Last Saturday in the Kings Cross area of Sydney, Australia, a stolen car full of kids hopped a curb and hit two young women. Police, who had been following the car, reacted by shooting the fourteen-year-old driver and the eighteen-year-old passenger, Troy Taylor, before dragging Taylor from the car and repeatedly punching him.

In response to this, the April 26 edition of the Sydney Morning Herald, columnist Paul Sheehan vomited out a piece that defends the police officers with brilliant arguments like: “The police were aiming at the windshield, not the occupants". He neglects to ask the following questions: How, if the car was still moving, were police officers able to get in front of it? Why, if they only wished to stop the car, didn’t they shoot for the tires? How did they plan not to hit any people by firing into the windshield of a car that had five people inside? Why would you drag a child you had already shot from a car and punch him repeatedly?

It appears none of these things matter to Mr. Sheehan. What really matters to him is this question: “What sort of kids are on the streets after 3am, in stolen cars, drinking alcohol, driving recklessly and resisting police? You know the answer.”

Well, his regular readers might but to make it clear, he means aborigines!

Sheehan goes on to describe the children and young men in the car as “begging for trouble” and, in what one hopes is a low point for the Australian press, “feral”.

Aside from this treatment in the SMH, the greater Australian media has been thunderingly quiet on the matter, which probably comes from aborigines being too disenfranchised to mobilise media channels (although they did march in the streets) and many white Australians tacitly not giving a fuck because, as Sheehan implies, this is what “these people” do.

I was made aware of this story via my Australian surfing scribe colleague Mike Jennings, who very much cares about such issues. If the comments on his Facebook page are anything to go by, other young Australians do too. As the shooting death of another unarmed teenager, Trayvon Martin, in the United States has shown, Americans also care about these sorts of problems. They have, after all, been occurring for the last two centuries in the Land of the Free. For that matter: who doesn’t care about issues like police brutality, child welfare, race and an unbiased legal system? They touch every one of our lives and will only loom larger in the public consciousness as global flows of people and capital make our societies ever more multicultural.

Despite all this public concern, the way that the international media treats issues related to race constitutes a widespread systemic failure. Unarmed boys are being gunned own in the street in Sydney and not a week later the front page of the SMH online is dominated by news of rugby matches, Telestra dropping out of the porn market and, ironically, a story about the shooting deaths of Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls.

If you think I’m singling out the Aussies, let me state unequivocally that the American and British media (the two I am most familiar with) are just as bad. Race is a complicated matter shot through with misunderstandings and flat out lies. It needs to be examined from all angles, to be dissected, deconstructed and reconstructed in a way that better represents the full panorama of human life. The media is in a unique position to do this but instead all it does is simplify. All it gives us is black and white, good and bad, and right and wrong. It spoon-feeds us mediocrity in the guise of public discourse.

When young Aborigines commit a crime and are subsequently brutalised by the police, myopic men like Sheehan would have you pick a side. Think about that: he’s actually given money by his employers to write about a case of extreme police brutality as if it were a Sunday football match. If that doesn’t make you angry, it should. He isn’t arguing a point that you may or may not agree with, he's simplifying a complex topic to the point where it means less than nothing in order to pander to the basest prejudices of his readership.

Asking you to choose a side is rhetorical slight of hand because there is no correct side. There are no good guys, and there certainly aren’t any winners. That’s certainly not a headline that is going to boost readership. Everyone directly involved in a case like this is both perpetrator and victim of the larger layers of prejudice that envelope us all. The media’s job isn’t to take sides in an invented debate, it is to structure the actual debate by peeling away these layers to cast light on the erroneous, the misinformed, and the disingenuous that obfuscate the core issues hiding underneath.

There are a lot of ways the media can do this, but let’s start with a simple one: let’s stop calling people 'racist'. Not because we are 'post-race' or because everyone should be allowed to say anything they want, but because that label oversimplifies the real nature of prejudice in the 21st Century.

The archetypical swastika-sporting, cross-burning, hate-spewing racist no longer exists outside of isolated groups with little popular or political importance. He's a bogeyman from another era in which racism was still an overt force. Times have changed and racism has gone underground where it has taken root in the realm of inference, assumption and tacit understanding.

In its 21st Century guise racism can look like anyone from a Sydney police officer to an American politician; from the old woman who lives down the road to the children playing in front of the school; from you to me. None of us are 'racists' in the classical sense of the term, but all of our outlooks on the world are coloured by racism. By throwing around the label of 'racist' what we are really doing is othering people who have given voice to the ugly sentiments that many harbour, but avoid speaking aloud. We separate them from ourselves so we can sit around and cast blame from ivory towers.

There is a great allegory on this change in attitude towards racism called The Racist Tree, written by Alexander Blechman, a writer for the satirical magazine The Onion.  In this story, a tree who won’t give apples to black children changes his ways, not because his opinion of black people changes, but because his opinions become politically incorrect.  “And so, social progress was made,” remarks Blechman dryly. The truth, of course, is that racism is still all around us, even if the archetypical racist is no longer PC.

