I’m getting prepared to DJ the roller derby bout today. Thinking about sports-music — the stuff that gets the crowd pumped. A number of quirky tunes came up in my searches, including this catchy number:
But it reminded me of the Das Racist tune which I might just play.
The Das Racist video was created by the brilliant Dallas Penn by the way.
Filed under Animals, communication, cultural appropriation, music, representation, roller derby
I was trying to embed a BBC video of a mole eating a worm. Stymied.
But here we have the Residents “Final Confrontation” from the Mole Show.
Good enough for government work!
Filed under Animals, documentary, music
Damn this is a good mashup. Taxi Driver vs. early Walt Disney. I really like the movie theater scene because it makes visible some wild Mickey Mouse animal abuse that I’d never noticed before. Not to mention the most scathing critique of corporate sanitizing of Times Square that I’ve seen.
Filed under Animals, art, capitalism, juxtaposition, media
The New York Times invited only prominent white men to discuss the ethics of eating meat. Blisstree remedy this by inviting Carol J. Adams, the preeminent feminist vegetarian ethical thinker writing today to respond. She begins by noting the invisibility of identity in the New York Times choices:
Let’s remember the insight about who is “marked” and who is not marked in our culture. Until Black Liberation and Women’s Liberation began to change consciousness in the late 60s and early 70s, white men were unmarked, that is, their whiteness and maleness were untheorized and unremarkable. We all have to resist a kind of “colonization of consciousness” in which we participate in maintaining what is normative because that is what we are used to seeing. The irony here is that the Times helps to create what is normative and who the experts are. Whoever is quoted in interviews and is invited to be a guest writer in the Magazine section, becomes more well known.
via Author Carol J. Adams Weighs In On The Ethicist’s All-Male Meat Panel.
And of course, the delicious core of the argument: that gendered representation is tied to how comfortable Americans are with meat eating. Adam’s continues:
Does it speak to the gendered politics of meat-eating? How much time do we have?
First, it begins with the presumption that meat eating as a normative practice can be defended, especially here in the United States. I don’t believe in general that it can be, not here in the United States.
Our culture is heavily invested in the identification of meat eating with manliness: The idea that meat protein is better for you; the notion that men need to eat meat to be strong (the countless vegan athletes who disprove this notwithstanding); the identification of veganism with women or with gay men (i.e., it is okay for those “kinds” of people to give up eating meat)! The fixation on hunting as being an important part of our evolutionary heritage is part of the sexual politics of meat, (and interestingly one of the panelists, Michael Pollan describes his very masculine experience of hunting wild animals).
Then there is the philosophical tradition from which much animal theory is written that emphasizes the rational and distrusts the emotional. I am part of a group of feminist writers arguing that a feminist care ethic helps us to see the important of choosing to be vegan. But if caring is disdained, then those kinds of arguments get drowned out in favor of the “rational.”
There is also the status of the other animals in a patriarchal world, one in which they are feminized and sexualized. (I argue in The sexual politics of meat that all animals are made female in image or language through meat eating.)
via Author Carol J. Adams Weighs In On The Ethicist’s All-Male Meat Panel Page 2 |.
Filed under Animals, capitalism, feminism, food, health, representation, vegetarian
Thanks to the Fader for the photo of Lil' B.
The Based God, Lil B gave a lecture at NYU a couple of days ago. Here are a few of my favorite gems:
I tell you, bruh, I was looking at insects. I do my observations when I go out. If I become a neurosurgeon or I’m about to come into some bugs, I’m rocking. With the bugs, man, you just be looking at them. Because I was having these big ant problems in my house. It was crazy. And these are people in their own way, too. As I was studying these ant colonies infesting my house daily, I’m not kidding you, I left food out and 20 minutes later r-r-r-r-r and I’m like, man, they already know! They get it down pat! And real talk, like, seeing these ants and studying them and respecting them, it’s like, man, they’re in their own community too. They’re trying to survive. They love. They fight. They telling themselves something. We can’t understand, but one day we will. I’m trying hard to figure it out. I’m there with them. We’re very smart animals, you know, or whatever we are. Organisms? What are we? What do y’all think we are? Is there like a fact? Does anybody have any proof what we are? Live that life, experience it, travel, and come up with your theories man. Read the books, too, but experience your own. It’s crazy.
via Based Scripture: The Full Transcript of Lil B’s Lecture at NYU « The FADER.
Real talk: Don’t ever deny the voices in your head either. When you’re sitting at home alone, right, we all go through depression, anxiety. You’re by yourself and you hear those voices going wild in your head, in your unconscious, those angels by your side, your mental, your gut feeling, your heart. Listen to them. Let your mind tell you how you feel. Let your body tell you. Be in tune with your rare—this is a very rare thing. I’m like a robot. Hey look, tell your hand to do this. [Raises hand]. It’s like, man, that’s amazing! That’s amazing to me.
via Based Scripture: The Full Transcript of Lil B’s Lecture at NYU « The FADER.
