April 2009 Archives

The Thermals - "Now We Can See".

Medan Per Gudmundsson menar att (Noko-)jeansen kommer att rädda Nordkorea från sitt öde, menar amerikanska konservativa debattörer att denimtyget snarare representerar allt som är fel med det amerikanska samhället (till och med "symptomatisk för allvarliga störningar i det amerikanska psyket").

Till exempel skrev Daniel Akst i Wall Street Journal 20 mars, där han uppmanar Barack Obama att inrätta en jeansskatt:

If hypocrisy had a flag, it would be cut from denim, for it is in denim that we invest our most nostalgic and destructive agrarian longings -- the ones that prompted all those exurban McMansions now sliding off their manicured lawns and into foreclosure, dragging down the global financial system with them. Denim is the SUV of fabrics, the wardrobe equivalent of driving a hulking Land Rover to the Whole Foods Market. Our fussily tailored blue jeans, prewashed and acid-treated to look not just old but even dirty, are really a sad disguise. They're like Mao jackets, an unusually dreary form of sartorial conformity by means of which we reassure one another of our purity and good intentions.

I dagens Washington Post lyckas George F. Will frammana både Edmund Burke och Paulus för att visa hur ett par urtvättade Levi's är ett tecken på infantaliseringen av folket:

Edmund Burke -- what he would have thought of the denimization of America can be inferred from his lament that the French Revolution assaulted "the decent drapery of life"; it is a straight line from the fall of the Bastille to the rise of denim -- said: "To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely." Ours would be much more so if supposed grown-ups would heed St. Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, and St. Barack's inaugural sermon to the Americans, by putting away childish things, starting with denim.

Jag läste ett par böcker av Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick när det begav sig, som var ögonöppnare - Epistemology of the Closet och Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire. Sorgligt nog har hon just avlidit, vid en ålder av bara 58 år. Läs dödsruna i New York Times. 

Stefan Geens misstänkter att Lantmäteriets satellitbilder, som nu används i Google Earth för delar av Sverige, fortfarande censurerar vad man anser vara "känsliga platser", t.ex. genom att photoshoppa bort ett par parabolantenner vid FRA:s högkvarter.

Instead, Lantmäteriet should do like their Dutch counterpart. If they feel compelled to censor, they should pixellate in an obvious way, so you know where the imagery has been degraded and should not be relied upon. 

Of course, Lantmäteriet may have mended their ways, and those satellite dishes really have been dismantled, but lingering suspicion is what you get when you've been caught lying about your data once before.