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The NAACP has just passed a historic resolution demanding an end to the War on Drugs.  The resolution comes as young Black male unemployment hovers near 50 percent and the wealth gap's become a veritable gulf. So why is the forty-year-old "War on Drugs" public enemy number one for the nation's oldest civil rights organization? Well here's why:  it's not extraneous - it's central: the war on drugs is the engine of 21st century discrimination - an engine that has brought Jim Crow into the age of Barack Obama.     Author Michelle Alexander lays out the statistics -- and the stories --  of 21st Century Jim Crow in her ought-to-blow-your-socks off book: "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in an Age of Colorblindness." I had a chance to sit down with Alexander earlier this summer. We'll be posting the full interview in two parts.     "We have managed decades after the civil rights movement to create something like a caste system in the United States," says Alexander in part one here  "In major urban areas, the majority of African American men are either behind bars, under correctional control or saddled with criminal record and once branded as criminal or a felon, they're trapped for life in 2nd class status."     It's not just about people having a hard time getting ahead and climbing the ladder of success. It's about a rigged system. Sound familiar?  Like the Pew Research Center report on household wealth and the Great Recession -- the NAACP resolution story was a one-day news-blip - despite the fact that it pierces the by-your-bootstraps myth that is at the heart of - you pick it - the deficit, the stimulus, the tax code - every contemporary US economic debate.     White America just maybe ought to pay attention. With more and more Americans falling out of jobs and into debt, criminal records are a whole lot easier to come by than life-sustaining employment.  Contrary to the conventional media version, the "Drug War" story is not a people with problems

One of the most important speeches in recorded history was given by a comedian by the name of Charlie Chaplin. If you like what you see please share the video any way you can and pass the message on.

In what may feel like a flashback to the porn wars of the '60s, a new study investigates the link between a country's relative gender equality and the degree of female "empowerment" in the X-rated entertainment it consumes. Researchers at the University of Hawaii focused on three countries in particular: Norway, the United States and Japan, which are respectively ranked 1st, 15th and (yikes) 54th on the United Nations' Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM). To simplify their analysis, their library of smut was limited to explicit photographs of women "from mainstream pornographic magazines and Internet websites, as well as from the portfolios of the most popular porn stars from each nation." Then they set out to evaluate each image on both a disempowerment and an empowerment scale, using respective measures like whether the woman is "bound and dominated" by "leashes, collars, gags, or handcuffs" or "whether she has a natural looking body." Their hypothesis was that societies with greater gender equity will consume pornography that has more representations of "empowered women" and less of "disempowered women." It turned out the former was true, but, contradictory as it may sound, the latter was not. "While Norwegian pornography offers a wider variety of body types -- conforming less to a societal ideal that is disempowering to the average woman -- there are still many images that do not promote a healthy respect for women," the researchers explain. In other words, Norwegian porn showed more signs of female empowerment, but X-rated images in all three countries equally depicted women in demeaning positions and scenarios. This, the researchers surmise, "suggests that empowerment and disempowerment within pornography are potentially different constructs." So, gender equality is accompanied by sexual interest in a broader range of beauty types but not a decrease in porn's infantilization of females, use of dominating fetish gear on women or any of the other characteristics th

When we study Marx in my graduate social theory course, it never fails that at least one student will say (approximately), "Class struggle didn't escalate in the way Marx expected. In modern capitalist societies class struggle has disappeared. So isn't it clear that Marx was wrong and his ideas are of little value today?" I respond by challenging the premise that class struggle has disappeared. On the contrary, I say that class struggle is going on all the time in every major institution of society. One just has to learn how to recognize it. One needn't embrace the labor theory of value to understand that employers try to increase profits by keeping wages down and getting as much work as possible out of their employees. As the saying goes, every successful capitalist knows what a Marxist knows; they just apply the knowledge differently. Workers' desire for better pay and benefits, safe working conditions, and control over their own time puts them at odds with employers. Class struggle in this sense hasn't gone away. In fact, it's inherent in the relationship between capitalist employer and employee. What varies is how aggressively and overtly each side fights for its interests.

100architects designs a #public #art #installation, #PaintDrop to vivify a mixed-use development space and engage passers-by by guiding them to the new #open-air LifeHub@Daning #retail space in #Shanghai. Read on to know more

The Orange Lane, Mumbai, brings a modern twist of typical Indian elements to vivid South Indian culture that makes for a contemporary 'udipi' restaurant by day and trendy bar by night. Find out how the integration of the concept within the design allows for a flexible space here...

Celebrating Japanese cuisine and culture in Hotel Roomers, Munich, is a standalone restaurant: Izakaya designed by @concrete-architectural-associates. With silk printed artwork, bespoke furniture and a massive Koi lamp, this area is a real treat! Adapting to its quiet restaurant crowd and then transforming into a cosy bar after hours makes the designers vision quite remarkable.

Forgo minimalism and simplicity. This Chennai Bungalow by HS Desiigns references a luxury lifestyle, highlighted by rich materials, colours, textures and furnishings. Check it out here…

Chromed Design Studio once again crafts a synthesis of old and new in the recently completed Ophelia restaurant at The Ashok Hotel in New Delhi. Check out the uber-chic restaurant that transforms from a luxury fine dine by day to a high energy lounge bar by night…

Designed by Hong Kong based @onepluspartnership with an articulate, overriding theme throughout, this Shanghai cinema house is inspired by the rails used for tracking shots in the filming process. Check it out and leave us your comments here…

The languages we speak affect our perceptions of the world.

Noted by Post-it® - the design-forward collection of stationery and desktop accessories from 3M is the winner of the #ProductoftheYear2021 at India Art n Design. Check it out here…

IAnD invites you to showcase your self-styled rooms/ homes/ offices or even a corner /area in your home/office that is exclusively designed by you…

Mecanoo-led renovation will give New Yorkers a completely new Mid-Manhattan Library by end of 2019! Check out the new features on the anvil.

Keeping pace with contemporary times, Architect Yukio Asari of Love Architecture Inc. substantiates his belief that 'time' and 'space' for revisiting the dead should be transcendent and beyond human knowledge by designing an ossuary in Japan. Check it out and leave us your views on the subject…

With exhibitions of different genres bringing to light a multitude of things unbeknownst to man, the 'World of Feathers' at National Museum of Ethnology in Leiden, Netherlands designed by Kossman.dejong, is a playfully designed showcase of plumage from all over the world, drawing aesthetically culled parallels to influence and inform behavioural types and cultural innuendoes. Check it out here and leave us your views...

The 3rd edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale that follows the thematic 'Forming in the pupil of an eye' seems to weave several threads of sensitivity by the 97 participating artists. IAnD picks three such intense musings to discover the creative processes behind their works…

Prioritizing nature over built form, hillside resort DuSaiResortSpa by VITTI.sthapati follows a hybrid typology of traditional tea estate architecture and standardised concrete construction.