And so, when Sheehan asks his readers “What sort of kids are on the streets after 3am, in stolen cars, drinking alcohol, driving recklessly and resisting police?” you can almost hear his corrupt thought process. If he answers his own question it sounds like the assertion of 'a racist' – unacceptable to the polite, enlightened, unprejudiced ears of many including himself. But if he lets you infer, well, then we’re all on the same page without ever having to get our hands dirty, nudge nudge, wink wink.

This, of course, isn’t social progress, it’s the cultural normalisation of bigotry. With the likes of Sheehan, it's there if you listen hard enough...

A few years ago, to make ends meet, I worked in a late night basement bar in Stoke Newington, a village-like conurbation of pushchairs, cafes and organic farmers' markets in north-east London.

One Friday night, some grubby skate kids in Supreme hoodies performed and stole drinks from the bar – I wasn't paid enough to try and stop them (or even cared). In fact, this was L.A. hip hop crew Odd Future's first UK show and, as I was told by one fawning muso, they were going to be big. They shouted their playschool rhymes badly over their beats with their pre-recorded lyrics still on them (pretty weak in my book) and got the place shut down early due to overcrowding, a general air of impending violence and the manager-at-the-time's concern for their stock. Odd Future were probably quite proud of themselves.

Fast forward to present day, and Odd Future are, as predicted, 'big'. Angry frontman Tyler The Creator has earnestly posed with his carefully-tailored don't-give-a-fuck attitude on the covers of NME, Wonderland and Billboard. Just the other night, they appeared on the BBC's clever-clever late night current affairs show, Newsnight, to be given an unsuccessful telling off by reporter Stephen Smith.

Odd Future may be a rag-tag collective of raw, intense, offensive kids from L.A., but their success just brings out the worst in everyone.

They make stuffy, politically correct reporters look even more stuffy and out-of-touch with 'the kids' by baiting them into asking the same old questions like, I'm paraphrasing here, 'Are you setting a bad example to children by rapping about drugs and sexual assault and using words like 'bitch' and 'faggot'?'; they make gullible teenagers appear even more stupid through their aping of OF's deliberately idiotic, don't-give-a-fuck lifestyle brand, as seen in Vice's recent point-and-sneer expose; and they help older generations write off a whole generation of kids as rude and nasty troublemakers.

But their worst crime in my book is that they are peddling product over music and, ultimately, style over substance. Odd Future give their music away for free and sell cobbled together t-shirts at overly inflated prices to gullible fans at pop-up shops to make money, like the one that appeared in East London recently. Ok, so declining record sales mean artists need to make a living from merchandise but it's very depressing to see music made into such an explicit promotional tool for a brand of lifestyle products.

They may have made a handful of half-decent tracks but Odd Future seem to be just another contrived, anarcho-capitalist exercise in making money out of a storm of controversy - as pioneered by Malcolm McLaren circa 1977. It goes: find a group of kids who'll say things that are deemed impolite, piss people off, cause feigned outrage by the mainstream media and then sell their brand of rebellion to younger kids who are hormonally predisposed to consume it. For further proof, take their manager insisting to Newsnight that they keep full financial records and pay their tax like good corporate citizens.

The only good I can see coming of the Odd Future phenomenon is that they are hip hop's equivalent of a 'gateway drug', and open up a new generation to the joys of beats, rhymes and life – like Cypress Hill did for me. Hopefully after a few months of listening to OF, they'll make the switch to some truly system-challenging hip hop striving to educate listeners in the ways of politics, social issues and self-determination.

Or find the real rawness like Necro... he'll probably scare them though!

On March 7, a video called Kony 2012, made by the US humanitarian group, Invisible Children, went viral. It sought to raise awareness about the Central African militia leader Joseph Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) which rose to notoriety in the 1990s due to its use of child soldiers in conflicts around Uganda, South Sudan and the Central African Republic.

When the dust settled from all of the collective 'caring' that exploded across social networks and people went back to posting Instagram pictures of what they were eating for lunch, the only true difference that this video made was be a massive jump in the levels of smug that have long obscured Africa in the global development discourse.

Smug, you may recall, is the term invented by satirists Trey Parker and Matt Stone in the tenth season of their series, South Park, to describe the harm that is done by well-meaning, progressive types who become too self-satisfied with their own supposed altruism. In the South Park episode, smug rising off the owners of hybrid cars and coalesces into a hurricane that wipes San Francisco from the map.

In the case of humanitarian and development issues, smug is the main result of sharing humanitarian causes on Facebook and clicking buttons that 'pledge your support' for a certain cause. Such campaigns – if they can be called that – cost you nothing and let you feel like you are doing something positive without actually having much a grasp of what, if anything, you are really doing.

Recent large-scale sources of smug contamination include the online campaigns to donate to Haitian earthquake relief in 2010 and the online support for the Arab Spring. Despite nearly $11billion being donated to Haiti by donor countries and institutions, much of the money remains tied up in NGOs and government programmes. In case you hadn’t heard, Haiti isn’t doing so well either. Egypt, though currently not battling cholera, unlike Haiti, is rapidly losing sight of any democratic reforms that the originators of it’s revolution had initially hoped to install.

