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"Sociological critics are waste makers."
-- Andy Warhol

Intifada Terrorista

"Then Peter told him, 'Explain to us this parable.'"  
-- Matthew 15 International Standard Version (ISV)

How to Raise a Boy

The teacher, though, had plenty to say, and much of it was full of the sort of details every parent dreams of hearing. William was one of her brightest students, reading at a third-grade level already, and he’s diligent and patient and “picks the right friends.” The only struggle she’d had with him was keeping him challenged: “He’s so far ahead of almost everybody else that I sometimes worry he’s bored.” She said he’s personable and friendly; “when you think of what you would want a kid in your class to act like, it would be William.” It was around now that I started tapping my foot uneasily and looking warily around the room. Something about this felt vaguely wrong in a way I couldn’t put my finger on, and what she said next said cinched it for me: “He’s just the golden boy.”

5 MARCH 2018     THE CUT     WILL LEITCH

(New York Magazine) New York City -- ... For generations, boys have been raised in environments that seemed designed to cultivate, and then sublimate, aggression, sometimes right up to the border of sociopathy. (We recoil at Fight Club, but it basically depicts the secret life of boys aged 8 to 14. Men are Tyler Durden spliced with Beavis.) But those masculine scripts seem especially problematic today: Trained by superhero movies, inspired by planet-straddling athlete-gods and tech tycoons more powerful than entire governments, boys are reared to tame their aggressions, then asked to navigate a bleak, winner-take-all economic, landscape. Thanks in part to more enlightened attitudes about gender and parenting, it is hard not to see male entitlement and aggression as toxic forces degrading our culture. But it is also hard not to notice that the world is now run by the aggressive and the bullying.  Read More

  

141972388X

The Truth Is Out

"Logos"

14 FEBRUARY 2018       WIKIPEDIA

Plotinus used a trinity concept that consisted of "The One", the "Spirit" and "Soul". The comparison with the Christian Trinity is inescapable, but for Plotinus these were not equal and "The One" was at the highest level, with the "Soul" at the lowest. For Plotinus, the relationship between the three elements of his trinity is conducted by the outpouring of Logos from the higher principle, and eros(loving) upward from the lower principle. Plotinus relied heavily on the concept of Logos, but no explicit references to Christian thought can be found in his works, although there are significant traces of them in his doctrine. Plotinus specifically avoided using the term Logos to refer to the second person of his trinity. However, Plotinus influenced Victorinus who then influenced Augustine of Hippo. Centuries later, Carl Jung acknowledged the influence of Plotinus in his writings.  Read More https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logos

Bat for Lashes - Two Suns (Echo, Parlophone)

Best of Asian Style Beats & Trip-Hop & Instrumental Vol. 1

Uploaded to YouTube by S!X - Music on 2 July 2017

Mortal Purification

"We need the tonic of wildness...At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature." 

— Henry David Thoreau

Uploaded to YouTube by Utada Hikaru 18 January 2017

Sion Sono swan dives into Shinjuku’s chaos

19 JANUARY 2017       JAPAN TIMES       MARK SCHILLING

TOKYO (Japan Times) -- [Shinjuku Swan II (2017) - www.ss-2.jp] Celebrated abroad for films that mash up everything from extreme sex and gore to Christian imagery and classical music, Sion Sono has emerged as one of the most distinctive directors in Japanese cinema this century.

His breakthrough came in 2001 with “Suicide Club,” in which 54 teenage girls kill themselves en masse, and he has since directed films such as “Love Exposure” (2008),a four-hour tour de force whose hero is an “upskirt” photographer, and “Himizu” (2011), a near-future dystopian drama themed on that year’s nuclear disaster. 

At home, Sono’s biggest hit is “Shinjuku Swan,” a 2015 comic thriller set in the disreputable world of “scouts” — guys who roam the streets of Shinjuku and other entertainment districts recruiting women for the sex trade. Based on a best-selling manga series by Ken Wakui that has generated 38 paperback volumes, “Shinjuku Swan” earned a solid ¥1.33 billion at the box office. 

Now Sono and producer Mataichiro Yamamoto, whose credits include the 1985 Paul Schrader drama “Mishima” and the 2009 Takashi Miike actioner “Crows Zero II,” have teamed up again for the sequel, “Shinjuku Swan II,” which opens on Jan. 21. 

This time our hero, the good-hearted and two-fisted Tatsuhiko (Go Ayano), is swept up in a turf war between his scout team, Burst, whose boss has decided to expand into Yokohama, and a Yokohama team called Wizard, which is led by the violently explosive Taki (Tadanobu Asano). As the two teams clash — and Wizard mounts a counter-offensive on Burst’s home ground — the action and intrigue escalate, with powerful yakuza bosses upping the life-or-death ante. 

Fans of both the manga and the first film will find many of their favorite characters in the sequel (though viewers new to the story may initially feel lost in the on-screen crowd), while the action scenes, supervised by the Hong Kong-trained Kenji Tanigaki, are larger in scale and impact. Sono has an obvious affinity for the material — his 1995 “Bad Film” and 2014 “Tokyo Tribe” also feature big pitched battles between rival gangs — but his signature style and concerns are harder to spot. 

Speaking to The Japan Times just before the film’s gala premiere at Roppongi Hills Toho Cinemas, Yamamoto says that he’d always planned to make a sequel. 

“With a big manga like that you can’t tell the whole story in just one film,” he says. “But it depended on whether the fans found the first film interesting. If a lot of fans didn’t come to see it, financially we couldn’t justify making the second installment.” 

With a sly glance in Yamamoto’s direction, Sono says the first film’s success didn’t surprise him in the slightest. Read More

Uploaded to YouTube by King Lion Deep House on 10 December 2016

I Know

Uploaded to YouTube by CNN Live on 16 January 2017

600-year-old Buddha statue emerges from lake

16 JANUARY 2017       CNN

An ancient Buddha statue has been discovered under the water of a reservoir in China's Jiangxi Province - and there may be more archaeological discoveries. Read More / Watch

These six utopian cities of the future will help you re-imagine life on Earth

17 JANUARY 2017       CNN       ALAN MARSHALL

(CNN) -- "Utopia", a book by English statesman, lawyer and clergyman Thomas More (1487-1535), turned 500 years old last month.

A fictional rendering of social philosophy, the book describes an exemplary society on an imaginary island in an unknown place faraway across the seas. 

Coined by More from the Greek "ou-topos", meaning no place, or nowhere, the word utopia has become adopted in the English language to mean a place where everything is ideal or perfect. 

In celebrating the 500th birthday of "Utopia", the Ecotopia 2121 project, of which I am the coordinator, is harnessing More's spirit to predict the futures of 100 real cities around the world -- if they somehow managed to become super eco-friendly. 

Of course, modern utopias need to be eco-friendly to overcome the global environmental crisis. Given that cities may be home to 80% of humanity by the end of the century, they can only be sustainable if environmentalism is one of their core features. 

The cities of Ecotopia 2121 are presented in the form of "scenario art", which involves a review of both global and local environmental challenges as well as their unique histories and cultures. This allows for a diversity of future scenarios rather than one common vision of the "future city". 

What you will see below are a series of artworks, but this is not an art project. We use art as a means of analysis and communication. With that in mind, here are six ecotopian cities of my own creation that emerged from the project, one from each inhabited continent. View / Read More 

 

"The 6 Deadliest Sea Creatures You Never Want to Meet"

Azula (2016)

きゃりーぱみゅぱみゅ - 原宿いやほい , Kyary Pamyu Pamyu - HARAJUKU IYAHOI

Uploaded to YouTube by kyarypamyupamyuTV on 10 January 2017