StumbleUpon | laodan's comments & reviews

The Story of Stuff with Annie Leonard

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 13:28:28 -0700

The Story of Stuff
on storyofstuff.com with Annie Leonard

From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It'll teach you something, it'll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life forever.

The Story of Stuff

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLBE5QAYXp8&feature=player_embedded

An excellent presentation. Everyone should watch that documentary. Pass it around... As Gavinski commented: "There's probably nothing in this 20 minute video that you don't know about consumer society already. BUT, I loved it, and it ties things together in a very clear way. I'd love to see this shown in every school."
Watch this " 20-minute animation of the consumerist society, narrated by Anne Leonard, to view online or download. Includes footnoted script, credits, blog, ..."

dgirlps blog - StumbleUpon

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 16:12:49 -0700

dgirlps blog - StumbleUpon

"If humanity does not opt for integrity we are through completely. It is absolutely touch and go. Each one of us could make the difference."

How true.

open money

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 16:02:28 -0700

open money
from the Flowplace, Building wealth with Free Currencies.

Open money enables your community to create new types of money and use them to cultivate the kinds of wealth that really matter.

Wealth is access to well-being. There are at least three levels of wealth.

Why do we need open money?

1. Modern money is inefficient and unfair. Because communities cannot create their own currencies they are beholden to, and fundamentally controlled by, whoever does, just as users of coins were limited by the amount of precious metal available. When communities can create their own currencies, they don't have to export their own wealth to get money to use for trade. They can start trading right away and export later if they so choose.
2. "Money can't buy me love." The structure of the modern monetary system is based on assumptions of competition & resource scarcity. Though these assumptions can be applied to tradable wealth, they blind us when we apply them to only measurable or acknowledgeable wealth. To cultivate the kinds of wealth that correspond with overall systemic health and inter-system resonances, where the assumptions of scarcity and competition no longer apply, we need a new wealth-acknowledgment system.
3. Our culture and our planet are falling apart. Humanity has grown so large and complex that cultural systems that once maintained the health of our communities no longer can. Similarly, the effects of humanity on the planetary ecosystem are beyond the ecosystems capacity to self-repair. Humanity must take responsibility itself, but currently has no tool and no capacity sufficient to the need for collective action.

open money
How does open money work?

Ough!
I stumbled upon this "Open Money" thing and feel it should be shared. Their motto is inspiring:
"You treasure what you measure, and you measure what you treasure. Open money provides the tools to implement this maxim. What should we be treasuring in our culture and on our planet that we so far have no way to measure?"

Culture Change - Time To Decide What Matters

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 17:44:08 -0700

Time To Decide What Matters
by Keith Farnish for Culture Change (the author has just come out with his excellent book Time's Up!, joining the Chelsea Green stable of works on sustainability.)

Community is the antithesis of civilization for civilization thrives on the division of humanity into tiny, atomized, competing parts; but community is the form in which humans have always survived best. The choice is simple now: Civilization or Community; Progress or Humanity; Death or Life.

Time To Decide What Matters
Time's Up! An Uncivilized Solution To A Global Crisis FREE 281 Pages PDF ebook

Some more goods words. But reality remains the same. Change will only materialize when humanity will be confronted with the necessity to change its ways. This means when humanity will be confronted with massive dislocation of its societal ways leading to barbarity, violence and death.

WWB: Against Comics by Jochen Gerner, translated from the French by Edward Gauvin

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 08:22:01 -0700

Against Comics
in "Words Without Borders" by Jochen Gerner

Against Comics

Thanks to Renrutia for passing this along.

Are comics art?

The question begs to clarify what is intended by art. Jochen Gerner's ramblings are about comics in the art market. But any serious person would tell you that the art market is something different than art. The art market is where "whatever" is sold as art. But art is not whatever and thus the answer needs to be re-framed...

http://escapeintolife.com/wordpress?p=3

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 07:54:53 -0700

Las Vegas
in "Escape into life" by Lethe Bashar

After getting kicked out of a halfway house in San Jose, California, Lethe takes a Greyhound bus to Vegas. He finds a youth hostel on the west side called The Backpacker's Inn. This Hotel California is refuge to a host of misfits and wanderlusts.

