Welcome to American democracy

Even if this particular incident was staged, I’ve heard about and seen quite a few more examples recently. I guess we should happy for the United States bringing their democracy for the rest of the world.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8znhEhxl3s]

Satirical illustrations by Pawel Kuczynski

One thing that I really don’t like is when people use someone else’s work without giving credit.  Today I came across a few images which I really liked, but which were shared without any mention of the author.  It took me a few minutes to establish that what I saw were satirical illustrations by a famous Polish artists Pawel Kuczynski.

The fact that I don’t really enjoy this particular drawing style didn’t stop me from enjoying many of the ideas pictured.  There are takes on anything – society, war, technology, fashion, environment, and more.  Have a look at more of his work.  Below are a few of my favorites.

On pseudovariety

Kottke has a link to an interesting article, with much more interesting visualization of soft drinks industry.  The article discusses pseudovariety.  That’s when you think you have a lot of something, when indeed you really don’t.  Like with all those soft drinks on the shelves of every supermarket.  You think there is a whole lot of them, when in fact most of them are brands of either one of the three major companies.

One other example of pseudovariety that came to my mind was from the field of politics.  Think about it.  There are usually a number of political parties and presidential candidates at every election.  All of them spend hours and millions of dollars to promote themselves, demote their competition, and explain to you how different they are from everything you’ve seen to this day.  But in reality, most of them are pretty much the same.  You can see it from the way they talk, the way they work, the way they lie, the way they approach difficult problems, and the way they talk about simple things.

It often seems like you have so much to choose from, when in fact, you really don’t.