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Intolerable Beauty: Chris Jordan Photographs American Mass Consumption

(author unknown) — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 14:03:52 PDT

Photographer Chris Jordan describes the photos in his series “Intolerable Beauty: Portraits of American Mass Consumption” as his “first foray into being an engaged artist.”

1. “The idea [behind this series] was to capture the scale of [our] mass consumption. It was the first time I stood in front of piles of the detritus of our mass consumption.” “Cell phones #2, Atlanta, 2005″

2. “Initially, I thought I was seeing the scale [but] in the end, I realized this was the tiny tip of the iceberg.” “Cell phone chargers, Atlanta, 2004″

3. “It was interesting to see the limitations of this series and the photos. [Mass consumption is an] invisible phenomenon– there’s no one place I can go to capture it all.” “e-Bank, Tacoma, 2004″

4. “There’s a hierarchy of activism…. What my work is about to feel these issues myself…. A large part of change is acknowledging feelings we have and connecting with these issues.” “Crushed cars #2, Tacoma, 2004″

5. “[All this waste] is something that’s sort of kept hidden.” “Oil Filters, Seattle, 2003″

6. “I almost felt like a spy. I felt like this was something people needed to see.” “Spent bullet casings, 2005″

7. “80% [of the photos in this series] were ’straight’ photos. As I ran up against these limitations of photography…I started arranging the subject.” “Circuit boards #2, New Orleans, 2005″

8. “I also felt like I aged about five years during this series. Virtually all the photos…required that I trespass. I’d go ask [for permission to photograph these piles of waste] but I’d get all these vague excuses: Homeland Security, insurance regulations…. I think it was really a weird fear about photography and exposure [even though] I offered veto [power], showed them my previous work, and explained I didn’t name individuals or companies. This was about [documenting] a nationwide, cultural phenomenon.” Circuit boards, Atlanta, 2004″

Having run into the “limitations of photography,” Jordan initiated a new series, “Running the Numbers,” a set of digitally constructed photographs that represent the actual quantities of consumed items. “I’m almost done with this series,” he says at the end of our interview. “I’m hoping to return to a photographic project. I’d like to be a photographer again.”

To learn more about Jordan and his work, please visit his website.

All photos courtesy of Chris Jordan.

Community Connection:

If you’d like to learn more about e-waste, please read this article from our archives, “The Problem with E-Waste.”

Disaster Voyeurism

(author unknown) — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 21:00:00 PDT

Little Tiger

(author unknown) — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 05:48:45 PDT

You can't just go tigapunchin' your way through life, little tiger!

Can you tell the difference

concentrate — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 12:25:32 PDT

via http://humor-spiked.com/can-you-tell-the-difference

Genre microfiction

David Malki ! — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 17:48:37 PDT

I was talking with a friend about a Twitter-based fiction contest that he’d seen, and he mentioned that this contest had stipulated genre requirements. So, of course, the conversation turned to how short a story could possibly be and still have some recognizable genre. I postulated that it wouldn’t take much at all:

“A final tear dripped down her dying cheek. Cancer! On our wedding day!” [Drama/romance]

“A final tear dripped down her dying cheek. Tuberculosis! On our wedding day!” [Period romance]

“A final tear dripped down her dying cheek. Nanobots! On our wedding day!” [Sci-fi]

“A final acidic tear dripped down her dying, scaly cheek. Dragon cancer! On our wedding day!” [Fantasy]

“A sultry bead of sweat dripped down her heaving bosom. Lust! On our wedding day!” [Erotica]

“A bloody tear dripped down her already-rotting cheek. Zombies! On our wedding day!” [Horror]

“A final tear dripped down her bullet-riddled cheek. Mobsters! On our court date!” [Crime]

“A final tear dripped down her dying cheek. Cancer! On our gay wedding day!” [Gay/lesbian]

“A final tear dripped down her goggles to her sprocket-laden corset. Brass poisoning! On our wedding day!” [Steampunk]

In fact, I bet between all of us we could write microfiction in every conceivable genre. Leave a comment and let’s prove it.

The Myth of Orthodoxy?

: safe space : — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 01:52:29 PDT

I've heard a few people say recently how their worship/church is underpinned/rooted in "orthodoxy". This always prompts a question in my mind... Whose "orthodoxy" do they mean?... Charsimatic, Evangelical, Liberationist, Episcopal, Congregational, Calvinist, Arminian, Lutheran, Augustinian, Roman, Greek, Coptic, The Pauline churches, The Jerusalem church... etc. etc. I'm sure the response would be "biblical orthodoxy"... But this brings even more questions eg. what makes these good folk think they can do something Bishops, Scholars, Theologians, 2000 years of the Church have failed to do, to find a single incontrovertable, universal interpretation of the whole of scripture... The more I think about it the more I think that "orthodoxy" is inherently local (in time and place) only grace is universal so only grace is a sure enough foundation for church, worship etc.

