Pigeons, Parakeets, Rats, Toads: A Residency at the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris

Under the welcoming guidance of biologist Anne-Caroline Prévot and the Centre des sciences de la conservation, I'm developing project about the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle's "invisible" urban fauna. The loud parakeet from India, the protected toad from North Africa and the problematic rat from Norway all enjoying one of Paris' oldest parks.... More to come!

Xie xie everyone for coming out under Shanghai's grim weather for urban animal mapping and talking

Buying Individuals, Data Collections and Online Ads

From the great article A Guide to the Digital Advertising Industry That's Watching Your Every Click, published in The Atlantic by Communications professor Joesph Turow.

The Ideology of Purging for the New Year: Toilet Bolls and Jogging

The beginning of a new year is a time when people reflect on purging their past's regrettable moments and come up with means of becoming better versions of themselves. As a result January is a time for ideological fantasies to materialize and things like a dramatic increase of joggers (soon to be absent) and a uniform of weight loss strategies and cleansing/detox diets takeover magazine covers.

But while these wonderful manifestations of ideological purging occur, our everyday bodily purging continues its unnoticed routine: allegedly the average human contributes 2 pounds of excrement a day. Why does this matter? Because we all do it, and because most of us Westerners do it through a technology which, like all technology, is the byproduct of a cultural and ideological bias. If Žižek famously analyzed three types of toilet bolls as informed by the three nineteenth century political ideologies, Virginia Gardiner's two contemporary toilet designs - one made out of manure and a second, part of a sustainable 'system' - might offer a future and more universal way to (unconsciously) ideologically engage in a less spoiled planet.

In the spirit of the new year's hopeful resolutions, then, let's hope Gardiner's toilets and obsession for better waste and sustainable living replace that of our self-indulgence in better measurements, muscles and weight.

I'm pretty certain it wouldn't be useless in making 2011 a better 2010.

Slavoj Žižek on toilets and ideology:

Virginia Gardiner's toilet made of manure: