morphizm

From Climate Hacker to Hero: An Interview With Tim DeChristopher

admin — Thu, 16 May 2013 18:36:53 +0000

(Update: This interview has been syndicated at Bright Lights Film and HuffPo.)

An environmental idealist stops an illegal oil and gas auction by bidding for parcels he can’t possibly afford. Savaged by an exponentially accelerating climate crisis, a once-proud nation rewards him…by throwing him into a hole.

Along the vertiginous fall, he tumbles through a dystopia that [...]

Cancer’s Cooked Books

admin — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 04:02:43 +0000

Cancer annually kills millions of us, so like you I find it quite hard to ignore. And that is why I was ironically happy, existentially speaking, to investigate for AlterNet why a recent scientific study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition pretty much found cancer associated with almost everything we eat.

But [...]

Understanding Pinealophiles: Four Things You Should Know About Your Third Eye

admin — Sun, 24 Mar 2013 03:22:31 +0000

For millennia, mystics and scientists have agreed that our pineal glands, snug in the center of our brains, are charged with power and meaning.

From cleansing us of disease and aligning our chronobiology to transforming us into drones and monsters, our third eyes, and their melatonin secretions, have been sleepwalking us from one revelation to the [...]

Happy Anniversary, Surfer Rosa!

admin — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 19:35:58 +0000

To say that the Pixies changed my life would be an understatement. I’ve been writing about Black Francis, Kim Deal, Joey Santiago and David Lovering’s influential quartet ever since they rebooted my life 25 years ago today. That’s when the immortal Surfer Rosa debuted, to little acclaim and notice. Except from those of us paying [...]

Goro Miyazaki’s From Up On Poppy Hill Feels Anxiety of Anime Influence

admin — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 03:56:29 +0000

For decades, the animated films of Hayao Miyazaki have captured my imagination and changed my life. It’s hard to watch Kiki’s Delivery Service these days without crying and remembering all those years I spent watching it with my daughter as she was growing up. But time passes, and so do torches.

For Miyazaki and his anime [...]

Does The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart Cower Before Power?

admin — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 18:47:30 +0000

I have an editor at AlterNet who routinely puts me on the controversial path. He’s unleashed me on autism, tasers and much more. This time around, he asked me to look into The Daily Show, which has snarked truth to power since last century but has nevertheless displayed an unfortunate pattern of bowing down to [...]

Bilbo the Billionaire: A Short History of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Greed Wars

admin — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 22:42:35 +0000

(Image: The Internet)

[An early draft of this ongoing intersection between avaricious art and life has been published over at HuffPo.]

‘Really you know,’ said Bilbo in his best business manner, ‘things are impossible. Personally I am tired of the whole affair.’

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien legendarily wrote one Oxford [...]

Catch A (Fierce Green) Fire, You Will Get Learned

admin — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 03:19:46 +0000

With apologies to Bob Marley and the Wailers, but I couldn’t resist. A Fierce Green Fire is an important enough chronicle of our indispensable environmental movement’s last century to merit a nod to the revolutionary spirit of the Wailers’ immortal Catch a Fire. Because it has taken green revolutionaries to awake us to both the [...]

‘We Are Slaves To Fossil Fuels:’ Interview With Chasing Ice Director Jeff Orlowski

admin — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 23:48:00 +0000

This year, the Oscars weren’t considered an utter failure until the predictable chauvinism of host Seth MacFarlane played out, with the Obama administration’s public endorsement of Argo‘s propaganda serving as a worrisome chaser. But I called bullshit on it from the beginning, because climate change was a disturbing no-show, despite the fact that its exponential [...]

Who Is thenewno2? An All-Star Soundtracker

admin — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 20:19:08 +0000

Taking its number from the rotating oppressor of Patrick McGoohan’s immortal ’60s psy-fi TV series The Prisoner, multimedia collective thenewno2 is busy fleshing out its film bonafides. Lately with a swamptronic soundtrack for Hollywood’s newest gothsoap Beautiful Creatures, based on the supernatural young-adult novel series from Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl.

Thenewno2 hopes it’s what Bogart [...]