December 3, 2011
Speech by Leonard Cohen
Your Majesty, Your Royal Highnesses, Excellencies, Members of the Jury, Distinguished Laureates, Ladies and Gentlemen:
It is a great honor to stand here before you tonight.
December 2, 2011
When I saw this painted favela in Brazil I went through this sequence: 1. Wow, beautiful. 2. How is papering over poverty and structural inequity with a rainbow going to help? 3. I would actually feel much happier living in Santa Marta after the paint job, and maybe it would attract money into the community.
November 22, 2011
Megaphone speaker by the Italian company Enandis. Why do I like this? I shouldn’t like it, but I do. It’s so wrong for things to pretend to be other things, like early cars resembling horse carriages, or high-heeled runners.
November 20, 2011
I took this photo from my dentist’s office late on a dark November afternoon. That bright light in the upper right by the stadium is a giant electronic screen billboard. It’s one of 3 or 4 such billboards ringing Vancouver’s largest stadium, despite the fact that there are Vancouver by-laws forbidding such signs.
November 19, 2011
Luxury brands like Louis Vuitton did record business this year, as did luxury car sales. This is the bottom line of our current economic system. Draw your own conclusions. But think twice before suggesting Occupiers don’t have clear demands or don’t know what they’re talking about.
November 3, 2011
Performance art/ political social satire enacted in London by The Love Police. “Everything you read in the mainstream media is 100% true! Consume consume consume! What you need to do is buy things you don’t need!
October 26, 2011
Amy Goodman of Democracy Now speaks with Asma Mahfouz, the girl who began the Tahrir Square revolution in Egypt, in Zucotti Park yesterday. Photo by Democracy Now.
Renegade brokers and police joining the demonstrators today, photo by Canadian filmmaker Velcrow Ripper (more here).
October 22, 2011
Geoffrey West: The surprising math of cities and corporations. How come it’s so hard to kill a city?
There is an interesting discussion of West’s idea in the NYT.
October 15, 2011
The sign above bears a quote from philosopher Bertrand Russell: “Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principle of liberty, which can be embodied in one maxim, “the fortunate must not be restrained in their tyranny over the unfortunate”.”
Occupy Vancouver had a promising start on a warm, beautiful fall day.
September 28, 2011
Hiyao Miyazaki, one of my favourite filmmakers, is the Japanese director of the animated movies Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke and Totoro. Of all his films these three are favourite, probably because they are the most Japanese in their aesthetic.
