Chasing Dragons

The Flower: A Film With an Anti-Prohibition Message

I just caugh this over at boingboing.net and thought it was a clever way of presenting the follies of illict drug prohibition.

What do you think?

Weekend Reading Roundup v. 63

This weekend in the reading roundup:

• 'Taliban Says US Drone Attacks 'Temporaily' Hindering Insurgency' by Mark Tran at guardian.co.uk

• 'Divided Cities' by Martin Coward at martincoward.net

• 'James Scott on Agricultre as Politics, the Dangers of Standardization, and Not Being Governed' at theorytalks.org

I know this is coming in at the wire, but have a good weekend, wherever you are!

Photo credit: Insight Imaging

Where Can You Watch Movies For Free (and Legally) Online?

Openculture has the inside scoop of where to find movies on-line that are free to watch without any legal repercussions.

Along with links to individual films (some of which are geographically limited), they also provide a good list of on-line film depositories. 

So whether you're looking for something to do on a rainy summer day or merely killing time while traveling, there are myriad options across the range of the cinematic arts to enjoy on-line.

Photo credit: mag3737

Weekend Reading Roundup v. 62

This weekend in the reading roundup:

• 'The Unwanted' a graphic novel by Joe Sacco at guardian.co.uk

• '40 Things You Need to Know About the Next 40 Years' at smithsonian.mag.com (I, for one, welcome the rule of our new jellyfish overlords...)-->thanks to openculture.com for the link!

• 'The Consultant was a Spy' by Shane Harris at washingtonian.com -->thanks to boingboing.net for the link!

• 'Humanitarian Design vs. Design Imperialism: Debate Summary' by the Editors at designobserver.com (a really good digest of the online debate about humanitarian design and whether it is a form of imperialism)

• And just in case you've ever wondered what the Earth might look like if it stopped rotating, you can find answers at popsci.com

Photo credit: Sunshine Junior

David Harvey's Crisis of Capitalism

In this presentation, David Harvey demonstrates how current discussions of the financial crisis neglect to account for the internal contradiction within capitalism--first identified by Marx, history's greatest liberal economist*- between wages and demand. He then illustrates how the rapid extension of credit over the past three decades was used as a means to prop up demand as real wages fell. And we all know what happened next...

With the Con-Dem coalition rolling out punitive 'workfare' style reforms, one begins to wonder about the longer-term macro-economic effects of this extension in the reserve pool of labour?

* I refer to Marx in this way because he understood how capitalism and the liberal economic theory underpinning it (dis)function better than any of their proponents.

Why is Taser International Demanding that a BC Death Verdict Be Quashed?

Why is Taser International demanding that a British Columbia provincial inquiry into the death of Robert Dziekanski at Vancouver International Airport on Oct. 14, 2007 be quashed?

The answer, as reported by the Toronto Star, is that they are upset that the Braidwood Commission ruled that the use of Tasers can cause death, a finding based on evidence gathered after Mr. Dziekanski was tragically killed---he had been shot five times in the chest with tasers by Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers.

Taser International's lawyer David Neave--a partner at the Vancouver branch of Blakes, Cassell, and Graydon--has argued that the finding that the product carries a low risk of death, is '...a slur that ought to be removed.'

And Taser International is demanding that all references to the weapon's (lack of) safety be struck from the report. The argument is that the company was not warned of the findings in advance of their publication and therefore was not given the opportunity to refute the inquiry's conclusion!

One can only hope that the law --always a very different beast from morality-- and the way in which the BC Supreme Court decides to interpret it upholds the right of a public and independent inquest to publish its findings regardless of the impact on private interests. To disallow this vital aspect of democracy so that a corporation does not lose potential clients for a controversial product strikes me as a dangerous precedent completely at odds with the public interest and the protection of human rights...

Photo credit: hradcanska

Socializing Children to the Alienation of Everyday Life

When I saw this listing for the Young Explorer system by Little Tikes, I couldn't help but think of Henri Lefebvre's notion of the everyday. For Lefebvre, the everyday is not merely an a-political sphere of the normal, unassuming, and banal aspects of our daily regimen. It is the primary site of alienation and terror, elements that are cultivated through the workplace and bureaucratically influenced patterns of consumption. As an outlet for play (and perhaps education), the design of the Young Explorer therefore strikes me as profoundly troubling.

What is troubling for me is that the venue for learning/play in this case takes the form of an office cubicle, a configuration geared to organizing the workspace of the service and professional industries. By adopting the form of the cubicle, it strikes me that the Young Explorer potentially socializes children into a spatial form of alienation typical to 21st century everyday life. Moreover, this process of socialization is dependent on parents holding the belief that their anxiety over the future security of their children can be alleviated through specific forms of consumption in the present.

What do you think?

