via slate.com
Apr
25
The rise and rise of the cognitive elite - The Economist
Jan Pen, a Dutch economist who died last year, came up with a striking way to picture inequality. Imagine people’s height being proportional to their income, so that someone with an average income is of average height. Now imagine that the entire adult population of America is walking past you in a single hour, in ascending order of income.
The first passers-by, the owners of loss-making businesses, are invisible: their heads are below ground. Then come the jobless and the working poor, who are midgets. After half an hour the strollers are still only waist-high, since America’s median income is only half the mean. It takes nearly 45 minutes before normal-sized people appear. But then, in the final minutes, giants thunder by. With six minutes to go they are 12 feet tall. When the 400 highest earners walk by, right at the end, each is more than two miles tall.
via The Economist
Apr
25
超芸術トマソン報告用紙：：：Hyperart Thomasson
In the seventies, Japanese conceptual artist and writer Akasegawa Genpei and his buddies discovered "hyperart," unintentional art created by the city itself. Everywhere they saw urban objects and structures that had had a use in the past, but were now useless ... yet someone was still maintaining them, not removing them. Akasegawa named these objects "Thomassons" after American baseball hitter Gary Thomasson, who was recruited to a Japanese team and paid a mint to look pretty, but whose bat almost never connected with the ball.
Jan
15
Best of 2010 Compilation
1. Beverly Kills - Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti
2. Shred and Transcend - No Age
3. Famine Affair - of Montreal
4. Oh, Maker - Janelle Monáe
5. Dear God, I Hate Myself - Xiu Xiu
6. Clear Spirits - Les Savy Fav
7. Peepers - Polar Bear
8. Over again - Black Milk feat. Monica Blaire
9. Sam Kinison Woman - Pissed Jeans
10. Fear of Fireflies - Calla
11. Power - Kanye West
12. Crooked Scene - Male Bonding
13. Hunting Lodge - Sandwell District
14. Rill Rill - Sleigh Bells
15. Window Seat - Erykah Badu
16. The Making Of Grief Point – Loscil
Download HERE
Jan
2
LRB · Eliot Weinberger · ‘Damn right,’ I said
Decision Points holds the same relation to George W. Bush as a line of fashion accessories or a perfume does to the movie star that bears its name; he no doubt served in some advisory capacity.
via lrb.co.uk
Dec
19
Your right to protest in under threat : Johann Hari
There is a cost to this chilling of protest. Every British citizen is the beneficiary of a long line of protesters stretching back through the centuries. Every woman reading this can vote and open her own bank account and choose her own husband and have a career because protesters demanded it. Every worker gets at least £5.93 an hour, and paid holidays, and paid sick leave, because protesters demanded it. Every pensioner gets enough to survive because protesters demand it. What what your life would be like if all those protesters through all those years had been frightened into inactivity? If you block the right to protest, you block the path to progress. You are left instead at the whim of an elite, whose priority is tax cuts for themselves, paid for with spending cuts for the poor.
via johannhari.com
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