The Fungus

TED Long therm thinking necessary in short term fire

thefungus — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 01:27:04 +0000

How creativity is being strangled by the law.

thefungus — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 23:07:21 +0000

John Frusciante’s New Album The Empyrean

thefungus — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 04:44:26 +0000

One of the greatest musicians alive, John Frusciante discusses some of his ideas on his latest album, The Empyrean…

Imrael

Lyrically this record became a concept album and was not initially written that way though I had a clear idea of what sort of things I wanted to write about. I did not write the songs as a character but as myself. The form revealed itself as it took shape and I added songs to complete the flow I perceived. I also left off two songs since the singer’s words were somewhat from the inside out. All the remaining songs lyrical viewpoint is from the inside in. They are very personal, hence my being uncomfortable talking about them in any specific terms. Even in the long “description” I wrote, I’m being very cagey. The actual experience was, and is, very specific and did not involve anything vague. But to explain it in plain terms would serve no purpose other than to make me look insane to people who have no correlating inner experience. What I’ve said so far is vague insomuch as it has to be to be open and universal. But I’ve said enough to where anyone who has had a similar inner experience may be gently directed towards finding some clarity in areas, which are confusing. I’m sharing it to the degree I am because I have, at times, been so lost in the course of my life, and have been gently directed towards making sense of lots of confusing things from reading certain writers and from obsessing on lyrics of rock songs about this same subject, of which I believe there to be many, though perhaps often unbeknownst to the writers of the songs themselves.

We are all reaching up in our own way and so even when we choose concrete things as the object of our desire, I feel that they are only symbols and that the real object of our desire is the creative force inherent in everything. It is what created us and perpetuates our lives, and so our creations are its creations. Kind of like if you built a robot that could think and feel, and then it painted a picture, that picture would be the result of the precise structure of thought and feeling you endowed the robot with. We’re all grateful for what we’ve been given. Even when we are unhappy with everything, its “poor me”, showing that we still think of that “me” and its feelings, as having a lot of significance. It’s a pretty amazing thing to have this complex network of thought and feeling in these bodies. From where does it come? We’ve traced the cause of matter to something that required the preexistence of time, the principles of motion, space and many other things. The laws of motion, time and the space everything exists into, all have an untraced cause. And likewise we don’t have any idea where things like perception and thought came from. So why anything whatsoever exists, whether as actuality or potential, is unknown. I just attribute all these things to the creative force, since, though its essence is unknown, it is in plain view inside each one of us. And it becomes clearer the more generative and positive a persons thoughts and actions are, until it doesn’t seem unknown at all. Our own creative nature is a small version of the creative force we owe existence to, so we can understand that force for ourselves just by doing creative acts.

The life giving properties that the suns rays contain is something we imitate ourselves, whether by smiling at someone or telling a joke, or singing a song. It is a human need when you feel something inside to express it outwardly. And that life giving substance the sun shines out is a lot like our own creative actions. The sun is telling us that if you repeat an action every day (like learning something, playing something or making something), the object of your efforts will grow and grow. Your ability to express yourself or to give to the world around you will grow with your persistence in doing whatever that thing is you do. And even though the sun appears to go up and down, having its process of apparently rising up, peaking, going down, and then hiding, science has taught us that this only appears this way to our point of view and it is circling around, and shining at full strength always. Likewise our own ups and downs just appear as they do to us. In actuality we are thriving all the time. Everything we do is directed towards shining our form of light. We couldn’t do it if we were just peaking all the time, just as life as we know it would end if the sun always stayed at what appears to us as its highest point of strength. A person could never exceed at something if they just did it once in a while, it’s a hint and half that the thing we owe our existence to repeats its rounds every day. Persistence is an incredibly potent thing. We are lucky that life isn’t like dreams, in which the result of our actions is lost by the next dream. Here we have the ability to build a thing from day to day, whether it is skill at something or an actual edifice. Whether in the physical world or in our minds, this principle stands. We read one page of a book, and upon reading the next page its events appear to us as following the last one. In music, one note leads to the next, the new one heard in relationship to the ones, which preceded it. Or we learn the basics of something and then gradually learn that subjects complexities. These gifts are ours to do whatever we want with.

