Beyond The Choir:: Climate scientists reaching beyond the choir & dropping the F-bomb VIDEO

reposted from BeyondTheChior A while back Chris Mooney, author of The Republican War on Science, offered some sound advice to climate scientists about “good climate communication”. Basically, if you’re a climate scientist who wants society to take your data seriously, you have to be something of a political scientist too. Mooney spotlights the Evangelical Climate …

The Importance of Stephen Colbert’s Bold and Subversive PAC

Stephen Hoban has written a great summary and the full story is on Splitsider. Here’s the beginning: On Wednesday night Stephen Colbert took on Comedy Central’s parent company Viacom, calling out their lawyers for trying to block his attempts to form a political action committee for the 2012 election. For the second time this year, …

Poor Immigrant as Muse

The following is an article about the artist Tania Bruguera and and her year-long project of living with and “as” an immigrant in NYC. This raises the question of: How does this art address and/or effect poor immigrants’ lives? The most charitable reading is that the artist intends to use her position of power and …

200 years ago The Luddites used humor, spectacle, narrative, and myth

From The Right To Be Lazy. Ned Ludd was a fictitious leader. Costumes, jokes, and more. Here’s an excerpt: “The Luddites, as they soon became known, were dead serious about their protests. … But they were also making fun, dispatching officious-sounding letters that began, ‘Whereas by the Charter’…and ended ‘Ned Lud’s Office, Sherwood Forest.’ Invoking …

Overcoming political polarization… but not through facts

Ethan Zuckerman has posted a beautiful piece that stitches together many of the ideas we deal with in How To Win and the Center for Artistic Activism. I can’t recommend it enough: Overcoming political polarization… but not through facts It ties together polarization, confirmation bias, the media, David Simon and The Wire, and the need …

Diggers: If you can act it out, it’s real.

We thought: culture is much more important than politics. Let’s just start getting people living the way they wanna live. You wanna live in a world where you don’t have to work? Let’s make it. You wanna live in a world where you can get food for free? Let’s make it. You wanna live in …

New ‘Tactical Urbanism’ guide for aspiring guerrilla urbanists | Grist

The Next Generation of New Urbanists yes, these are young New Urbanists, because New Urbanism has been around long enough that it’s getting a little … old and the Street Plans Collaborative want to help. They’ve put together a “Tactical Urbanism” guide that you can download for use when you need some ideas about how …

Culture Gap – New York Bike Lanes

Duncombe and I have said more than once “you can change the laws, but it won’t matter if the culture doesn’t change with it.” For lack of a better term, I’m going to call this – for now – a Culture Gap. A change may be “the right thing,” environmentally, economically, socially, for justice, but …

Design with Intent Toolkit

Design with Intent:101 Patterns for Influencing Behaviour Through Design All design influences our behaviour, but as designers we don’t always consciously consider the power this gives us to help people, (and, sometimes, to manipulate them). There’s a huge opportunity for design for behaviour change to address social and environmental issues where people’s behaviour is important, …

Creative militancy meets militant creativity

By Sarah Amsler Lecturer in Sociology at Aston University (Birmingham, UK) via the Huffington Post Under what might now need to be termed comparatively normal circumstances, I have often agonised over helping my students understand the practical significance of critical theory. They ask, but what can one actually do with Herbert Marcuse today? In a …

In Kansas, Climate Skeptics Embrace Green Energy – NYTimes.com

Attempts by the Obama administration to regulate greenhouse gases are highly unpopular here because of opposition to large-scale government intervention. Some are skeptical that humans might fundamentally alter a world that was created by God. If the heartland is to seriously reduce its dependence on coal and oil, Ms. Jackson and others decided, the issues …

Arnold Schwarzenegger knows environmental leadership

“I think that I have the talent of speaking the language in such a way so that the world understands it rather than making it complicated,” he said. But don’t expect to see Schwarzenegger touring an Al Gore-style scientific slideshow. The governator’s version of environmental leadership hinges on avoiding mention of the words climate change …

Art as Terrorism — Antanas Mockus

Antanas Mockus, was a mayor of Bogota Columbia who used innovative, creative methods to build civil society. The following is from an interview between Mockus and Pedro Reyes (From Marisa’ Jahn’s Byproduct) PR: How do you imagine the role of the artist as social agent? AM: I think one could veery convincingly put forward: “Commit …

Insane Clown Posse = secret Christians

In brief – super violent, misogynistic, homophobic, white guy hip-hop act just announced they were Christian evangelicals and this was all part of their plan. Violent J explained himself unapologetically to a New Jersey newspaper: ”You have to speak their language. You have to interest them, gain their trust, talk to them and show you’re …

UCSD arts professor cleared in at least one investigation « Last Blog On Earth

UCSD arts professor Ricardo Dominguez did not use school funds inappropriately, according to the findings of a University of California official investigation into Dominguez’s involvement with a controversial art project. On Jan. 11, the UC system began investigating Dominguez’s use of just under $5,000 of grant money to fund the Transborder Immigrant Tool (TBT), a …

Imagine Peace by Yoko Ono

IMAGINE PEACE by yoko ono to the pebble people: start your own campaign! A butterfly is hopping from flower to flower. Oh, good. I think. The butterfly is busybodying as usual. We are like butterflies. We busybody ourselves every day for our survival as we think we know how. But the difference with us, is …

What is Winning? Results. – Indymedia Ireland

Via Indymedia Ireland Activist Questionnaire Results This is an attempt at a summary of the results of questionnaires, interviews and a focus group at the Dublin Grassroots Gathering in June 2008 on the theme of what is winning in horizontal activism. This was done to hopefully be part of a broader movement discussion on goals, …