Natalie Portman has collaborated with limited-edition shoe line Té Casan to create some high-end vegan shoes. She says she was inspired by all the shoes she loved but wasn’t able to wear because she’s vegan (once she made a stylist at a photoshoot cut off the leather buttons on a blouse they wanted her to wear because she wouldn’t be photographed wearing animal products). The shoes start at $175 and 5% of the profits will go to the Nature Conservancy. She’s pictured above in an ad for the company wearing a pair from her line.
“This is the season of frenetic shopping, but for a devious few people it’s also the season of spirited shopdropping. Otherwise known as reverse shoplifting, shopdropping involves surreptitiously putting things in stores, rather than illegally taking them out, and the motivations vary. Anti-consumerist artists slip replica products packaged with political messages onto shelves while religious proselytizers insert pamphlets between the pages of gay-and-lesbian readings at book stores.”
I recently came across this list of “ghost detainees” that the U.S. government has disappeared according to Human Rights Watch. SCARY. And a direct violation of this U.N. Convention, which the U.S. hasn’t signed (countries that have are listed here).
More information on the Disappeared from around the world here.
From: Liz
I have loved Sweeney Todd for a while and seen it twice as a play. I cannot wait to see the movie version. And with Alan Rickman I’m guaranteed to love it *fan girl sigh*
Release date: 12/21/07 (that’s today!)
Star Trek XI
It might not even make it out next year because it’s still in production, but damn it, I want it!
Release date: 12/25/08
I’m also pretty psyched about Prince Caspian and Harry Potter 6!
What do you guys want to see?
(Liz here, I found this in the drafts so I published it, I hope that’s ok whoever wrote it)
I know this was reported in the Bi-Co, but I value the opinion of Batteniks much more highly than those expressed in that rag. Here’s what appeared in the Washington Post:
“A very attractive woman — looked like she just got finished teaching a sociology class at Bryn Mawr College, if you know what I mean — she said, ‘Senator Biden . . . I came fully prepared to be unimpressed with you.’ I said, ‘Well, thank you very much.’ ” – Joe Biden, telling a Concord, NH audience about a young woman who challenged him for wearing an American flag pin. (here is the link)
What the hell is he implying? I can’t quite figure it out, but I don’t like it.
Peta2, geared toward a younger set of anti-cruelty activists, has this new feature “Meet the Trollsen Twins” that criticizes “Hairy-Kate” and “Trashley” for wearing fur. You can send them a letter asking them to stop killing animals for their fashion sense or “play dress-up” and drag bloodied animal “accessories” to the scarily skinny, warty paper doll of each twin.
Is this a fair attempt at getting the attention of tweensters or just another way Peta uses (and attacks) women’s bodies for advertising?
“Ok, so if you ride your bike regularly in place of driving a car you might think you’re doing the environment a favor. Well, according to a Wharton School professor it’s time to shelve that holier-than-thou attitude. Based upon Karl Ulrich’s research (.pdf paper), biking does save a considerable amount of energy. But it also makes you healthier. Ulrich finds that a single additional year of biking adds 10.6 days to one’s life, and that the energy consumed during this added lifetime offsets the energy saved by pedaling” (http://blogs.chron.com/sciguy/archives/2006/09/go_bicycling_de.html).
Here’s a poem that we read in my class and I loved. It’s in Spanish but I’m adding my own translation.
Yo no soy yo.
Soy este
que va a mi lado sin yo verlo,
que, a veces, voy a ver,
y que, a veces olvido.
El que calla, sereno, cuando hablo,
el que perdona, dulce, cuando odio,
el que pasea por donde no estoy,
el que quedará en pie cuando yo muera.
-Juan Ramón Jiménez
English:
I am not myself.
I’m that which walks at my side without seeing it.
That which sometimes I see,
And that which sometimes, I forget.
He who is quiet, serene, when I talk,
He who forgives, sweetly, when I hate,
He who passes places where I am not,
He who will stay standing when I die.
She is workshoping her new show Beautiful before she starts her tour in Australia.
SHE IS GOING TO COME TO SWARTHMORE ON FEBRUARY 23RD.
If you are in the area, please go see her. She is amazing. I’ve seen her in concert and own three of her DVDs. (I’m even in one of them!) It looks like she won’t even be doing Beautiful in the US right away, but going back to performing Sensuous Woman (which I’ll def go see, but I have to wait til the summer).
The link between douching and cervical cancer has been established for years, but these Lysol ads carry a message that’s a different kind of forboding. Watch out ladies, the state of your marriage may depend on the state of your mucus!
