How to not buy crap for Christmas

I'm not much a a shopper, unless it is a thrift store. So talk about Black Friday and Christmas gifts kind of freaks me out. But many people love the gift giving aspect of the upcoming holidays, so let me make some suggestions that won't add more plastic crap to a household and might boost the economy of enterprising individuals rather than major corporations.

First suggestion is of course, make things yourself. I personally think that the idea of a home-made Christmas is the best. No one has to buy anything at all! Getting a gift you know was made just for you is truly heartwarming, as anyone who has ever hung kid's art on the refrigerator knows. Cards, cookies, homemade books about some event you enjoyed together, pictures in decorated frames, whatever. The list is endless. And they will like it because they like you, and you made it just for them.

Second best is to buy local. Not local as in your nearest shopping mall, but local as in the one-of-a-kind shop owned by someone who lives near you. You'll have to walk around your own neighborhood to figure out what remarkable items are hiding inside...

Third, buy stuff that is handmade and sold by the maker themselves. Going to craft shows is always fun, but you can shop handmade from bed, via the internet. The most well known handmade shopping site is etsy.com. You can find anything, and I can guarantee that you will find the perfect gift for even the most difficult to shop for person. They also make it easy to search by location, so you can buy homemade and local. Chances are, someone you know uses etsy to sell things they make. Many people I know do. Here's a sampling of creative folk I personally know and love:

My brother Orien sells handmade tools, kitchen utensils, and archery. Link to his shop here.








Tracey makes amazing jewelry here and here:

Or check out lovely Megan's wonderful bags here and here:









The samples above are grown up presents, but Etsy has tons of amazing and unique toys and kids items, too. For example:








Aside from Etsy, try the websites of some of these amazing craftspeople:

The pottery of Kate Brown can be seen here:











The metal work of Ginger Meek Allen (she made our wedding rings!)










The Handmade Toy Alliance has a long list of links to independent toy makers here.

Kid's music by original artists (that is pleasant for adults too) can be found here.

Magazines make great gifts too. Try these:
Cricket Magazine (award winning, no advertising!) and their other magazines for kids from toddlers to teens:











For ladies, Bust Magazine is way fun. And everyone loves National Geographic, including kids.

See? There are lots of fun ways to shop that let you avoid long lines at chain stores on Black Friday! Enjoy!

mcnamara

“Who is man? Is he a rational animal? If he is, then the goals can ultimately be achieved. If he is not, then there is little point in making the effort. All the evidence of history suggests that man is indeed a rational animal but with a near infinite capacity for folly. His history seems largely a halting, but persistent, effort to raise his reason above his animality. He draws blueprints for utopia, but never quite gets it built. In the end he plugs away obstinately with the only building material really ever at hand: his own part-comic, part-tragic, part-cussed, but part-glorious nature.”

"What makes us omniscient? Have we a record of omniscience? We are the strongest nation in the world today. I do not believe that we should ever apply that economic, political, and military power unilaterally. If we had followed that rule in Vietnam, we wouldn't have been there. None of our allies supported us. Not Japan, not Germany, not Britain or France. If we can't persuade nations with comparable values of the merit of our cause, we'd better reexamine our reasoning."

don't divorce us

I'm really excited about getting married. For so many reasons.

With that in mind, please take the time to watch this very lovely little movie:


"Fidelity": Don't Divorce... from Courage Campaign on Vimeo.

the arrival

I've been meaning to blog about this book for about a year now. Hassan gave me a copy, my first introduction to the astoundingly great illustrator Shaun Tan.

The Arrival is a wordless telling of the immigrant experience. Using beautifully rendered sepia-toned drawings, Tan combines the mood of Ellis Island era photographs with fantastical landscapes unlike any we have ever imagined.




We join our nameless protagonist as he seeks a better life, away from the shadowy monsters bringing grief to his homeland. Like every immigrant before us, we leave behind everything familiar and beloved, seeking opportunity and a better life.


We enter a world unfamiliar. Day-to-day objects are new to us, language unintelligible, the creatures and foods perhaps a little frightening.

What can we do for work in this strange new land, without language? The skills we came here with are useless in this new place, where everything must be learned from the beginning.

We miss our family and the comforts of home.

