Political protest art

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Meus' post "Blame the hippies" was the impetus for me to wax nostalgic about the 1960s and all that went with it: hippies, Vietman, racial integration, civil rights for all Americans, etc etc etc. And that got me looking at a lot of photography from the period, and I was really intrigued with the creativity of lithographs and posters. The rawness of that time is extremely hard to describe to people that didn't live through it, but some of the raw anger comes across in artwork, some of it quite graphic, too much so to even post here. You'd think that with the advent of the computer, protest poster art went the way of the dinosaur, along with 'zines' and 8-track players, but I was glad to find out, there is still an extremely vibrant design community creating beautiful protest art work. I thought I would share some of the ones I discovered, but starting with Vietnam War protests and working up to the present. Whenever any information is known about the origins of the artwork, or artist, that's provided in the byline. The more recent vintage work is pretty self explanatory. If you know or have favorite artists and or posters, please feel free to share them in the comments.



( Very large images behind the cut )

The "Moment of Silence" Sham

[paft.livejournal.com]

Damon Fowler, a graduating senior at Bastrop High School in Louisiana, recently took a principled stand on the school’s consistent flouting of the law:

My graduation from high school is this Friday. I live in the Bible Belt of the United States. The school was going to perform a prayer at graduation, but due to me sending the superintendent an email stating it was against Louisiana state law and that I would be forced to contact the ACLU if they ignored me, they ceased it. The school backed down, but that's when the shitstorm rolled in. Everyone is trying to get it back in the ceremony now. I'm not worried about it, but everyone hates me... kind of worried about attending graduation now. It's attracted more hostility than I thought.

( Read more )

Liveblogging the Rapture

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

OK, I know I said in the Friday Fun thread that I was going to leave this until tomorrow (Saturday), because SOME PEOPLE can't wait until Friday to start the post :P

Anyway, I'm bringing it forward because I have a big announcement to make!

Giraffery Lemon over at Heathen Scripture wrote to Family Radio requesting clarification over the time of The Rapture and he now has a response!

( Good News Everyone! )

34 33 32 24 22 18.5 9 2 hours and counting!

ETA 1250: For those of you who doubt the veracity of the science behind this prediction I can reveal to you now: The Mathematical Certainty

ETA 1254: What prayers should YOU be saying? Jeremiah (most of it) and Hosea, says Harold Camping. Audiobooks available here!

ETA 1411: To clear up some confusion, tomorrow is just The Rapture, those of us luck enough to be left behind have until October 21st, 2011 to make sure we earn out place in Hell.

ETA 1800: Edited to unlock the post because I am an idiot.

ETA 2000: From the Twittersphere: #Rapture prank: On Saturday, take some of your old clothes and shoes and leave sets of them arranged on sidewalks and lawns around town.

ETA 2330: I'm off to get my pre-Rapture beauty sleep. In the meantime, post your suggestions of the best post-rapture use of Church property. So far I'm thinking paintball ranges, skateparks, go kart tracks, bars and brothels. Preferably all at once.

If we get lucky and it takes the Papists too I'm going to Rome to get me some Nazi gold.

ETA 0900: The day has arrived. Heading out to scout potential looting hot spots, off to FundyVille (the outer suburbs). 9 hours to go, still no earthquakes.

ETA 1600: All suited up, post apocalypse style (see here). Heading out now to a Rapture looting/orgy party. Hopefully should be able to get on to the old lady's iPhone to update you all in two hours.

ETA 1610: ***ALERT ALERT ALERT*** www.familyradio.com appears to be down. Harbinger of the horns perhaps?

ETA 1612: Nope, it's up now. For those of you raising the point the Bible specifically says that no man will know when The Rapture is, Harold Camping addresses your legitimate concerns with the logic, reasoning and rationality that has made him great: No Man Knows?

ETA 1800: from iPhone. No earthquakes or Jebus. Thinking he has stopped at pub to get booze.

ETA 1900: Went looting anyway, no point wasting a good outfit! People were generally a mixture of confusion, fear and rage. Didn't get an iPad :( It's been fun, family radio have run a good campaign. Would Rapture again.

For now, I'm off to hide out for a while.

