CRE8

http://www.flickr.com/photos/russell-higgs/4290223373/

Bus Stop 23

http://www.flickr.com/photos/russell-higgs/5195073023/

COMMONPLACE

... from the pages of the print edition of the Hackney Citizen

... Commonplace ... online episode archive ...

... http://www.flickr.com/photos/folkushackney/sets/72157625566703442/

a SPACE ODYSSEY

Stik meets Krishnamurti, the Great Outdoors, Samhain 2010

NEWS

.. A secondary school in Stoke Newington, Hackney, London, claims to have almost eradicated homophobic bullying after it started teaching lessons on gay history.

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23891416-anti-gay-bullies-are-taught-a-lesson-or-two.do

"Anti-gay bullies are taught a lesson or two"

"caring" is all too often an excuse for being controlling

"My son is in his late 30s and drifts aimlessly through life. How do I motivate him?"

To which I replied ... What does it matter if he is "drifting aimlessly". I suppose if he was some kind of career drone you'd be happy. There most probably is no point to existence other than to explore the experience. And there is an infinite number of ways for each of us to choose how we are going to do that. Get on with your own autonomous adult life choices and let him get on with his.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/sep/23/my-son-drifts-through-life

What is revolutionary activity?

3 brief general priorities of mine:

... I believe in trying ideas out, living ideas, putting them into practice, making commitments and experimenting, rather than just collecting ideas in books on shelves or just discussing them endlessly. Doing and Being. Do Be Do Be Do.

... I also believe in being consciously fallible, imperfect. Being too right-on can just end up making people feel defensive, guilty, apologetic, cornered etc without them actually evolving. I prefer to live life in the shades of grey.

... I strongly believe in making a conscious effort not to collude in any "them and us" divides. Judging people by their appearances or their background or their job, for instance, is the same irrational nonsense as racism and should be rigorously guarded against. I'm especially wary of activists who refer to others as "scum". This doesn't mean we have to be po-faced and humourless. It just means our humour has to be a little more creative and less knee-jerk.

superorganism

we are finally reaching the stage at which we must think of ourselves and the networks that connect us as an entity in its own right

http://rossdawsonblog.com/weblog/archives/2010/05/autopoiesis_and.html

Bus Stop 2005-2010

http://www.flickr.com/photos/russell-higgs/sets/72157624785469663/

PETITION: Petrol-free Parks For London

Target: Boris Johnson and the London Assembly

Can wheelbarrows, rakes, brushes and smaller, electric chainsaws make a comeback?

Can vehicles, if needed, be replaced with electric equivalents too?

Many of the capital's parks and green spaces no longer give respite from pollution.

Petrol-powered tools are used constantly, causing excessive noise, dust and fumes. Worst of all are leaf-blowers.

Year-round leaf-blowers, pole chainsaws and road vehicles have become commonplace. Air pollution, road risks, noise and dust are often worse than in the outside world.

http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/petrol-free-parks-for-london.html

screw the law, lets get naked

At one extreme, there is the proposal that Islamic full-face veils be prohibited. And at the other extreme, Steve Gough, "the Naked Rambler", is currently serving a 21 month sentence for "contempt of court"...

http://jackofkent.blogspot.com/2010/08/screw-law-lets-get-naked.html

A culture's power structure depends largely on how we look and how we are looked at.

Marilyn Monroe said

"I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best."

Henry Miller said

One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.

We are gods with anuses

Some thoughts on Art + Inspiration, Love, Apotheosis and Engineering Divinity from jason silva on Vimeo.

http://vimeo.com/14496644

PSYCHOGEOGRAPHY

"We define ourselves by our surroundings and our situations. If you are brought up in a neighborhood that resembles a rat trap, pretty soon you are going to come to the conclusion that you are probably a rat. If on the other hand you have got to the tool of psychogeography — or poetry, to give it a less trendy and more accessible name — then you can look at the ordinary world around you with the eye of a poet. Finding events which rhyme with other events, what little coincidences or connections can be drawn to these places and people. You can put them into an arrangement that says something new about them."

http://m.wired.com/underwire/2010/08/alan-moore/all/1

"If you have that kind of insight into the tawdry and debased streets in which most of us spend our lives, then instead of walking down a rat trap you are walking through cataclysmic history, from your personal memories to the local legends. Then the rat trap becomes a fable, a mythological landscape."

"just as living in rat trap will give you the impression you live in a rat trap, then l suspect that living in a mythological landscape might after a while give you the subliminal impression that you are at least a mythological figure. A heroic character in your own narrative."

"I think it would be better if we felt like that rather than victims of our environment. That would empower us, and put some genuine energy back into the streets in which we live."


Dérive ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A9rive


Flânerie ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fl%C3%A2neur


Psychogeography ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychogeography

Left Right Left Right

"Conservatives, generally, are far more adept at politically reframing concepts by giving them snappy-but-misleading nicknames than liberals. 'Loony left'. 'Boom-and-bust'. 'Flip-flop'. 'Ground Zero mosque'. All simplifications or outright lies – but they worked. Like advertisers, the right seems breezily unconcerned about the truth of the slogan, provided it rings up a sale."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/aug/30/charlie-brooker-buzzwords-blowhards

"The left, meanwhile, tends to respond by flinging back tired old insults. Bastards! Fascists! Racists! This is wrong on several counts. For one thing, it's counter-productive. Nothing riles an anti-mosque demonstrator more than being called a bigot. It's a grotesque, misleading smear on a diverse group of individuals – a bit like claiming all Muslims are terrorists"

"But worse than being insulting, it's just plain unimaginative. At least the right bothers to invent a new buzzword each time it wants to fart some monstrous new lie into the ecosystem. And they're often infuriatingly well-crafted buzzwords"

"...today's audience is too distracted to digest big lies. Now the trick is to cram as much misleading information as possible into a succession of tiny verbal snacks, inaccurate but memorable."

incivility makes it harder to teach people

"Many movement-oriented skeptics and organizations have things they hope to accomplish; with goals, there comes discussion of best practices."

The Moral Argument for Not Being a Dick

"Skeptics should passionately argue the merits of their case, and we should leave the ad hominems and snarling and hyperbole to the bad guys."

http://skepticblog.org/2010/08/27/war-over-nice/

"it may sometimes be necessary to say things people don’t want to hear, but, in itself, cruelty is morally bad."

"the distinction the scientific literature makes on this topic, between argumentativeness (presenting the actual case) and aggressiveness (personal attack in addition to — or instead of — valid argument)."

BEING

"Whenever two people meet, there are really six people present. There is each man as he sees himself, each man as the other person sees him, and each man as he really is." ... said William James

TIME TRAVELLERS

"Give thanks for what you are now, and keep fighting for what you want to be tomorrow." ... [ Fernanda Miramontes-Landeros ]

Ecocities: Graphic interventions for a greener future

http://www.archdaily.com/71810/ecocities-graphic-interventions-for-a-greener-future/

an architectural photographer based in London.

"My main motivation is to produce a positive outlook."

The catalogue of UK Entrances to Hell

http://www.entrances2hell.co.uk/

Photographs of entrances to Hell from around the UK with historical info and analysis

More than 70 countries make being gay a crime

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/more-than-70-countries-make-being-gay-a-crime-2040850.html

There's no place...

WINDOW 24th July 2010

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIDzJQlIMMI

Hackney, London

The thinker is not separate from the thought

"Is it possible not to name a feeling? Because, by calling a particular feeling `anger', `fear', `jealousy', we have given it strength, have we not? We have fixed it. The very naming is a process of confirming that feeling, giving it strength, and therefore enclosing it in memory.

"Observe it and you will see. It is possible to be free fundamentally only when the process of naming is understood - naming being terming, symbolizing, which is the action of memory; because memory is the `you'. Without your memory, without your experiences, the `you' is not; and the mind clings to those experiences as essential in order to be secure. So, we cultivate memory, which is experience, knowledge, and through that process we hope to control the reactions and feelings which we call distortions."

"If we would be free of any particular quality, we must understand the whole process of the thinker and the thought, we must see the truth that the thinker is not separate from thought, but that they are a single, unitary process. If you actually realize that, you will see what an extraordinary revolution takes place in your life."

"By revolution I do not mean economic revolution, which is no revolution at all, but merely a modified continuity of what is. But when the thinker realizes that he is not different from thought, then you will see that radically, deeply, there is an extraordinary transformation; because, then there is only the fact of thought, and not the translation of that fact to suit the thinker."

Krishnamurti - New York 1st Public Talk 4th June 1950 Collected Works, Volume 6


AUDIO: http://www.jkrishnamurti.org/krishnamurti-teachings/audio.php

I am an information activist.

"You get the information out to the people."

