Running the Numbers by Chris Jordan

I saw some photographs by this guy a while ago, and they made quite an impression. Since then he's added a new series, which has to be seen to be believed.

This is how he describes it:

Running the Numbers 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 32,000 breast augmentation surgeries in the U.S. every month.

Check out Running the Numbers, here.

"The Most Hated Family in America" Comes to Canada...(tried to, anyway)

(Picture generated by the Westboro Baptist Church Sign Generator)

The Westboro Baptist Church, well-known for their "godhatesfags.com" website and their picketing of the funerals of dead American soldiers -- deaths that they cheerfully applaud, by the way -- announced recently that they would be picketing the funeral of Tim McLean. The reason, not that it matters, is that McLean was Canadian, and his murder was a sign of God's anger towards Canada's tolerance of gays, abortion, etc. The Westboro Church was hoping to come here in order to let us know that.

If you're not familiar with the Westboro Baptist Church (or even if you are), you should really check out this 2007 BBC documentary by Louis Theroux (who was, I think you'll agree, the perfect person to make this). It's one of the saddest and most fascinating things I've ever seen on TV. You really couldn't make this stuff up.


Fred Phelps later claimed that God "raised up" the BBC specifically so it would eventually help him spread his message to the world through this documentary. Wow.