And so we come to our cause du jour: child soldiers in Africa. Grant Oyston, a Political Science student at the University of Acadia was on the ball when he pointed out, shortly after Kony 2012 went viral, that Invisible Children is an aid group with a questionable past, having been criticised repeatedly by monitoring agencies both for exaggerating the human rights abuses of their targets and for running a pretty serious accountability deficit. Oyston also notes that only 32% of the over $8million they spent last year went to direct services. Some of that other 68% money went to supporting the Ugandan army. They even have a photo of themselves posing – machine gun preacher-style – with the army. Check it out, they are holding assault rifles because they care.

But the Invisible Children campaign has chosen to ignore that the Ugandan army is also guilty of a myriad of human rights abuses, including putting refugees from the civil war in Northern Uganda into concentration camps resulting in around 1,000 excess deaths a week.  This is a serious issue, but it doesn’t play as well in the media or YouTube videos as child soldiers do.

The reason they choose to gloss over these not unsubstantial issues is because their aid work, while well-intentioned, is based not on altruism but on the self-satisfaction that comes from feeling altruistic. They are professional creators of smug.  Their bombastic, white-saviour media campaigns prey on the stunted and misplaced sympathies of a generation of young, upperly-mobile first worlders whose only experiences with conflict and exploitation come from watching Hollywood movies and playing video games. In video games evil is not thwarted by careful diplomacy and foreign policy which considers the entire panorama of history, society and economy before making a difficult decision that will, in turn, have far reaching implications in all of these areas; evil is thwarted with a AR-15 and a full clip.

We live in a world where it is easier than ever to be informed but extremely difficult to affect change. This whole notion of fixing Africa, Haiti or anywhere by making an overly sentimental video then passing it on through a thick cloud of smug is the shared delusion of an entire generation of media-permeated youth. They are sympathetic to suffering, but their sympathy lasts only as long as the latest soundbite or three minute video clip. Then they are bombarded by the next plea for sympathy, call to arms or campaign for help. In trying to create a type of activism that is effective in the information age, politicians, NGOs and the media have simplified the issues behind it to the point of farce.

'But at least they are doing something!' type the commentators on the blogs of Oyston and Yale University’s Chris Blattman. The reasoning goes like this: poor people have nothing so anything that we do for them will naturally increase their well-being. This is the fallacy upon which all smug contamination is predicated. The only thing worse than doing nothing is doing the wrong thing without taking into account how difficult and complex it is to affect real change in other countries. Haiti is the prime example of a place that has gone to hell by being dragged down the road of good intentions by foreign governments and the aid industry.

These two groups, along with the Western media, have singled out Joseph Kony because he's low hanging fruit. In an atrocious conflict he is arguably the vilest of the bunch and therefore the easiest to take pot shots at from behind a thin veil of schmaltzy, do-gooder 'caring'.  Chances are nothing will come of it. Remember that Obama sent American troops in order to try to catch or kill Kony last year to no avail.  But if Kony 2012 does motivate a policy change and they 'get’em' (a dangerous precendent in itself) the direct outcome will be…nothing.

The reason for this was explained in a November 2011 article in Foreign Affairs magazine written by Marieke Schomerus, Tim Allen and Koen Vlassenroot: “The violence in Uganda, Congo and South Sudan has been the most devastating - anywhere in the world - since the mid-1990s. Even conservative estimates place the death toll in the millions. And the LRA is, in fact, a relatively small player in all of this - as much a symptom as a cause of the endemic violence. If Kony is removed, LRA fighters will join other groups or act independently.”

This kind of conflict is not solved by Facebook campaigns, viral videos or silly young men mean-mugging with assault rifles like something out of the worst type of Hollywood fantasy. It’s not solved by killing one militia leader or even all the military strongmen in the region. It is solved by peeling away the tangled strands of history, economy and politics, both regional and global, that have brought central Africa to its knees then trying to construct some sort of good from it.

Academia is on point with this mission in trying to start a deep and meaningful dialogue around these issues. But until the NGOs and politicians are willing to take note and base their programmes on lasting change instead of PR gains and the media is willing to examine the complicated facts behind these atrocities and report on them in a responsible and non-sensational way, it will be business as usual in Central Africa. The children will keep dying behind our suffocating cloud of smug.

Ladies and gentleman, there's a new sport in town that may just knock your collective socks off. It's Spikeboarding! – or as founder Enrique Cubillo has carefully legally laid out SpikeBoarding™ and STAND UP SPIKE™/SUS™ (patent pending) as owned by Susoix Limited Liability Company.

This revolutionary new 'action sport' that is currently being promoted by a video of Cubillo in Susoix-branded lycra energetically pushing himself around New York by way of a longboard and a big stick. Dodge traffic, get rad.

