Familiar vs. Novel – Everything is a Remix

First, if you’ve never seen Everything is a Remix, go watch it now. It’s a great primer on creativity, originality, and copyright. Recently Kirby Ferguson posted a new installment about the new Star Wars movie, The Force Awakens. Towards the end he makes a point about a sweet spot existing between the familiar and the …

Awareness | 99% Invisible

99% Invisible did a 20m piece on the AIDS Awareness ribbon last month. The ribbon was a project of an art collective, Visual AIDS. The story is well done and worth your time – and this is coming from the guy who hates “awareness.” Source: Awareness | 99% Invisible By the late 1980s, AIDS had …

1: Transformers: Age of Extinction

In our first expedition we will watch the highest grossing worldwide movie of 2014, and one of the worst. Not to make fun of it (though that can not be helped) but to learn. This was the most popular movie last year and Patricia, Steve, and Steve try to parse out why people saw it …

“It Was a Good Day” Ice Cube and Politics

“It Was a Good Day” is rapper Ice Cube’s biggest hit — a solid rap song with a great beat, it’s easy to see why this record was so successful. What makes this song truly great, however, isn’t Ice Cube’s vivid description of his good day, but looming, omnipresent possibility of a much worse day. …

“Look at him; no ribbons, no lace!” Cyrano teaches us old lessons

I don’t think I understood how valuable this was in freshman year English class. What a strength to have such confidence, and be able to insult yourself better than anyone else. To know that what others perceive as our weaknesses are actually strengths. Our value isn’t worn outside, but in our hearts and our actions. …

The trouble with apocalypse

The Post Carbon Institute published a thought provoking piece by Kurt Cobb on “apocalypse narratives.” We hear these narratives every day in the news and popular culture. Cobb points out they’ve done a great job to “improve ratings and book sales” and then goes one to say “Peak oil, climate change, an impending food crisis, …

Beyond The Choir:: Climate scientists reaching beyond the choir & dropping the F-bomb VIDEO

reposted from BeyondTheChior A while back Chris Mooney, author of The Republican War on Science, offered some sound advice to climate scientists about “good climate communication”. Basically, if you’re a climate scientist who wants society to take your data seriously, you have to be something of a political scientist too. Mooney spotlights the Evangelical Climate …

Overcoming political polarization… but not through facts

Ethan Zuckerman has posted a beautiful piece that stitches together many of the ideas we deal with in How To Win and the Center for Artistic Activism. I can’t recommend it enough: Overcoming political polarization… but not through facts It ties together polarization, confirmation bias, the media, David Simon and The Wire, and the need …

Diggers: If you can act it out, it’s real.

We thought: culture is much more important than politics. Let’s just start getting people living the way they wanna live. You wanna live in a world where you don’t have to work? Let’s make it. You wanna live in a world where you can get food for free? Let’s make it. You wanna live in …

Imagine Peace by Yoko Ono

IMAGINE PEACE by yoko ono to the pebble people: start your own campaign! A butterfly is hopping from flower to flower. Oh, good. I think. The butterfly is busybodying as usual. We are like butterflies. We busybody ourselves every day for our survival as we think we know how. But the difference with us, is …

Miami's Community Avengers

Have No Fear the Community Avengers are Here! As the right wing mob mobilizes to shut down democratic debate on health care reform; as Van Jones is forced from the White House through distortions of the truth and plays on racial and political fears; as the recession deepens – the masked marauders known as the …

"Oblique Strategies": Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt's "How to Win" card game

  Brian Eno, the father of ambient music and Peter Schmidt, an English artist, created this deck of cards called Oblique Strategies in 1975. It is now in it’s fifth edition. Via Drawn!: Oblique Strategies is a deck of cards created by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt after thinking about approaches to their own work …

Politics as Product

Happy Spokesmodel Selection Day to one and all. I am certainly not the first to comment on the commodification of American politics in general and this race specifically, but a little more can be said before we’re on the next distraction tomorrow. This election has been primarily a contest between the values of experience and …

Laugh at a Campaign Pitch? Sure. Visit the Grandparents? Not So Much. – NYTimes.com

MIAMI — When Sarah Silverman told young Jews to get their lazy rotund rear ends to Florida to persuade their grandparents to vote for Senator Barack Obama, one question loomed: Would they go? This weekend was the first big test, a kickoff for the so-called Great Schlep, and so far, momentum has been building with …

Larry Flynt Producing 'Palin porno' political parody

I think the key line here actually comes at the end. “Whatever you think of Larry Flynt, the man knows his First Amendment,” Kelly concluded. Seriously, that smut monger is a true champion of the First Ammendment, and we should all remember that the freedom of speech is the freedom to be offended. Now is …