Our protagonist is shown the ways of his new home by a series of strangers, each of whom has their own immigration story to tell. Each of these side-stories are achingly familiar and yet other-worldly:

As every immigrant has hoped and will hope, our family is eventually reunited. This new land does become our home. The day-to-day objects of our new life merge with those of the cultures we come from.


This picture book does more to express my sentiments on human kindness and struggle than any other book I've encountered. Tan clearly put enormous effort into making his story both timeless and universal. It is at once the story of Hassan's parents, my Finnish ancestors, Tan's own father (who immigrated from Malaysia to Australia), and the countless strangers who leave their homes and cross borders everyday all over the world.

Side note: check out the cute stuffy based on Shaun Tan's new-world creature:

You can read about him here.

miserable much?

AM linked me to this a while ago, but it's so astute I have to meme it for y'all. From Cracked.com:

7 Reasons the 21st Century is making you miserable

Some excerpts to whet your palate:

"Lots of us were born into towns full of people we couldn't stand. As a kid, maybe you found yourself in an elementary school classroom, packed in with two dozen kids you did not choose and who shared none of your tastes or interests. Maybe you got beat up a lot. But, you've grown up. And if you're, say, a huge DragonForce fan, you can go find their forum and meet a dozen people just like you. Or even better, start a private room with your favorite few and lock everybody else out. Say goodbye to the tedious, awkward, painful process of dealing with somebody who's truly different. That's another Old World inconvenience, like having to wash your clothes in a creek or wait for a raccoon to wander by the outhouse so you can wipe your ass with it. The problem is that peacefully dealing with incompatible people is crucial to living in a society. In fact, if you think about it, peacefully dealing with people you can't stand is society. Just people with opposite tastes and conflicting personalities sharing space and cooperating, often through gritted teeth."


I love reason #3: "Texting is a shitty way to communicate."

After reading inane flames from some internet trolls over coffee this morning, I also love the following graph, posted by the blog's author:


"In my time online I've been called 'fag' approximately 104,165 times. I keep an Excel spreadsheet. I've also been called 'asshole' and 'cockweasel' and 'fuckcamel' and 'cuntwaffle' and 'shitglutton' and 'porksword' and 'wangbasket' and 'shitwhistle' and 'thundercunt' and 'fartminge' and 'shitflannel' and 'knobgoblin' and 'boring.' And none of it mattered, because none of those people knew me well enough to really hit the target. I've been insulted lots, but I've been criticized very little. And don't ever confuse the two."


"The problem is you are hard-wired by evolution to need to do things for people. Everybody for the last five thousand years seemed to realize this and then we suddenly forgot it in the last few decades. We get suicidal teens and scramble to teach them self-esteem. Well, unfortunately, self-esteem and the ability to like yourself only come after you've done something that makes you likable. You can't bullshit yourself. If I think Todd over here is worthless for sitting in his room all day, drinking Pabst and playing video games one-handed because he's masturbating with the other one, what will I think of myself if I do the same thing?

You want to break out of that black tar pit of self-hatred? Brush the black hair out of your eyes, step away from the computer and buy a nice gift for someone you loathe. Send a card to your worst enemy. Make dinner for your mom and dad. Or just do something simple, with an tangible result. Go clean the leaves out of the gutter. Grow a damn plant."

worldmapper

Heard about this project on NPR. "Worldmapper is a collection of world maps, where territories are re-sized on each map according to the subject of interest...The maps presented on this website are equal area cartograms, otherwise known as density-equalising maps. The cartogram re-sizes each territory according to the variable being mapped...The process of creating an equal area cartogram is not a trivial one, and has occupied researchers for decades. A recent development by Mark Newman and Michael Gastner (described in their paper, Gastner and Newman 2004) has led to the creation of this website. The process is essentially one of allowing population to flow-out from high-density to lower-density areas, and they used the linear diffusion method from elementary physics to model this process."

Michael T. Gastner and M. E. J. Newman (2004) Diffusion-based method for producing density equalizing maps Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 101, 7499-7504.

____________________________________________________________

Wealth - purchasing power (2002)

Leading nations:

1. Luxembourg
2. Norway
3. Ireland
4. US
5. Denmark

____________________________________________________________

HIV prevalence

"In 2003, the highest HIV prevalence was Swaziland, where 38%, or almost 4 in every 10 people aged 15 to 49 years,were HIV positive. All ten territories with the highest prevalence of HIV are in Central and Southeastern Africa."

