We Speak For Earth
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ikenbot CWL -
mohandasgandhi Mohandas Gandhi -
realcleverscience Real Clever Science -
socialuprooting Social Uprooting -
abstractnerd Abstract Nerd -
perscientiamlibertas A Matter of the Most Pleasant Fraternal Confidence
So guys this is what might go down (chances are high): My boss at the tattoo shop and I have been in talks about setting up my own limited-time art gallery/show with my drawings. We were thinking of setting a cheap admission and do it at the shop.
We’d scan, clean via photoshop and blow it out into bigger proportions. It would probably happen in about a month while I rework on the sketches we’re putting up. But an awesome idea occurred to me… so as many of you who have been following up on my artwork know, I love drawing women. It’s literally my specialty and I feel (as well as my boss) that when I get awesome at tattooing, people will want me drawing women on them or designing something for them that has women in it.
But back to my idea, I figured, why not up the ante and challenge myself as an artist and draw women that aren’t society’s idea of sexy and desired. I want them to represent the diversity within the Earth’s female population. I can use my first ladies (the traditionally sexy ones) and present them as society’s idea of what beautiful is, as well as my artistic perception from before I got into feminism to after I got into it, which will be represented by my more broader, accepting, and diverse vision of women.
So in short, I want to center this showing around the diversity of women, and my evolution as an unaware privileged male whom objectified women and set unfair bars for the idea of beauty to someone who’s aware of the problems of machismo and patriarchy. I want ideas from you guys as to what kind of girls you’d like to see drawn in my style. Thick, chubby, frizzy hair, curly hair, really skinny, whatever you got in mind. I want to see what I can do with that.
If I fail then at least I tried and knew for sure I couldn’t do it. But we’ll see, this isn’t exactly the most favorite of subjects up here in washington heights (which you could pretty much call machismopolis). If I get enough support I’ll do it for sure and I’ll even let people, women, whomever, some space on a separate sheet of paper for them to write anonymous accounts of their experience within this culture that embraces patriarchy so openly and feverishly.
Be creative with the women you’d like to see on the diverse perception side of the show. And if you’re in the NY area or can easily come, then you’d better come support or else!
Listen to the news today and you would think that economic growth was the only answer to all our problems. But 40 years ago The Limits to Growth, written by a group of scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and published by The Club of Rome, broke a modern taboo: it suggested that growth itself might be the problem.
It wasn’t the first time someone had suggested that an economy endlessly expanding in scale was neither possible nor necessarily desirable. As long ago as 1821, David Ricardo wrote of the ultimate equilibrium to which economic development led. And, in his Principles of Political Economy, 1848, John Stuart Mill raised and answered the question like this:
“Towards what ultimate point is society tending by its industrial progress? When the progress ceases, in what condition are we to expect that it will leave mankind? It must always have been seen, more or less distinctly, by political economists, that the increase of wealth is not boundless: that at the end of what they term the progressive state lies the stationary state, that all progress in wealth is but a postponement of this.”Why, then, did The Limits to Growth shock in 1972, and why does questioning growth today still provoke incredulity and anger? The report itself became something of an albatross for the green movement. The view entered folklore that it contained predictions about resource use that were alarmist and plain wrong. But, as New Scientist magazine reported recently, it was the critics of the book who turned out to be mistaken.
Here’s a perfect article for the back-to-work-week doldrums:
Millions of Americans have lost control over the basic rhythm of their daily lives. They work too much, eat too quickly, socialize too little, drive and sit in traffic for too many hours, don’t get enough sleep, and feel harried too much of the time. It’s a way of life that undermines basic sources of wealth and well-being—such as strong family and community ties, a deep sense of meaning, and physical health.
Earn less, spend less, emit and degrade less. That’s the formula. The more time a person has, the better his or her quality of life, and the easier it is to live sustainably.Imagining a world in which jobs take up much less of our time may seem utopian, especially now, when a scarcity mentality dominates the economic conversation. People who are employed often find it difficult to scale back their jobs. Costs of medical care, education, and child care are rising. It may be hard to find new sources of income when U.S. companies have been laying people off at a dizzying rate.
But fewer work hours for people with jobs is a key step toward solving the unemployment crisis—while giving Americans healthier lives. Fewer hours means more jobs are available to people who need them. Living on less pay usually means consuming less, making more of the things one needs at home, and living lighter, whether by design or by accident.
The Economics of Happiness - Trailer
Economic globalization has led to a massive expansion in the scale and power of big business and banking. It has also worsened nearly every problem we face: fundamentalism and ethnic conflict; climate chaos and species extinction; financial instability and unemployment. There are personal costs too. For the majority of people on the planet, life is becoming increasingly stressful. We have less time for friends and family and we face mounting pressures at work.
The Economics of Happiness describes a world moving simultaneously in two opposing directions. On the one hand, an unholy alliance of governments and big business continues to promote globalization and the consolidation of corporate power. At the same time, people all over the world are resisting those policies, demanding a re-regulation of trade and finance—and, far from the old institutions of power, they’re starting to forge a very different future. Communities are coming together to re-build more human scale, ecological economies based on a new paradigm – an economics of localization.
