Well, the "over fifty percent thing" is technically correct -- if you ignore Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, something called Income Security, Interest on the National Debt, etc. When she can blow by the fact that the DOD/WOT gets about $900 billion, but those other five get a combined $1,700 billion, somebody's trying to sell me something.
(That said, no one needs to convince me that American consumerism is entirely out of control.)
This new series looks at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) and so on. My hope is that images representing these quantities might have a different effect than the raw numbers alone, such as we find daily in articles and books. Statistics can feel abstract and anesthetizing, making it difficult to connect with and make meaning of 3.6 million SUV sales in one year, for example, or 2.3 million Americans in prison, or 426,000 cell phones retired every day. This project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society, in large intricately detailed prints assembled from thousands of smaller photographs. My underlying desire is to emphasize the role of the individual in a society that is increasingly enormous, incomprehensible, and overwhelming.
Comments
I stopped watching when she said more than 50% of our tax dollars go to the military.
Yeah, that was the first lie I caught, but I watched a bit more, and this blogger needs to stop cherry picking her "facts."
OTOH, the basic premise is correct, in that we can't sustain our current growth rate indefinitely, globally speaking.
(That said, no one needs to convince me that American consumerism is entirely out of control.)
I agree that some of the facts could be wrong or misleading, but the whole idea was important, I think.
I'd suggest that everyone watch the Science Channel's (SC) How It's Made.
It's like the SC looks on in glee as the Coneheads (nee Earth's human population) consume vast quantities of ... everything.
Talk about cognitive dissonance.
Running the Numbers
An American Self-Portrait
This new series looks at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) and so on. My hope is that images representing these quantities might have a different effect than the raw numbers alone, such as we find daily in articles and books. Statistics can feel abstract and anesthetizing, making it difficult to connect with and make meaning of 3.6 million SUV sales in one year, for example, or 2.3 million Americans in prison, or 426,000 cell phones retired every day. This project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society, in large intricately detailed prints assembled from thousands of smaller photographs. My underlying desire is to emphasize the role of the individual in a society that is increasingly enormous, incomprehensible, and overwhelming.
This is the cached version, too many people clicking on this stuff.