featured articles
"It's Not a Hobby, It's a Post-apocalyptic Skill": Space, Feminism, Queer, and Sticks and String
by Emma Sheppard
Yarnbombing, also known as yarnstorming or knit graffiti, has a fairly simple premise—knitters and crocheters, working anonymously or under pseudonyms, create pieces of “knitted graffiti” that are then placed in the public urban landscape, “tagging” the space in the same fashion as more traditional spray-can graffiti.
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They Privatized Paradise and Put Up a Parking Lot
by Annaliese Pope
In the winter of 2005, the municipal government of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, opted to privatize and remodel (turn into parking lots) four of its city parks. This decision was part of a larger “modification program” that was intended to draw more tourism into the downtown area.
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The University of the Commons: a New Progressive Alternative in San Francisco
by Molly Hankwitz
People were excited at the promise of starting a really great project for higher learning, and to be able to teach what we wanted, as we wanted, without money and profit motives and administrative harnessing to get in our way.
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The Speciousness of Origin: Notes from Palermo
by Dominic Pettman
On a visit to our sewn and preserved fellow species in a Palermo natural history museum, the author ponders our inveterate need to diminish and hold out of sight our connectedness in the mesh of all life and the invalidities of our politics and presumptions resulting from our rigorously maintained blindness.
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The Neoliberal/Right-wing Psyche
by Joseph Natoli
The author considers the present political situation as a psychomachia, a drama in which what any of the dramatis personae say or any of the bi-partisan accords they enact do no more than mask the “Unthought” that conceals the hidden heart of the matter. In this first "diagnosis," the author examines the neoliberal psyche.
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The Liberal Psyche: Session One
by Joseph Natoli
The author continues a description of the present political drama as a psychomachia by here turning to the Liberal psyche which he discovers has the psychic valence of "absence," "lack" and "denial," none of which can launch an offensive against the stronghold of "More." He thus concludes that more than one session will be needed.
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The Liberal Psyche: Session Two
by Joseph Natoli
In this second session of our psychomachia, the author sets the stage for an examination of how wealth crosses party lines and has much to do with not only the present ineffectiveness of government but the failure of liberals to adopt a strong critique of an economic system that has put wealth into the hands of only 20% of the population.
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The Liberal Psyche: Session Three
by Joseph Natoli
In this third and final session with the Liberal Psyche, the psychotherapist provides examples of how the wealthy join across ideological fences on issues ranging from war, education, abortion, welfare, environmental protection and many others to protect and preserve an economic system which has treated them well.
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The Leftist Psyche: Session Four
by Joseph Natoli
This fourth and last examination of the American cultural psychic drama, or psychomachia, focuses on a repressed, suppressed and devilized leftist ideology.
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Cyber-liberty, Democracy and the Arab Psyche
by Kody Gerkin
We in the West typically refrain from couching international insights in culturally sensitive ways. In the Arab world the freedom to converse and not the mere googling of information is what can trigger political change and social networks make this possible.
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Word of Click: Social Networking and the Arab Spring Revolutions
by Kody Gerkin
Social networking's political value in the U.S. may not exceed its distracting/seductive values but such has not been the case with the Arab Spring Revolutions.
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KISS MONSTER
by Art Lyzak
The rock gods, in blue jeans and black sport jackets, slipped into a back room where they could press the flesh with fans.
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Problems of the History Painter: Niagara, Detroit and "War Paint"
by Mike Mosher
Elegant women in Niagara's "War Paint" exhibit make the conflagration seventy years ago into the best of fun.
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Jung, Clarke, Kubrick: Dark Monoliths, Stone Temples
by Michael Powers
Motifs and coincidences involve the lives and work of the psychologist, the writer and the filmmaker.
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Robots All: A Letter to Kurt Vonnegut on the Anniversary of Breakfast of Champions
by Rob Drew
Your book gives the impression, not only that most humans act like machines, but that the universe itself is like a machine.