Trying and giving up go hand in hand. But it’s trying that deserves the attention of our will. Giving up is just breathing out. Breathing in is the one we need to remember to do. Breathing out naturally follows. The important thing is just to keep breathing. To try and then just go through all that happens, including not trying. And so we hold our breath sometimes. These things aren’t problems. They are just living. As long as the message you send yourself is that it is important to you to be guided by the creative force inside you, in the long run you are on the same path as the sun. Of course you’ll seem to go up and down, and be in darkness and light. That’s life. The reality of it is that you are a shining star circling through space all the time. So by making your own circular actions (doing some creative or educational activity consistently) you will naturally become more of what you really are. And you are that already. It’s just a game to learn to be it more completely amidst environment, and the illusions of constant change and separateness. One entirety of everything is all there is, ever was, and ever will be.

A People’s History of American Empire by Howard Zinn

thefungus — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 04:21:05 +0000

U.S. photographer Anthony Suau wins World Press Photo contest

thefungus — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 09:46:42 +0000

World Press Photo of the year 2008 was taken by American photographer Anthony Suau for a Time piece on the troubled U.S. economy. Following an eviction, Det. Robert Kole ensures the residents have moved out of their home in Cleveland, Ohio, on March 26, 2008. (World Press Photo)

Image of officer searching foreclosed home captures top photo prize

http://www.cbc.ca/arts/artdesign/story/2009/02/13/worldpress-photo-suau.html

Celebrated American photographer Anthony Suau, whose lens has captured tragic conflicts and human crises from Ethiopia to South Korea, is the top winner of the 2009 World Press Photo competition.

For its prestigious Photo of the Year prize, the World Press international jury chose Suau’s image of a Cleveland, Ohio, sheriff’s office police detective — handgun drawn — searching a looted, debris-strewn home after the owners had been evicted.
The jury, comprising international photography professionals, also named winners in 20 other categories, including:

Canadian winners include Kevin Frayer of the Associated Press, who won third prize in the general news, singles category.

“The strength of the picture is in its opposites. It’s a double entendre,” jury chair MaryAnne Golon said in a statement released Friday.

“Now war in its classic sense is coming into people’s houses because they can’t pay their mortgages.”

The winning photo originated from a series Suau captured for Time magazine, painting a portrait of the growing number of U.S. home foreclosures in March 2008, months before the public fully realized the impact of the housing crisis and the subsequent economic downturn.

Along with the excellent quality of the grim, complex photo, the judges praised Suau for capturing last year’s most important global issue.

He wins a cash prize of 10,000 euros (about $15,000 Cdn.).

Born in 1956, Suau is a longtime Time magazine contract photographer. His lens has captured a range of subjects, from famine in Ethiopia, war in Chechnya to the transformation of Soviet states after the fall of the Berlin wall and the at-home response to the most recent U.S. war in Iraq.

Suau is a past World Press Photo winner: an image he took at a South Korean demonstration also won the competition’s top honour in 1987.

His accolades also include the 1984 feature photography Pulitzer Prize for images chronicling the famine in Ethiopia and the 1995 Robert Capa Gold Medal for war images from Chechnya.

Despite these honours, however, Suau told industry website Photo District News on Friday he has struggled to find work over the past two months and is worried that he may have to find a job outside of photography in order to help support his family.

Suau and his fellow winners will receive their awards during a ceremony in Amsterdam on May 2. An exhibit of the 2008 prizewinners will also debut in Amsterdam that week before travelling to more than 100 cities around the globe.

Thousands of photographers from around the world submit images for the contest each year, and the judges spend nearly two weeks evaluating more than 96,000 photos.