Urban Renovation With LEGO Bricks.

Brent Richards — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 07:00:44 PDT

Jan Vormann and an army of volunteers decided to do something about the chipped bricks and decaying masonry around downtown Amsterdam. Rather than slap up some bland plaster or drab mortar, he used that world renowned symbol of Danish cultural heritage: the LEGO brick. I’m not sure about their structural integrity as a building material, but they make up for it in colorfulness and pure-grade awesome.

Number 5

(author unknown) — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 07:07:53 PDT

Heh

Steven — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 17:38:24 PDT

The Narcissist Test Cartoon | Savage Chickens - Cartoons on Sticky Notes by Doug Savage

everyueveryme — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 05:01:34 PDT

via http://www.savagechickens.com/2009/06/the-narcissist-test.html

100+ Minimal and Typographic Package Designs

Jay Hilgert — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 10:05:29 PDT

Time for a little inspiration. Package design can be tricky, but as you can see here, sometimes it can be relatively simple and still come across as beling elegant. Sometimes, less is more….. Here are over 100 examples of package design that either has a minimal style, or a typographic based solution. If you like these and you’d like to learn more about package design, TheDieline.com and LovelyPackage.com are the places to visit. A big thanks goes out to them for a lot of the images you see here.

This is a post from: BittBox.com

Lessons in Leadership, Robert McNamara teaches the most important lesson

donmilleris — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 16:39:25 PDT

I won’t follow anybody who can’t admit a mistake. I led a college group at a church once, and as part of a series I created I asked all the pastors at the church to address the college group regarding mistakes they made when they were the age of my students. The pastors agreed, save one, who, as humbly as he could, explained he hadn’t made any mistakes. As the years went on, I noticed something about this pastor, I noticed he never admitted he was wrong, about anything, and I also noticed a trail of bodies behind him. He literally fired or marginalized anybody who did not agree with him. His church succeeded to some degree, because people do follow strong, confident leadership. But it suffered too. It was, and remains, a revolving door, impressive at first, but not so impressive up close and personal. Christian leaders who can’t admit their mistakes place a wall between their congregation and God, rather than a window. They paint an image of Christ on themselves, as they feel this is their job. People like the painting of Jesus they see on the wall, but in the end, the painting isn’t the real thing, and so Jesus just gets distorted.

The pastor I am talking about is not an arrogant man. He is actually quite humble, all things considered. But what he is not, is confident. He only looks confident. A person who cannot admit their faults is afraid, is insecure, and leads from the belief that if they make a mistake, nobody will follow them. A confident person would admit mistakes freely, because they really don’t need you or I to approve, they would get that from Jesus, and they’d teach us to get it from Jesus too. Instead, they teach us that they do not make mistakes, and so they are selfish.

Nobody in scripture is perfect, save Christ. And God has no trouble airing the dirty laundry of his followers. Peter denies Christ, but God leaves the incident in the text, Moses is a murderer, but God leaves the story in the text, David cheats on his wife, Lot offers his daughters, Thomas won’t believe his friends who saw Christ alive, and so on and so on. There are few good marriages in the Bible, and fewer good fathers. Throughout the ages, Christians have been more than comfortable admitting their humanity, almost as a reference to God’s goodness. Until, that is, western civilization and, perhaps, the commercialization of our culture. Now Jesus is a product, and we sell him, and if we are selling a product, the product better work, so we just make things up about how great we are.

A pastor friend and I were having lunch recently and he asked for advice about writing a book. He is a terrific guy and had terrific stories. But I told him many of the Christian authros I read make the same mistake the secular authors do, though to a greater degree, and that is the writer gets in the way of the truth. The truth is in there, but so is the writer. The writer wants you to know about his message, but also that he or she is smart. The writer wants you to know about their message, but also that he is tough and you better not mess with him, and that you area coward in comparison. The writer wants you to know about his message, but also wants you to know he is a good writer! The trick is, even if you are talking about yourself, to get out of the way. Tell the truth. Of course, because we are fallen, we aren’t going to nail this, but we have to try.

I heard an interview a long time ago with the folk singer David Wilcox, in which Wilcox was asked how he managed to be so vulnerable and open in his songwriting. Wilcox answered that, when he sits down to write a song, he tries to share something he is afraid to share, something that, to him, might be embarrassing. He does this, he said, because in giving the audience something they can use against him, they create a trusting relationship. It’s as though he is taking his pistol out and handing it to the person across the table.