Las Vegas Online Graphic Novel
Escape into Life, Arts and Culture webzine based on the concept of "citizen journalism".

Interesting webzine.

Links 6/1/09 & naked capitalism

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 06:51:25 -0700

Antidote du jour.
in Naked Capitalism by Yves Smith

A family that lives on the outskirts of Milford, PA in Pike County decided to build a sturdy, colorful playground for their 3 and 4 year old sons. They lined the bottom with smooth-stone gravel all around to avoid knee scrapes and other injuries. They finished building it one Friday evening and were very pleased with the end product.

The following morning, the mom was about to wake up the boys and have them go out to play in their new play center. This is what she saw from the upstairs window.

Antidote du jour.

Yves Smith blogs daily about economic and financial matters. Most often the news is demoralizing these days and to counter this she posts a daily "Antidote du jour" in the form of pictures of the animal world.
The scene of today's antidote takes place in Milford pa which is also where I live.

Google Reader

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 17:27:16 -0700

FreakAngels Episode 0053
by Warren Ellis and illustrated by Paul Duffield

Over on Freakangels, our heroes are experimenting with post-apocalyptic solar power.

FREAKANGELS is a free, weekly, ongoing comic written by Warren Ellis and illustrated by Paul Duffield.

FreakAngels

Stumbling on this site via WorldChanging I thought about my friend RenRutia. But while those FreakAngels guys have a quite traditional style RenRutia's style remembers me of the work of Crumb who is my favorite cartoonist.

Question: Can We Design The Next-Evolution of Community? | Twine

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 12:47:57 -0700

Question: Can We Design The Next-Evolution of Community?
on Twine by Nova Spivek

I've been thinking about community lately. There is a great need for a new and better model for communities in the world today.

Our present communities are not working and most are breaking down or stagnating. Cities are experiencing urbanization and a host of ensuing social and economic challenges. Meanwhile the movement towards cities has drained the people -- particularly young professionals -- away from rural communities, causing them to stagnate and decline.

Question: Can We Design The Next-Evolution of Community?
My take on the question

My personal take is that "The Next-Evolution of Community" is out of our hands. It will result as a new realignment or balance of the near infinite load of factors interacting in the "whole earth ensemble" or "whole earth system": climate, resources, species, humanity, etc. This in no way implies any determinism. We are faced with many possible outcomes.
Our dreams and visions of a better tomorrow will eventually bring us to act as a nano-push on the unfolding balance between those many possibles.
"I believe that what we do today depends on our image of the future, rather than the future depending on what we do today. We build our equations by our actions. These equations, and the future they represent, are not written in nature. In other words, time becomes construction. Of course, we have some conditions that determine limits of the future but within these limits are many, many possibilities.
Therefore, since no deterministic prediction is likely to be valid, visions of the future--utopian visions--play a very important role in present conduct." (quote of Ilya Prigogine from an interview by NPq of Fall 2004 titled "Beyond Being and Becoming")

Just read this piece in
Scientific American concluding that "Engaging in rituals involving rhythmic synchrony might not only have bound us together in cooperative groups: they might have brought us together to practice the very skills essential to survival."

Bill Moyers Journal: Sharing the Blame for the Economic Crisis?

Sun, 05 Apr 2009 17:36:42 -0700

Sharing the Blame for the Economic Crisis?
Bill Moyers interviews Bill Black on PBS

Discussing the roots of the economic crisis with Bill Moyers on this week's JOURNAL, former regulator Bill Black said that much of the blame lies with lenders for issuing "liars" loans, in which borrowers claims about their financial situation were not verified.

Were lenders committing fraud?

Sharing the Blame for the Economic Crisis?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQ4JXW_ErXQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOA1RpK7ttg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMDLx_-f1L4

The fraud of the century by the banksters.

Please diffuse this interview. It's the best we have to counteract...
This needs to go viral.