Hot Docs has $40,000 for best Canadian pitch

thefungus — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 03:04:35 +0000

Last Updated: Monday, January 26, 2009 | 5:58 PM ET Comments0 Recommend5

CBC News

Hot Docs, Toronto’s annual festival of documentary film, is offering a new $40,000 grant to the best Canadian pitch at this year’s Toronto Documentary Forum.

The forum, an international marketplace for the documentary industry held at the Toronto festival, allows filmmakers to rub shoulders from producers from around the world.

The best pitch award is part of the Canwest-Hot Docs Fund created last year to increase the quantity and quality of Canadian documentaries.

That fund has already handed out $584,000 to Canadian documentary makers.

Participants, to be selected by a group of industry professionals, will have 15 minutes to present their pitch to assembled financiers on May 6 and 7.

Hot Docs will also host the Good Pitch, a project by Britain’s Channel 4 and Sundance to link documentary makers interested in social change with others who might have the same interests.

The pitch process links filmmakers with NGOs, charities, ad agencies and media, as well as other potential sources of financing, to work toward a common goal.

The Good Pitch was created three years ago in Britain as a way of creating a market for films that would inspire people to give money, change laws or influence others.

“Films are the best medium for changing hearts, minds and lives, by bringing stories and issues to the widest possible audiences,” the Good Pitch website says. “Films inspire people to engage; with the characters, with the stories, with the issues.”

The Good Pitch is making its first tour of North America with the Sundance Institute and Hot Docs is its first stop.

BC Elections Are Coming Up…

Change the Game — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 17:31:56 +0000

So here are a few useful links/blogs:

Inside info on the City: The State of Vancouver. Frances Bula
The Tyee
Beyond Robson
Public Eye Online
The Hook–The Tyee’s Blog Site
Bill Tieleman

We’ll try and keep this list active and expand as we find more. If you know of better ones, add them to the comments.

Mel Lehan beats Gordon Campbell in 2009

Change the Game — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 17:04:20 +0000

It could happen, it just depends on how much work the people of Vancouver Point-Grey are willing to put into a campaign.

Mel at UBC Farm. Image from the Georgia Straight

Who is Mel Lehan? Well, for all you greenies, even David Suziki wants people to recognize and support the work Mel has done in the community. The MAYOR OF KITSILANO is already getting geared up to take on “never likes to sit in the legislature and debate” guy.

What happened Last time…

bAng* bAng*

thefungus — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 22:47:02 +0000

A Bid to Curb Violence Before It Is Learned

By MARC LACEY
Published: January 10, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/world/americas/11mexico.html?hp

MEXICO CITY — Over the Christmas holidays, Othón Cuevas Córdova, a Mexican congressman, had his life threatened, albeit in jest. His young nephew pointed a toy pistol that he had received as a gift at the lawmaker and said, “Tío, I’m going to kill you.”

Mr. Cuevas was not amused. He talked to the boy’s parents about the inappropriateness of giving a child a weapon, even a plastic one, in a country so overrun with violence. And he sped up the introduction in Mexico’s National Assembly of a legislative ban on the fabrication, importation and sale of toy guns and other warlike toys.

“The boy was so young he could barely say the words,” said Mr. Cueva, who is from Mexico’s southern Oaxaca State and represents the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution. “But from infancy, children are learning the culture of violence and we need to do something about it.”

Mr. Cuevas’ proposal to ban toy weaponry, introduced on Thursday, is one of a number of legislative proposals aimed at addressing in one way or another the explosion of killings and kidnappings that Mexico is experiencing, much of it tied to narcotics traffickers fighting with the authorities for control of their lucrative transit routes.

Lawmakers have suggested legalizing marijuana to reduce traffickers’ profits, bringing back the death penalty for kidnappers and reducing the age at which criminal suspects can be tried as adults to 12 from 18, among other measures.

The bills face varying probabilities of success and are in some cases dismissed as irrelevant by security experts. But they show the concern, and even desperation, that many politicians feel toward the state of their crime-racked country.

The proposal to legalize marijuana is considered dead. But President Felipe Calderón has put forward his own measure to allow those carrying small amounts of illegal drugs to spend time in treatment centers instead of jail.

