So, this fine warm day we're happy to present three best-quality products for your intellectual stimulation: New poetry from Philip Vassallo, The Cult of Jared by Robert Stribley, and, as noted below, strange photography from Nick Dunfey. Please share and enjoy with your loved ones.

One of our favorite benefits of running Opensewer is having the ability to give exposure to young, less established artists, right alongside those with years of experience and exhibitions. So we present…

Photographer Nick Dunfey’s strange interpretations of ancient and classical themes ignore the traditional sense of beauty, and instead focus on the sinister undercurrents that lie beneath the surface.

And following up on Megan's post on Monday about music copyright, here's an excellent article about the future of music distribution. (NY Times article; username: opensewer; password: iswatching; via Rebecca Blood)

Following-up my post on Monday about the Thomas Kinkade-inspired housing subdivision, here is a very well-written book review from Salon (2 years ago) that encapsulates many of the key issues in the debate over suburbia. On one hand, suburbia is a condition within which 90% of America (happily?) lives. On the other, it is a reprehensible urban form that uses too much land and fails to promote community and civic involvement. The two books, "Suburban Nation" and "Picture Windows" offer, respectively, practical and ideal critiques of the suburban landscape. The divergence of the critiques represents the inherent tension that exists for those (myself included) seeking long-term solutions to the societal problems caused by suburbia: Progressive developers and planners "ask what can be done, given the realities of the marketplace, and the academics ask what ought to be done, even if it's impossible."

I'm not a thief. I'm a customer. When you treat me like a thief, I won't be your customer.

via boing boing

Oh. My. God. Ticky-tacky houses from "The Painter of Light™" (thanks to Thomas Otto in Cornell's City and Regional Planning Department for the link).

In case you're wondering why we were so quiet this weekend, Rosie and I were enjoying a nice mini-vacation in Montreal. We had a very nice time, thank-you, and "business" will resume on Monday. (Jean and Sylvain, thanks for your wonderful hospitality!)

The Antarctic ice shelf collapse sure feels like a message.

The Bush Administration is pushing for federal measures to shrink endangered species habitats. (username: opensewer; password: iswatching)

"Is the cost to society at large greater than the potential benefit to the species?" asked David Smith, general counsel of the Building Industry Association of Southern California. "That's what the government is supposed to consider."

And that's what we are supposed to decide.

Last November, Phillip Morris proposed to change it's name to Altria. Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Geoffrey C. Bible told employees the change is being proposed for two reasons: clarity and evolution. Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids points out the third reason with this short movie, however melodramatic it might be. (via Signal vs. Noise)

Artist J. Phillip White’s bizarre, meticulous and often humorous photomontages draw on inspiration from the surrealists to illustrate and critique man’s inhumanity to man.

On the sidewalks, encased in spotless plastic bags, the remains of yesterday’s Leonia await the garbage truck. Not only squeezed tubes of toothpaste, blown-out light bulbs, newspapers, containers, wrappings, but also boilers, encyclopedias, pianos, porcelain dinner services. It is not so much by the things that each day are manufactured, sold, bought that you can measure Leonia’s opulence, but rather by the things that each day are thrown out to make room for the new. So you begin to wonder if Leonia’s true passion is really, as they say, the enjoyment of new and different things, and not, instead, the joy of expelling, discarding, cleansing itself of a recurrent impurity.

—from Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities, 1972.

Low-income nations cannot solve their health problems without assistance. The World Health Organization’s Commission on Macroeconomics and Health estimates that annually between $30 and 40 per person is needed to cover “essential interventions” to minimize the impact of the greatest health threats to the world’s poorest nations. These include HIV/AIDS, malaria, TB, childhood infectious diseases (many of which are preventable by vaccination), maternal and perinatal conditions, tobacco-related illnesses, and micronutrient deficiencies. Read the executive summary of the report—it’s less than 20 pages (PDF).

Currently, about $6 billion per year of donor financing is provided to the WHO from all nations. It is estimated that this needs to increase to $27 billion per year by 2007. To put things into perspective, please note that world citizens purchased $20 billion of Coca Cola products last year, $25 billion worth of Disney goods and services, and nearly $1 billion worth of Beanie Babies. (Link to full report here.)

It's official: Andersen indicted (PDF, via NYT). Here's the story. (NYTimes; user name: opensewer; password: iswatching.)

Be inspired.

Art is not a mirror to reflect reality, but a hammer with which to shape it.
- B. Brecht.