I’ve applied this technique to my writing, and it is scary stuff, but it’s true, it does create a trusting relationship with your audience. 1 out of 100 people use it against you, and it does in fact hurt, but it’s worth the other 99 relationships that are authentic from the beginning.

As Christian leaders, we will be tempted to surround ourselves with yes men, and we will be tempted to get rid of anybody who doesn’t agree with us. We will cloak this under “God’s will” or “we weren’t on the same page” but this can only go so far. If you keep it up, you’ll find yourself alone. I’ve made this mistake many times, and had to learn the hard way. At The Mentoring Project, I now have to submit to my board, and to our Executive Director. I frequently get vetoed, and it’s clear I am not top man on the totem pole. In fact, I am simply seen as an advisor. Oh, the days when I once had power! (and more than a little dysfunction)

I’ve noticed healthy children often have parents who sit down with them and explain their short-comings. A parents admission that they weren’t perfect frees the child to learn from their parents mistakes rather than cover up or react to family issues. But parents who, in neediness and selfishness, will not admit fault, in an effort to control their children, often have children who feel they cannot be safe with their parents, and sometimes react. Authenticity works in all forms of leadership, I think.

Yesterday, Robert S. McNamara passed away. MacNamara was President of Ford Motor Company before going to work at the Department of Defense. He was instrumental in the bombing of Japan in World War II, and is often called the architect of the war in Vietnam. But toward the end of his life, MacNamara began to reconsider his actions. He even wrote a book confessing what he felt were his wrongs. He left the Johnson administration and ran the World Bank, some believe, to make up for the many lives lost under his command.

I don’t have a strong opinion about the war in Vietnam. War is messy, and I tend to believe we had good reason to be there, though it certainly didn’t turn out the way we would have hoped. But hindsight is twenty-twenty. I am more interested in MacNamara, though. I am more interested in a man with a distinguished career suddenly coming out and admitting he was wrong. It is so rarely seen by a government leader.

Perhaps it was the haunting memory of the soldiers who passed, or the protestors, one of whom, a married Quaker, burned himself alive outside McNamara’s window. The mans wife would later write McNamara, after he admitted his mistakes, and forgave him. In an interview with Terry Gross on Fresh Air, McNamara broke down crying as he read her words.

McNamara’s tearful confessions can be seen in the Academy Award Winning documentary The Fog of War. It is a gripping film, revealing the confusion any leader faces during war. But what is more fascinating is that the film captures a man who decides his reputation is not more important than the truth, and the clearing of his conscious.

And did it cost McNamara? It didn’t. Those who support the war, still support McNamara, and those who protested it, see him as another kind of hero, a man who laid down his ego so history could learn from what he felt were mistakes. He was an arrogant man, and he was more consumed by his ego than troubled by the war he ran in which hundreds of thousands were killed. But in the end, perhaps, he did a thing that was noble. I don’t know why else he would apologize, or admit fault.

In my opinion, the most important thing a leader can do is admit his mistakes. He or she should be competent, and should have integrity, and some mistakes really do disqualify you from leadership, but so should deceit, even if its self deceit.

Rest in peace, Robert McNamara.

Donald Miller’s new book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years releases this fall. You can pre-order it here.

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magnificent landscape

(author unknown) — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 01:00:00 PDT

Extrapolating

(author unknown) — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 21:00:00 PDT

R.I.P. Mike and Alec’s Friendship

admin — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 12:43:43 PDT

cartoon: what a circus!

nakedpastor — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 05:29:53 PDT

This is just a completely silly cartoon, but one which popped into my mind in the middle of the night and made me chuckle in bed. Here’s a cartoon that shouldn’t offend anyone, except tightrope walkers who have fallen. And maybe animal rights activists who have a heart for alligators. Or crocodiles. So I immediately got up and grabbed my trusty little Pilot G-Tec-C4 black Ultra Fine Point pen, and my loyal Sharpie Ultra Fine Point, and drew this cartoon. I hope that maybe it might cheer up your day. And please be careful. Don’t fall.

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Check out my t-shirts HERE. I’m growing my inventory all the time. And check out my contemplative art here.

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6.30.09

(author unknown) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 06:47:23 PDT

Entire New 13-Story Building Tips Over in Shanghai [Architecture]

Dan Nosowitz — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 22:30:00 PDT

This past Saturday, an entire apartment building in Shanghai collapsed. To be fair, the building was under construction and thus unoccupied, but it's still a minor miracle that there was only one fatality.

