As social groups and classes live, if not in their productive then in their ‘social’ relations, increasingly fragmented and sectionally differentiated lives, the mass media are more and more responsible (a) for providing the basis on which groups and classes construct an image of the lives, meanings, practices and values of other groups and classes; (b) for providing the images, representations and ideas around which the social totality composed of all these separate and fragmented pieces can be coherently grasped. (Hall, 1977)

The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas; hence of the relationships which make the one class the ruling class, therefore the ideas of its dominance. (Marx and Engels, 1970)

Skateboarding’s Humble Beginnings

 

Barcelona

HOW CORPORATIONS ARE CHANGING SKATEBOARDING AND WHY IT MATTERS

As George Ritzer points out in The McDonaldization of Society, businesses attempt to operate in an extremely efficient fashion. They focus on making everything quantifiable (skatemetrics) rather than focusing on creating subjective quality (“best” video part), they want everything to be predictable (i.e. standardized, the same experience every time), and they want all aspects of a business or activity to be easily controlled, basically the antithesis of what skateboarding is today. As the corporation’s values become more and more apart of skateboarding and influence the ideologies of individual skaters, the greater the potential that our activity will fundamentally change.

 

Full Story at JenkemMag.com  (HERE)

Hurricane Sandy

stolen photos from JenkemMag.com

The Illusion of Choice

 

Visualizing CO2 Emissions: Case Study NYC

For one thing, he [Pushker Kharecha of Columbia University’s Earth Institute] says, as I suspected, New York isn’t as bad as other places. If you compare cities to suburbs and rural areas, cities are often more energy efficient. People who live in detached houses, who drive everywhere, whose power comes from coal and gas, often have much higher CO₂ emissions per capita.

Random Photos

 

Even More Random Photos