I'm going to hazard a guess that this guy saw how popular skateboarding is and how the whole punting thing has caught on in such cultural centres as Venice and Cambridge and one great big lightbulb has flashed on in his head!

Eureka! SpikeBoarding™.

Ok, so there's also the loved/loathed sport of stand up paddle boarding which seems to have taken off in recent years. Surfing evolved to grow legs, crawl onto land and turn into skateboarding. So why can't SUPing do the same?

But there's a key difference. I interviewed UK surfer Alan Stokes a few years ago and he remarked on the appeal of SUPs, of which he can appreciate: on flat days you can still get out onto the water and paddle around. It's the equivalent of pushing on flat on your skateboard as opposed to dropping in on a bowl or bombing a hill. Also, SUPing is also great for core balance and stability training, and could even help you train to become a better surfer when you can't actually get out to surf.

So why the hell do you need a spike to ride a skateboard?! And if you watch the video all the way through – yeah, it's a big ask! - you'll see that he also uses his leg. Which brings to the central reason why this just won't catch on: people have been using their legs to propel themselves along on a skateboard for years, and it seems to have worked out quite well. If something simple exists that works well at the job, then you don't need to invent a product more complicated to mimic it. When was the last time you saw an automatic foot in the shops?

I'm going to hazard a guess that this guy genuinely loves SpikeBoarding™. He seems to have developed quite a technique for getting up some speed. Fuck it, if this guy gets a buzz pushing himself around on a skateboard and a big stick then that's awesome! I genuinely believe that and I wish him all the luck in the world. But it's just quite simply depressing to see something commodified so quickly, given a logo, branded up and had trademarks slapped on to be claimed as a property.

It seems nowadays that the natural conclusion to any activity is to try and – as people say sadly without irony – 'monetise it'. Can't something just be without being packaged and sold? After all, the genuinely cool and enduring stuff emerges organically by people who do an activity for the love of it and nothing more. After time, it attracts other like-minded people and slowly grows in size and respect – and eventually some people start to make a living out of it.

Who knows, I could be wrong. Maybe one day there will be a whole subculture of pushing yourself around with a stick and a wheeled plank of wood, but I doubt people will be referring to it as SpikeBoarding™ or STAND UP SPIKE™/SUS™.

As I write, there is a large, rather ugly and not particularly reliable clock in Trafalgar Square counting down the days until the Olympic Games explode into the lives of Londoners and the wider world. But it's like they are here already. In London, it’s hard to go anywhere and not see a billboard or advert that doesn’t have some tenuous connection to the games. But putting aside all the commercialism and hype, it’s important to remember what the Olympics claim to actually represent.

It all started back on July 6 2005 when London won the bid to host the 2012 Olympics. Fundamental to that win was the bid’s vision to “use the power of the Games to inspire change”, and a promise to the International Olympic Committee to make London 2012 the “first sustainable Olympic and Paralympic Games”. And so an independent organisation, aptly given the title of the Commission for a Sustainable London 2012, was established to make it happen. At first glance, it seems that the London 2012 Organising Committee and the Olympic Delivery Authority seemed to be keeping their promise of sustainability. But last month, came the news that the CSL Ethics Commissioner Meredith Alexander had resigned over a sponsorship deal with Dow Chemical, and bought new ammunition to those who believe that the Olympics' sustainable and ethical image is perhaps just a facade.

It turns out Dow Chemical is sponsoring a £7million plastic wrap that will encircle the Olympic stadium in an effort to reduce winds reaching inside. In a video posted by Amnesty International, Alexander justifies her reasons for resigning, pointing out that this wrap is an unnecessary “optional extra”. The reason why Dow is such a controversial choice is that many people, believe that Dow carry the responsibility for 1984 Bhopal Disaster in India, a toxic gas leak at a chemical plant that has contributed to an estimated 25,000 deaths and over 500,000 related injuries. Dow didn’t actually own the Bhopal plant at the time of the disaster, and rightly can’t be held responsible for it happening. But in 2001, they bought out the company that did, Union Carbide. By buying into the legacy of Bhopal, Dow chose to take on the responsibility of dealing with the fallout from the disaster. Their subsequent failure to do so is where the argument lies.

As Alexander puts it: “when a company buys another company they get all the good stuff [...] but they [also] get the bad stuff”. In the same way that Dow chose to buy Union Carbide and their legacy, the Olympic organisers chose to associate themselves with Dow Chemical. And in doing so, they have inadvertently given their Olympic stamp of approval to the way in which Dow reacted to the legacy of the Bhopal Disaster and their neglect of the environmental and human responsibilities that came with it.

Dow isn’t the only sponsor – sorry, 'Official Olympic Partner' - that seems out of sync with the professed ethical vision of these Olympics. Perhaps I’m just being overly cynical but, going through the list of worldwide partners, the choice of McDonald's and Coca Cola seem more than a little ironic. The combination of the world’s largest fast food chain and a drinks company (which itself owns nearly 400 brands) that have both been cited as causes of obesity or associated conditions doesn’t scream “the educational value of good example” or “social responsibility” – just two of the things that make up the Fundamental Principles of Olympism. While these sponsorship choices may seem more laughable than potentially damaging, it’s the partnership with the oil giant BP that appears most questionable.