"We believe a richer intellectual and historical record that is fuller and more accurate is in itself intrinsically good, and gives people the tools to make intelligent decisions."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/jul/14/julian-assange-whistleblower-wikileaks

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikileaks



http://wikileaks.org/

Window Farms

"Windowfarms are vertical, hydroponic, modular, low-energy, high-yield edible window gardens built using low-impact or recycled local materials."

http://www.windowfarms.org/

it REALLY REALLY is TIME for SCOTLAND to RELEASE STEPHEN GOUGH

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

a Facebook CONVERSATION.....

MT wrote:
What happens to us when we die? Nothing happens. We're simply gone, we've expired, we no longer exist. Religious believers are in deep denial of this existential reality, while agnostics are halfway in and halfway out of denial.

RH wrote:
I haven't read the other 89 comments yet, but when we die it thrills me to think that our cells become dispersed and we become a part of the whole great everything. We become part of the worms, the soil, the trees etc. :)

JM wrote:
The loss of my individual identity doesn't thrill me, and it's quite surprising to hear someone say that who is not suicidal in their eagerness to be recycled by the universe.

RH wrote:
...at JM... I already fully accept that there is no finite division between myself and everything else. That humans are identifiable but not definable. Therefore I have no eagerness TO BE recycled. However, a post death version of interconnectedness is also fascinating to contemplate. :)

JM wrote:
Sorry, but being worm food is not fascinating. I'm not sure what you mean by no finite division. Since humans are physically limited in extent, by the Beckenstein Bounds derived from quantum mechanics ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beckenstein_limit ), there are only a finite number of possible humans. Frank Tipler(a theoretical physics heavyweight... See More) has done some interesting calculations matching up that number against the rapid growth in our computing power to try to get an estimate of the point at which every human who has ever lived(plus every possible human who could ever have lived!) could be "resurrected" via computer simulations. Great book, "Physics and Immortality".

RH wrote:
....it thrills me that we are STAR LIGHT; Thanks to photosynthesis and the veg we eat, and the other animals we eat too that have themselves consumed the solar powered green stuff .

JM wrote:
Yes, that is thrilling. Death, not so much.

RH wrote:
... and it is thrilling to think that as much as 90% of every human being's entire 100 trillion cells ..... is actually BACTERIA. We are walking communities, much of it unmapped, un-named as of yet :)

BIOCHAUVINISM

BIOCHAUVINISM: The prejudice that biological systems have an intrinsic superiority that will always give them a monopoly on self-reproduction and intelligence.
[...K. Eric Drexler, Engines of Creation, 1986]

I’m a little lamb who’s lost in the wood, I know I could, always be good, To one who’ll watch over me

EQUIVEILLANCE

"The teaching of certain thoughts and ideas has often been regarded as a crime. And, since Roman times, certain kinds of what we might like to call Free Speech have been regarded as crime."

"But not only is speaking often prohibited, sometimes so is taking notes, or remembering what is spoken."

"At the WTO meetings in Washington for instance, police orders heard over the police radio requested the seizing or destruction of reporters' written notes, and many instances of attempted willful destruction of photographic and video evidence have been perpetrated by both the police, the military, and by others."

Sousveillance can be understood by the following simple experiment:

1- enter the regime;
2- ask them why they have surveillance cameras there;
3- accept a typical response such as "Why are you so paranoid? Only criminals and terrorists are afraid of cameras.";
4- photograph the respondent;
5- observe reaction.

The Land

...The Land is written by and for people who believe that the roots of justice, freedom, social security & democracy lie not so much in access to money, or to the ballot box, as in access to land and its resources....

http://www.thelandmagazine.org.uk/

FREE RANGE CHILDREN

Take your kids to the park, and leave them there

A New York writer has caused a storm by encouraging parents to leave their kids in parks tomorrow.

Lenore Skenazy, who was branded ‘America’s Worst Mom’ after she wrote in the New York Post about letting her nine-year-old son ride the NY subway alone, has declared this Saturday to be the first-ever ‘Take Our Children To The Park And Leave Them There’ day. She has been caught up in a maelstrom of media attention since she announced the ‘holiday’ on her Free Range Kids website last week. Here, she explains why she’s doing it.

Up Wing

http://twitter.com/UPwingadingdong

Shakespeare

"Love all, trust a few. Do wrong to none."

CYBORG MANIFESTO

"The dichotomies between mind and body, animal and human, organism and machine, public and private, nature and culture, men and women, primitive and civilized are all in question ideologically."

Donna Haraway : Cyborg Manifesto

A prescription for meditation

There is no guide,

no teacher,

no authority.

There is only you,

your relationship with others and with the world,

there is nothing else.

