(via Https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSal-ms0vcI)

Virtual Guantanamo (by Draxtor Despres)

nonnydlp.com | nonnydelapena.com | pyedogproductions.com

Fast Company’s Co-Create Magazine called Nonny de la Peña one of the 13 People Who Made the World More Creative. She is the pioneer of Immersive Journalism, a groundbreaking brand of nonfiction that offers fully immersive experiences of the news using virtual reality gaming platforms. Combining her communication and technology skills with her lengthy career as a reporter, de la Peña believes newsgames can deepen the understanding of complex stories. Her most recent project Hunger in Los Angeles creates the feeling of ‘being there’ as a real crisis unfolds on a food-bank line at the First Unitarian Church. Hunger was called ‘one of the most talked-about’ pieces at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. Her other projects include the MacArthur funded Gone Gitmo, a virtual Guantanamo Bay Prison; Cap & Trade, an interactive exploration of the carbon markets built with Frontline World and CIR; Ipsress which investigates detainees held in stress positions; and Three Generations, a newsgame on the California eugenics movement that premiered at 2011 Games For Change. She also co-founded the Knight News Challenge winner Stroome.com, an online collaborative video editing platform that hosted users from 126 different countries. A graduate of Harvard University, she is a award-winning documentary filmmaker with twenty years of journalism experience including as a correspondent for Newsweek Magazine and as a writer whose work has appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times Magazine, Premiere Magazine, and others. Her films have screened on national television and at theatres in more than fifty cities around the globe, garnering praise from critics like A.O. Scott who called her work ‘a brave and necessary act of truth-telling.”

अनन्त का छंद - 2

अनन्त का छंद – 2 प्रसन्न कुमार चौधरी भारतीय चिन्तन विधि 13. दर्शन क्षण में अनन्त की स्मृति है, नश्वर में शाश्वत का शब्द है, मूर्त में अमूर्त का अभ्युदय है । सृष्टि – अदृश्य सूक्ष्म कणों से लेकर नीहारिकाओं तक, जीवाणुओं से लेकर मनुष्य तक – इसी सान्त और अनन्त के, नश्वर और अनश्वर के, वचनीय और अनिर्वचनीय के, मूर्त और अमूर्त के अन्तहीन अन्तःमिश्रण का सिलसिला है, प्रवाह है । सत्य सान्त को अनन्त से,…

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CELLINI, Benvenuto

Perseus

1545-54

Bronze, height 320 cm

Loggia dei Lanzi, Florence

वक्त के साथ गहरे होते जा रहे हैं घाव: सुधा भारद्वाज की बेटी मायशा

वक्त के साथ गहरे होते जा रहे हैं घाव: सुधा भारद्वाज की बेटी मायशा

Source: वक्त के साथ गहरे होते जा रहे हैं घाव: सुधा भारद्वाज की बेटी मायशा

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What I went looking for was an answer to a deeper question about the metaphoric holes left in a person, a family or a community by murderous acts, whether by guns, knives, or bare hands. If nothing else, talking about guns can serve as a beacon, starting me on the road toward answering the question: Why do Americans kill so much? […] There are two kinds of social capital—bonding and bridging—and each impact a society differently. Bonding capital is what you get within a given group. These tend to be closer and more reliable bonds that form the foundation of our social capital. Yet bonding social capital is not always positive: Tight-knit groups can turn insular, reaching their logical conclusion in gangs and militias but with negative effects found in everything from families to groups of friends to certain kinds of religious communities. In contrast, bridging social capital reaches across a societal divide such as race, region or religion and is by nature weak. But it also promotes empathy and tolerance and enlarges our radius of trust, allowing us to see other people as people, not as a faceless other. This sense of bridging a divide is especially important in the U.S. because, contrary to popular opinion, we regularly put the needs of the group ahead of the needs of the individual in a way Europeans don’t. In surveys, Western Europeans are more likely than Americans to say citizens should follow their conscience and break an unjust law or that citizens should defy their homeland if they believe their country is acting immorally. On the other hand, Americans are more likely to believe they control their own fate and to believe in a more laissez-faire relationship with the state. It’s a more complex mix than our myths allow for, and the end result is that it can be hard to fathom just how different Americans are from the rest of the world. […] Perhaps, like a true original sin, groups in power in the U.S. have systematically destroyed social capital in vulnerable communities and between groups of all kinds in order to gain wealth and power and deny it to others. And perhaps they have done this in more ruthless fashion than in other comparable cultures. This could explain why the murder rate in New York has been more than five times higher than London’s for 200 years, though the American propensity for violence reaches even farther back than that, going all the way back to frantic religious refugees with visions of the Apocalypse both at their back and before their eyes.

Bad Land – Nathan Hegendus explores the social psychology underpinning gun culture in America.

Also see Stephen King on gun control and violence.

(via explore-blog)

'Sentiment must be outlawed from the domain of science and things should be judged from an objective standpoint. For myself I shall find as much pleasure in a positive destruction of my own ideology, as in a rational disagreement on a topic, which, notwithstanding many learned disquisitions, is likely to remain controversial forever.' Dr. BR Ambedkar, 'Castes in India: Their Mechanism, Genesis and Development'.

“Two centuries ago, a former European colony took it into its head to catch up with Europe. It has been so successful that the United States of America has become a monster where the flaws, sickness, and inhumanity of Europe have reached frightening proportions.”

— Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth

“Incantation. A prayer for apps and the latest whatever, sung by “the witch”. New things to try, a desperation, an automation to it. A heaviness, as if being joined by a yoke to our technology, it’s dragging us, making us pay per download. We’re it’s slave.”

Leah Kardos’s album “Machines”, a song cycle based on themes of technology, loneliness and the human condition, with lyrics derived from spam emails. (via Tom A.)

Mother's storybook photos become viral sensation

Mother’s storybook photos become viral sensation

Originally posted on Flickr Blog:

When we first spotted Elena Shumilova’s photostream, her photos instantly took our breath away. The Russian photographer transports her viewers into a beautiful world that revolves around her two little sons and their adorable pets — scenes literally out of a storybook. Elena’s use of natural light, colors, and her enchanting rural surroundings have not only…

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https://www.youtube.com/embed/yfViYlM8KwU?feature=oembed&enablejsapi=1&origin=https://safe.txmblr.com&wmode=opaque

Virtual Artists Talks Series: Praveen K. Chaudhry on New York City: Pand...