Some Chicago Boyz know each other from student days at the University of Chicago. Others are Chicago boys in spirit. The blog name is also intended as a good-humored gesture of admiration for distinguished Chicago School economists and fellow travelers.
[ by Charles Cameron — cross-posted from Zenpundit ]
It’s riveting to follow the tweets on protests in Bahrain, Egypt, Libya or Iran on Mibazaar in real-time to be sure — but mash that capability up with the one Shloky found and Zen just mentioned with video…
As Zen says, I mean, “automatic face-recognition and social media aggregation raises serious concerns about the potential dangers of living under a panopticon state”.
Two dots, two data-points, two apps connected.
[ cross-posted from Zenpundit ]
I am, admittedly, very interested in religion, and Christianity has been the mother-lode for me of the imagery, gestures and profound words that can move heart, soul, mind and imagination into a greater depth.
Advertising, on the other hand… well, let’s just say that the best of it plays on imagination, too, but it is generally more of an intrusion upon via billboards on landscapes, via commercials in movies, or via irritating jingles and catch phrases that subvert my best attempts at quieting the mind than an experience of the kind of depth that religion at its best can offer.
But if you are interested in religion, and click online in enough of the right places, advertising that has “religious” content will be targeted to you.
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And so it is that I went online this morning to check out something about al-Awlaki on Islamic Awakening, an American jihadist forum, and found myself invited to consider, instead, wearing some “bold Christian clothing”.
This was while I was researching al-Awlaki, right? the Muslim jihadist preacher?
at:
a site with its own curious graphics…
And looking closer at that logo, isn’t that some sort of triumphalist armored vehicle I see?
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Well, never averse to a pretty girl, and noticing the one in the Bold Christian ad, I thought I’d taker a look at Bold Christian Clothing to find out what sort of fashion sense was popular among the younger Christian set just now, and found I could obtain t-shirts with such comforting images as these…
— this one’s symbolic of our relatively new century, I guess…
or this:
which I am praeternaturally fond of since my online moniker is hipbone, with its veiled reference to the Valley of the Dry Bones in that very same chapter 37 of Ezekiel…
and then there’s this masterfully supremacist rendering of a part of the Lord’s Prayer:
which I must admit isn’t the image of Thy Kingdom Come that springs to mind when I personally hope and pray for heaven on earth.
What exactly is it, you may ask? According to the manufacturer, it’s
The Lord’s Prayer — “Thy Kingdom Come” with an Angel holding the cross, Horses, skulls under the horses, and palm trees (with Shield and Pacific Oracle cross logo added)
It’s also “the softest, smoothest shirt we sell” … “made from combed cotton for your added comfort” and gives “a flattering and stylish fit to virtually any body type”.
I on the other hand think it looks more like a photoshopped variant of the Quadringa statue in London that celebrates Wellington’s victory over Napoleon at Waterloo:
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In light of all this, I do believe I’ll just wear white although even that could be misinterpreted, I guess.
[ cross-posted from Zenpundit ]
A great many people will have seen (or designed) some variant of the “coexist” bumper-sticker / tee-shirt design:
— the first of which can be found on acsapple‘s photobucket — and hey, the “aum” sign for “oe” is a brilliant bit of graphic substitution! while I nabbed the second here.
What with a thousand flowers blooming, the importance of preserving memetic variations, peaceful coexistence and all, it’s only natural that some will have different takes on the matter —
— the first of these comes from the blog of a gun-toting political refugee from the People’s Progressive Republic of Massachusetts, while the second is a tee-shirt design by Matt Lussier, and you can get your tee-shirt here…
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As for myself, I have fond memories of India, and was accordingly heartened to see this on an Indian Muslim site…
which is what set me thinking about “coexistence” graphics in the first place.
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Did I ever tell you about the sign I saw over a shop in Delhi, advertising the sale of mythelated spirits?
I frequently feel just a tad mythelated myself.
I was doing some work in my basement when I came across the following, tucked away out of sight behind a girder.
It is an old grocery flyer from a nearby store. How old is it?
Okay, so it lists the prices from 1979. But how do those prices stack up against the cost of similar items that can be found on the shelves today?