When you realize this, it either brings great despair, from which comes cynicism and bitterness, or, in facing the fact that you and nobody else is responsible for the world and for yourself, for what you think, what you feel, how you act, all self-pity goes.

Normally we thrive on blaming others, which is a form of self-pity."

...... said Jiddu Krishnamurti

Moonday

....please VOTE for my 2nd policy HERE....

http://thepeoplepolicies.co.uk/policies/name-day-after-sunday-moonday/

*THE MENTAL ENVIRONMENT* and the tyranny of *THE NATURAL*

Frequently, when people mention authenticity it comes hand in hand with an underlying and all too often unchallenged (romanticist) assumption that only face-to-face experience can truly be authentic.

But why should we be required to have to share the same temporal and spatial co-ordinates as another person in order to experience or share something authentic with them?

To be human is to be neurodiverse; I believe passionately in the importance of cognitive liberty.

What best suits some people doesn't best suit everybody. And different experiences (including different mediated experiences) will give varying degrees of nourishment depending on each individual. And equally what might seem authentic or of value to one person may be entirely meaningless and empty to another also.

Variety and diversity is what's important, I reckon. And the more options we have to communicate and share with one another and learn about one another, the better.

FREEDOM FROM THE KNOWN

...Please VOTE for my policy HERE...

http://thepeoplepolicies.co.uk/policies/freedom-from-the-known/

...and create your own...

Creativity is as important as Literacy

Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity. He champions a radical rethink of our school systems, to cultivate creativity and acknowledge multiple types of intelligence.

Nature Boy

"The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return"



Nat King Cole - Nature Boy
written by eden ahbez
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMjGRHcWrrQ

Plato said

"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle."

BEYOND GAY MARRIAGE

"We must overcome the tyranny of the natural and build human institutions that serve human needs."

Living

“I like living, breathing better than working,” Marcel Duchamp famously declared. “My art is that of living. Each second, each breath is a work which is inscribed nowhere, which is neither visual nor cerebral; it’s a sort of constant euphoria.”

________________

________________
Originally uploaded by Dario Φ ipofisi

Apice Vecchio

Apice Vecchio
Originally uploaded by vinnieblue

Beelitz Heilstätten

Beelitz Heilstätten
Originally uploaded by vinnieblue

earth

earth
Originally uploaded by pioforsky

Darwin Day

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_Day

Darwin Day is a recently instituted celebration intended to commemorate the anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin on February 12, 1809. The day is used to highlight Darwin's contribution to science and to promote science in general.

Center for Troubled Youth 18

Center for Troubled Youth 18
Originally uploaded by Avius Quovis

over the meadows, far away...

over the meadows, far away...
Originally uploaded by CowGummy

Brean Beach - tree

Brean Beach - tree
Originally uploaded by CowGummy

To Be

Germaine Greer said

"Human beings have the inalienable right to invent themselves."

SURVEILLANCE CAMERA THEATRE

Playing to the cameras.

Entertaining the watchers.

Real reality TV.

Re-engaging with our imaginations and going outside to play in the streets again.

Non-violent re-appropriation of our public spaces. etc

The Surveillance Camera Players have some suggestions:

http://www.notbored.org/the-scp.html

Leopard Slug Mating Ritual

Žižek

When you love a person you do not idealise them. You learn to love them with all of their faults. And that is how we should learn to love the world.

In The Examined Life, Žižek argues that we need to embrace the whole world including our artificial, technological, created self and products.

Pastoral romanticism and New Age mysticism are a form of ideological mystification and alienation.

Ecology as it currently stands is in danger of becoming the new opium of the masses. Ecology is taking over from the role of religion as a new conservative, reactionary ideology.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGCfiv1xtoU

MIRROR NEURONS

http://www.ted.com/talks/vs_ramachandran_the_neurons_that_shaped_civilization.html

Einstein said

"A human being is a part of a whole, called by us _universe_, a part limited in time and space. [We] experience [our]self, [our] thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest... a kind of optical delusion of [our] consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."

archive....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bc4pP96suIE

Michael Hardt: "One has to expand the concept of love beyond the limits of the couple."

High Rise Urban Forest

http://design.fr/news/urban-forest-uplifts-both-environment-and-economy/

a high-rise building, the Urban Forest, situated in Chongqing, China, the commercial structure features curved, abstracted shaped floors connected by a core cylindrical structure. Almost all the floors incorporate green spaces to create a natural environment throughout the structure. The floors enveloped in full length glass windows with a see-through, wrap around balcony have been layered off-center (to some extent) from one another, giving it an appearance of a floating structure.

archive: http://www.verticalfarm.com/