La Maupin, both insane and remarkable
Month: April 2013
Codex Seraphinianus, 1976-1978
‘The Codex Seraphinianus is a book written and illustrated by Italian artist, architect and industrial designer Luigi Serafini, from 1976 to 1978. The book appears to be a visual encyclopedia of an unknown world, written in one of its languages, an alphabetic writing intended to be meaningless.’
I skimmed through that once in a library… I really need to get my own copy.
Investors don’t go down to the television studio and make sure that the local talk-show host or reporter is doing what they want. There are other, subtler, more complex mechanisms that make it fairly certain that the people on the air will do what the owners and investors want. There’s a whole, long, filtering process that makes sure that people only rise through the system to become managers, editors, etc., if they’ve internalized the values of the owners.
Secret, Lies and Democracy – Noam Chomsky (via noam-chomsky)
Growing inequality: the war on the poor
Growing inequality: the war on the poor
The latest figures for global inequality show a worrying trend. It is a well worn phrase that the ‘rich get richer whilst the poor get poorer’, but in the last few years the extent of the wealth accumulated by the richest people in the world has sky rocketed.
The campaigning charity Oxfam released a report in early 2013 on the crisis of rising inequality across the world. The report highlights the never before seen levels of wealth that are going to the very top of society. The reality of unequal wealth distribution are more stark and revealing than even Occupy managed to capture with their call for a struggle against the 1% . Oxfam’s research indicates that in fact the top 100 wealthiest people earned £240 billion in 2012. They claim;
“The richest 1 percent has increased its income by 60 percent in the last 20 years with the financial crisis accelerating rather than slowing the process” (read full report here)
Even the World Bank acknowledges the growing crisis of wealth distribution; “The top 1% has seen its real income rise by more than 60% over those two decades“.