The overhaul of Mexico’s judicial system — introducing quicker, oral trials instead of the current trials conducted solely by the exchange of legal documents, and making arrests of organized-crime suspects easier — is considered by experts to be among the most important legislative steps taken recently.

Substantive proposals are also under consideration to improve intelligence-sharing among law enforcement agencies and to overhaul the security forces to make them less corrupt.

One priority of Mr. Calderón’s government is to reduce the number of real guns in Mexico, the vast majority of which are smuggled into Mexico from the United States. That is likely to be high on the agenda when Mr. Calderón meets with President-elect Barack Obama on Monday in Washington.

In the case of the toy gun ban, Mr. Cuevas is seeking to add teeth to a measure already on the books. In 2002, Mexico made toy guns that look like the real thing illegal, largely because criminals were using the fake guns to commit crimes and get away with lighter sentences. That ban applied to replicas of assault rifles, submachine guns, shotguns and pistols.

The only problem with that ban, Mr. Cuevas said, is that it carried no sanctions. Street vendors still sell toy Berettas outside schools. Markets still stock realistic-looking AK-47 toy rifles, which are known in criminal circles as “cuernos de chivo,” or goat horns.

The beefed-up measure offered by Mr. Cuevas would fine those who trade in toy weaponry or close down their businesses. The country would be better without those sales, he argued.

“The cost we will pay as a society will be more if we do not do something to prevent conduct in children that later will become criminal,” the bill says.

Mr. Cuevas acknowledged that wiping out every last plastic pistol, realistic looking tank or replica warplane was not going to make Mexico safe again, a point that security experts make as well. “It’s not a panacea,” he said. “There are many reasons for this violence. But this is something we can do.”

Other places have tried a similar approach. Los Angeles, fed up with an explosion of gang-related violence, banned toy gun sales in 1987. In Iraq, the British Army issued a public safety announcement last month asking parents to not allow their children to play with toy guns “in case security forces mistake them for real weapons and open fire.”

Airsplat.com, a California company that makes toy guns that look like real ones and fire plastic pellets, warns users not to bring their guns to schools or pull them out in public places.

“If you are confronted by a police officer while transporting or playing with your airsoft gun, stay calm and follow their orders to the letter,” the company says on its Web site. “Tell them the gun isn’t real, and ask them what you should do. Don’t make any sudden movements and DO NOT argue with the officers.”

Toys are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to how violent themes reach children, said Mr. Cuevas, the father of two daughters. There are violent video games and television shows, he said, that expose children to unchildlike behavior. And then there are the violent videos put up on Web sites, sometimes by drug traffickers themselves.

On top of all that are news reports, which in Mexico, on any given day, can feature beheadings, bombings and numerous other violent acts.

That real-life horror is what concerns José Antonio Ortega, president of the Citizen’s Committee for Public Security and Criminal Justice.

He lamented that the role models for many children these days “are drug dealers, kidnappers and others involved in organized crime.”

‘Stop Gap Housing’ Idea Could Make Big Dent in Homelessness

Change the Game — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 18:42:30 +0000

A plan to house Vancouver’s homeless is taking shape on the drawing board of a local architect. It calls for the rapid erection of temporary villages assembled from the same type of modular units that mining companies provide for remote workers.

“Stop Gap Housing” is what architect Gregory Henriquez calls it.

“All of us in this community have long been advocates for permanent housing,” he said. “But we’ve gotten to the point where the numbers of homeless are so staggering that I’m left wondering if we will ever catch up doing it that way. I don’t think we can. I think there has to be a stop-gap measure. And that’s what this is.”

Henriquez, whose Woodward’s includes 200 units of social housing built to last hundreds of years, stressed that Stop Gap Housing would never replace permanent homes.

“It’s portable dwellings. It’s not meant to be a permanent fixture on the landscape. But it could serve for several years until we complete the construction of permanent housing,” he said. “I think it’s better than leaving people homeless.”

It’s also cheaper.