They alone, therefore, of all the citizens are forbidden to touch or handle silver or gold; they must not come under the same roof as them, nor wear them as ornaments, nor drink from vessels made of them. Upon this their safety and that of the state depends. If they acquire private property in land, houses, or money, they will become farmers and men of business instead of Guardians, and harsh tyrants instead of partners in their dealings with their fellow citizens, with whom they will live on terms of mutual hatred and suspicion; they will be more afraid of internal revolt than external attack, and be heading fast for destruction that will overwhelm the whole community.
Plato, The Republic

The Narcicyst and Omar Offendum

This past Saturday I went to see “An evening with Aesop Rock and Kimya Dawson” at the Melbourne Festival. I’m not a huge fan of either artist, but figured the pairing would at least have to be interesting. Although I ended up leaving before the end of the set, the good news is that the opening act was stellar: the duo of Syrian-American Omar Offendum and Iraqi-Canadian (Montrealer, no less) The Narcicyst.

There’s a huge wave of great Arab hip-hop coming out at the moment, and these two guys are definitely fantastic examples. Both strong lyricists with impressive flow, Omar’s acappella was particularly jaw-dropping. Check out these videos to get a taste, then go out and buy their records:

As a bonus, here’s another amazing artist in this space, Shadia Mansour (featuring M1 from Dead Prez):

So just before Twitter was brought to its knees a few minutes ago, my whole stream was full of mourning for a successful business leader who made some really cool products and died today. I thought this was maybe a little much, so I went looking for a list of people who’ve died this year to provide some perspective, and found out that Wangari Maathai died last week, which doubly brought home the point I was trying to make in that I hadn’t heard about it until just now. RIP, Wangari. You did real good.

New Coat O’ Paint

WordPress tells me it’s been a year and a day since the last post I published on this blog, so I figured, “hey, what a great time to roll out a new theme.”

I’ve been digging responsive web design in a big way lately, and I also can’t be bothered spending more than 20 minutes in a stretch writing CSS, so I opted to purchase this most excellent theme. It’s GPL-licensed, which is really nice, and it’s also gorgeously responsive.

Maybe this will inspire me to post more often. But probably it won’t.

This is a news website story about a scientific paper

A great piece of satire about mainstream media science reporting from Martin Robbins’ The Lay Scientist over at The Guardian.

Full of gems like:

This paragraph elaborates on the claim, adding weasel-words like “the scientists say” to shift responsibility for establishing the likely truth or accuracy of the research findings on to absolutely anybody else but me, the journalist.

Joell Ortiz — Farewell to Summer EP

farewell_Summer2

Joell Ortiz’s new free EP Farewell Summer is fire.

I’m so hot, I could stand still and pour sweat
In the North Pole, fully naked with my balls wet

Damn.

Check out this track, So Wrong, featuring Talib Kweli, Brother Ali, and Jean Grae (talk about an all-star lineup):

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New Blog: Grow Buy Cook Eat

Anyone who knows me well knows that reading The Ominvore’s Dilemma had a fairly profound impact on me. I’ve taken to shopping pretty much exclusively at farmers’ markets and ranting to anyone who’ll listen about the wonders of local and sustainable food and the evils of the agro-industrial complex.

I’ve decided to take that ranting and do something productive with it: I’ve started a new blog on the topic of food, called Grow Buy Cook Eat. The name is inspired by the four principal ways we engage with food; my idea is to examine each of those points of contact and look for ways to make them more ethical, sustainable, and of course enjoyable. The blog’s been up for a little while, but I wanted to put off the “official” announcement until I had a theme that looked halfway decent. I think I’ve achieved that now, so have at it.

Check it out and let me know what you think. There’s also a twitter account @growbuycookeat.

CBC Radio’s Ideas Bats One Out the Park

A great program all-round, Ideas, from CBC Radio, recently ran a two part round-table discussion on secularism in modern democracies that was just fantastic. A reasoned, in-depth, and principled discussion that steered clear of all the usual empty rhetoric on the topic. If you’ve got two hours of listening time at any point in the next few weeks, this is most definitely how I’d recommend you spend them:

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