As a follow up to last week’s post on the Whole Earth Campaign it seems that at this rather crucial juncture in the relationship between ourselves and our planet, we are again being encouraged to observe, contemplate and allow ourselves to be overcome by the profound image of the Earth from outer space.

“It was one month after the Trips Festival at Longshoreman’s Hall when the “whole earth” in The Whole Earth Catalog came to me with the help of one hundred micrograms of lysergic acid diethylamide. I was sitting on a gravelly roof in San Francisco’s North Beach. It was February 1966. Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters were waning toward Mexico. I was twenty-eight…
“…The buildings were not parallel—because the earth curved under them, and me, and all of us; it closed on itself. I remembered …

My wife Jane and I launched The Ox Project today, a holiday fund raiser with the goal of purchasing 2 oxen and a plow for the Kenyan village of Kanyawegi.

Currently showing at the Met and corresponding with a book of the same name, Robert Polidori’s New Orleans After the Flood: Photographs hauntingly documents the post-Katrina devastation of the once Big Easy. With the same passion that affected his photographic essay on Chernobyl in 2001, Polidori once again succeeds in capturing the magnitude of loss and human folly in each frame.
For more info check out John Updike’s review of After the Flood in the New York Times Review of Books.

From Diplo’s Mad Decent Worldwide Radio: “its crazy here in Rio.. guns go missing and police go to war with poor people and then i get kicked out of my apt and i got no internet access.. but heres a random mix.“
It was Diplo’s show with Brazilian acts, Cansei de Ser Sexy (who win the title of Dance Hit of the Summer with the brilliant “Let’s Make Love and Listen to Death From Above”) and Bonde do Role a few weeks ago at Celebrities here in Vancouver that first …

This video, found over on William Gibson’s blog this morning made me immediately nostalgic for my old Tokyo ‘hood.

“[The] conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence – economic, political, even spiritual – is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or …

My own personal experience has taught me that China is a force to be reckoned with. As it careens forth into this century – a century that most have already conceded that it will dominate – gaining momentum at every turn, one is left to ponder how anyone is going to keep a hold of the reigns.
Edward’s Burtynsky’s photographs, recently compiled in the book Burtynsky – China, document the harsher side of this burgeoning rise and provide a rare glimpse into the hefty price of progress.

One of my wife’s colleagues, who is working as a teacher in Dubai stumbled upon this image in a 1972 British text book entitled “America”. He writes, “When I first saw the picture I almost dropped the book in disbelief. One of my students, after seeing the publication date, said: ‘How teacher? Is it magic?’”.
Not magic, but it is amazing how such an innocent watercolour illustration could inherit so much horror and historical importance to turn it at once into a globally understood icon.

There is something eerily resounding in the utter silence of abandoned buildings. No longer with purpose, emptied of their human charge, they stand as physical prophecies to the conquest of time and the inevitable reinstatement of nature.
Check out these spectacular images of Abandoned Japan (via the Skinny). And if you are left wanting more there is a very comprehensive listing of similar urban skeletons at Ruins and Urban Exploration.