned their staff from using Latin words, because they say they might confuse people.
But the ban has prompted anger amongst some Latin scholars
Professor Mary Beard of Cambridge University said it was the linguistic equivalent of ethnic cleansing.
But the move has been welcomed by the plain English campaign, which says some officials only use Latin to make themselves feel important.
A campaign spokesman said the ban might stop people confusing the Latin abbreviation e.g with egg.
More here
Good News
This from the today's New York Times:
"The economy shrank at an annual rate of 0.3 percent in the third quarter, as personal consumption spending fell for the first time in 17 years."
No doubt, people all across our great nation are becoming inspired by our message: Stop consuming, and start creating!
On War
Obama-McCain have been waging war on the American mind. Their weapon of choice: boredom. Day after day, we are subject to a barrage of badges, buttons, and all sorts of nick-knacks, and for what?
An election is an artificial game, which follows a strange, arbitrary set of rules. Hence, when you enter the polling booth you become nobody.
War, in contrast, is best defined as a game with no rules. War is life. It is the most biological (and therefore least artful) form of human existence. When you enter this game, you perish. The best you can hope for is to replicate your genes and store them in the body of your "child." (I agree: disgusting!)
An information war has scorched the metaphysical plane. Ergo, our society has entered into a state of suspension; and the flower that is art has ceased to bloom (but has not yet wilted).
On Language
Language is a highly flawed means of communication. I call for perestroika and glasnost on the commonly accepted devices for transmission of ideas, concepts and emotions. After all, how can we as a species ever truly acknowledge the constraints that we are forever bound to if we cannot place ourselves outside of language? Pictorial representations offer a glimmer of hope, but are perhaps not entirely effective either.
Comments, offerings and suggestions are highly encouraged (nay, pleaded for).
[Quentin]
A modest proposal: at the heart of all communication is the Will to Groom. Yet grooming, as currently practiced (e.g., 'www.facebook.com'), is unacceptable. Ergo, I call for an extension of our perestroika and glasnost into the realm of grooming.
[Quentin]
A modest proposal: at the heart of all communication is the Will to Groom. Yet grooming, as currently practiced (e.g., 'www.facebook.com'), is unacceptable. Ergo, I call for an extension of our perestroika and glasnost into the realm of grooming.
All Gloss and No Substance
Or, why PowerPoint is responsible for the death of the soul. With the advent of the PowerPoint presentation we have descended into a society of light, color, bullet points and nothing more.
Think about it.
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