buchino

Dec 26

“Money is the most powerful gasoline that can be poured on the fire of pseudoscience. And thanks to Senator Tom Harkin, and a few merry enablers, there is now legislation in the Senate healthcare reform bill that would allocate tax dollars to disproven and unproven medical therapies. Healthcare providers recognized by CMS will include alternative medicine practitioners – many of whom can meet licensing requirements with online degrees from schools that do not teach actual science. They will be eligible to become primary care providers, use “doctor” in their self-designation, and do untold harm to patients nationwide through misdiagnosis and mistreatment.” — Science-Based Medicine » 2009’s Top 5 Threats To Science In Medicine (via lkm)

Dec 25

The reason for the season

The reason for the season

[video]

Dec 24

The plan was to tear down an entire block of student housing and build something called ArtStreet, “an innovative learning and living arts complex.” Of course, no student was sold on the idea. Though there were myriad inconsiderations and missteps by the administration, one I recall most favorably was the architecture firm’s idea of sculpture. Smack dab in the middle of the tiny remaining green space in ArtStreet would be a large pole with other poles and things jutting from it extending upward at a slight diagonal. It screamed: “Hey, drunk student! Climb me!” At the university’s first and only town hall meeting asking student opinion (by this point, they sought opinion only, not input), I had the opportunity to expose this gross oversight. They must have made an exception; the suspicious art was never erected. I was not in Portland in 2002 to discourage placing a 12-foot bronze elephant sculpture between Couch and Burnside. And I’m thankful for that. For if it had not existed, I would never have mounted that bitch — drunk and in Santa regalia, along with a dozen other Santas — on a rainy day amidst the denouement of a decade. Photo by Ryan Sorgnard

The plan was to tear down an entire block of student housing and build something called ArtStreet, “an innovative learning and living arts complex.” Of course, no student was sold on the idea.

Though there were myriad inconsiderations and missteps by the administration, one I recall most favorably was the architecture firm’s idea of sculpture. Smack dab in the middle of the tiny remaining green space in ArtStreet would be a large pole with other poles and things jutting from it extending upward at a slight diagonal. It screamed: “Hey, drunk student! Climb me!”

At the university’s first and only town hall meeting asking student opinion (by this point, they sought opinion only, not input), I had the opportunity to expose this gross oversight. They must have made an exception; the suspicious art was never erected.

I was not in Portland in 2002 to discourage placing a 12-foot bronze elephant sculpture between Couch and Burnside. And I’m thankful for that. For if it had not existed, I would never have mounted that bitch — drunk and in Santa regalia, along with a dozen other Santas — on a rainy day amidst the denouement of a decade.

Photo by Ryan Sorgnard

Dec 23

Good burn.

Premature Christmas tidings to ya. Too soon?

Premature Christmas tidings to ya.

Too soon?

Also: 96% of the Internet posts art on their blogs, but only 27% credit the artists -

(Via claytoncubitt, Fette)