12 PM | 26 Feb

The Case against #Fragrance a #book by Kate Grenville [#geekgirl]

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Kate Grenville had always associated perfume with elegance and beauty. Then the headaches started.

Like perhaps a quarter of the population, Grenville reacts badly to the artificial fragrances around us: other people’s perfumes, and all those scented cosmetics, cleaning products and air fresheners. On a book tour in 2015, dogged by ill health, she started wondering: what’s in fragrance? Who tests it for safety? What does it do to people?

The more Grenville investigated, the more she felt this was a story that should be told. The chemicals in fragrance can be linked not only to short-term problems like headaches and asthma, but to long-term ones like hormone disruption and cancer. Yet products can be released onto the market without testing. They’re regulated only by the same people who make and sell them. And the ingredients don’t even have to be named on the label.

This book is based on careful research into the science of scent and the power of the fragrance industry. But, as you’d expect from an acclaimed novelist, it’s also accessible and personal. The Case Against Fragrance will make you see – and smell – the world differently.

Source: Booktopia

01 PM | 19 Oct

NY #book #auction 26 Oct 2016 for Louise Bourgeois: Ode to Forgetting [#geekgirl]

Louise Bourgeois: Ode to Forgetting

“I had a flashback of something that never existed.”

— Louise Bourgeois

Used and worn fabric, imbued with sweat and memories, often woven and washed by the hands of women, was an ideal means to marry the themes Louise Bourgeois explored throughout her artistic career: The body, memory, intimacy, fragility, femininity and the attendant emotions of family and childhood recall her own childhood spent among tapestries from her parents’ fabric restoration business. Impressive in its construction and quiet power, this particular work is an editioned handmade cloth book, Ode à l’oubli (Ode to Forgetting), published by Peter Blum Edition in 2004.

Directly based on the unique cloth book Ode â l’Oubli created in 2002 and from scraps of fabric Bourgeois had collected throughout her lifetime. The covers and 36 pages were created from monogrammed hand towels from her 1938 wedding to art historian Robert Goldwater (embroidered ‘LBG’), assembled with scraps cut, bound, quilted, layered and appliqued from old clothing like stockings scarves, nightgowns and dresses, household items and other fabric remnants. The compositions are abstract and rhythmic, in warm, blue and neutral tones, interspersed with patterned fabrics and text images, with layered sheer and opaque fabrics of varying delicacy, stitched together and bound, with the backsides of the pages openly revealing the labor and lacing of the threads on the opposite pages.

The editioned book of 25 recreates these details meticulously, using techniques such as lithography, dying, digital printing, sewing and embroidery. Replicating the patterns, stitching and even stains imbedded into the original fabrics. The binding is made with tie and buttonhole fastening which allows the individual pages to be unbound. The edition was skillfully and meticulously produced over two years by Judith Solodkin and her team at Solo Impression and Raylene Marasco from Dyenamix, a fabric company specializing in dying and printing samples for the fashion industry.

Auction estimate: 80 – 120k

Source> Phillips

02 PM | 23 Jun

The Matrix as Metaphor for #Animal Advocacy [#geekgirl]

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“Animal advocacy, like other social justice movements, asks us to confront difficult realities, but the ultimate reward goes to those who have the courage to witness because seeing things as they really are liberates us from oppression. Silence and denial keep oppression alive, and breaking that silence and denial disempowers it.” Robert Grillo

The following is excerpted from Robert Grillo’s new book Farm to Fable: The Fictions of Our Animal-Consuming Culture,due out Summer, 2016.

It appears that most children are born with an innate empathy for animals. They learn prejudice and discrimination based on race, sex, and species from the adult world. For example, when I was a child, I recall being taken to petting zoos on school field trips where we were given strict guidelines for how to interact compassionately with the animals. But then, later that evening, we would be served the same animals we were told to respect when alive. What seemed like baffling hypocrisy to me then is a testament to how powerful cultural and social forces lead us to turn against our hearts and minds, especially when it comes to the animals we eat. And even more startling is how widespread and consistent this phenomenon is in all of the animal-eating cultures of the world. The question I have grappled with for years now is: how can this conditioning work so well on so many of us for so long?

This question is central to the film, The Matrix. While most narratives from popular culture are carefully crafted around what we want to see, hear, and believe, The Matrix asks us to question what we’ve been taught, to separate what is illusion from what is real, what is oppression from what is freedom. And The Matrix is all the more important because of its notoriety as a cult classic. In the film, Morpheus explains to Neo that the Matrix is a simulated reality based on what the world was like in 1999, into which harvested humans are pacified and trapped as slaves by the sentient machines of their own creation. Morpheus and his followers make up a rebel group who hack into the Matrix and “unplug” enslaved humans and recruit them as rebels. Morpheus becomes convinced that Neo is “The One” prophesied to end the war between humans and machines. In one defining moment, he offers Neo a choice to take the red pill or the blue pill, explaining that taking the red pill will reveal the truth about reality.

Source: Read full article at Free from Harm

02 PM | 17 Apr

An Illustrated #Book of #Bad #Arguments [#geekgirl]

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A flawless compendium of flaws. Alice Roberts, PhD, anatomist, writer, and presenter of “The Incredible Human Journey”.

The antidote to fuzzy thinking, with furry animals! Have you read (or stumbled into) one too many irrational online debates? Ali Almossawi certainly had, so he wrote “An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments”! This handy guide is here to bring the internet age a much-needed dose of old-school logic (really old-school, “a la” Aristotle).Here are cogent explanations of the “straw man” fallacy, the “slippery slope” argument, the “ad hominem” attack, and other common attempts at reasoning that actually fall short plus a beautifully drawn menagerie of animals who (adorably) commit every logical “faux pas.” Rabbit thinks a strange light in the sky “must” be a UFO because no one can prove otherwise (“the appeal to ignorance”). And Lion doesn t believe that gas emissions harm the planet because, if that “were” true, he wouldn’t like the result (the “argument from consequences”). Once you learn to recognize these abuses of reason, they start to crop up everywhere from congressional debate to YouTube comments which makes this geek-chic book a “must” for anyone in the habit of holding opinions.”

Also available as an audio book. <3 it! 2nd ed. pre-order now!

Source:> An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments