Monday, November 27, 2006

Okay - this you gotta see

If you haven't heard of Têtes à claque, you must check it out. You need to speak french to appreciate it fully. It's real Québec humour. This halloween scene is one of the funniest things i've seen in a long while (Thanks, Sean, for letting me know about this). Le Pilote is also side-splitting. And check out Le Willi Waller, if you've got the time.

Indigenous Peoples' Resistance to Economic Globalization

Indigenous Peoples' Resistance to Economic Globalization: A Celebration of Victories, Rights and Cultures is a must-listen-to-it episode of Democracy Now (one of the best news shows coming out of the US).

Tuesday, November 21, 2006

A Postcapitalist Politics

This new book- A Postcapitalist Politics by J.K. Gibson-Graham is a must read for anyone doing popular education and/or popular economics education.

Activist Training in the Academy

I've recently learned about a new Master’s Program in Environmental Advocacy and Organizing at Antioch University New England. Worth checking out. Steve Chase who has both written a dissertation and designed the program and argues that popular education is the most suitable pedagogy for this program. Here's what he writes in his abstract:
In the last part of this section, the study identifies 5 core curriculum content areas that are key to teaching environmental advocacy and organizing and then discusses the tradition of popular education as the most appropriate educational methodology for activist training programs.
You can get Steve's dissertation on this page. He's got a blog, too: The Well-Trained Activist.

Popular Education for Social Change 2006

A belated posting of the syllabus for the popular education course i'm teaching at the Faculty of Environmental Studies (York University). Feedback is always appreciated. Especially if you make use of this syllabus in some way.

Monday, November 20, 2006

Amapola y los aviones

For those of you who speak spanish, i recommend watching this trailer for a Spanish film being made by my friend Clara about Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Most of what i've learned about this pernicious and invisible disability I’ve learned from Clara. Check it out! And here's more info here (Documental Sobre el SFC) and here (Conferencia del Profesor Dr James Baranjuk de la Georgetown University)

Sunday, November 12, 2006

Rabbit

Thanks to Matt for passing this on. A bizarre little morality tale. Very, very creepy.

Vivienne Jones work

This is a belated post to introduce you to Vivienne Jones' work which i learned about from a mutual friend. I just went to Vivienne's exhibit (a collaboration with Ken Nicol) that closed today (my bad - in terms of spreading the word in more timely fashion). Vivienne's work has an organic elegance and roughness that i am very fond of, reminding a good deal of Nick Bantock's work of which i am a big fan. I learned of Vivienne's work while looking for an engagement ring (more on that in a later post). Her rings are enchanting and seem to me like they have been carved out of the earth itself as much as cast. This most recent exhibit of works (quite different from her jewelry) includes resin-encased collages of buttons, iron filings and other found items and the whimsical ephemera of plumb-bobs and fawcetts. Again it reminded e of Bantock's work as well as the work of Dave McKean who did the covers to the Sandman comics. Here's one of the first covers that he did that has inspired my own collage work for many years.

Eagleton on Dawkins

English evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins has just published The God Delusion in which he applies his scientific reductionism to religion. The certainty of atheists such as Dawkins has always struck me ironically to be most similar to that of fundamentalists. Weird. Terry Eagleton, one of my favourite writers (whom i yet disagree with about postmodernism), has written a blistering critique of Dawkins that is well-worth the read - more than a few laugh-out-loud lines. I wanna write like Eagelton when i grow up - though i'll never be as wicked smart as he is. Here's a taste:
Dawkins speaks scoffingly of a personal God, as though it were entirely obvious exactly what this might mean. He seems to imagine God, if not exactly with a white beard, then at least as some kind of chap, however supersized. He asks how this chap can speak to billions of people simultaneously, which is rather like wondering why, if Tony Blair is an octopus, he has only two arms. For Judeo-Christianity, God is not a person in the sense that Al Gore arguably is. Nor is he a principle, an entity, or ‘existent’: in one sense of that word it would be perfectly coherent for religious types to claim that God does not in fact exist. He is, rather, the condition of possibility of any entity whatsoever, including ourselves. He is the answer to why there is something rather than nothing. God and the universe do not add up to two, any more than my envy and my left foot constitute a pair of objects.
Thanks to Corvin for the link!