April 2012
2 posts
The day Louis Vuitton was closed
Barcelona, 29th March 2011. The day awakes to a Sunday mood. The shops are closed, there’s no laughter of children on their way to school. A general strike is scheduled for today in protest for… well, probably no one agrees exactly for what: against the sky rocketing unemployment rates, against corruption, against the financial system and banking institutions, against the government’s austerity...
“I will do such things – what they are yet, I know not; but they shall be the...”
– in Howard Jacobson’s latest chronicle on The Independent -
When did we stop seeing modesty as a virtue?
March 2012
13 posts
Against Scientific Masturbation
A few months ago I happened to be at a conference speakers’ dinner sitting across a young economy professor. His department had been granted a huge lump of EU money for research. (Meaning the conference, and therefore the dinner, were kindly being paid by EU taxpayers).
Having sat all day at the conference failing to see any connection, let alone application, of the array of presentations, papers...
Mr. Obrist must be really tired
Am I the only one who is getting a bit exhausted of the omnipresence of Hans-Ulrich Obrist? Don’t get me wrong. I do admire his ubiquity and versatility as curator-critic-interviewer-biographer-historian-lecturer-etc…. but I begin to feel a certain repetition and boredom in this prolific activity. And yes, I do try to just look away, ignoring the stacks of his books in every Art bookshop and...
The Perplexities of the Unemployed Young Graduate
The unemployed young graduate (I shall just write the young graduate from now so as to avoid the pleonasm) comes out of University, tender and hopeful, and is faced with his first perplexity:
1 - All those years of superior education did not prepare him at all to actually do the job he was supposedly trained for.
But in times of crisis further perplexities follow:
2 – Right now there is...
What the Fetishization of Social Media Is Costing... →
It’s costing us plain sanity. Specially when people post on Tumblr about a Tweet about a Pinterest link they saw on Facebook. Said link was obviously a reply to a question on Quora about the relevance of Google+. And now let me check-in on Foursquare.
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Financial Sector - A Nuts & Bolts Guide
I found this little gem in News from Nowhere - Radical and Community Bookshop in Liverpool. Demystifying the Financial Sector - A Nuts & Bolts Guide is a little volume that walks you through the financial sector giving straight forward short explanations for a myriad of topics.
It’s part of a corporate critical research project by Corporate Watch called Banking on Crisis.
A bit...
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February 2012
7 posts
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Neighbors with a bit more than white fences
A few days ago this interesting article by Paul Theroux was published in the New York Times.
Beautifully written, it documents Theroux’s two day trip across the border - meaning the huge metallic fence - that separates Nogales, Arizona, USA from Nogales, Mexico, after which he returned to “homeland” with his eyes more open and his teeth whiter (more on that below).
Not sure what I find more...
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Pealing a Pomegranate without corrupting any aril
#part of the Immediate Satisfaction Series
Sit down. Make sure you have everything you need: a pomegranate; a knife; a bowl, a napkin; some good music playing.
Make an incision into the top of the pomegranate, small enough to be sure that you won’t cut through the arils. It needs to be a small careful superficial incision - just enough to cut through the hard rind without corrupting the pulp....
“For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but...”
– Matthew 13:12, King James Bible (Cambridge Ed.)
thinking about bailouts… and about all those who bought Plasma TV’s on credit.
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“I can’t think you’re mean ‘cause I volunteered to be misled.”
– excerpt of the song You Will Love This Song, by Amber Rubarth
thinking of all those that complain about the “system” and simply don’t do anything (not even - and namely - Vote!).
January 2012
2 posts
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Daily Snippets of Immediate Satisfaction
We are doomed to being dissatisfied. Frustrated. Haunted by the fact that “there’s something missing”….
Everything, every day is a never ending (better said never endable) task. Perennially suspended, unfinished. Never enough. Never closed. That Facebook feed never ceasing to show new stories, the flow of emails making productivity levels plunge… and then there’s all the maintenance – eating,...
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