____________________________________________________________

Violent Deaths (2002)

Gotta love Europe when it comes to violence (or lack thereof). Stay away from Colombia. And from everything I've been hearing, the mafia and murderers of Juarez are trying to push Mexico up in the rankings. Dark humor, I know.
____________________________________________________________

Odd fact that I didn't know: Norway is the 2nd leading exporter of crude petroleum to the world (#1 is Saudi Arabia - exporting 2x as much as anyone else).

Best feature of the website: for each map, you can make a printable PDF poster for your classroom/dorm/apartment/rebel base.

hope

obama

I have avoided political commentary thus far in this election, primarily because the blogosphere is already clogged with partisan opinion. Furthermore, when discussing politics (or religion, for that matter) one typically finds oneself in one of two uncomfortable positions: preaching to the choir, or banging your head against a brick wall. I find neither particularly appealing. And yet, after watching the last debate I felt inspired to make some comments on Obama & McCain.

First, I just have to get a couple things off my chest. While I am used to Republicans in the Rove-era using scare politics to win elections, I find two of the current neocon tactics too despicable even for my cynical and jaded palate. The portrayal of Obama as a radical, Muslim terrorist is reprehensible and irresponsible. Yes, I am worried some that right-wing, white trash nutjob is going to off Obama a week before the election. And if that happens, McCain/Palin will have to feel party responsible for the anger and hatred they have intentionally stoked. Furthermore, I find it disturbing that people have to defend Obama by saying, "No, he's a Christian." What if he was a Muslim? My mother's Muslim. I was raised reading the Koran and knew far more about Muhammed than about Jesus. I assure you: this does not make me, nor my mother (a diminutive 4'11" saint) a terrorist. Arab = Muslim = terrorist is an equation that must be eradicated from the American consciousness, and McCain/Palin have only reinforced this falsehood.


Second, I absolutely detest it when people use the phrase "pro-abortion" to describe pro-choice. McCain did so several times in the debate, and I found it repugnant. No one, obviously, is pro-abortion. Using that phrase trivializes the issue to an extent; it creates a black & white world, stoking people's anger and moral outrage against women, doctors, and advocates of the right to choose. I actually understand, and perhaps even sympathize, with the pro-life argument: if you truly believe that abortion is murder, than you should campaign to make it illegal. That's a reasonable position to hold. But it's not necessary to portray the opposition as evil.

radical

I believe Obama will win the presidency. But I suspect that many on the left will be severely disappointed by his actions. Obama has crusaded, from the beginning of his campaign, as someone who will bridge the divide. He will work with Republicans, and may in fact, cave in to establishment-demands in order to push forward aspects of his own agenda. He will likely expand the war in Afghanistan. He will almost certainly struggle to get a universal health-care system off the ground, and I'm certain that he'll continue to protect the interests of BigPharm and insurance companies. He won't purge Washington of lobbyists, and he won't eradicate pandering, soft-money, or pork. He won't be a pacifist who cuts military spending in half and doubles the education budget. He won't be a shining hero of leftists everywhere. He won't be a Ralph Nader, or a Dennis Kucinich.

Many on the left will be hurt and angered by this - perhaps so much so that Obama won't get elected to a second term. If you expect that of him, you haven't been paying attention and your disappointment will be your own fault. But there's no need to worry. Obama has the potential to shape our country, and possibly the world, like no other leader in recent history.

How? Primarily, by serving as a role-model and a symbol. A symbol of diversity, intelligence, and compassion.

A bi-racial child of a black Kenyan and a white woman from middle America, Obama could initiate our desperately needed separation from the Puritan-rich-white-male heritege that has dominated American politics since its inception. Do I hate rich white males, just because? No. But rich white men can't represent America today. Obama's existence embraces so much more of what it means to be Amercian, and for that matter, a human being. I like the fact that his father exposed him to Islam, and that his mother was an agnostic anthropologist. How much more worldly he will be than G.W.! I know from personal experience that having parents from two very different cultures has provided me with a broader understanding and appreciation for the diversity of ways that people live their lives. Rather than promoting a doctrine of American dominance, I believe that Obama will preach acceptance, integration, and appreciation for cultural diversity. He will appeal to our common humanity, rather than heavy-handed American patriotism/jingoism.

