Tag Archives: Thorstein Veblen

coach there’s a zebra at second base

Posted on March 3, 2012 by Dave

Baseball, like any institution has always needed an inventory of necessary myths that sustain it, somehow invoke deity status, and some form of the exceptional that can be woven into the fabric of empire, and by extension claim a piece … Continue reading →

Posted in Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion | Tagged bart giamatti, Buster keaton, eddie stankey, George Bellows, Guy Debord, joe queenan, leo durocher, madame pickwick art blog, madame pickwick art supplies, roger kahn, Thorstein Veblen, ty cobb, Walter Benjamin | Leave a comment

the syrian bride: all in the family

Posted on February 21, 2012 by Dave

It wasn’t because of his dancing ability, or his sexy cinema noir looks, or the jew jokes at the dinner table in which he always forgot the punch-line, or his absolutely ribald yet compelling attempt at yodeling; does she laugh … Continue reading →

Posted in Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion | Tagged Asma Assad, Bashar Al Assad, Gary Cooper, Gottfried Helnwein, Henry Kissinger, James Gillray, Niall Ferguson, Peter Munk Debates, Philip Zimbardo, Syrian President Assad, Thorstein Veblen, Vogue Magazine Asma Assad, William Hogarth | Leave a comment

omar the tent faker

Posted on February 20, 2012 by Dave

How to escape the classic and enduring, reinforced Orientalist trappings, the colonialist “other” that keeps resurfacing in reinforced, ingenious and more invigorated fashion. Is this part of the running of the gauntlet, the typical immigrant cycle as invoked by Canadian … Continue reading →

Posted in Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion, Literature/poetry/spoken word, Modern Arts/Craft | Tagged craig thompson habibi, Francis Galton, Harold Bloom, henry goddard psychologist, john frederick lewis, julius grey lawyer, Maxfield Parrish, Rick Salutin, Sam Huntington, stieg larsson, Thomas Rowlandson, Thorstein Veblen, William Beckford, William Beckford Vathek | Leave a comment

austerity will set you free

Posted on February 15, 2012 by Dave

A Pinata Party. Picking over the carcass. Reena Virk. A girl, fourteen, caught in a deep plunge of self-esteem. She just wanted to be part of the gang. The cool club. But she became a victim of adolescent ritual. Virk … Continue reading →

Posted in Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion, Marketing/Advertising/Media | Tagged Angela Merkel, Gottfried Helnwein, Greek debt crisis, james rickards, mark blyth, mark blyth brown university, mimmo rubino, nicole itano, reena virk, reena virk murder, Thorstein Veblen, watson institute, watson institute brown university | Leave a comment

dissent building: toy stories

Posted on February 10, 2012 by Dave

Consumerism is unlikely to be defeated; there will be no white knight, no Saint George to slay the dragon and pitch its corpse into the center of the earth for fifty generations. Consumerism is a product of consumer behavior and … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Alexander McQueen, Andrew Potter, Arthur Rimbaud, Charles Baudelaire, Feminist frequency, House of Givenchy, joseph heath rebel sell, Kurt Cobain, LEGO friends, LEGO toys sexism, rebellious pixels, thomas frank the baffler, Thorstein Veblen | Leave a comment

brother can you spare a dime?

Posted on February 6, 2012 by Dave

The Great Depression ended in every film. If it ever existed. Yes we could thank Shirley Temple for that. The great template that the American entertainment complex gave us, and keeps on giving us. To learn to love kids, and … Continue reading →

Posted in Cinema/Visual/Audio, Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion | Tagged charles sellon, Edward Bernays, eleanor roosevelt, fred bojangles robinson, gifford and young, Herbert Hoover, J.P. Morgan, jaime diamond, james jimmy dunn, Pecora Commission, shirley temple, shirley temple curly top, Sigmund Freud, Thorstein Veblen, Walter Lippman, William Wellman | Leave a comment

boutique atheism : babel banter

Posted on February 5, 2012 by Dave

What are the limits of scientific rationalism? But what actually is atheism, besides an ecological and scientific dirt disher despite Chris Hitchens perhaps stuck in limbo, a purgatory of the missionary position somewhere in rhetorical rebuttal to the anal perversions … Continue reading →

Posted in Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion | Tagged A.C Grayling, alain de botton, Alfred Stieglitz, Ashcan School, Christopher Hitchens, Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, John Updike, Leo Steinberg, Marcel Duchamp, Martin Heidegger, Max Ernst, Niall Ferguson, Stephen Fry, Thorstein Veblen, william glackens | 2 Comments

romney care: tax evasives of the leisure clasp

Posted on February 2, 2012 by Dave

One of the key themes in our ongoing public discourse is taxes. Mitt Romney’s income tax filings and the continuing collateral damage from banker bonuses and bailouts have made this an open sore with the pain shooting to the dark … Continue reading →

Posted in Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion, Modern Arts/Craft | Tagged Ben Shahn, Charles White, charles white art, irving norman, jeff wall, john steuart curry, Lloyd Blankfein, Mitt Romney 2012, Paul Krugman, Ralph Ellison, Raphael Soyer, Thomas Hart Benton, Thorstein Veblen, William Wellman | Leave a comment

finite voices

Posted on January 25, 2012 by Dave

Subjective rationality is a very elusive term; an alternative conception of rationality that could shed light and propose some resolutions to the pathologies of modern society. Its basis is a belief in the decline of individuality in favor of the … Continue reading →

Posted in Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion | Tagged boris lurie, Charles Baudelaire, Felix Nussbaum, Harold Rosenberg, Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Thorstein Veblen, Walter Benjamin | Leave a comment

air supply

Posted on January 23, 2012 by Dave

Culture jamming. Sometimes the artwork and aesthetics of culture jammers is of such ingenious quality that it could appear as if the anti-corporate dissent of the activists is actually produced by the offending companies themselves. That is, ostensible anti-consumerist messages … Continue reading →