It has become such customary practice for politicians to criticize other regimes as if they could only possibly rule without the will of the people that this was even trotted out when the Chinese government waded into China. Which is why this clip found by Charles Firth is so interesting – it gives us a glimpse of popular Chinese nationalism and for reasons Charles explains convincingly.
If Mugabe were assassinated, there is a strong chance that many innocent lives would be saved and huge number of people would suffer less. Unlike many leaders Mugabe does not have the resources to make himself safe, and a single Cruise Missile would perhaps have a chance of success. Yet this outcome is unlikely, leaders rarely get assassinated outside of war, by a foreign state. There are reasons for this: Zimbabwe has no strategic benefit to others – no oil, and it is ‘illegal’ under UN law to assassinate a leader of a foreign state etc. But what if these reasons were actually an inevitable result of the way that countries evolve collectively?
What if the institutions of states evolve over time so that they self calibrate towards the stability of rule rather than the well being of the largest number of people? The natural equilibrium of politics is such that decision paths that allow for attacking the head of an organization or society will be rarer than war which requires bottom up confrontation with lots of individuals when evaluating the chance of a net reduction in suffering.
In other words, like the Selfish Gene perhaps there is a Selfish Meme, a naturally selected macro organization where people are expendable if the rules and institutions and nationalistic ideas (extended-genotype?) that create countries (extended-phenotype) survive. Perhaps what looks like the result of corrupt humans in government, is in fact the nature of government itself.
On the antiques roadshow, people lug along ancient pieces of unwanted crap – sorry priceless heirlooms, in order to find out how much they are worth so that they can fantasize about immediately flogging them and moving to Florida. Trinket owners play along with the genteel history lesson charade, pretending to be interested in some bone-grindingly dull anecdote from an expert in Chinese foot binding stools, or whatever, followed by the fake rhetorical question – have you ever thought about what its worth? Answer: Oh no, not really – I’d never, never sell it.
At this point, if the expert didn’t actually give the price, the owner would, of course, instantaneously beat her to a bloody pulp. I love the Antiques Roadshow, its my favorite TV program, and I love this trailer for BBC HD.
Worth it, even as a link rather than an embed: Link
A voyage of discovery to see where America’s food comes from. This seems like a good topic, since where America’s food comes from has changed more in the last 20 years than the previous 100, replacing the bucolic ideal of the American cowboy rancher with giant agribusinesses and Yale graduate presidents in Stetsons.
(I like the idea of these extended clips for PBS documentaries)
The first in a 2 part series that takes the theme of conquering cold, as the premise for human progress.
Perhaps the trashy magazine aspect of the show about Japan where this clip was taken is the best format for the subject matter. In any case, expect to be deluged with stuff from it on SmashingTelly.
I love this clip about weird Japanese women’s fashion tribes, Gyaru, including the evolution of styles up to the exceptionally weird, reverse Geisha: Ganguro.
Here, the late, great, Maynard Smith talks about what it means to say something is living. Like many virtuosos, he makes something difficult seem simple, with utterly clear explanations – the lecture is a small masterpiece.
He considers that what some biologists (such as Stuart Kauffman) define as life i.e. self reproducing things that metabolize, does not differentiate between life and something like a flame and that we must always add heredity (of infinite possible variety) to account for what we consider to be truly alive.
This leads to life as seen from an information perspective i.e how we transmit information between generations, and he outlines 9 milestones in the evolution of life from this vantage point, from replicating molecules to electronic information communication.
One of the world’s most successful painters, Luc Tuyman, recently exhibited on a wall in a side street ( via Boingboing ). This is reminiscent of when one of the world’s premier violinists, Joshua Bell, played in the DC Metro.
Both Luc Tuyman and Joshua Bell are good sports. They both ventured outside of their natural habitat to display their feathers in ordinary situations to see if people noticed. I put this up as a contrast to the previous post about Gregor Schneider, since neither of these people are Fartists (Feeble artists).
The article asks why is it that in 1831 Alexis de Tocqueville could write “In no country is criminal justice administered with more mildness than in the United States” and yet now the country with a twentieth of the world’s population has a quarter of the world’s prisoners, incarcerated at ten times the rate of other Western countries with no actual difference in crime reduction beyond what has happened in Canada.
Some of the conclusions aren’t that surprising: a Protestant dominated, puritan influenced culture, combined with gung-ho libertarianism and an ongoing race paranoia, but one is startling – Democracy. Unlike most of the world, American judges are elected and often on a ticket of tough justice, which leads to the mob rule flavor of democracy, when combined with the previous factors.
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This Gregor Schneider ‘piece’ is the first post in a new category about Fartists – Feeble artists (a complement to our FEBL media category).
Here is how it is described in copycat white-wall gallery speak:
“Gregor Schneider’s art expresses the concerns and anxieties of today’s world. Bondi Beach, his latest work, brings into question the values that we associate with the sun, surf and sand image of the Australian beach and asks us to consider the fundamental openness of Australian society and the freedoms and liberties we enjoy as citizens.”
What this means is that he has taken the idea that Australian’s are prisoners of the fashion of sun bathing – and built a sunbathing prison. A brazenly literal interpretation of an already waning fashion, a cliched metaphor so hilariously unimaginative that it makes pretty good satire – except its serious.
Schneider’s latest planned piece is to recruit a dying person and have him or her die in an art gallery. The idea is, of course, couched in dignified reverence, but it sells itself all the more on its potential shock value.
If you are going to do something this dramatic there should be depth and subtlety, something that this lacks – on the scale of a wet curry fart in an elevator. When Duchamp put a piss pot in a gallery, I am sure he though he had closed the door on this, instead it has only encouraged people like Schneider – who are ultimately so old-fashioned and Bourgeois, that they still miss the point after nearly a century.
Schneider does Duchamp in the way that Musak do Beethoven. Trying to be a rebel without breaking free of the traditions and places where people buy and sell paintings isn’t being much of a rebel – the artist equivalent of being into Death Metal in an Ohio suburb. Talented creative people these days work elsewhere and the traditional gallery no longer remains supreme rather like the most prestigious art form of ancient Greece – Lyre playing.
Who plays the Lyre these days?