It both amuses and pains me to see Republicans try to turn Obama's educational background against him. Perhaps in no other country would education and intelligence be so negatively portrayed as "elitist". Americans, apparently, don't like smart people running their country. But after 8 years of being embarrassed by Dubya's idiocy, how refreshing and inspiring it will be to have someone of intelligence and eloquence in the white house. Consider the effect this could have on young people, especially minorities, yearning for powerful role-models outside the domains of entertainment and athletics. And consider the message that his presidency sends to the rest of the world: the American dream is real! It's not just something we sell on TV! We are a meritocracy!

Finally, I believe Obama will make compassion - true compassion, not Bush's "conservative compassion" - a center-piece of his administration. Does Obama want to redistribute wealth? You bet he does. And it's exactly what our country, and the world, needs right now. An investment in the poor, hungry, uneducated, and down- trodden. A Robin Hood, taking money from rich executives and investing it into public works. A Jesus Christ driving the moneylenders from the temple, helping the sick and diseased. If "wealth distribution" scares you, as McCain hopes it does, recall that the richest 1% of people own ~40% of global assets.

If you don't believe that inspiration and symbolism are potent forces, consider the effect that the neocons have had on our world ethos in a short 8 years. Americans are inspired by greed, hatred, and fear. Republicans have peddled Armageddon to their great advantage. When people think the world could end tomorrow (terrorists could kill them, or the economy might collapse), it doesn't make rational sense to invest in the future. When you live in fear, you spend, burn, and behave selfishly to give you and your family as much as possible without a concern for the rest of the world - or future generations.

If Obama can inspire hope in Americans, and people around the world, that there's a future for our species... that inspiration may have a greater impact on the health and well-being of our planet than any policy decision.

a quiet death

Our blogging compatriot RL recently posted a fascinating commentary on our (collective) obsession with apocalypta. It has led me to wonder why humans as a whole, and I personally, find the concept of Armageddon so interesting and perhaps even appealing. Since my childhood, our societal visions of apocalypse have evolved from ones filled with mushroom clouds and Australian biker gangs, to diseased corpses, and now Atlantian tombs. Every now and then, an ironic cynic or cynical ironist provides us with a humorous psychological outlet: zombie apocalypse scores high on our cultural preference (e.g., Dawn of the Dead, The Walking Dead), but I also find old-fashioned monster Armageddon satisfying as well (e.g. Godzilla, Crush Crumble & Chomp!).


But in the end, our greatest tragedy may be that we don't actually go out with a bang, and with nary a whimper. More likely than death by meteor or hadron, there lies the possibility of our dissolution through inauthenticity. This has become increasingly fertile ground for bioethicists and philosophers concerned with how scientific and cultural "progress" has fundamentally eroded our very nature. It's not like we're going to wake up tomorrow and half our town is dead with some virulent flu (although I suppose it's a possibility) - but rather, our grandchildren will wake up in a town/nation/world full of metaphysical zombies (reference: first 15 minutes of Shaun of the Dead). Some examples...

Fukuyama is infamous for declaring the "end of history," but I found his treatise on the philosophical implications of biotechnology to be a tour de force. In Our Posthuman Future, he explores how genetic engineering, pharmacotherapy, and other revolutionary breakthroughts of the modern age have the potential to destroy defining aspects of our being. For example, the use of Prozac (and other anti-depressants) to treat painful mood disorders seems a great step forward in psychiatry. Certainly, these drugs have provided profound psychological relief to millions of patients, and helped prevent thousands of suicides from occurring.

However, we must consider the possibility that depression itself is periodically functional. If we eradicate the possibility of psychic pain, we lose a critical facet of our humanity. Fukuyama suggests that depression (on a societal scale) may be a reflection of a vast undercurrent of popular dissatisfaction with the status quo - and that in our historical past, such disenfranchisement led to revolution. What effect might pharmacotherapy be having on our cultural evolution? Are we feeding ourselves a version of state-sanctioned Soma that placates us proles as the elite few rape and pillage our world to stark oblivion?

