We live lives so completely dominated by commercialism and monetary exchange that we think of everything, even ourselves, in the terms of the marketplace. Not content with turning time into a commodity (to be earned, spent, wasted, saved), we now endeavor to turn ourselves into commodities, brands, our own tiny little multinational corporations - Me, [...]
Architecture of Ascent
This is tactical gear for the spatial expansion of private leisure.
Happy Spamiversary
On May 3, 1978 Gary Thuerk, a marketer at the now-defunct computer firm Digital Equipment Corporation, sent an email to 393 users of Arpanet, the US government-run computer network that eventually became the internet. It was the first spam email ever.
Me, Here, Now
My life, and all of our lives here in the “first world” are obsessed with, organized around, and circumscribed completely by the three words that make up the title of this post: me, here, now. Nowhere is this more true than in the United States, where we are famous for our collective national amnesia, and [...]
Codependent Toys
Needies are interactive plush dolls inspired by codependent, high-maintenance relationships.
Great American Hypocrites
Toppling the Big Myths of Republican Politics
Lying for Jesus
Richard Dawkins lets another mouth-breathing meat-head have it.
Bored?
Bored?
Twitter Away Your Life
We start as social creatures, isolate ourselves into small rooms writhing with power strips, then make friends with similarly sequestered people, trying to re-create the very communities we’re avoiding.
Top 10 Biblical Massacres
The top 10 biblical massacres.
Digging In To the South
Quite literally. For the last several weeks we have been working to get our planting done before it got really hot here, and today we finish up putting in the first round of vegetables.
Biodynamic, open-pollinated, heirloom seeds from Abundant Life and Nichols nurseries are going to provide us with Artichoke, Broccoli, Brussel Sprouts, Cabbage, Carrot, [...]
How To Choose The Right Thing To Do
Is it even possible to do so?
How to go about discovering what in the East is called ‘right-action’?
How is “right” defined, and is that definition flexible, subjective, relative?
Relative ‘truth’ is self-refuting, so is relative ‘right’ also self-refuting?
Why can’t we discuss ‘right action’ without constant and overwhelming recourse to the dialectic of ‘need’ and ‘want’.
“Authenticity” [...]
On (Not) Wasting Food
As an avid reader of “foodie” blogs, I run across articles like this one all the time, and I’m really not sure why they even exist. How hard is it to not waste food, particularly if you like food enough to read a food blog?
Everyone occasionally has a few leftovers or some fresh herbs that [...]
What Every American Should Know About the Middle East
What Every American Should Know About the Middle East
Pat Robertson
He left his 7-month pregnant wife to traipse around the Canadian woods, hawks diet shakes, thinks Thomas Jefferson is personally responsible for Marxism, has run afoul of the Federal Election Commission, and the IRS, lied about humanitarian aid to Rwanda and Zaire (now Congo) to mine diamonds for his offshore company, signs business contracts with [...]
Settling In To The South
Since December of last year, we have been living in the Southwest corner of Georgia, a place where most of my family is either from or currently lives. I was born an hour East of here, in Tifton a place most notable for the Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College.
Originally, our plan was to breeze into town, [...]
The Edible Landscape
I have, for some time now, been enamored of the idea of edible landscaping. Now that we are living on a nice piece of land, I have the room to put this idea into action. I have drawn up a rather ambitious list of edibles to add to the property here, but I happy enough [...]
Moving Towards Nordicization
The US Federal Reserve is examining the Nordic bank nationalisations of the 1990s as a possible interim solution to the US financial crisis.
Monster Factory Store
Get your monsters here! Factory-direct pricing! Step right up!
Gay Scientists Isolate the “Christian Gene”
Homosexual researchers at the Pink Tiger Research Institute , working for years to determine what it is that makes people Christian, have isolated the gene which causes the ailment. They hope to use this finding to cure people of their Christianity.
Moral Development Quiz
How morally advanced are you? Kohlberg’s stages behind the quiz.
Rate My Cop
Think of this website as an excellent tool for bringing some accountability to the “thin blue line” and their “code of silence”.
Fire The Workaholics
37Signals says you should fire the workaholics at your company. I think I might just agree.
BookSnapz
Finally, a content ripper for the literate.
Precarity In America
While I was living in Europe I found myself involved in quite a few pub discussions about Precarity and its adjunct flexploitation. One thing that popped up in all of those conversations was the question of why there is no discussion of precarity in the United States.
I said then, and still believe that there is [...]
The Interstate System
The simplest map of the United States yet
Beyond Food Miles - A Locavore Apologetics
The locavore movement has been misunderstood, perhaps willfully, by quite a few people. Newspapers characterize it as being simplistically, or militantly, focused on food-miles and ignoring the “fiendishly tricky business” of balancing your carbon emissions on your dinner plate.
Never mind that many of the objections raised in the above Guardian article are canards. Environmentally-sound growing [...]
Rent Vs. Buy Myths That Ruined the Housing Market
I have previously (here, here and here) talked about my aversion to the concept of mortgage debt (Old French “death pledge”). I was sort of grasping at the reasons behind it, the justifications for co-owning a home with a bank just rang hollow to me.
Now the folks at eFinanceDirectory have addressed most of these myths [...]
As George Bernard Shaw once said “The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.”
Free State Nauru
Maybe the Free-State freaks could move to Nauru instead. Only 10,000 population and just dying to be bought out…
AutoMotivator
Now you can make your own (de)motivational posters.
Early D&D Exposure Chart
My personal favorite: “Doubting the technical accuracy of this diagram“
Tommy Westphall Imagined It All
Tommy Westphall was an austistic child on the TV series St Elsewhere who, it was revealed in the closing moments of the final episode of that series, had dreamt the entire [...]
Geraldine Ferraro Redux
April 15, 1988: “If Jesse Jackson were not black, he wouldn’t be in the race”
March 7, 2008: “If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position”
Thinking Blogger Award, A Year Late
It seems that I got tagged with a “Thinking Blogger Award” by Jenny MCB last year and somehow missed it. Far be it from me to let my laziness get in the way of a meme, so here are four blogs that always make me stop and think:
Bookforum - What can I say. Every post [...]
Dunce In Chief
The outstanding academic legacy of the dunce in chief.
Reading Is Dead?
Reading is dead. No, wait, it’s not. We just read different things, like blogs and Facebook comments and “missing”Apple manuals now. Literacy is purely functional. Nah, we just need better technology. If blog-scanning is “literacy” then counting to ten is “numeracy“.
The Four Pillars of Libertarianism
As Wendy McElroy, Fox News’ resident Libertarian pundit aptly summarized in a column for the Independent Institute, American political Libertarianism is based on Murray Rothbard’s synthesis of four schools of thought, the radical anti-statism of the individualist anarchists and wed it with Austrian economics, the foreign policy of the Old Right (isolationism) and the [...]
There’s a blaze of light in every word
“It Doesn’t Matter Which You Heard”: the Curious Cultural Journey of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”
Stripped!
Thanks to a timely heads-up from Jeff, I am now happily awaiting the arrival of my orchestra box seats for Eddie Izzard’s June 25 Atlanta show. Mrs. Badcrumble would be so proud.
These are the ramblings of 