For a company with a significant history of both environmental and human rights 'slip ups', BP hardly feels like the best choice of sponsor of a 'sustainable' games. I’m not alone in thinking this way; 34 individuals from a variety of backgrounds including academia, charities and politics have come together to sign an open letter to the IOC and LOCOG. The letter highlights how the Olympics have failed to live up to their own code of ethics when they chose the oil company as their carbon offset partner. Perhaps one of most damaging effects this partnership may have, is BP’s promotion of the “seductive idea that barely any behavioural change is needed to combat climate change because offsetting effectively eliminates carbon emissions”. In other words, they are inviting the public to just sit back, relax and carry on burning the carbon-based fuels they are selling.

By giving BP such an endorsement, the Olympics is continuing to spread the myth that significant climate change can be averted by simply carrying on consuming fuels as usual and offsetting the carbon emissions. How, as the letter puts it, “one of the least sustainable companies on earth” came to be one of London 2012’s six official 'sustainability partners' shows not only how warped LOCOG’s view of sustainability is, but also suggests they are more interested in the lucrative sponsorship income from huge corporations than creating a truly ethical and environmentally conscious games.

The Olympic Charter (the set of rules for governing the games) states that among the IOC’s roles, it's expected to “encourage and support a responsible concern for environmental issues, [and] to promote sustainable development in sport” besides encouraging and supporting “the promotion of ethics and good governance”. Of its 16 listed roles, the award for the ‘most contradictory’ must surely go to rule number 10, that requires the IOC to “oppose any political or commercial abuse of sport or athletes”. If accepting sponsorship money from huge companies that look to improve their public image and cloak previous wrong-doings by associating with this iconic sporting event doesn’t count as 'commercial abuse', I’m not sure what does.

Jacques Rogge, President of the IOC has said: “quite simply, the Olympics would not be possible without our [sponsorship] partners”. Despite London 2012 currently costing the taxpayer £9.3billion (with estimates reaching as high as £20billion), over 40 percent of Olympic revenues still come from commercial sponsorships. I’m not arguing against subsidising the games through sponsorship - especially when taxpayers contribute so much already – I'm just questioning their choice of sponsors.

Why aren’t the IOC and LOCOG choosing to associate themselves with more ethical, genuinely sustainable companies? The organisers should use the popularity of the games and the benefits of association as an opportunity to demand high standards in ethics, sustainability and environmental awareness from anyone who wants to do business with them.

As it stands, the IOC receives sponsorship money from a small number of very big companies. Some of whom it seems, are much more interested in using the games as an opportunity to buy themselves some great PR and improve their public image. Instead, couldn't the IOC work with a large range of smaller companies that together could raise the same funds? Companies whose motivations and methods of operating are more in tune with both the original values of the Olympics and the philosophy of sustainable business.

Back in 2005, the London bid had a vision to “use the power of the Games to inspire change”. Seven years later, it’s important that neither the organisers, nor the public, forget the responsibility to live up to that pledge, and not allow the frantic hype that surrounds the games to cloud the real meaning of the word 'sustainable'.

While trawling the internet this morning, I came across something rather unusual. It was a video by Burton Snowboards showing off their collaboration with Lucasfilm to create a Star Wars™-themed snow park for kids at Sierra-at-Tahoe resort in California.

This Burton Star Wars™ Experience (yes, apparently the ™ is necessary every time you write Star Wars...™) is claimed in the video by Burton Global Resort Director Jeff Boliba as “an introduction to snowboarding” for kids aged three to six and by Sierra-At-Tahoe General Manager John Rice as an “amazing, forward-thinking way to teach young kids and get them excited about snowboarding.”

Perhaps but my cynical nature believes that it's probably more to do with Burton's officially-licensed range of Star Wars™ snowboarding gear that allows you to dress your little grom like R2D2, and probably have them resent you for it in later life.

At first, for a brief second, I actually thought this was kinda cool. You see, I have this weird dream to create the perfect snowboarding mountain wonderland, a tree-lined powder fantasy paradise complete with caves, hidden runs, weird sculptures to jib, buried treasure and lit by flaming torches at night, you know, that sort of thing – kind of like Lord of the Rings meets The Garden if you will.

So when I saw Yoda's Riglet Park complete with mini features like a halfpipe and banked slalom and some amazing chain-sawed sculptures of Wookies, Ewoks and Anakin with a stupid helmet – all made from 'enviromentally-friendly' fallen trees and reclaimed scrap no less ­– I was briefly hoodwinked into smiling.

But then I remembered one thing... I fucking hate Star Wars™!

It's probably due to the fact that I first saw the ironically-titled A New Hope when I was 14 – and so my brain had developed suitable critical powers to be hardened against George Lucas' merchandise-led brainwashing machine – but I have never been seduced by this thinly-veiled advert for cheap plastic tat.

