Kombinat!

AKMA Cut Out Blogger Action Paper Doll

AKMA Paper Doll

Finally a product for bloggers. A cut out AKMA Blogger doll complete with a Wifi setup and a Panama Hat.

On Transformational Giving

Gift Hub: Transformational Giving:

"Without a concept of public goods, of the polis, and the community, any analysis of giving will be flawed. You cannot reduce the holy to goods bought and sold, nor justice to that, nor poetry. Parsimonious explanation is good, but as the Russian poet Mayakovsky wrote, "How with only three words, one of them, apparently, 'borscht,' can one celebrate love and spring?" To those Christians to whom caritas is not a first principle (along with faith and hope) charity will never make much sense"

Cooperation: "It will take years to answer these questions"

From Course Goals - Toward a Literacy of Cooperation:

Might "cooperation studies" be the beginning of a new narrative about human social behavior? (...) The evolution of cooperation, the dynamics of social dilemmas, the economics of peer production, the design of institutions for collective action, the structure of social networks, the forecasting power of prediction markets, the power of distributed computing – can these frontiers in previously unconnected disciplines be mapped onto a broad interdisciplinary discourse?
(...)
What can evolutionary biology teach us about the complexities of human cooperation? Can institutions for collective action be designed more effectively by examining the ways people agree to use water, grazing lands, fisheries, intellectual property? Do alternative currencies, peer production techniques, collectively-created online public goods point toward a sharing economy that differs in fundamental ways from previous means of organizing production? What are the opportunities and dangers of hyper-mediated collective action via smart mobs and mobile social software? Is open-source politics the beginning of an emergent democracy, or a media fad?

Another one bites the dust

This link to Stuart on  "Giving Up Traditional Blogging" from Euan

"I am giving up on traditional Blogging. it just doesn't suit my needs anymore.
I learned that the personal blog is not focussed enough. "

Stuart, good for you. Now you can write a book about your experiences and analyze the data from your career as a blogger. I am sure it will be a hit. In the meantime please stay away from blogging, you are really bad at it. We recommend you refocus on something else, something that requires a lot of explanations and is much more practical.

20 questions. 20 answers for True Voice. The business of blogging.

We came across 20 questions at Corante as part of their "True Voice: the Business of Blogging". We immediately set up an emergency meeting at Kombinat! to come up with the answers to those burning issues. Here is what our committee has produced.

1. Irrelevant Question. It's like asking "What's [blank blank], and why should I care?" where for [blank blank] we substitute a number of possible human activities that relate to the question of blogging: Breathing, Speaking, Seeing etc...

2. Irrelevant Question.

3. Irrelevant Question.

4. What do you get for answering this question?

5. Yes. Huge.

6. see Gonzo Marketing

7. Irrelevant Question. Define 'succesful blogger' first and I will know what world you are living in. Then I will see if your worldview is worth fighting for or argue against or let it be.

8. see Flickr. as to the second part it's about slaying the dragon called "Broadcasting"

9. Stop enforcing corporate lies and pretense. Dismantle corporate hierarchy of secrets vs official agenda for all. Transparency. Learn from Game Theory. Tit for Tat.

10. Find self-interest worth building upon or fire their asses.

11. Irrelevant. The culprits will be shamed. Happy Tutor's version of Tit for Tat

12. Irrelevant.

13. Irrelevant.

14. Stop institutionalizing blogging. It's a structured context for social construction. Dialog helps.

15. Good question. I believe the biggest will be 'commitment'.

16. Irrelevant at this point.

17. Depends on your commitment. See 15.

18. Irrelevant. If you have passion and commitment then write. See 15

19. Irrelevant.

20. Irrelevant.

Kombinat! purchases Tralfamadore by Kurt Vonnegut

I have recevied (purchased by way of cash earned from Noise Production) Kurt Vonnegut's print "Tralfamadore #2".  (Number 3 from the edition of 30). Here it is. Lovely.

 

It arrived wrapped in this proof of Good Bye Blue Monday print found at Vonnegut.com.