Sounds like there was a problem with some nearby flood prevention walls at the Dianpu River, but there's no hard evidence as to why this huge building simply fell over. Anyway, here are some sweet pictures of the architectural carnage. [Cellar.org via Twitter]

Using Deceptive Design Elements to Emphasize Product Features

Dmitry — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 10:06:01 PDT

Recently, I’ve noticed how Apple’s product designs have taken a direction towards deception — a gentle sort of deception that doesn’t trick you into thinking the product has something it doesn’t, but a deception that promotes and extends the appearance of certain features so that they appear better. I think it’s a smart way to design products (from a business perspective) as it will make your products seem better than they actually are, all done artificially through appearance rather than function. Here are a couple of examples.

Apple has modified the curves on their computers, from a smooth symmetrical curve to a more gently curved edge that gets cut off at the end, forming a sharp corner. What does this achieve? It makes the device appear thinner as the gentle curve tends to disappear and all you’re left with at the side is the thinner edge that now appears to represent the thickness of the device. This illusion works best when looking up from above rather than directly from the side, as the lower and upper curves disappear. Here’s the old symmetrical curve on the white MacBook:

Here’s the curve on the new unibody MacBook Pro. While the perceived thickness I highlighted won’t be evident from looking directly at the side of the unit, it becomes clearer when you view the product from above, as seen in the next picture. It then becomes even stronger when the viewing angle increases towards a more typical one you will have when the notebook is on your desk:

Additionaly, some design elements are now thin and stripe shaped instead of circle shaped. Look at this IR receiver at the bottom of the MacBook Pro:

The new stripe shape further emphasizes the thinness of the product — i.e. we can’t fit a circle here so we had to make this a thin stripe.

Another interesting change is the way Apple makes their displays. Gone are the aluminum edges around the sides of the screen — it’s all one big black glass now, right to the very thin edge of the case that it sits in. How does this help? When the screen is off, the screen appears to be bigger than it actually is. This illusion is evident on most of Apple’s new hardware, from iMacs, Cinema Displays to MacBooks and iPhones. Sure, deceit might not be the main point of this design — the glass has to be attached this way and the black bezel helps bring out the colors on the screen — but it’s still a beneficial side effect.

What can we learn from this? I think this illusion element of design is something to think about when designing our products. Is there a way we can shape the design so that it emphasizes the key features we’re trying to promote — whether that be thinness of the case or the size of the screen, or whatever else.

Just like those illusions we’re all familiar with, where one line appears longer than the other when in reality they’re both the same length, the design of your product can have an effect on how that product is perceived, and can positively or negatively influence the appearance of its features.

NYTimes and Wikipedia Save Reporter’s Life By NOT Reporting On His Capture

Guest Author — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 21:51:54 PDT

This post was written by Gagan Biyani.

Earlier last week, New York Times reporter David Rohde escaped from a Taliban prison. He had been a Taliban hostage for the last seven months, but the general public had absolutely no clue. In a joint effort by The New York Times and Wikipedia, the story was kept quiet until his daring escape.

In November 2008, Rohde was captured and held hostage by the Taliban, along with a local reporter, Tahir Ludin, and their driver, Asadullah Mangal. But until he managed to escape, most of the general public had absolutely no clue. To prevent Rohde’s value in the eyes of his captors from rising, the New York Times kept more than 35 major news organizations from reporting on the story. They believed that the publicity from reporting his capture would inflate the value of Rohde’s life, increasing the difficulty of negotiating for Rohde’s release. Keeping 35 news organizations quiet was actually not the hard part - but staving off Wikipedia users from publishing the news? That was a bit trickier.

Through an elaborate and ongoing battle between Wikipedia editors and an anonymous contributor from Florida, the New York Times and the Wikipedia Foundation managed to keep the story quiet. For seven months, Wikipedia editors were in a constant back-and-forth with this user to delete news of Rohde’s capture off of the site. They were unable to contact the user directly, as s/he was anonymously posting on Wikipedia, and thus could not explain to the user why they were trying to keep the news quiet. Infuriated, the user threw insults at the editors who were deleting his addition, and blindly continued their futile fight.

All of this ended when Rohde and Ludin managed to climb over a wall and escape the Taliban’s clenches. In an interesting twist, the driver chose to join the Taliban and thus stayed behind, according to Rohde. This is a truly inspiring story, and the efforts of the Wikipedia editors and the New York Times are beyond laudable. In a recent tweet, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales said that preventing the news from breaking may have saved his life. Regardless of the merits of this comment, it made Rohde’s escape more likely, and was a downright impressive feat of coordination by all parties involved.

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