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Agitate! Educate! Organize!: American Labor Posters by Lincoln Cushing and Timothy W. Drescher
by Mike Mosher
This book should be in every university or art school library, and be purchased by anyone who respects organized labor and its history.
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The Black Keys Howlin’ For You
by Cole Waterman
It’s safe to say The Black Keys have effectively duped a substantial amount of the music-listening population. Keep this on the down-low, but the secret truth of the matter is what they really are is…a blues band.
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See Bad Reviews for earlier reviews
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new issue (2013)
Bad Subjects Issue #84: Crafts
Editors: Tamara Watkins & Mike Mosher
Craft is political. The London Review of Books Christmas Number, 20 December 2012, has two pieces affirming that. Ramachandra Guha notes how Karl Marx wrote that colonial rule in India destroyed local craft traditions “through the brutal interference of the British tax-gatherer and the British soldier.” Neil Ascherson mentions Wanda Telakoska, promoter of traditional Polish arts and crafts who believed “beauty is for everyday and for everybody", but despite directing Poland's Bureau for Supervision of Production Aesthetics, her designs were ignored by penny-pinching factories.
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recent issue
Bad Subjects Issue #83: Election 2012
Editors: Tamara Watkins & Mike Mosher
This issue discusses the politics, media, and meaning of the 2012 election season. Hello, we're calling to ask you to take a short, three-question political poll.... No, we're not. We're as tired of the Election 2012 season as you are. However, we would be remiss if we didn't take this opportunity to discuss the political insanity that current grips our nation.
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Bad Subject Stephen Perkins, blogging from Cairo, posts photos of the street art of Egypt's evolving revolution that's displayed in Tahrir Square.
Who Gives a Cluck What Dan Cathy Thinks?
by Tamara Watkins
On July 16, Dan Cathy, President and COO of Chick-fil-A confirmed that his company is decidedly anti-gay marriage. The chain's conservative politics have long been suspected; however, no one from the (heteronormative, thank you very much) Chick-fil-A family publicly stated it. This proclamation wasn't very surprising for liberals who patronize the chain. Chick-fil-A is notoriously Christian. If you want a banana shake on a Sunday, you're out of luck.
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Costumed for Life and Love: San Francisco LGBT Freedom Day 2012
Photos by Ron Henggeler
The City marched, danced and celebrated in its finery on Sunday, June 24th.
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Uncorking Saint Julian: WikiLeaks and Mr. Assange
by Mike Mosher
Wikileaks must be acknowledged as a contributor to the exposure of injustices of state power around the world, though Julian Assange appears to be a messy, contradictory character.
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Shouts from Wisconsin
by Stephen Perkins
Displeasure at Governor Scott Walker prompts this artist's portfolio, named for the Arabic word for "Enough!"
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God Save My Mum: A Not So Warm and Fuzzy Take on the Queen of England's Jubilee
by A. E. McCann
All the love and adulation heaped upon her should have been heaped upon my Mum, and other widows and veterans of Her Majesty's Armed Forces, once shipped off to an obscure place called Christmas Island.
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It's Springtime!
Graphic by Nadeer
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Oakland (after William Blake)
by Adam Francis Cornford
I wander down each corporate street,/There where the corporate cop cars go...
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Great Scott! Why Florida's Governor Is Wrong to Promote Only STEM Education
by Tamara Watkins
In an effort to transform Florida’s economy and draw businesses to the state, Governor Rick Scott announced that college students should abandon the humanities and social sciences to pursue degrees and careers in science, engineering, and math (or STEM).
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Predator Drones, Reaper Drones, and Total Disconnect
by Rosalie Riegle
In commemoration of the endless Afghanistan war and as a final activity of a national Catholic Worker gathering, activists sat down in front of an entrance to Creech Air Force Base in Indian Springs, Nevada.
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See Bad Editorials for earlier editorials
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