Good Bye Blue Monday Wrapper for Tralfamadore #2 Print

Thank you Joe Petro III for the wonderful care in shipping the print. Thank you Mister Vonnegut for the lovely scratchings

TechnoratiTag: vonnegut

Kombinat! Secretaritute and Prositutary

Kombinat! Xmas Model Secretaritute

Kombinat! Xmas Model Prostitutary

Just in time for Xmas we present you two new models. We combined a Secretary and a Prostitute and now 2 in 1 package only from Kombinat! Secretaritute or a Prostiitutary. Whatever you like.

What-notism? Kombinatism!

Frank Paynter at Connect & Empower says:

"I think my answer is that I am no longer a Christian if I ever was one. Indeed, I am not a theist. I shy from the word atheis because it implies a dogmatism I do not assert. But I think that we have come a long way culturally since the middle ages, and Christianity is no longer of much use. Nor is Islam for that matter. Nor Judaism. Hinduism. Shamanism. Buddhism. Shintoism. Paganism. Jainism. And what-notism"

Frank. Join us, we are launching Kombinatism!  A New Religion. We haven't figured out the rules yet but I am sure we'll have some kind of miracle birth, perhas a virgin or two. There has to be travelling and escape from oppression. Anything else?  Also we need to develop theses about the superiority of Xmas over Easter celebrations. We can corner the market for neotism thing. 

(UPDATE: First suggestions filed by Kent. Follow the thread for more wisdom and rubbish. You decide. But if you are a swine you will not know the pearls thrown before you anyway.)

Paintings of Jesters, Irony, Village Idiots by Jaroslaw Miklasiewicz.

Miklasiewicz_CourtJesterAgony

Jaroslaw Miklasiewicz social commentary in paintings. (his site in polish, click links Galeria 1, Galeria 2 and Galeria 3 to see painings)

Some of my favorite paintings:

Proletariat: Notice the jester and whores.

Death of a Jester: I wonder why his right hand is in a bucket.

The Blind: Not only the blind leading the blind but a new twist with the blind reading a newspaper. Parade of Fools indeed.

A Tip, A Gift: Perhaps a way Candidia might pass a tip to a homeless man an a street as long as her gesture were to be reported by the media.

Dialogs with the Past: A torn canvas, A rip in the fabric of the painting, a separation.

A Little Voting Booth: The leader speaks. The guys in the back hold a white sheet to cover the leader's naked ass. Notice the construction of a voting booth with the votes going straight into the garbage bin.

Jester going for a walk : parade as usual

Rounding Up of Fools (I invented this title): Polish title is "Skolowani", a play on words, it could be translated as Being Loopy, Loopy people as in crazy but it has to do with a wheel too so round shapes represent loopy crazy people. Notice the jesters cap hanging on a tree stump, tree is gone, the jester is gone.

Charles Aznavour

I love this song by Charles Aznavour "Non je n'ai rien oublié"

"Je voudrais, si tu veux, sans vouloir te forcer
Te revoir à nouveau, enfin... si c'est possible
Si tu en as envie, si tu es disponible
Si tu n'as rien oublié
Comme moi qui n'ai rien oublié"

This from article by Jody Rosen at Salon

"My shortcomings are my voice, my height, my gestures, my lack of culture and education, my frankness and my lack of personality." So wrote the 26-year-old French singer and songwriter Charles Aznavour one night in 1950, drunkenly brooding over his stalled career. Nothing, he concluded, could be done about his unorthodox voice, whose rasp and keening "Oriental" quality were so different from the smooth, insouciant style of that era's popular chansonniers. Nor was there any solution to the 5-foot-3 Aznavour's height problem: His one attempt to rectify the situation, when he wore elevator shoes for a New York nightclub performance, had been a tragedy of clubfooted slapstick. His frankness: another hopeless case. "I am incorrigible ... I say 'merde' to anybody, however important he is, when I feel like it."

Update: Just realized that Emmenez-moi is probably my favorite song from Charls . The music is seductive.

Je fuirai, laissant là mon passé, 
Sans aucun remords
Sans bagage et le coeur libéré,
En chantant très fort

Emmenez-moi au bout de la terre
Emmenez-moi au pays des merveilles
Il me semble que la misère
Serait moins pénible au soleil