Objectify This

Today’s post is brought to you by the word bricolage, which  Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright define as the practice of working with whatever materials are at hand, and making do with what one has. As a cultural practice, bricolage refers to the activity of taking consumer products and commodities and making them one’s own [...]

The new year is here, and with it, new questions.  The New York Times wondered what it would mean if we aren’t calculating horoscopes correctly; Information is Beautiful explored what it would mean if we were; McSweeney’s Internet Tendency asked why comic sans can’t get any respect. I wonder what it would be like to [...]

Today, March 8th, was International Women’s Day. However, it’s never too late to act. After all, limiting your actions on behalf of women to Women’s Day would be to cede the other 364 days of the year to men: a ratio that’s clearly imbalanced. In the spirit of fairness, take action for women: Urge the [...]

The American Dream has great power. Merriam-Webster defines it as “an American social ideal that stresses egalitarianism and especially material prosperity”; but this is incomplete. The American Dream is also bound up in those four words, “the pursuit of happiness,” an “unalienable right” guaranteed by the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson and Franklin elided our right [...]

Palin Doesn’t Convince the Pro-Life Movement, Either: Stephanie Mencimer at Mother Jones reports that a Pro-life movement, the American Right to Life, believes that Palin is secretly pro-choice. Dispute Over Repercussions of  Health Care Reform Act? At the NPR health blog Shots, Julie Rovner explains that neither abortion rights groups nor anti-abortion groups believe that [...]

Last week, the long-awaited passage of health care reform came at a hefty cost. Bart Stupak’s amendment to HR 3962 prevents women receiving federal subsidies from buying  health insurance that covers abortion. This attack on the reproductive rights of poor Americans may have dire repercussions for women and society, and that may be what the [...]

According to Micheal Magee, “Poems are, like, total bullshit unless they are/squid or popsicles or deer piled/on elk in the trunk of David Hasselhoff’s/cutlass Sierra.” That’s pretty much the spirit of the first poetry movement of the 21st century: semi-dadist riffing with Googleian specifics. It’s an interesting metaphor for modern consciousness– globalization has brought the [...]