When I first opened The End of Nature, by Bill McKibben, I expected something more speculative and hyperbolic. And, at times, I'll admit that it reads a little too "fruity" and unscientific for my taste. But his primary argument rang deeply true with me, as I'm sure it has with anyone even moderately concerned with how humans have affected their environment over the past several hundred years. A quote:

"...Our comforting sense of the permanence of our natural world, our confidence that it will change gradually and imperceptibly if at all, is the result of a subtly warped perspective. Changes that can affect us can happen in our lifetime in our world--not just changes like wars but bigger and more sweeping events. I believe that without recognizing it we have already stepped over the threshold of such a change; that we are at the end of nature. By the end of nature I do not mean the end of the world. The rain will still fall and the sun shine, though differently than before. When I say 'nature,' I mean a certain set of human ideas about the world and our place in it."

One of McKibben's primary arguments is that by altering our atmosphere, humans have eradicated the line between man-made and natural. Nothing in our environment, at this point, is untouched by man since we have affected the very sky we live under. This corruption of nature's "purity," if you will, can have a profound impact on our own sense of well-being and pride. In addition to being concerned with the physical damage that global warming and other environmental hazards threaten, we might also worry about the psychological toll of living in a concrete empire.


As an aside, Tolkien was well-aware of this as he wrote his Lord of the Rings trilogy, and I am convinced that Sauron (and perhaps to a more obvious degree Saruman) represent the threat of burgeoning industrialization in the post-War era. The "temptation" of the rings of power that Man falls prey to is this very notion that one can exert control over one's environment. Elves (and hobbits, and other fairie-folk) have always represented a more balanced and respectful relationship with nature. I hope that my nieces at least absorbed some of this, at a subconscious level, as they consumed the absurd Peter Jackson extravaganzas.

Perhaps my favorite piece of post-apocalyptic fiction, Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake is a fascinating examination of our philosophical dissolution. I'll choose just one of the many incredible examples from the book: ChickieNobs. Atwood suggests that in our near future, we will genetically engineer animals to provide meat more efficiently. We are already doing this, by breeding chickens with a greater percentage of breast meat, for example - but taken to its extreme, one can imagine something quite horrifying.

The protagonist, Jimmy, is touring a biotech facility run by his former high-school friend, Crake:

"Next they went to NeoAgriculturals. AgriCouture was its nickname among the students. They had to put on biosuits before they entered the facility, and scrub their hands and wear nose-cone filters, because what they were about to see hadn't been bioform-proofed, or not completely. A woman with a laugh like Woody Woodpecker led them through the corridors.
'This is the latest,' said Crake. What they were looking at was a large bulblike object that seemed to be covered with stippled whitish-yellow skin. Out of it came twenty thick fleshy tubes, and at the end of each tube another bulb was growing.
'What the hell is it?' said Jimmy.
'Those are chickens,' said Crake. 'Chicken parts. Just the breasts on this one. They've got ones that specialize in drumsticks too, twelve on a growth unit.'
'But there aren't any heads,' said Jimmy...
'That's the head in the middle,' said the woman. 'There's a mouth opening at the top, they dump the nutrients in there. No eyes or beak or anything, they don't need those.'
'This is horrible,' said Jimmy. The thing was a nightmare. It was like an animal-protein tuber.
'Picture the sea-anemone body plan,' said Crake. 'That helps.'

Of course, after a couple years pass, Jimmy (and the rest of the populace) find themselves happily easting cheap, tasty fast-food chicken provided by ChickieNobs. Wouldn't our society behave in a similar manner? Aren't we already?

And finally, my favorite song by Outkast. If you ignore the forgettable gangsta opening stanzas by Big Boi, Andre 3000's astute analysis of our growing inauthenticity may give you pause.

Synthesize, microwave me
Give me a drug so I can make seven babies
Pump my breasts up, can you suck the fat up
Please make my life appear
like ain't no such thing as bad luck
My nose ain't right
Like I need a new one
Just take your pick, a yellow, red
A black or a blue on
Virtual reality, virtual BULLSHIT
Synthesizer preachers can reach you
up in the pulpit
Who a bitch?
Give me my gat so that I can smoke this nigga
Tell his momma not to cry
because they can clone him quicker
than it took his daddy to make him
Niggaz bitin verbatim
Thought provokin records radio never played dem
Instant, quick grits, new, improved
Hurry hurry, rush rush, world on the move
Marijuana illegal but cigarettes cool
I might LOOK kinda funny but I ain't no fool
Now if you wanna synthesize, I empa-thize
Now if you wanna synthesize, I empa-thize
But if you synthasize, I will understand
Your synthasizer MAN.