Friday Lulz: Newtonian Edition.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

Now that I am officially one semester closer to a degree in Mechanical Engineering I feel particularly qualified to speak on the following.

First let us review what we know...

Rule 1: You can't win, you can only break even.

Rule 2: You can only break even at absolute zero.

Rule 3: You will never reach absolute zero.

Questions? Bueller? Ok lets continue.

Forgotten Michael Jackson photos could power the world.

Contrary to the headline the article is not about using celluloid as an alternative fuel source. It's about a guy who took pictures of Michael Jackson back when he was 19 and is now trying to sell the heretofore-unpublished photos to raise money for his experimental electric motor (magic perpetual motion machine) that "...generates more energy than it actually draws from the battery".

I see three possibilities, in order of likelyhood they are...

One: The guy is just another snake-oil salesman.

Two: The guy is serious but a quack, which is in itself sad and a little poignient. Truth be told, if you've got an electric motor that puts out more juice than it's taking in you don't need to sell anything to raise the money to develop it. You just wheel that Bad-boy through the front door of GE and demand a seven-digit paycheck for life.

Three: The guy is serious and NOT a quack. In which case those guys predicting satueday's Apocalypse may well get the last laugh. You see, inventing a perpetual motion machine to end our dependance on oil is like developing anti-gravity to lose a few pounds on the bathroom scale. In fact, thanks to fun with relativity a functional perpetual motion machine would also be an anti-gravity device or time-machine depending on which variables it's messing with.

But what really frightens me is that I made the mistake of reading the comments. ( The naivety on display is simply breathtaking )

The scary thing is that these idiots, all excited about solving the worlds energy problems, represent the "Conventional Wisdom". These people will campaign and vote on my country's energy policy without ever grasping the the literally world shattering implications of of being able to bypass laws of thermodynamics. I swear there's nothing that will crush what little faith I have in the US Educational system faster than the readers of CNN's "entertainment" section's knowledge of science.

Then again, If you were a Micheal Jackson fan with a functional Time-machine and needed some petty cash what would you do? Maybe the reason the pictures never published is because they were never taken, at least not in this timeline. ;)

I'm sorry, did I break your causality?

The original Friday lulz (naughty grin)

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

Because it's NOW really-Friday (at long last!), here's the countdown to your portion of lulz. Four, three, two, POW!

Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Oh, you're so sweet...

DSK sez: "Meh........"

From the blogosphere:

"I feel sory for Dominique Strauss-Kahn, there is nothing worse than getting accused of attempted rape. It means you failed."

"I just heard that Silvio Berlusconi has been asked to head the IMF and restore its integrity at this difficult time."

"Dominique Strauss-Kahn should look on the bright side. It's probably not the last time he'll be picking up the free soap before being involved in a sexual assault."

""IMF head in US custody" Sure, America has reached its debt limit but isn't this rather drastic?"


...Your turn, mofos!!!

(no subject)

[fire-81.livejournal.com]

"Russia's General Public Prosecutor's Office failed to identify the owner of Domodedovo International Airport". (Russian News)

WHAT?
bwahahahaha

And you want me to want growing in the place, where whole giant airports are being own-less?

Its not a pin or a forgotten laptop, so you can't define who's the owner of lost property.

This is a fucking giant international airport. The biggest in Western(my bad) Eastern Europe.

Does this happen everywhere or in Russia only? :)

Jon Stewart: They’re [Bush adminstration officals] like the Winklevoss twins of getting bin Laden.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Why are we listening to the Bush administration people anyway? They didn’t get bin Laden,” he said on The Daily Show. “They’re like the Winklevoss twins of getting bin Laden. If you were the guys who were going to kill bin Laden, you would have killed bin Laden!”

Video clip will not embed. Click to view it here.

I know this aired over a week ago, but since the initial story first broke, several things have been cleared up: water boarding detainees did NOT lead to the success of the OBL raid. Even John McCain said this in a speech on the Senate floor recently. In fact, several of the detainees provided false information that hurt the process of finding OBL. And some right wingers are using this story as some sort of odd vindication that it was completely a Bush policy win. Given the developments after the raid (Pakistani objections, etc), we can rightly put that canard to rest, never mind that was ten years ago and completely overlooks any subsequent events.