Adbusters
Undesign
Arts Journal
Rhizome

In recent months, when Bush administration officials talked about the implications of Sept. 11 for long-term military policy, they have often focused on "homeland defense" and the need for an anti-missile shield. In truth, what has evolved since last year's terror attacks is an integrated, significantly expanded planning doctrine for nuclear wars.

William M. Arkin of the LA Times provides a very disturbing commentary on previously secret nuclear plans.

Supporters of Intelligent Design Theory "accept that the earth is billions of years old but they dispute the idea that natural selection -- the force that Darwin suggested drove evolution -- is enough to explain the complexity of the Earth's plants and animals. That complexity, they say, must be the work of an intelligent designer." Critics such as Dr. Eugenie Scott respond (login: opensewer; iswatching) by describing it as "a repackaging of the antievolution movement to try to withstand court challenges by avoiding the C-word."

Bill Berkowitz discusses the politics surrounding this controversal theory.

"There should be a warning on food made with this stuff like there is on nicotine products. It's that bad for you." I betcha there never will be.

Artists may be interested to know that we've posted our "official" submission guidelines in the Art section of the website.

Good stuff from Mother Jones: Beyond Banning Soft Money and Aiding Future Enrons?

Hmmm… Social engineering at its best.

not.so.soft has a good post on branding, with many excellent links.

We told you about this months ago on Opensewer... The soon-to-be-infamous Line 47, which Paul Krugman mentions in his recent not-so-optimistic take on recovery from this recession: The Bush administration didn't want to give those famous $300 rebate checks; its original plan would have pumped hardly any money into the economy last year. Under prodding from Democrats the plan was changed to incorporate immediate cash outlays. But those outlays were included only grudgingly, and with a catch: they really weren't rebates. Instead, they were merely advances on future tax cuts. (NYT--user name: opensewer; password: iswatching.)

Did you know that next to The Bible, the Tao Te Ching is the most translated book in the world? And for good reason. This ancient Chinese book lays the philosophical foundations for one of the world's great wisdom traditions, Taoism. A friend recently reintroduced me to Taoist philosophy, and again, I'm reminded of how simple life can be.

Today in 1848, the Communist Manifesto was published in London. Recently I'd lost sight of the fact that the pen really is mightier than the sword--thanks to Mr. Keillor for the reminder.

Everything you need for a summer house, you can certainly get in Wal-Mart; Wal-Mart Eyes BMW Crowd. Oh great.

The United States was not always the world’s economic leader. History looks more like a long-distance race in which one county assumes leadership for some time, only to lose it to another and return to the pack or disappear from sight. For much of the first millennium, and until the fifteenth century, China probably had the world’s highest level of output per capita. For a couple of centuries, leadership moved to the cities of northern Italy. It was then assumed by the Netherlands until around 1820, and then by the United Kingdom from 1820 to around 1870. Since then, the United States has been in the lead… If history is any guide, the United States will not remain in the lead forever. –Oliver Blanchard

In a world otherwise stripped of meaning and self-identity, adolescents can come to understand violence itself as a morally grounded gesture, a kind of purifying attempt to intervene against the nothingness.

For each act of gratuitous violence that is actually carried out, how many unconsummated dark fantasies are transmuted into depression, resignation, or a benumbed withdrawal from participation in civic society?

A frightening momentum has been building, and the qualities of generational understanding and assurance that once earned America a worldwide reputation as child-centered are fading fast. And yet despite a growing awareness of this fact, the public policy that we are developing to cope with troubled kids is only exacerbating the situation...the state's growing arrogation of power to punish rather than to rehabilitate. This is a policy that expresses both fear of and contempt for children.

We must face the fact that having ceased to exploit children as laborers, we now exploit them as consumers. RoperASW (with its Roper Youth Report), Teenage Research Unlimited, and similar organizations, using methods derived from the behavioral sciences, advise merchandisers and advertising companies on the latest semiotics of "cool" and consumer-friendly subversion. "We understand how teens think, what they want, what they like, what they aspire to be, what excites them, and what concerns them," the Teenage Research Unlimited Web site brags. What this understanding translates into in the marketplace is hypersexuality, aggression, addiction, coldness, and irony-laced civic disaffection—the very seed-bed of apocalyptic nihilism.

From Opensewer 11 Ithaca last night:

The most merciful thing in the world is the mind's inability to correlate its own content.

--Jorge Luis Borges. More later...

OS New York is over. Tonight, the other 6 cities. See you there!