Most of the discussions you’ve heard about green jobs likely focus on blue-collar positions: just think about how many times the phrase “green collar jobs” is followed by “installing solar panels” and “weatherizing houses.” These are important discussions, no doubt, and organizations like the Apollo Alliance and Green for All deserve credit for bringing these opportunities into the debate over economic recovery.
But what if you’re an engineer, a marketing manager, or an administrative assistant?
Populist director Michael Moore takes a stab at the fat cats of Wall Street in his latest film CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY, a documentary about the financial crisis of 2007-2009 and the subsequent stimulus and bailout packages. CAPITALISM echoes similar themes from a 2003 Canadian documentary THE CORPORATION, a critical examination of the modern-day corporation and its behavior towards society.
As the economy is forcing many businesses to close leaving storefronts shuttered, artist James Reynolds came upon this genius solution that addresses the unsightliness of the boarded up and empty stores.
Candy Chang’s slightly voyeuristic interactive installation “I’ve Lived: Post-it Notes for Neighbors” featured fill-in-the-blank Post-It notes which covered the storefront window of Brooklyn vintage furniture shop,Yesterday’s News, and focused on one of the most obsessed topics in New York City: How much are my neighbors paying for their apartments? Locals were encouraged to participate by sharing this information and at the end of the project, she compiled the results into neat graphs and charts.
The Economist recently published their popular “Big Mac Index,” a semi-annual “lighthearted guide to valuing currencies” that “is based on the theory of purchasing-power parity (PPP), which says that exchange rates should equalise the price of a basket of goods in each country.” The single baseline product for comparison is McDonald’s Big Mac which can be found in locations all over the world. Theoretically, as GOOD points out, this iconic fast food burger “cost the same everywhere because it has the same ingredients worldwide,” except for the price thus providing a useful snapshot of the global economic condition.
A Big Mac in the US currently costs $3.57, while the equivalent in China is $1.83 and on the over-valued end of the spectrum, this burger will set you back 40 kroner or $6.15 in Norway.
This is an addendum to a luxury bag round up from back in April which included a Chanel bag designed to look like their shopping bag. Well here’s a do-it-yourself version that’s even more downtown and definitely more affordable that was spotted in the wild:
As photographer Jerome succinctly summarized, “fake it till you make it.” Just be ready to run from the copyright and trademark lawyers!
A hot button topic that every New Yorker has an opinion on, or rather complaint about, is the budget problem facing the city’s MTA and the uniformly hated solution to raise the fare across the board for public transportation. Cutbacks to public transportation and possible fare hikes aren’t unique to New York City in this difficult economy as cities each face their own fiscal crisis. At the very least, this “MTA” jacket injects some much needed humor into this heated discussion by quoting and repurposing lyrics from a popular club song by hip hop artist Ludacris.
Kevin Bauman photographed 100 abandoned houses in Detroit, creating a somewhat spooky tableau of the current recession. He writes:
100 seemed like a lot, although the number of abandoned houses in Detroit is more like 12,000. Encompassing an area of over 138 square miles, Detroit has enough room to hold the land mass of San Francisco, Boston, and Manhattan Island, yet the population has fallen from close to 2 million citizens, to most likely less than 800,000. With such a dramatic decline, the abandoned house problem is not likely to go away any time soon.
Each January, as the Sundance Film Festival approaches, there’s a mad scramble among journalists and critics to pinpoint something, anything new to differentiate their articles from the ones they wrote last year—and usually they turn to the documentaries for their hook. One year it’s LGBT issues, another year it’s Iraq. This year, the festival’s 25th anniversary (well, since the Sundance Institute took over its management anyway), the popular “news hook” is the environment. By way of evidence, writers point to the number of environmental docs in competition this year: 5 out of 32 total. But I just looked at last year’s film guide and counted three environmental docs. From 3 to 5—not such a dramatic increase, is it?