How anyone can ignore the dodgy script about some quasi-religious power held by some tedious monks, excuse the heaps of politically-suspect characters and not want to punch Luke Skywalker in the face every time he appears on screen is beyond me. Seriously, Darth Vader is Playmobil villain with a permanent cold; Ewoks are just Care Bears from the Middle Ages; Chewbacca is what happens when you drop a Shih Tzu on its head at birth and then raise it on steroids; and don't even get me started on Jar Jar Binks... And if Lucasfilm hadn't cashed in enough, they are now they are re-releasing all the films again in 3D! Adding a third dimension of turd into a galaxy far, far away seems, to me, unnecessary at best.

Don't get me wrong, I think it's awesome that Burton are trying to create new, interesting ways for kids to get into snowboarding, but do you need some nasty film franchise product endorsement to make kids want to give shredding a go? Or is it just maybe a crafty way to sell Star Wars™ merchandise to the parents?

Snowboarding is rife with logos, endorsements and 'on-message' athletes, can't we at least spare the kids from this plastic corporatism for a short while? Shouldn't snowboarding be used as a way to teach kids important things about life - like confidence, perseverance and the value of the natural world - instead of a vehicle to sell toys?

And, finally, doesn't George Lucas have enough money yet?!

The timing couldn't have been better. Just as the UK was getting its annual winter snow spattering, Paul Chambers was in the court of appeal in London presenting his case for leniency to two senior judges. Whether Chambers appreciated the timing is another matter - it was snow which led to his whole predicament.

In January 2010, Chambers was on his way to Northern Ireland. He'd met a girl online and things were going well. He was looking forward to seeing her. But disaster struck in the form of snowfall. Frustrated, and waiting in Nottingham's Robin Hood airport, he reached for his phone and tweeted. “Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You've got a week and a bit to get your shit together otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high!!” Perhaps he thought the tweet would raise a smirk in a couple of his 690 followers. Perhaps he thought a few friends would sympathise with his frustration that snow was in the way of a meeting he was really looking forward to. Probably, he clicked send and thought nothing more about it.

Nothing, that is, until a week later when he was arrested at his workplace. That's one week later – by which time it was clear the airport had not been blown sky high. His tweet hadn't been picked up by intelligence officers scouring the land for terror threats. Rather, a staff member at Robin Hood airport had stumbled across it online and forwarded it to the police. Though neither the police nor the airport authorities thought the threat was credible, the arrest went ahead anyway. And the farce didn't end there. Chambers was tried. Found guilty. Appealed. Had his appeal quashed. And now, finally, is defending himself in the highest court in the land. His supposed crime, “Sending a public electronic message that was grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character contrary to the Communications Act 2003.”

Back in January, the world was forced to do without Wikipedia for 24 hours. Google, stopping short of shutting down, censored their logo with a thick black bar. These were acts of protest against Sopa, proposed laws being debated in the US congress which could allow the US government to force internet search engines to block content they suspect as being related to piracy. But, as Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales told the BBC, "Proponents of Sopa have characterised the opposition as being people who want to enable piracy or defend piracy. But that's not really the point. The point is the bill is so over broad and so badly written that it's going to impact all kinds of things that, you know, don't have anything to do with stopping piracy."

Put simply, the bill in its form at the time would have fundamentally changed the way the web functions. Rather than the entwined network we currently have, accusations of association with piracy would see links cut left, right and centre as US internet servers would be prohibited to link to your content for fear of being hauled up in front of a US court. The fundamentally democratic principles of the internet as they currently stand would be endangered, replaced with de facto policing by the US government. Following protest, the legislation is on hold until wider agreement can be found.

What links the Paul Chambers and SOPA cases is the way that those in the establishment have totally failed to understand the internet. They're governors and their instinct is to govern. In itself that's okay, but legislators have assumed that there's something fundamentally different about the internet which sets it apart from ordinary life. They're wrong. Sure, the internet is still a fairly novel technology – particularly if you're a bit older. But it is just a communications technology that facilitates the contact that people have anyway, in the same way the telephone does, or even the letter. If Paul Chambers had said what he said in the pub, the consequences would have been zero. Likewise, I've yet to see lending a DVD to a friend being criminalised alongside the infrastructure that helps it take place.

The internet spent its first couple of decades in happy freedom from legislative interference. Now, for various reasons, the rule makers want to make their mark on the online world. And that's fair enough. An online version of the wild west is in no one's interests, and some rules which govern behaviour are okay. But that rule making needs to be done properly.

There are some universal sporting truths that can't be disputed; surfers like warm, glassy breaks, skaters like smooth concrete and experimental architecture, and snowboarders love powder!

If any more proof were needed to the last of these adages, then I saw it firsthand a few weeks ago while out in Davos, Switzerland for the O'Neill Evolution. Quite simply, I have never seen it snow like it. It was constantly shitting it down for at least 48 non-stop, leaving many of the riders (and spectators) to ditch this lucrative 6-star TTR contest and head up the Jakobshorn to find fresh tracks.

