I am happy to invite you all to read the primer for FreerangeII and offer ideas and suggestions for the upcoming zine. FreerangeII will be themed Gardening and Violence! (We are limiting the size of this issue to a tidy 48 pages pages)
freerange-2.pdf by Cheif Egg Bennett and Lt. Tania Maddog Sawicki
Please add points of conversation, ideas or suggestions below or email to freerangeorama@gmail.com
(I’m imagining writings about things like WWII Victory Gardens, Guerilla Gardening, Cuba’s Urban Agriculture)
ps. Freerange_III will most likely be themed “The importance of Design“. So feel free to put your thinking caps on about that one too!
Coastal Shipping may sound like a pretty inane topic, however it is interesting to note how important it is for developing an economy less reliant on fossil fuels. Shipping uses 75-80% less fuel that road freight; a bill before the american congress aims to put $US50 Million a year into developing coastal routes which would apparently move an estimated 20,000 truckloads a day off the roads (this seems rather high), and simultaneously create some 20,000 new jobs. A rare win-win scenario I would have thought. Over in NZ however the new National government looks to have changed our frieght development budget from $NZ27 Million to $NZ3 Million. Hurrah for short sighted right wing economics! Why are we not taking this environmental crises seriously? The righting is on the wall.
Hat tip: The Standard and Greenvoices blogs
Some freerangers have been doing some writing in a magazine called Magneto, coming out of Massey University in Wellington. The first is by Tania Mead about the present recession and its cultural benefits, and the second is a pre-plagiarized piece about Nina Simone and the Laws of Unintended Consequences.
TANIA SAWICKI MEAD. : Vultures of Doom Begone
Barnaby Bennett: “What gonna happen now? In all our cities?” (WHY? THE KING OF LOVE IS DEAD)
Finally, after a long gestation Freerange #1: The Self and the City is out and free to download. Go and get it. Have a read and tell us what you think.
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“How did it come to pass that virtue–a quality that for most of history has generally been deemed, well, a virtue–became a mark of liberal softheadedness?”
An excellent collection of thoughts from author Michael Pollan about reclaiming small scale positive actions such as gardening, because they do in fact make a difference . . .
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We should mostly be aware of the importance of the time we exist in, and how the next few years ahead of us are critical in dealing with the various economic and environmental threats we face. It is however important to remind ourselves of the nature of these threats. This is a very well elaborated talk from Jeremy Rifkin. Don’t let his slightly annoying delivery get in the way of the importance of what his is discussing. Quite inspirational.
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From Art of the Title . com.
Amazing short.
There’s a lot of discussion these days about the relationship between digital and analogue technologies. I rather like this video and its lovely parody of digital effects. zzz is playing: Grip
“We’ve got an energy problem, a fuel problem, a water problem and global warming all coming at us,” he replies. “Monoculture is heavily C02-emitting, water and fossil-fuel dependent. Clearly we can’t carry on as we are. We can and we must meet this challenge with something new. So the question is what?”
Fantastic review of Raj Patels book Stuffed and Starved via the Guardian. [link]
So for the first time in living memory we as a species are consuming more food than producing, while at the same time what will soon be the worlds largest economy reminds us we haven’t left the worst of the twentieth century behind us, and now to top things off an article from Wired Magazine, confirming some information I had heard about targeted sonic advertising, which for all purposes is brain advertising.
I’m scared. Read here.
