Tag: Culture

The globalization of food production and distribution have led to a dramatic rise in food prices in many places around the globe. This 2011 paper elaborates both a model to understand the connection between food prices and political instability and shows empirical results from international data.

I always laugh at these trailers, this time for Gravity.

Funny stuff indeed!

My blog followers know that I have posted quite a bit on the Tiny Home movement. Changes in technology and engineering techniques have revolutionized the way we are going to build our homes. My friend DD sent me this link. $30k and perfect for a cottage. Although I am not sure about the big screen. I may opt for a projector 🙂

Dissent has a very interesting article about the use of the postal system as a bank, a return to an older, more reliable model here. A postal bank would be used for deposits and other day to day transactions, providing a public good to a vast amount of the citizenry.

No, seriously. While Francis Fukuyama may have declared its end due to an emergent liberal hegemony in the intellectual sphere, history is officially ending because a lot of people just don’t believe it anymore. Or, at least that is how they act. Western culture with its cannibalistic tendency, has become, once again, unmoored and may not have the capacity to regain its composure. A belief in history, however difficult to absorb, is necessary to stem this descent.

Its contrary is also true: namely, that an assurance in the betterment held by the future is also disappearing. More ghosts for the attic.

The inevitability of dominance in the future held by western exceptionalists was shattered by the piercings of terrorism and its response. The failure was the exceptionalism since that led to rigidification that could not accommodate the burgeoning realities of demographics: the South, or the Third World, or whatever category that you lumpen the proletariat into was younger and more ready to adapt and bear the burden of tomorrow.

These videos make my knees weak. This time the crazy Russian climbers are in Shanghai.

Yes, I love Engrenages, The Fall, Borgen and other European television series but damn, True Detective is the shit. Half way though its 8 episode season, it just keeps getting better.

I normally stay away from politics on this blog but WTF? Schools denying food to children and throwing out lunches because parents are behind in payments?

Nice. What a legacy. These people should be ashamed of themselves.

Some stunning examples of modern home design from the UK architecture firm Hyde + Hyde .

I especially appreciate the calm esthetics of The Photographers Home.

A tragedy that highlights the fact that mental illness knows no bounds. At some point I will post my portraits from East Hastings in Vancouver but each time I look at them I just get sad. Not much else to say.

Here is a photo essay from the 1960s looking at heroin addicts and their addiction.