Weekend Reading Roundup v. 61

This weekend in the reading roundup:

• 'Why We Talk to Terrorists' by Scott Altran and Robert Axelrod (on the latest US Supreme Court decision that will stunt terrorism research and jeopardize conflict resolution through track two diplomacy) at edge.org

• 'What Work is Really Worth' by Pierre Rimbert at mondediplo.com

• 'What was Cricket Australia Thinking?' by Mukul Kesavan at cricinfo.com

• 'Why Paywalls Will Fail: An Interview with Clay Shirky' by Decca Aitkenhead at guardian.co.uk

Have a good weekend!

Photo credit: Davic

The Unintended Politics of 'Eating Well on $1 a Day'

The popular blogs lifehacker.com and boingboing.net have recently directed their readers to an interesting and provocative challenge undertaken by Jeffrey at grocerycoupon.com: to spend $30 or less on food for a month to feed a single person.

Bound to a set of rules around coupon procurement and use, Jeffrey then documents the frugal highs and occasional culinary lows of the ensuing 30 days. But, in the end, the goal is achieved: through the use of coupons obtained via newspapers and the internet in combination with in-store promotions and catalinas--discounts given on store shopping receipts--he is able to emerge healthy and well-fed after a month of living on $1 for food a day. In fact, he does so well that he is able to donate a large quantity of food to a local food-bank.

So, one the one hand, this challenge reveals just how wasteful we can be in terms of what we buy when we go food shopping and how we go about buying our food. Jeffrey also reveals some important tips he learned and how to avoid paying more than one ought to pay for particular items. In this sense, the challenge is actually quite helpful for anyone trying to do more with less in these uncertain financial times.

On the other hand though, there are some things that are politically problematic about the challenge. And in outlining these problems, I am by no means implying any malice on Jeffrey's part. Rather, I am trying to show that even the most banal everyday acts are deeply embedded within relations of power, relations that we may not even be aware of as they enable us to act in some ways and prevent us from acting in others.

First, the fact that someone is able to take on this challenge by choice--as opposed to necessity--and then blog about it is itself a reflection of privilege. 

Second, some of the rules governing the challenge regarding computer usage reflect this unrecognized privilege. While there are approximately 76.2 computers per 100 people in the United States with 74.1% of the population having internet access, there is a great amount of diversity when these numbers are disaggregated. For example, while at least one person in 77.7% of households who identified themselves as 'White' had internet access of some kind, this fell to 68.1% in 'Black' households, and 63.9% in 'Hispanic' households. Variations based on education were even more marked: only 41% of households where a member had less than a high-school education had internet access in comparison to 93% of those where a member had a Bachelor's degree. I suspect that there would also be marked differences in age categories and income, as well as in households headed by a single parent.

Third, challenges like this remind me of the push towards extreme sports, marathon running, iron-man triathlons, around-the-world sailing jaunts, and off-piste travel that are increasingly becoming the leisure activities for conspicuous consumption by the global upper classes. As a result, there has been a cultural shift over the past two decades towards the veneration of extreme physical challenges completed by an increasing number of privileged individuals who enter them by choice. And while the feats of endurance--both mental and physical--can be impressive, it is odd that similar kudos are not offered to those who must walk miles a day to secure clean drinking water or who brave dangerous conditions, emotional turmoil, and physical hardship in order to migrate.

Fourth, given the concerted attack on welfare, low income earners, minimum wage provisions, and labour rights since the 1980s, this challenge enters a grid of intelligibility where it is likely to be understood by many as evidence that social benefit provisions ought to be a lot less. Moreover, if one is unable to make ends meet, a challenge like this unintentionally gives credence to arguments that one must be lazy, wasteful, and/or generally undeserving of support.

Finally, the $1 a day challenge--even with its explicit aim of eating healthy--unintentionally contributes to the discourse enabled by industrial production and neoliberal ideology where food is to be understood as merely a source of (tasty) fuel as opposed to a rich cultural practice. In this sense, food becomes a source of alienation as opposed to serving one its primary purposes as a conduit for social interaction and exchange.

Photo credits: winterofdiscontent

Weekend Reading Roundup v. 60

This weekend in the reading roundup:

• 'Realer than Real: The Simulacrum According to Deleuze and Guattari' by Brian Massumi, available here.

• 'The Vienna Declaration' a demand for a full global policy reorientation with regards to illicit drugs, available to be read and signed here.

• 'India's Epic Head Count' by Meena Kadri at designobserver.com

• 'He-Man and the Masters of Transmedia' by Henry Jenkins at henryjenkins.org

• 'Foucault and Philosophy' by Clare O'Farrell at refractedinput

Happy Independence Day to all the American readers of this blog and a belated Happy Canada Day to all my fellow Canadians!

Photo credit: Lightmash