Go directly to jail…
The U.S. has under 5% of the world’s population– but jails over 25% of the world’s imprisoned. We have (by far) the highest rate of incarceration in the world; and with the encouragement of the the private prison industry, it’s growing.
Josh Begley, a master’s student in the Interactive Telecommunications program at NYU, wanted to represent what all of this means, to communicate not just the sheer quantity of prisons in America, but their footprint, their volume on our landscape. The result: Prison Map, not really a map so much as an extraordinary collection of Google earth photos of “correctional institutions” across the country.
Read more at Atlantic Cities, and visit Prison Map.
***
As we ponder the perils of profligate privatization, we might take a moment to meditate on Timothy Francis Leary; he died on this date in 1996. As a Harvard psychology professor in the early 60s, Leary was among the first researchers into the therapeutic applications of psychedelic drugs (when those drugs were legal, and widely considered promising). His early experiments, conducted “in the clear” and according to accepted research protocols, were contemporaneous with covert CIA tests. But while Leary’s work produced encouraging results, his project was closed, and he was fired from his post. Leary spent the next three decades advocating the use of psychedelics– and influencing a broad swath of the counter-culture.
In his final moments, Leary said “why not?” to his son Zachary Leary repeatedly, in different intonations– as a question, as a statement, softly, loudly, thoughtfully, ruefully, and confidently. His last word, according to Zachary, was “beautiful.”
“Turn on, tune in, drop out”
“Think for yourself and question authority”
