A teacher once said to me: “A society pays for what it values.” If so, our society values commercial entertainment, including spectator sports, orders of magnitude more than it values civics defined as the rights and duties exercised by citizens in a democracy. What if we lived in a society that valued both equally? 1. […]
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Orientation Questions about fame and celebrity What does it mean to be famous? Does being famous go all the way back to hunter-gatherers or does it have an origin later in history? What does it mean to be a celebrity? Is it common in all societies or do celebrities emerge at a certain point in […]
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This week’s News on China. Sources: • China calls for a “roadmap” to a two-state solution “China calls for ceasefire, UN peace conference to end Israel-Gaza conflict” “Israeli military widens ground offensive to southern Gaza” “PA thanks China for sending aid to Gazans in hour of need: Palestinian diplomat” • US Secretary of Commerce counters […]
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This week’s News on China in 2 minutes. • China suspends sales of U.S. company Micron • China’s food security faces the challenge of an aging rural workforce • Two Ming Dynasty ships found in South China Sea • Tibetan village turned into a large Buddhist art factory
No one who frequents the dark auditoriums is really an atheist…Whenever there is a white screen in a black room a new religion has been established…We enter into the darkness of an artificial grotto. A luminous dust is projected and dances on a screen. We cross time and space, until some solemn music dissolves the […]
It involved bringing out the irregular or peculiar from society’s peripheries – at least as popularly perceived at the time. Granted a national, broadcasting stage, various persons of despair would perform, if only for a spectacular, brief moment. Cue the chants of a studio audience and the threat of physical confrontation. And the late Jerry […]
Orientation Can language limit thought? If a dogmatic belief system can narrow the kind of vocabulary used, can language itself limit the kind of thinking that is going on? How free are people to think their own thoughts independently of language? My answer in this article is that language can trap thought. In his book […]
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In 1919, South Carolina’s Charleston Museum acquired an unusually massive jar bearing the inscription “made at Stoney bluff; / for making dis old gin enuff / May 13 – 1859 – / Dave & / Baddler”. The following year another large, alkaline-glazed vessel came into the museum’s possession bearing the same date and names within […]
The post Pottery, Poetry, and Protest first appeared on Dissident Voice.
all we are saying… Today, I took a photo walk around the Welling Court Mural Project in Astoria, Queens, NYC. “Imagine a city where graffiti wasn’t illegal, a city where everybody could draw whatever they liked. Where every street was awash with a million colors and little phrases. Where standing at a bus stop was […]
The post “The walls are the publishers of the poor” first appeared on Dissident Voice.
Koonalda Cave This is quite shocking,” declared South Australia’s Attorney-General and Aboriginal Affairs Minister, Kyam Maher. “These caves are some of the earliest evidence of Aboriginal occupation of that part of the country.” That evidence was subtracted this month by acts of vandalism inflicted on artwork in Koonalda Cave on the Nullarbor Plain, claimed to […]
The post Country for Bad Dreams first appeared on Dissident Voice.
