A life in general, Jashan.org

The Hippy Clintons via Newsgroper

The Moghul and the Madam …..

Whatever could they be talking about?

Madam my minaret stands at attention when I see your lovely boots!

Oh Sir! I’m hardly familiar with minarets…. but your own shoes are ever so pointy and quite becoming….

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“Prom Night ’62: Alone with Mr. McNamara” should have been the name of this photo. It’s not just the kitschy aspect of the photo that is interesting, but the oddly symmetrical nature of it in general; the brick pattern on the wall in relation to the well, the conical ruffled dress and the upward sweep of the pine trees.

There’s a few elements going on; the staged setting is at once congruous and incongruous to each of its props, she’s standing at a well, (why?!) made of a brick-patterned cardboard within another brick enclosure, a river of grey crepe paper draped over more brick and just beyond the door opening is yet another brick ensemble, brick leading into more brick– an Ikea display gone wrong?It’s hard to tell if it’s really a set of stairs or another background, did she come through there? Or was she always there?

Not an uncommon prom photo, perhaps of the time, but it’s somewhat sinister, the inharmonious confluence of artificial materials and the girl–smack in the middle, dressed to kill, not a hair out of place, perfect pink with white gloves and a tiara. Why would anyone stand at a well in a ball gown?

It’s as if her geometry teacher had wandered in the room and said “Hey let’s have a photo!” The girl looks caught in the headlights–somehow she ended up alone with Mr. McNamara. “Beautiful, beautiful, you’re a perfect inverted Isosceles triangle”, he sighs and runs his hands over the ruffles of her dress. We need to get her out of there quickly! A mad rush from stale colors and pencil crimped fingers! She steps back and falls into the well, pink taffeta slips over the edge and she is gone, the teacher is alone now, he looks over inside the well, it’s empty, a slew of old paper cups, popcorn and corsets litter the bottom.

London’s Metropolitan police has launched a new counter-terrorism campaign complete with anti-photography propaganda.

It’s very interesting, considering the following;

Within 200 yards of George Orwell’s flat 27B overlooking Canonbury Square in Islington, North London, there are thirty-two CCTV (closed circuit television) cameras.

Orwell’s view of the tree-filled gardens outside the flat is under 24-hour surveillance from two cameras perched on traffic lights.

The flat’s rear windows are constantly viewed from two more security cameras outside a conference centre in Canonbury Place.

Britain now has over 4.2 million cameras - that’s one for every fourteen people. A typical citizen is caught on camera an average of 300 times per day.

It was quite simple. All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. “Reality control,” they called it: in Newspeak, “doublethink.” - George Orwell (Nineteen Eighty Four)

Via BoingBoing & Technovelgy

Incredible Greek photographer…To see more

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Eighteen years later, Nikos Economopoulos is a law student in Greece headed for a lucrative career when a wave of numbness overcomes him in a classroom. He rises from his desk, walks out the door, and leaves jurisprudence forever for the precarious existence of a wandering photographer. “I wanted to stop thinking and begin to feel,” he says. Quote from 1998 Mother Jones Article.

Watch it or Read it and spread the word if you are so inclined.

Click the image below to watch the Video or click here for the Transcript.

So I want you to shut your eyes and imagine what it will seem like to a young man in Iraq or in Iran, who wakes up on January 21st, 2009, and sees the picture of this man as the president of the United States. A man who opposed the war at the beginning, a man who worked his way up from almost nothing, a man who came from a mother and a father of mixed cultures and mixed societies, who came from a broken home to overcome all of that to become the leader in his class, at the Harvard Law Review, and an extraordinary success as a politician. How can they see us when they see us as having chosen this man as our president?

There can be no clearer way that we could say, that we could say that the United States could say, that we have changed, than by electing this man. There is no way we could more clearly move on toward peace than this. He represents the very best of who we are, the best of character, of integrity and ideals. And someone who opposed the war from the start.