Judith Levine and her significant other decided to not shop for a year. She wrote about her trials and tribulations in her book, Not buying It: My Year Without Shopping. She also wrote about it in Washington Post in an article titled, "Don't Buy It." Here's an excerpt: People can…
According to Time Magazine, the Mayor of Sao Paulo banned most outdoor advertising two years ago, "in a bold effort to rid the city of what he called 'visual pollution.'" You can check out some images of the new Sao Paulo at the Time link. I have a special interest…
As expected, certain mouths are already looking for ways to tear down Obama and all he stands for, even though---perhaps especially because---they don't know just what that is. It is disheartening. It makes me want to sit them down in a chair from which they cannot move and ask them,…
I'd like to do a bit here on language. Primarily on how we have seen it distorted over the last few decades. According to George Lakoff and Geoff Nunberg, the Right has seized the rhetorical high-ground and driven Liberals into defensive postures by altering or subverting the meanings of certain…
I'm currently reading Rob Walker's 2008 book, Buying in: the Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are. I'm finding Walker's chapter on "Hello Kitty" especially interesting in its own right and also because his description of the success of Hello Kitty has helped me to understand Sarah…