Thursday, January 27, 2011
Postman Blues is the story of Sawaki, a mailman who delivers letters on his red bicycle. One day he delivers mail to Noguchi, an old high school buddy turned yakuza, who has just cut off his pinky. Sawaki’s life takes a strange turn when Noguchi’s freshly severed pinky accidentally rolls off the table into his [...]
I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law. —Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
In 2003, Chinese artist Ai Weiwei conjoined forty-two Forever brand bicycles into a circular sculpture. Manufactured in Shanghai since 1940, the Forever bicycle was an essential mode of transportation that has become an icon of the postrevolutionary era. Made of heavy steel, these utilitarian bicycles were meant to last forever. The same cannot be said [...]
From the New York Times: Dead Horse Bay sits at the western edge of a marshland once dotted by more than two dozen horse-rendering plants, fish oil factories and garbage incinerators. From the 1850′s until the 1930′s, the carcasses of dead horses and other animals from New York City streets were used to manufacture glue, [...]
“The bicycle is a curious vehicle. Its passenger is its engine.” —John Howard, Olympic cyclist