Banksy On Advertising
Posted on February 2, 2013 in Images
Banksy’s brilliant take on why all humans have the right to rebel against the invasive nature of advertising in the digital age.
Why Most Mass Murderers Are Privileged White Men
Posted on February 2, 2013 in Articles
The Article: Why Most Mass Murderers Are Privileged White Men by Hugo Schwyzer in Role Reboot.
The Text: Are white men particularly prone to carrying out the all-too-familiar mass killings of which last week’s Aurora shooting is just the latest iteration? Is there something about the white, male, middle-class experience that makes it easier for troubled young men to turn schools and movie theaters into killing fields? In a word, yes.
Not every mass murder in recent years has been committed by a middle-class white guy. But as Jamie Utt pointed out in the hours after the Colorado theater massacre, in those rare instances where a man of color is responsible for a shooting spree (as in the 2007 Virginia Tech killings or the 2009 Fort Hood rampage), the popular reaction is to search for connections between the race or religion of the murderer and his act. After Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 people in Blacksburg, media attention focused on the likelihood that a Korean culture unwilling to acknowledge mental illness helped drive the young man to commit the worst mass murder in U.S. history. After Maj. Nidal Hasan carried out the Fort Hood shootings, his Muslim faith became all the public needed to know about his motive.
Debunking The Obama “Socialist” Myth
Posted on February 1, 2013 in Videos
Corporate tool and simultaneously a radical leftist? Makes about as much sense as forward-thinking conservatives.
Hunter S. Thompson On The Good Life
Posted on February 1, 2013 in Quotes
Gonzo’s dream life sounds amazing, especially as the concept of a good-hearted landlord is an oxymoron.
The Rise Of Israel’s Radical Right
Posted on February 1, 2013 in Articles
The Article: THE PARTY FAITHFUL by David Remnick in The New Yorker.
The Text: At a makeshift theatre in the port of Tel Aviv, hundreds of young immigrants from Melbourne, the Five Towns, and other points in the Anglophone diaspora gathered recently to hear from the newest phenomenon in Israeli politics, Naftali Bennett. A forty-year-old settlement leader, software entrepreneur, and ex-Army commando, Bennett promises to build a sturdy electoral bridge between the religious and the secular, the hilltop outposts of the West Bank and the start-up suburbs of the coastal plain. This is something new in the history of the Jewish state. Bennett is a man of the far right, but he is eager to advertise his cosmopolitan bona fides. Although he was the director general of the Yesha Council, the main political body of the settler movement, he does not actually live in a settlement. He lives in Ra’anana, a small city north of Tel Aviv that is full of programmers and executives. He is as quick to make reference to an episode of “Seinfeld” as he is to the Torah portion of the week. He constantly updates his Facebook page. A dozen years ago, he moved to the Upper East Side of Manhattan to seek his fortune in high tech, and his wife, Gilat, went to work as a pastry chef at chic restaurants like Aureole, Amuse, and Bouley Bakery. Her crème brûlée, he declares proudly, “restored the faith of the Times food critic in the virtues of crème brûlée.”
