decapitator is back

In January a story went around the net that there was an artist in London photoshopping advertisements and essentially decapitating the actors or characters in them.  An example is above and an article about this person can be found at Laughing Squid.  They call him/her “The Decapitator” and the artist has a flickr photostream which you simply must check out.  I love this kind of countercultural art, sticking it to the man if you will.  Our senses are assaulted with a constant bombardment of marketing.  It is refreshing (and amusing) to see an artist making a statement against such consumerism in our society.

Well, The Decapitator is back.  Check out the second Laughing Squid article for details.

Twitter update

Have all the windows open for the first time in a while.  How’s the weather where you are?

Posted by email from flashkube’s posterous

Twitter update

Made the mistake of straying slightly from Toyota’s service department.  Sales people were eyeing me like fresh meat.

Posted by email from flashkube’s posterous

resist wall street’s shock doctrine

 

Thank goodness there is at least some debate happening in congress about the 700 billion dollar bailout proposed by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and backed up by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. Not enough questions have been asked by the media about this issue. There is a big one that would be at the top of my list: why is it so imperative that this legislation be passed by Friday?  This crash has been apparently long predicted.  Why the rush now?  I believe the answer can be found in a book I am now reading called The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein.

Though I am only halfway through (the book has 701 pages mind you), the author’s point is quite clear.  Chicago School, free market economics requires some kind of overwhelming and disastrous event (a hurricane, a terrorist attack, a coup d’etat, the fall of communism) to be accepted and implemented.  The following is a quote from the father of this free market ideology, Milton Friedman:

Only a crisis–actual or perceived–produces real change.  When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around.  That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable.

Check out the Wikipedia.org entry on The Shock Doctrine.  It has a brief summary and a fair description of the book’s praise and criticism.

The current economic crisis is a disaster by anyone’s measure.  Klein now warns of the rush by those in power to implement otherwise unacceptable policies.  She has written an article in “The Huffington Post” that lays out her warning and the reasons we all should take a measured and skeptical look at the deals being made between Washington and Wall Street.  This morning she was also on “Democracy Now.” I urge you to read/listen/watch these resources to get an alternative perspective on this bailout.

the wisdom of wives

This is a quote from Scott Kelby’s guest blogger today, Michael Tapes.  His wife is as wise as mine. ; )

Thankfully my wife was insightful enough to convince me to buy the D30 instead of the Canon G1 P&S which had also just been released She said to me that we could not afford the G1 ($1,000) and that I must buy the D30 ($3,200)! She knew in her ultimate wisdom, that a G1 purchase would only have satisfied my gear lust mentality for a week or 2, and would be followed by the inevitable D30 purchase for a total cost of $4,200. Hence we could not afford the G1 <g>. Thankfully it still applies today. D300 vs. D90 – 85 f1.8 vs.85 f1.4. “We cannot afford the cheaper one!” Have I mentioned how much I love my wife?