The Age of Stupid
March 16, 2009
from Don Shade’s blog. I’m glad people care enough to make films like these about how we’re marching to our own destruction knowingly. Also Pete Postlethwaite is badass.
If you give up, they give up
September 19, 2008
Something to get you thinking… click on the pictures to go see the animations
Nothing is funnier than swearing and stereotyping
August 7, 2008
Let’s face it, in these bleak times of crunchy credit, Monbiot sticking two big sweaty thumbs up for nuclear, and Paris Hilton doing politics in a bikini that gets on Channel 4 news no less (I mean, that’s real news right?) we need some delight in our lives. Delight such as a list of swearwords that the BBC deem unacceptable. <unt, 3rse, c o k, and every 15 year old permutation inbetween. How wonderous. Discovered because they didn’t encript their expletive database for their olympic monkey widget. The monkey widget is of course the 2.0 sporn from the new BBC summer olympic ident done by Gorillaz artist Jamie Hewlett. It’s a pretty mixture of shameless promotion for his new opera (called, ‘monkey’) coupled with sweeping cultural stereotypes. I love (read hate) that when the big sporting summer event of the year arrives, the sponsors and their respective agencies loose all bottle and imagination. This time round planners and creatives up and down the land have essentially been given the same brief: sell our product but do it ‘Eastern’. Cue Karate, Noodles, Chopsticks, Dragons, Pointy Hats, Women with funny makeup, and other such obviousnesses. Every second ad on the telly window features some sort of nod to the orient. How tedious. Or am I just exposing my ingrained western prejudices by getting annoyed at what I think is stereotyping and a fundamental lack of imagination or realism? Or should I just enjoy my ‘taste of the orient’ burger from McDonald’s and be done with it?
Why the FIA president is so offensive I’ll never know. Answers in the comments below.
Back to the coal age
October 9, 2007
As a new opencast site for mining coal is approved by the very government who claims to back a low carbon future it makes you wonder if they were ever serious about it in the first place. While they’re digging a big hole in the ground they might as well bury their environmental policies with it. It makes you weep.
George Monbiot explains all:
Here’s an advert from Greenpeace with Eddie Izzard, the bloke from the borrowers, and I think the guy from Belle & Sebastian.
It started off so well…
May 1, 2007
Having eaten my organic pear delivered by the Nick from Abel & Cole and hopped on the crowed train to work I was in quite a good mood. I went to the canteen for a hash brown fix and was presented with a free coffee mug. Delighted, I ordered my first latte in about 2 years and was informed that this was part of their drive to be more environmentally friendly. Excellent I thought and they even persuaded the finance director to take a free mug despite his protests about cleaning the bloody thing.
So far so good. Then foolishly I began thinking that all is not lost for the human race. If even the canteen in an advertising agency can green itself up a bit then surely there’s hope for us all? Then I read this. Thanks George for pissing on my bonfire.
It really is a bit desperate now isn’t it?
Can my small efforts to shop locally and recycle my newspapers really bring about any force for good when faced with numbers like that?
The climate science boffins tell us that we need to stablise the concentration of CO2 equivalent at 400ppm to have even a realistic chance to prevent dangerous climate change. Considering we’re already at 459ppm it does seem a tad hopeless.
Future generations will condem our inaction I’m sure, and quite rightly. Can we really be blamed? After all we like driving and holidays and watching television with surround sound. We love the fact that we can eat strawberries in December and we can buy a digital camera for 50 quid. Don’t we?
My sister has just had baby. A lovely happy baby boy. I worry for him but I also feel excited. He and others like him will get to see how this madness will pan out. By the end of this exciting century people will have learnt to cope with the consequences of our gluttony – they’ll be wizzing about in hydrogen cars or whatever the magic fuel is of the day. They’ll laugh when they think of the efforts we went to to dig up that black gunk when the solution was staring us in the face.
peak oil
November 14, 2006
more serious than climate change? you guessed it… soon it’ll be half gone and then it’s goodbye to life as we know it.
