Rethinking Work: art as labor
In my recent piece on activism as labor, I briefly touched on the connections between art and street activism, and promised to get back to that soon. I do think that in a discussion of art as labor,...
Category: Themes
Jihad vs. McWorld: one man’s terrorist…
On Christmas day, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab allegedly attempted to blow up a trans-Atlantic Northwest Airlines flight arriving from Amsterdam in Detroit. Though he is Nigerian, he has alleged...
Environmentalists: nature’s conservatives
Environmentalism has an image of being the politics of the left but in reality it is the most conservative political ideology imaginable. Centred on a disgust with the masses, environmentalism's...
The Idan Raichel Project: music for a splintered Israel
The house lights come up. The stage lights flash for effect. The ten-piece band kicks into high gear and strikes up an ebullient major-key melody. The genteel seated crowd of about a thousand claps...
Yes, IT’S PERFECTLY OK to have a wind turbine near your house
No one wants "unpleasantness" in his or her backyard. For nearly as long as Europeans have lived in the Americas, the wealthy have tried to separate themselves from industry, people, and environments...
Andy Serkis is pure “Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll”
The opening 20 minutes or so of “Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll” is like being in a fight on a bouncy castle; exhilarating, exhausting and leaving you with a dickie tum. The biopic of...
Ireland and abortion: something’s got to give
Catholic morals were deeply embedded in Irish society by the theocracy from which Ireland is only now beginning to shake itself loose. Since the middle of the nineteeth century, the Catholic Church...
“44 Inch Chest”: secondhand embarrassment galore
Watching “44 Inch Chest” is like being stuck in a bad karaoke bar with a pissed up divorcee screeching through “Without You” before breaking down into a crumpled heap on stage. Imagine...
Martha Coakley’s failure is a symptom of a larger problem
There's plenty of blame to go around for Martha Coakley's defeat at Scott Brown’s hands in the Massachusetts Senate race. Let's start with Coakley herself. She ran a pathetic campaign. Starting out...
Paul Chambers: “privacy is dead, get over it” is not good enough
China's snooping on dissidents is unfortunate but unsurprising, but Western governments – and businesses – need to get out of our private communications, too. Last week a British man, Paul...