Without the state

We know where you live...

And more from: The Privatopia Papers.

If passed, the CC&Rs would require, for the first time, that landlords provide the homeowner’s association with a list of all tenants and residents of the home...

Land of the free...

Guess where this is:

A year after a statewide smoking ban took effect at workplaces, restaurants, bars and other public places, a new battlefield over secondhand smoke is emerging: apartment buildings. Spurred on by nonsmoking tenants and public-health leaders, more private landlords are considering restricting smoking inside their rental units. And local public-housing agencies are also looking at banning smoking in the units of some buildings.

No - not Dublin or Glasgow but Seattle.

links for 2007-01-17

• Devolution For England | The Campaign for an English Parliament
  (tags: politics government devolution england)
• http://www.englishconstitutionalconvention.com/
  (tags: politics government devolution england)
• English Democrats Party Campaigning for an English Parliament. We are the only national party to do so.
  (tags: politics government devolution england)
• Designing for Civil Society: Running the social media game
  (tags: socialmedia community nptechuk games blogposts)
• Stumbling and Mumbling: Utopia: two distinctions
  (tags: utopia philosophy)
• Streetsblog » Reverse Graffiti
  (tags: graffiti art environment politicalaction)
• overshadowed
  Some stunning photography
  (tags: art photography urban)

Reverse Graffiti

A number of street artists around the world have taken to expressing themselves through an innovative practice known as Reverse Graffiti. Taking a cue from the "Wash Me" messages scrawled on the back of delivery trucks, they seek out soot covered surfaces and inscribe them with images, tags, and even advertising slogans using scrub brushes, scrapers and pressure hoses.

razilian Alexandre Orion, turned one of Sao Paolo's transport tunnels into a stunning mural last summer. The mural, comprised of a series of skulls, very succinctly reminds drivers of the impact their emissions are having on the planet.

links for 2007-01-16

• Humble Voice.
  Humble Voice is a community of artists and those who appreciate them
  (tags: art socialmedia)
• Stumbling and Mumbling: Why can't Gerry Robinson fix the NHS?
  (tags: health management blogpost)

The Tennis Player

The Tennis Player, originally uploaded by ibanda.

Looking at this and many of my other images, I see a sort of common thread. Most of my 'reworkings', whether of my own or other people's images use graphically bold shapes - you can't get more graphic than the tango after all!

Others like Ron Diorio for example, seem to be able to create much subtler images - images full of darkness and foreboding - to great effect. Such variety is a good indicator I think of the potential of digital technology - we are at the beginning of an exciting time.

links for 2007-01-15

• Search the archive of the London Gazette
  (tags: archive history "public notices")
• Burning our money: How The NHS Rations Your Life
  (tags: health public policy politics)

January calendar page

January calendar page, originally uploaded by ibanda.

Free for use under this Creative Commons Licence

Frugality or ...?

This humble piece of paper came from my father in law’s effects. I don’t know the exact date, but I believe it is probably wartime or soon afterwards. It was initially going to be thrown it away but something about it seemed to capture quite brilliantly the prevailing frugality of those times.

If you only ever listened to the virulently anti-environmental Polyannas who infest the Internet, you would soon probably believe that this frugality – or more likely they would describe it as meanness – is the inevitable outcome of concern for environmental issues. Indeed many go further and would have you believe that those who worry about what we are doing to this planet want to impose such behaviour on the world at large. You don’t have to go far to find statements equating ‘green’ with ‘statist’.

In practice of course this is malignant nonsense. More to the point, they are not defending us from the need to care for the world's resources, they are making it ever more likely that we will find ourselves plunged into a world of scarcity, a world plagued by violence as those who have try to hold on to it. Think ‘peak oil’, think water wars...

A rather portly pas de deux

A rather portly pas de deux, originally uploaded by ibanda.

I have uploaded some more dance images to flickr - of which this is one. It's an accident but I love the slightly pompous feel of the male figure - rather like some middle aged principal dancer in an amateur production.