In a straight choice it seems that this simple love of the ride will always trump the logo-heavy, energy drink-charged trick contests. In contrast to the gratuitous acrobatics that provide a snappy, easily-consumed spectacle for the media, the act of carving out a line is a far more subtle, refined – some may even say spiritual – form of athleticism. It's something far more organic and cerebral than the mechanical, rehearsed-to-perfection contest runs. The connoisseurs' choice. And two videos that have emerged this week showing off the creative potential of this slow-burning pleasure.

Firstly, was a short video of Austrian pro snowboarder Wolle Nyvelt. The video might not have been revolutionary in itself but it did shed some more light on Nyvelt's quest to take his snowboarding on a new path, shunning the big tricks (which he is more than capable of) in order to surf powder with a quiver of boards that hark back to the days of the Snurfer. These sticks are simple: no bindings, a leash and unorthodox shapes – and unlock a riding style that could be at home on a lazy, tropical break.

And building on this surfy outlook, the other video was by Signal Snowboards. The California-based company has been making a selection of experimental snowboards over the past year or so, as documented in their monthly Every Third Thursday videos. This time round, they made a snowboard surfboard hybrid, one that could be ridden both in the SoCal waves of Encinitas (demonstrated by HUCK cover alumnus Rob Machado) and the powder of Baldface in British Columbia. It even had a fin to help navigate through powder. How awesome is that?!

Yet, despite snowboarders' inherent love of riding powder, it still seems to be an under-represented side of the sport. Just compare the interest and list of sponsors for the Freeride World Tour and the TTR World Tour. And there are good reasons why. To find the best stuff, you have to venture off-piste and into the potential hazards of the backcountry, that means guides, shovels, transceivers, knowledge and patience. In short, it's harder.

But also it seems that it goes against the culture of our times. In an age of instant-gratification, escalating consumption and the demand for the next sensation, this slow-burn doesn't seem to fit easily any lucrative business model. There just aren't the crowds gathered around watching to sell product to.

And maybe that's a good thing? The likes of Signal and Nyvelt are showing that progression isn't necessarily doing what has come before in a bigger and better way, fighting to the top of the pile and seeking applause. Sometimes it's a little bit more subtle, taking a few steps back and going on a different path.

And if the direction is good, one it'll day find a discerning audience. After all, snowboarders do love powder!

As someone who often works from home, I spend a lot of time – perhaps more than is healthy – on Facebook. Judging by the green blobs in the chat sidebar, I'm not the only one. But the problem isn't just wasting time, it seems that the not-hooked-to-Facebook crowd is now very small.

Which is why the recent announcement from the Zuckerberg empire is pretty interesting. In February 2010, it emerged that a new Facebook data centre that was to open in Oregon would be powered, not by the renewable hydro electricity which makes up 60% of the energy generated in the state, but by coal. Why? Because it was cheaper of course. Days later, Greenpeace responded. They launched a campaign demanding that Facebook be run entirely on renewable energy. Nearly two years later, Facebook and Greenpeace have come to a collaboration. Facebook hasn't booted out the coal yet, but in a joint statement they've agreed to at least show a “preference” for greener energy, and to start thinking about how they might get the green ball rolling.

But hang on a minute! Greenpeace is better known for driving boats in front of whaling ships or lending its support to radical campaigns like  Climate Camp, not cosying up with with a corporate behemoth worth billions! And about that joint statement, it's nice but it's hardly ground breaking stuff. A document stuffed with solid plans and binding commitments it is not. So what's going on here?

It wasn't so long ago that climate change was at the top of the agenda. Sure, the vocal but scientifically illiterate crowd of deniers were out in force, but something productive seemed to be happening. Then, the recession hit. Trillions vanished from the global economy, jobs were lost and government finances in chaos. In that context, for many climate change has become irrelevant. The latest climate deal struck in Durban has caused some excitement. A game changer it may be, but the game was in such a bad way before the talks that anything would have been an improvement.

In short, after a fortnight of talks, the world's nations have agreed to arrange some more talks. According to the Durban agreement, by 2015 there needs to be a plan for carbon reduction which must come into force by 2020. The Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012 and, as Canada's recent withdrawal from it shows, it was pretty toothless anyway. So between now and 2020, the only thing driving down emissions will be a few voluntary targets. We could be in serious trouble.

So with governments falling at almost every hurdle, Greenpeace's action is pretty logical. If legislation isn't going to force the necessary carbon reductions that one way or another we're going to have to make if we want our planet's climate to remain at least vaguely stable, then someone else is going to have to lead the way. And the hook up of Greenpeace and Facebook shows how this is likely to progress.

Once upon a time, personal responsibility was the line being pushed. We were all to change our light bulbs and drive less, and that was going to solve the problem. Of course, reducing the emissions for which we're personally responsible is a good thing, but it'll never be enough to make any real impact (plus, I reckon, there are some unsavoury politics behind it). Then direct action campaigning went into overdrive with things like Climate Camp and Climate Rush. But although most of what the activists were demanding made sense, mainstream culture wasn't ready for their message – the cave-dwelling hippy myth will take a long time to shift.

