Category: Culture

Dissent has a very interesting article about the use of the postal system as a bank, a return to an older, more reliable model here. A postal bank would be used for deposits and other day to day transactions, providing a public good to a vast amount of the citizenry.

No, seriously. While Francis Fukuyama may have declared its end due to an emergent liberal hegemony in the intellectual sphere, history is officially ending because a lot of people just don’t believe it anymore. Or, at least that is how they act. Western culture with its cannibalistic tendency, has become, once again, unmoored and may not have the capacity to regain its composure. A belief in history, however difficult to absorb, is necessary to stem this descent.

Its contrary is also true: namely, that an assurance in the betterment held by the future is also disappearing. More ghosts for the attic.

The inevitability of dominance in the future held by western exceptionalists was shattered by the piercings of terrorism and its response. The failure was the exceptionalism since that led to rigidification that could not accommodate the burgeoning realities of demographics: the South, or the Third World, or whatever category that you lumpen the proletariat into was younger and more ready to adapt and bear the burden of tomorrow.

These videos make my knees weak. This time the crazy Russian climbers are in Shanghai.

Yes, I love Engrenages, The Fall, Borgen and other European television series but damn, True Detective is the shit. Half way though its 8 episode season, it just keeps getting better.

I normally stay away from politics on this blog but WTF? Schools denying food to children and throwing out lunches because parents are behind in payments?

Nice. What a legacy. These people should be ashamed of themselves.

Some stunning examples of modern home design from the UK architecture firm Hyde + Hyde .

I especially appreciate the calm esthetics of The Photographers Home.

A tragedy that highlights the fact that mental illness knows no bounds. At some point I will post my portraits from East Hastings in Vancouver but each time I look at them I just get sad. Not much else to say.

Here is a photo essay from the 1960s looking at heroin addicts and their addiction.

Amusing from the streets of Paris. This guerrilla artist replaces advertising with classical art. Thank god there are still people that reject the corporate materialism that we are forced to consume.

I love these two especially:

Keichu, the great Zen teacher of the Meiji era, was the head of Tofuku, a cathedral in Kyoto. One day the governor of Kyoto called upon him for the first time.

His attendant presented the card of the governor, which read: Kitagaki, Governor of Kyoto.

“I have no business with such a fellow,” said Keichu to his attendant. “Tell him to get out of here.”

The attendant carried the card back with apologies. “That was my error,” said the governor, and with a pencil he scratched out the words Governor of Kyoto. “Ask your teacher again.”

“Oh, is that Kitagaki?” exclaimed the teacher when he saw the card. “I want to see that fellow.”

And my other favorite:

A Zen student came to Bankei and complained: “Master, I have an ungovernable temper. How can I cure it?”

“You have something very strange,” replied Bankei. “Let me see what you have.”

“Just now I cannot show it to you,” replied the other.

“When can you show it to me?” asked Bankei.

“It arises unexpectedly,” replied the student.

“Then,” concluded Bankei, “it must not be your own true nature. If it were, you could show it to me at any time. When you were born you did not have it, and your parents did not give it to you. Think that over.”

So after binge watching the amazing third season after yoga on Sunday, I was told that a fourth season had also already aired.

I’m watching episode 1 now. Looks like Breaking Bad season 2 is on hold. 🙂