{"id":1254,"date":"2010-05-01T11:31:57","date_gmt":"2010-05-01T16:31:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/05\/01\/may-day-reports\/"},"modified":"2011-02-11T22:25:24","modified_gmt":"2011-02-12T03:25:24","slug":"may-day-reports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/05\/01\/may-day-reports\/","title":{"rendered":"May Day reports"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"phpThumb_generated_thumbnailjpg.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Happy May Day<\/a> and merry Beltane<\/a>, to those in a mood to celebrate this weekend. I’m traveling and unable to blog much, but the past week’s events warrant at least a quick update on why such a mood might be difficult to sustain with any steadiness.<\/p>\n

The biggest environmental bad news story was, of course, the Gulf oil spill, which threatens to turn Louisiana’s wetlands and much of the Gulf of Mexico into an industrial sacrifice zone<\/a> and, according to some voices, to become one of the worst ecological disasters<\/a> in history. (More pictures, as well as maps, here<\/a>.) Jonathan Hiskes at Grist, which, as always, is doing an admirable job keeping up with events, calls this the The worst week ever, brought to you by the fossil-fuel industry<\/a>. Hiskes notes the deaths of two coal miners in Kentucky, the talk of sinking the Chinese coal freighter that crashed recently into the Great Barrier Reef, and the approval of the Cape Wind energy project off Martha’s Vineyard — which, as the week’s leading good news story still “feels pretty bad” for all the sparring that went on around it. All the while, the fossil fuel industry continues to make huge profits<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The best news might have been the dissemination of the final conclusions<\/a> from the Cochabamba conference’s working groups. Despite their marginality in the echelons of global power, these conclusions are at least making a clear case for a global eco-socialist alternative, a case that will be heard by some thanks to the Bolivian government’s pursuit of them in the United Nations. President Morales submitted the conference’s Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth<\/a> for consideration to the UN this week.<\/p>\n

Elsewhere: PBS’s two best programs, Bill Moyers’ Journal<\/a> and Now<\/a> (which Moyers started) signed off<\/a> for the last time yesterday. Pierre Hadot<\/a> signed off as well, for good. And Middlesex University announced<\/a> it will close its top-rated Philosophy program (reports of this and of philosophers protesting the economically driven decision are all over the philosoblogosphere, but Infinite Thought<\/a> is as good a place to catch up on it as any).<\/p>\n

In somewhat less sobering news, Dot Earth<\/a> alerts us to the Lens<\/a>‘s Moment in Time<\/a> project, a global moment for catching a collective glimpse of humanity in action, to take place at 11 am New york time tomorrow (Sunday). E. O. Wilson has been doing what he does best, which is writing about ants<\/a> — which Larval Subjects’ recent note<\/a> on made me think of how an ant megalopolis is a perfect example of how difficult to isolate “objects” from the relational world. (What’s an object here? A single ant? Nope. The entire city? Yes, but it’s co-evolved with its surroundings to such a degree one could hardly place boundaries around it…) Stuart Elden, meanwhile, joined the blogosphere<\/a>. Welcome, Stu.<\/p>\n

And extraterrestrials circling around Alpha Centauri finally got to watch<\/a> the Janet Jackson\/Justin Timberlake Super Bowl event. Many debates followed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Happy May Day and merry Beltane, to those in a mood to celebrate this weekend. I’m traveling and unable to blog much, but the past week’s events warrant at least a quick update on why such a mood might be difficult to sustain with any steadiness. The biggest environmental bad news story was, of course, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[196,689701],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ecoculture","category-media_ecology"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4IC4a-ke","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1266,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/05\/17\/council-of-13\/","url_meta":{"origin":1254,"position":0},"title":"Council of 13","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"May 17, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"The International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers (yes, that's a council I hope to hear more from) will be holding water ceremonies around the world all day tomorrow. From the Black Hills of South Dakota to Oaxaca and Brazil to Africa, Nepal, and Aotearoa. Sounds like an event worth attending.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Eco-culture"","block_context":{"text":"Eco-culture","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/ecoculture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Oil-in-the-Gulf-of-Mexico-006.jpg","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2010\/05\/Oil-in-the-Gulf-of-Mexico-006.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6546,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2013\/03\/11\/sighting-oil\/","url_meta":{"origin":1254,"position":1},"title":"Sighting Oil","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"March 11, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"While it's been out for several months now, the current issue of Imaginations: Journal of Cross-Cultural Image Studies, a special issue on Sighting Oil, deserves more press than it's gotten. The journal is housed at the University of Alberta, which makes it particularly well situated to critically observe the development\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Eco-culture"","block_context":{"text":"Eco-culture","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/ecoculture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.csj.ualberta.ca\/imaginations\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/3.2Cover-791x1024.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2865,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2011\/03\/06\/plastic-planet\/","url_meta":{"origin":1254,"position":2},"title":"Plastic planet","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"March 6, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Discard Studies shares Max Liboiron's engrossing, and depressing, account of the ocean's toxic soup of plastics. A few quotes: \"The best conservative estimate we have is that there are 315 billion pounds of plastic in the ocean. For comparison, The Gulf Spill spewed roughly 2.5 million pounds of oil per\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Eco-culture"","block_context":{"text":"Eco-culture","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/ecoculture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1269,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/05\/25\/spillcam-reality\/","url_meta":{"origin":1254,"position":3},"title":"Spillcam reality","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"May 25, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"I've been wanting to post something about the images of the Gulf oil spill (or, rather, of the unmitigated man made deep water volcanic vent of crude oil and gas) -- about what they indicate (i.e. directly inform us about), what they symbolize (i.e., mean) and iconize (look like), and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Visual culture"","block_context":{"text":"Visual culture","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/image_nation\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Oil-spill-1.jpg","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2010\/05\/Oil-spill-1-thumb.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":13850,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2025\/01\/11\/burning-moment\/","url_meta":{"origin":1254,"position":4},"title":"Burning moment","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"January 11, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"Watching Onscene.tv\u2019s continuous, commentary-free footage of the fires in and around Los Angeles is like watching a Buddhist cremation ceremony. Recently vacated homes and buildings burn, slowly collapsing, walls crashing, smoke plumes exiting from windows, and embers blowing from building to building, as a hand-held or vehicle-mounted camera moves silently\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Spirit matter"","block_context":{"text":"Spirit matter","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/religion-spirituality\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2025\/01\/image-1.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2025\/01\/image-1.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2025\/01\/image-1.png?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2025\/01\/image-1.png?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2025\/01\/image-1.png?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2025\/01\/image-1.png?resize=1400%2C800&ssl=1 4x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1267,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/05\/20\/the-crystal-image\/","url_meta":{"origin":1254,"position":5},"title":"the crystal image","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"May 20, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"A couple of recent posts by Chris Vitale and Tim Morton have rekindled my thinking about Deleuze's crystal-image. Chris's interesting post is about the power of crowdsourcing and video detournement in delivering a more democratic form of media politics. Tim's brief posts share music videos and reflections on dark ecology\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Cinema"","block_context":{"text":"Cinema","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/cinema_zone\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/WDHJjLO8FQw\/0.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1254"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1254\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2645,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1254\/revisions\/2645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}