Via the Telegraph:

In a high-tech country that grew rich selling cars and electronics, young farmers are standing up to reinvent the image of agriculture. Organic farming converts, rice-growing Tokyo fashionistas and other young green fingers have trickled back into rural Japan, where many farm towns have been slowly dying amid fast-greying Japan’s demographic crunch.

Japan, the world’s second-largest economy, now imports 60 per cent of its food, and many worry about future food security if climate change affects global food supplies or energy costs increase international grain prices.

No matter how big Japan’s economy is, no matter how much cash it stacks up, this country will soon be unable to buy so much food from overseas,” Yusuke Miyaji, 31, recently told a crowd of young farmers.

“I want to make a job in the primary sector cool, striking and profitable,” said Miyaji, dressed in overalls, to applause from his audience. “Kids should dream of becoming farmers, not baseball players!”

Miyaji, who comes from a pig farming family, has created a network called Kosegare, a word meaning “farmer’s son”, that has attracted more than 200 young farmers and supporters who share his sense of crisis.

(Telegraph: Japan’s urban youth swaps fashion for farming)

 
Pot-stirring, hell, pot-smashing, author and journalist Christopher Hitchens (God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice) muses in Slate this week on what he’s “learned from debating religious people around the world.”  Typical for Hitchens, “Faith No More” is a nice balance of lucidity and venom.  But it’s also gracious to his current sparring partner, Pastor Douglas Wilson, a senior fellow at New St. Andrew’s College:

Wilson isn’t one of those evasive Christians who mumble apologetically about how some of the Bible stories are really just “metaphors.”  He is willing to maintain very staunchly that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ and that his sacrifice redeems our state of sin, which in turn is the outcome of our rebellion against God.  He doesn’t waffle when asked why God allows so much evil and suffering?

 
British artist—and “human camera”—Stephen Wiltshire has set about drawing a 20-ft. long panorama of New York City’s skyline.  What’s astounding about this, though, is that Wiltshire, who has autism, has seen the city just once—during a 20-minute helicopter ride.  He’s sketching it entirely from memory.  You can watch a bit of Wiltshire’s process, and progress, below:

 
In the NYT: Like A Skyline Is Etched In His Head

(via New York Magazine)

 
Fans of Chris Smith (American Movie, The Yes Men) can look forward to the indie director’s upcoming release, Collapse.  In it, Smith gives the Errol Morris treatment to Michael Ruppert, the one-time cop turned investigative journalist.

Here’s what Apple’s Trailer site has to say about Collapse which, curiously, is listed as both a documentary and a horror film (but then again, if you know about Ruppert, maybe it’s not so curious at all):

Americans generally like to hear good news. They like to believe that a new President will right old wrongs, that clean energy will replace dirty oil, and that fresh thinking will set the economy straight.  American pundits tend to restrain their pessimism and to hope for the best.  But is anyone prepared for the worst?  Michael Ruppert is a different kind of American.  He predicted the current financial crisis in his self-published newsletter ?

 
“Each series is comprised of either a single photobooth strip or multiple photogbooth images of the same person—sometimes, as is the case with the first and last series, taken over the course of many years.”
 
Square America: Moving Pictures
 
(via J-Walk Blog)

 
Fascinating story in this month’s W about the late filmmaker Ingmar Bergman‘s private retreat on the Swedish island of

Our super smart friend Charles Hugh Smith posts another must-read essay at his Of Two Minds blog:

When it comes to post-bubble retraces, the fundamental reasons may not matter as much as the technical case for a full reversion to pre-bubble prices. We all know the fundamental reasons why housing shot up—a credit bubble of epic proportions plus securitization, fraud and low interest rates, to name but a few factors—and why housing has plummeted: foreclosures and inventory are rising, tightening of credit standards by private lenders, etc.

But the ultimate predictor of price is technical: speculative bubbles retrace to their pre-bubble prices, or in many cases even crash below those levels.

Those arguing the fundamentals are always grasping at various straws to support the case that prices won’t drop all the way back to pre-bubble levels, and they’re always wrong.

Read more at Of Two Minds

 
Politically Corrected: What’s small, cuddly, and likelier than a Build-A-Bear to initiate a workers’ revolt?  The Communist Cuddle Doll.  Castro looks cooler with that cigar, but I’ve got my eyes on Lenin—he looks like my Grandfather!  And, yes, “The Boss,” should not ever be confused with Kim Jong-Il, but if the Dear Leader can bring pizza to Pyongyang and stop that missile testing, maybe he’ll make next year’s collection?

(via TrendHunter)

 
Flickr user, EYE-talian, has a wonderful photostream of hundreds of masks collected from around the world. EYE-talian says, “I’ve been collecting masks since 1989 when I first purchased a mask in Cancun, Mexico. I was intrigued by the weird hallucinogenic Mexican masks because they looked similar to the oddball sketches I was doing at the time.

On subsequent visits I purchased additional masks, usually buying the most unusual masks I could find and/or what my budget and baggage limits would allow. In the meantime, I stumbled upon some very cool German paper mache, and starched buckram Halloween masks at antique shows around Cincinnati and picked those up as well. I never had any intention of amassing a formal “collection” but one thing lead to another and then…. Holy Shit… Ebay!

Besides Ebay, a few of the masks were given to me by fellow collectors and a handful were purchased at local import shops. Yes I have way too many, and unfortunately don’t have room to display them all. I began taking photos of them a few years ago as a record of what I had, and eventually ran across Flickr and decided to post them there.”
 
Visit Eye-talian’s The Maskatorium
 
EYE-talian ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. NO USE AUTHORIZED WITHOUT PERMISSION.

 
Portly, balding, comic R&B singer Har Mar Superstar, yes, he of the overactive libido, is hardly anyone’s idea of a dreamboat, but that has not stopped the performer (real name Sean Tillman) from being the most buzz-worthy man in pop music today. Har Mar’s latest CD, “Dark Touches,” seems to be everywhere you turn, both online and off.

His latest single, “Tall Boy,” was originally written for Britney Spears, but rejected by her management. Undaunted, Tillman recorded the song himself, but without switching the gender roles for an amusing, off-kilter, homoerotic approach.

The “Tall Boy” video features spacesuits, ray guns and famous friends like Eva Mendes, “Arrested Development” actress Alia Shawkat and comedian Eric Wareheim. The clip, directed by prestigious L.A.-based design shop Tomorrow’s Brightest Minds, has been making the rounds as a popular viral video.

Har Mar (who has also gone under the monikers Sean Na Na and Calvin Krime professionally) has seen his star rise to unexpected heights in the last few years and he’s picked up some famous friends along the way. It’s recently been announced that Tillman has co-written an HBO pilot with his co-stars in Drew Barrymore’s “Whip It,” Ellen Page and Shawkat, with the working title ?