Which is why the Facebook thing is such a good idea. In almost all cases, law reflects pre-existing cultural values. Murder and theft, for example, were culturally unacceptable long before they were illegal. So Greenpeace are playing a tactical game. Getting a big corporation like Facebook to change their energy policy will make a tangible difference to emissions. But it'll also prove that being green doesn't mean huddling around a candle for warmth while gnawing on home grown turnips.

We need a massive cultural shift to deal with climate change0 and, after a few false starts, it looks like Greenpeace is on to something. Like it or loathe it, there's little that's more universal right now than Facebook. An unexpected starting point maybe, but with a new year on the way I think our prospects for actually dealing with climate change might just be looking up again.

It’s a brisk November night in central London, and two new snowboard films are being screened simultaneously in the capital. In the blue corner and taking centre stage at the BFI IMAX in Waterloo is Curt Morgan and Travis Rice’s latest snowboarding blockbuster, The Art Of Flight: in the red corner, in a secluded Shoreditch cinema, Nick Waggoner of Sweetgrass Productions is introducing his latest offering, Solitaire.

The two films represent the crossroads that snowboard films have come to of late. Turn left, and you’ll find companies like Sweetgrass Productions, a five-strong Colorado-based team that pride themselves on their organic, slow-to-mature films. Take a right and you’ll end up at Brain Farm Cinema, where big money meets big mountain riding. Established back in 2005, they were responsible for 2008’s hit That’s it, That’s All, which featured a similar all star cast of big mountain shredders, and their recognisable Planet Earth-style cinematography.

At a basic level, the two films do have some similarities; they both took two years to make and they’re both about exploring uncharted terrain. But the far-flung settings of the films are where the similarities stop. While The Art Of Flight crew rented 15 top-of-the-range helicopters and had a treasure trove of hi-tech camera equipment (valued somewhere in the “millions” according to Morgan) at their disposal, Solitaire was a human-powered production with not a helicopter or snowmobile in sight.

Filmed in six-month stints, the Sweetgrass team shot Solitaire exclusively in South America. The final product almost seems like a backcountry adventure that just happened to be caught on camera. None of the riders that feature in the film are given their own specific segments and they’re not even named until the credits. Also missing are any all-or-nothing, star-making set pieces that have become the bread and butter of snowboard flicks. There are no park or urban sections and the shots of riders churning through deep power are juxtaposed with riders skidding down icy couloirs and being battered by wind and sleet – just like real snowboarding. By sacrificing the short, adrenaline-fuelled lines that are common place in the genre, they’ve created a realistic, engaging film that feels much more at home in the mountains rather than just showing off for the cameras.

Sweetgrass’s adventurous, organic attitude towards snowboarding is shared by backcountry talisman Jeremy Jones. His 2010 film Deeper saw Jones and his cohort (including Travis Rice) dispense with helicopters and snowmobiles, and access their descents by a combination of hiking, camping and climbing. Both Solitaire and Deeper focus on exploring and experiencing the mountain ranges that they feature. Substituting the ‘fly in, tear up, fly out’ angle for a more narrative driven one, these films are as much about being out in the wilderness as they are is about riding it.

Incidentally, December 14, 2011 will mark a hundred years since Roald Amundsen and his crew first set foot at the South Pole. This date not only marks an incredible achievement, but also acts as a timely reminder of our sense of adventure. With our lives increasingly being lived virtually, perhaps it isn’t a coincidence then that these films are focusing on escaping the status updates and twitter feeds that clutter modern life for a more simplistic, natural experience? Indeed, Solitaire has even earned Nick Waggoner a place in National Geographic's Adventurers of The Year 2012.

In contrast to Solitaire, The Art Of Flight has managed to cement itself in the popular psyche with an estimated budget around $2 million – heavilu bankrolled by Red Bull. The trailer has racked up 6.4 million Youtube hits to date and was tweeted about by the likes of 50 Cent and Justin Timberlake when it was unveiled. The latter even attended the New York premiere with Owen Wilson making an appearance too. The Art Of Flight is snowboarding Hollywood style.

While it should be praised for bringing big mountain snowboarding to the masses, it should be remembered that this is a film that was only made possible because of its unique funding. So will the success of The Art Of Flight set a trend for a variety of big investment in other production houses, helping to fuel creativity in snowboarding or will it just lead to Brain Farm making another untouchably expensive  feature in a league of their own?

So back at the crossroads, should we turn left and see what a small crew of intrepid filmmakers can produce with a minimal budget and hard graft? Or go right and see what a bigger crew with millions of dollars and a Cineflex camera can do? Regardless of which road you prefer, what’s important is that both Brain Farm and Waggonner are pushing the boundaries of snowboard filmmaking. As long as they inspire a next generation of riders, filmmakers and explorers, does it really matter which route we take?