connecting*the*dots

Earth Day, 2007 by Mr. Fish.

Mr. Fish archive

by Joan Vizcarra Carreras

More…

It goes real deep.

Cuban artist Arístides Esteban Hernández Guerrero (Ares) drops his point of view with these classic illustrations.

(illustration by Serifcan Özcan)

Good Magazine
Political NASCAR
by Morgan Clendaniel

In the 2006 midterms, Senators Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and Rick Santorum (R-PA), both running for re-election, have raised the most money of any candidate in their respective parties. Here are the NASCAR-style uniforms they would wear if companies were proud of their political donations, and if running for senate required a flame-retardant suit.

HILLARY CLINTON
Hillary Clinton’s top contributions by sector
Finance, Insurance, Real Estate $4,650,601
Lawyers & Lobbyists $3,533,740
Other $3,258,584
Miscellaneous Business $2,332,809
Communications/Electronics $1,808,119
Health $1,122,341
Construction $521,796
Ideology/Single-Issue $432,270
Labor $340,545
Agribusiness $211,565
Energy/Natural Resource $206,462
Transportation $118,210
Defense $86,050

TOTAL (as of June 30th): $33,180,949

RICK SANTORUM
Rick Santorum’s top contributors by sector
Finance, Insurance, Real Estate $2,812,841
Miscellaneous Business $1,373,537
Lawyers & Lobbyists $1,357,125
Health $1,258,021
Other $1,243,951
Construction $666,015
Energy/Natural Resource $651,541
Ideology/Single-Issue $563,073
Communications/Electronics $474,990
Agribusiness $399,237
Transportation $299,574
Defense $76,000
Labor $56,706

TOTAL (as of June 30th): $17,252,473

Like many people, I often think about the chasm in the relationship between our state representatives and us, the constituents; how in so many cases, our elected representatives tend to not represent the desires of the people that put them in office, instead succumbing to the efforts of lobbyists and special interest groups.

While the concept of wearing logos on campaign duds is probably a bit too extreme for our culture, someone really needs to build a web site that displays such contributions and relationships in an easy to digest manner, across numerous data slices. I assume that the information is already available to the public; the big question is whether or not it’s being gathered, managed and distributed in the most open formats available.

I mean, can I get an RSS feed of newly submitted documentation of Clinton, Santorum and, say, Vernon Robinson campaign contributions?

If the answer is no, then why the hell not?

Maybe when the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act (S. 2590) is finally passed, we can start serious work on the infrastructure and interfaces that support centralized repositories for decentralized accountability. Or is this not sexy enough to fit into the social networking investment craze of Web 2.0?

(via BoingBoing)

The Black Iris of Jordan
Moral Equivalents

[…]

Because it seems to me that morality is always on Israel’s side, the side that is morally superior and therefore has a moral obligation to kill Arabs the same way that morality is on America’s side and therefore it too has a moral right to kill Arabs because you see Arabs are morally bankrupt and their acts are morally reprehensible. It doesn’t matter who is militarily superior, what matters is who is morally superior; morality trumps artillery and whatever you do with it. And it doesn’t matter who is occupying whom or who is forced to live in what kind of morally reprehensible conditions; these arguments are fruitless, perhaps immoral themselves. What matters is that the void of morality or rather the moral bankruptcy of Arabs, most likely inherited from that crazy desert religion they practice, needs to filled. Arabs need to be taught the ways of morality so that they too can embrace the civilized world and go on to bomb and invade other nations and other people deemed less civilized, perhaps people who are darker in skin color, and teach them how to be moral and how to be civil.

[…]

CounterCurrents
Why Must The Right Wing Sound So Brutally Stupid?

[…]

Of course, Condi was keeping her eyes on the big picture, as she tends to do, the picture as viewed from high above the earth where human beings become unseen bacilli in a vast fabric of coastlines and geometric patterns, not close-up where you can distinguish blood-spattered ruins and childrens’ limbs snapped like broken bird wings.

[…]

Tom Toles sums up my perspective on the future effects of this war in a single frame:

Check out more Tom Tomorrow brilliance at his blog: This Modern World

(via workingforchange)

(via Yahoo!)

Well, maybe not 3D, but still… what an amazing set of spot-on patriotic posters. You gotta love the old school style of poster art. The sad thing is that I’m having a hard time calling many of these “spoofs.”

Translation: “A cartoon targeting the prophet, Bush�

(via The Black Iris of Jordan)