I'm supporting Ron Paul for the Republican primary. I'm not as concerned with the Dem candidates, so when the primaries are over hopefully I'll get to decide between Paul and a Dem if it's not Clinton, or maybe I'll just STAY HOME. i.e. .. I'm pissed off at the Repubs and the Dems for putting the US in the can. To me Hillary or any of the other Republicans aren't any better than voting for Bush - they're all for the same corporate/military/NAFTA agenda which has sent this country down the shitter. There are plenty of Dems in power and yet our country is going down like a plane in flames so as with the last several elections I'm not drinking the kool-aid of either party.

Don't believe me? Even the banks in Danmark have started projecting our demise.

If you use public wi-fi hotspots such as ones found at McDonalds or Starbucks you just lost a major chunk of privacy to Big Brother today. No, I'm not wearing my tinfoil hat (shiny side out thanks!) on this one. It's a legit new bill called the SAFE Act signed into law yesterday.

Essentially what it says is if a someone providing an "eletronic communication service" or "remote computing service" to the public learns that someone is using their Internet tubes to transmit illegal images then they're supposed to promptly report the person to the authorities. 1984?

There's a number of scary issues here like... what constitutes an illegal image? Child pornography of course, but how about:

certain obscene visual depictions including a "drawing, cartoon, sculpture, or painting."

So you'd better be careful about what sculpture you're looking at next time you're sitting at a Starbucks.

So will this be a law that people just ignore? Not hardly.. Failure to comply with the SAFE Act would result in an initial fine of up to $150,000, and fines of up to $300,000 for subsequent offenses. AND if they comply with it they're immune from civil lawsuits and prosecution.

Now, you might think that this will only affect criminals and so it doesn't impact you at all, right? Wrong. In order for a company to comply with this they'll essentially need to store data that goes across their wires for at least a short time. There will need to be filtering and monitoring in place, and once they find something they'll invariably need to open their records for further investigation. Records that will include your data if you happened to be in the vicinity - available to the feds without warrant.

Two more points while I'm on this rant..

1 - This wasn't really needed. Internet providers already are required by another federal law to report child pornography sightings to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which is supposed to report it to the police.

2 - Not one Democrat opposed the SAFE Act. Two Republicans did: Rep. Ron Paul, the presidential candidate from Texas, and Rep. Paul Broun from Georgia.

Which leaves me with this question: Why did the Democrats push this through and open up a massive loophole that will allow the government to essentially snoop on anyone who uses a public wi-fi hotspot AND push the burden onto businesses to police their customers and snitch on them?

A big pink heart by Jeff Koons sold at auction for $23.6M. One positive way to look at this is it topped the price paid for the Damien Hirst diamond studded skull.


full article here

This past week it was announced that RISD (Rhode Island School of Design in case you live under a boulder) is considering opening a satellite campus in Charlotte, NC. Here's an article.

Let's take a look at this. The Charlotte leaders are trying to put together an "incentive" package to lure the school there. Um. It's a shame there aren't any Universities in NC that could be incentivized to open a design focused art school in Charlotte. And this bolsters the image that Charlotte is nothing but a banking town and is devoid of art and artists.

This also smacks of some "old boys" at work cough*kickback*cough. You see.. RISD is within spitting distance of Johnson and Wales in Providence RI. J&W set up a shop in Charlotte and is doing well there. It's not a stretch to say that the J&W folks probably had some good things to say to some folks at RISD about their little venture into Carolina.

Will it be a good thing for RISD? Yep. They'll find students who don't want to travel all the way to RI for school, and would like something more prestigious than the local colleges and universities.
Will it be a good thing for Charlotte? Yep. They'll get more talented artists in the area, and more of their talent will stay in the area.

How could it be better? The leaders of Charlotte need to look beyond a quick fix. Look around the region and find someone interested in starting a new design school and put your money into that venture instead of sending it to RI. Get your own identity instead of buying into a brand.

Disastrous sale sends Sotheby's shares falling by 37% in one day

So did you feel the Earth move? Nope?!

Prices had been going up steadily for 11 years but investors hit by the mortgage crisis are starting to hold onto their money. Museums have been affected as well since donations for acquisitions are down.. so they can't get in on the game at the auction house.

Oh, and has the price of art by living artists climbed at such a rate? Nope. Maybe a drop in the market isn't such a bad thing.

Public art is a tough gig. It's not for the feint of heart and not just because it doesn't pay well except in rare cases. It's the mountains of paperwork and rejection you have to climb to get to the point that paydays are consistent, the criticism from people who don't speak art, and the bull$hit you have to put up with to appease everyone. There is also that narrow little path between taking loads of time to come up with the perfect/unique proposal (when you probably won't get short listed anyway) for a site, and taking what you normally do and repackaging it to look like it was dreamed up just for a specific site.

I say all of that not from personal experience. I started down the path of public work and quickly realized it wasn't for me. So I get to listen to friends bitch about their experiences and nod with little understanding. But I do listen.

So when Tara Servatius took a second aim at Thomas Sayre, the sculptor and gallery owner from Charlotte NC, I kind of chuckled with understanding. You see.. she said pretty much the same thing last time, and when I saw that first article it really stung. It's not that what she said hasn't been said before about other public artists in other cities. It's old rhetoric and it's old the second time around too. What is so bothersome is the exposure of how horrendously messed up the whole public art system is and the lack of understanding she's exhibiting and spreading.

I'm not defending what Sayre is doing as right, but it's what should be expected with the system in place. What he is doing is fairly commonplace in the public art game. It's almost the sane thing to do given how much is involved in submitting proposals. With a few exceptions it's more hassle than it's worth to create proposals for public art that are truly unique.

So now that I think about it what was so bothersome about both of her articles was that Servatius singled out an artist rather than taking aim at the whole public art selection process. Maybe she'll take some time and sit down with artists who have tried the public game and gave up in disgust rather than doing what Sayre did. She'll likely find artists who applaud her for outing Sayre as a rubber stamp public sculptor, but she'll also find quite a few who understand why he's doing what he's doing.

Take a look at this poll. .

http://www.ask500people.com/questions/art-has-no-bearing-on-the-real-world-anymore

The poll was "

Art has no bearing on the real world anymore."

and 100 people from around the world responded. It's reassuring to see that the majority (even though a small majority..) thought that statement was hogwash, but what floored me was the small minority in the US who agreed with it.. . ... and the opposite in Europe. The majority of the people who agreed with that statement were in Europe. wow..