I was a product of the media and my environment. I seen the people I like with gold teeth, and I was like, man, I want gold teeth. He looked like me and I wanted gold teeth. Everybody can get a grill in here. Everybody should embrace that. Get gold teeth! Don’t be thinking so hard, like, “Oh, man, I can’t get gold teeth.” Who is going to say what to you? We got love in our heart. We good people. Can’t nobody tell you nothing if you doing it from the love and you’re embracing people. Try to have fun and try to be as less ignorant as possible and meet people. I’m trying to set a tone for the younger generations.
via Based Scripture: The Full Transcript of Lil B’s Lecture at NYU « The FADER.
My grammar and spelling and how I say things might not be technically what we hear or textbook, but as long as you understand me? You have to work as a human with empathy and love in your heart, staying positive and staying based and staying normal. You have to make an effort to learn about people. You have to make an effort at your job. You have to make an effort to care.
via Based Scripture: The Full Transcript of Lil B’s Lecture at NYU « The FADER.
[Audience member: “Do you like to paint?”] I definitely do, man. My mom was a painter. Ay, bruh, feel me. But you know what I do rock with? My favorite is watercolors. I’m a watercolors type of dude, so definitely collect some of my rare paintings.
via Based Scripture: The Full Transcript of Lil B’s Lecture at NYU « The FADER.
Filed under academics, Animals, art, capitalism, communication, hip hop, learning, music, nature
Starlings above Rome. Photo from the Telegraph.
Rather than affecting every other flock member, orientation changes caused only a bird’s seven closest neighbors to alter their flight. That number stayed consistent regardless of flock density, making the equations “topological” rather than critical in nature.
“The orientations are not at a critical point,” said Giardina. Even without criticality, however, changes rippled quickly through flocks — from one starling to seven neighbors, each of which affected seven more neighbors, and so on.
The closest statistical fit for this behavior comes from the physics of magnetism, and describes how the electron spins of particles align with their neighbors as metals become magnetized.
via Starling Flocks Behave Like Flying Magnets | Wired Science | Wired.com.
Filed under Animals, communication, learning, nature
I’ve been a vegetarian for almost twenty years. For me it is easy, fun and a delicious. I no longer see vegetarianism as a sacrifice in any way. Eating is celebration and to eat vegetables is delightful.
Mark Bittmann, the New York Times food critic seems to be building a path to live with joyous cruelty-free food:
Many vegan dishes, however, are already beloved: we eat fruit salad, peanut butter and jelly, beans and rice, eggplant in garlic sauce. The problem faced by many of us — brought up as we were with plates whose center was filled with a piece of an animal — is in imagining less-traditional vegan dishes that are creative, filling, interesting and not especially challenging to either put together or enjoy.
My point here is to make semi-veganism work for you. Once a week, let bean burgers stand in for hamburgers, leave the meat out of your pasta sauce, make a risotto the likes of which you’ve probably never had — and you may just find yourself eating “better.”
These recipes serve about four, and in all, the addition of salt and pepper is taken for granted. This is not a gimmick or even a diet. It’s a path, and the smart resolution might be to get on it.
via No Meat, No Dairy, No Problem – NYTimes.com.
Kudos to Bittmann for the column, approach, and recipes. To have veganism be the suggestion for New Years resolutions is wonderful. The New York Times, one of the most venerable newspapers in North America offers a marker of the persuasiveness of vegan choice in the current public dialogue.
Filed under Animals, communication, food, health, representation
An imprisoned chimp in Louisiana where they do Hepetitis C research. Photo by Tim Meuller in the NYT
Nice to hear that the United States has decided to stopped funding research on Chimpanzees. I’m not feeling the excemptions:
The committee identified two areas where it said the use of chimpanzees could be necessary. One is research on a preventive vaccine for hepatitis C. The committee could not agree on whether this research fit the criteria and so left that decision open.
In the second area, research on immunology involving monoclonal antibodies, the committee concluded that experimenting on chimps was not necessary because of new technology, but because the new technology was not widespread, projects now under way should be allowed to reach completion.
via U.S. Suspends Use of Chimps in New Research – NYTimes.com.
It does seem like a victory for some of the cultural arguments about animal rights. The statement by the director of the National Institute of Health begins with these explanations:
Chimpanzees are our closest relatives in the animal kingdom, providing exceptional insights into human biology and the need for special consideration and respect. While used very selectively and in limited numbers for medical research, chimpanzees have served an important role in advancing human health in the past. However, new methods and technologies developed by the biomedical community have provided alternatives to the use of chimpanzees in several areas of research.
Lets note that the development of scientific alternatives is a key theme that Collins uses to justify his decision. This suggests there are tangible rewards for those activists who focus on the alternatives to animals in scientific research.
Collins’ argument about the closeness of Chimps to humans is a non-starter for me — I sympathize with all beings that can suffer regardless of cuteness or similarity to me. I also think it is a temporary persuader for most people.
But in this case, twenty years of making arguments into the public sphere about primates has saturated the knowledge frame of a few decision-makers.
Filed under Animals, communication, learning, protest, representation
Life of refinement 