Arabic Poesie

trash: ANYCOLORYOULIKE

http://anycoloryoulike.biz/info.html

Internet flooded with shoe-throwing games in wake of Bush incident

haha

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1229868841420&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Bubble Project

Do you ever wonder what people are thinking about when you pass them on the street? Thought bubbles out of paper all around brooklyn...ColorMeKatie




http://colormekatie.blogspot.com/2008/12/thursday_18.html

great...

thank you for throwing your shoe

haha

http://thankyouforthrowingyourshoe.com/

Ecofriendly font saves on ink

Will a new, free-to-download, environmentally friendly font that cuts down on printing ink mean less paper use?

The Ecofont saves on printing ink by … well, using less of it. Letters in the freely downloadable typeface contain multiple small circular holes, meaning that each letter requires less ink to be printed.

Though rather striking, the typeface is wholly readable (no pun intended) and is, apparently, most effective at nine or 10 point. It's also sans serif...Spranq claims that the Ecofont will reduce ink use by up to 20%...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2008/dec/22/waste-ethicalliving

Google Earth accused of aiding terrorists in Mumbai

Last month’s terrorist attacks in Mumbai have apparently triggered India’s long-simmering moral panic about maps, satellite imagery and security in general, and Google Earth in particular. A petition has been filed before the Bombay High Court demanding a ban on Google Earth and similar services because the gunmen used satellite imagery to plan the attacks. They also used GPS, satellite and cellular phones, BlackBerrys — and, oh yes, boats — but no one seems to be calling for them to be banned.

The Times has more; Stefan does his usual excellent job demolishing and fact-checking the petition and the news coverage: “Forcing Google to make imagery of India inaccessible to users of Google Earth in India would mean that everyone but people in India could access the imagery. Considering that the planning for the attacks likely took place outside India, such a ban would have achieved nothing, security-wise. And let’s not forget that people sophisticated enough to use VOIP to coordinate their attacks are also likely to know about proxy servers.” From what I gather from this Washington Post article, the issue isn’t that the attackers were technologically sophisticated, it’s that the Indian authorities aren’t.

Stefan advises not to take the petition too seriously. It’s worth noting, as the Times and Stefan do, that India is launching its own competitor to Google Earth, Bhuvan (which Stefan reported on last month), and, even if the Indian government censored the hell out of the available imagery, it’s a safe bet that the hotel district of Mumbai would have been available in exquisite detail, had Bhuvan been available at the time of the attacks.

http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/the_web/article5311241.ece

Stampede for 'Bush shoe' creates 100 new jobs

Ramazan Baydan, owner of the Istanbul-based Baydan Shoe Company, has been swamped with orders from across the world, after insisting that his company produced the black leather shoes which the Iraqi journalist Muntazar al-Zaidi threw at Bush during a press conference in Baghdad last Sunday. ...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/dec/22/turkey-george-bush-shoe

Type Trumps

http://www.face37.com/#/work/type-trumps/

Clock for Identity Designers

Last month, I wrote about the day I spent obsessively chronicling all the brands, logos, identities and symbols - all 1,035 - that I interact with throughout the day. This research was done for a project I was working on at the time in the Visual Communication Design program at Arizona State University under Professor Al Sanft. This clock serves as a reminder that we are constantly enveloped by brands.

http://www.fillslashstroke.com/slash/2008/12/a-clock-for-identity-designers/

Web of Influence_DEC 9, 08, NYT

The United States attorney’s office in Chicago accused Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich of having numerous schemes for profiting from his office. The affidavit contains details of a five-year investigation into public corruption and accusations of “pay to play” deals. This chart shows some of Mr. Blagojevich’s interactions with advisers, fund-raisers and other individuals, both named and unnamed.


http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/12/09/us/20081209_corruption.html

Draw Me Schools Of Commercial Art

http://www.designobserver.com/archives/entry.html?id=38860#more

Israeli Candidate Borrows a (Web) Page From Obama

The colors, the fonts, the icons for donating and volunteering, the use of videos, and the social networking Facebook-type options — including Twitter, which hardly exists in Israel — all reflect a conscious effort by the Netanyahu campaign to learn from the Obama success.

http://netanyahu.org.il/

Design_Objets Cultes

The French daily newspaper 'Le Monde' launches a weekly magazine called 'Le Monde 2' that serves as a supplement for the daily's weekly edition. Recently the magazine was accompanied by the first book out of a collection of 20 that starts to introduce 999 design objects through facts about how these objects had such a success, their history, and the steps taken toward their design process. Check it out!

http://boutique.lemonde.fr/boutique/product_info.php?products_id=252&osCsid=e9a93eb926ef0f17049a2c535f8eb9ca

http://www.lemonde.fr/kiosque/design/#fra-fr/collection/vol-01

journal with a PLANTABLE cover!!!

haha please comment on this

http://www.greenhome.com/products/personal_accessories/in_your_pocket/114977/

"This journal makes a great eco gift and you feel good about not creating unwanted waste in the landfill!

Each journal comes with a plantable cover made of 100% recycled office paper. Inside the journal contains 150 sheets of lined recycled office paper. A wrap tie bound to the outside helps keep all your secret thoughts safe. When finished filling the journal with all of your thoughts just rip the cover off and plant to see beautiful wildflowers all year long. It's just that simple!"

Vanity fair toooo?

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/politics/2008/07/new-yorker-cover.html

The Palin Trap

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080929

palin book banner?

Not that I'm a Palin fan or anything, but I just find this hilarious.

Over the last two weeks, a vicious smear has spread across liberal outlets and blogs into the mainstream media that as the Mayor of Wasilla, Governor Palin banned several books from the Wasilla City Library. This smear is categorically false and has no basis in fact. It is an urban myth — nothing more. Then-Mayor Palin never asked anyone to ban a book and not one book was ever banned, period.

Please find the facts below: (http://thepage.time.com/mccain-memo-on-palin-and-library-books/)

· As Mayor, Palin never asked to ban a book and no books were ever banned from the Wasilla Library, period. According to the Chairwoman of the Alaska Library Association’s Intellectual Freedom Committee since 1984, there are no records of any books being banned in Wasilla. As the Chairwoman told the Anchorage Daily News this month, she has no record or recollection of discussing threats of censorship with the Wasilla Library Director — who was also the President of the Alaska Library Association at the time.

· When first elected, Mayor Palin asked a rhetorical question of the Wasilla Library Director about the library’s book-challenge policy. It was a rhetorical question — nothing more. As Mayor Palin said at the time, she was merely asking questions about administration policies (the book-challenge policy being pertinent because of the local debate at the time) and that she had no materials in mind when she asked the questions. After these rhetorical questions, no other action was ever taken by her office.

· When Mayor Palin asked these rhetorical questions, Wasilla’s Library Director was working to update the city’s book-challenge policy, and these issues were part of the local debate in the early 1990s — including a contentious book-challenge in Wasilla in 1995. It should not be surprising that the Mayor of Wasilla would ask questions about a policy one of her department heads was working to update. As was reported at the time, “The timing of the issue comes at a time when [the Wasilla Library Director] is trying to get the book-challenge policies of the Wasilla Library and of the Palmer City Library in line with the Mat-Su Borough policy, revised in December of last year.” As the city’s executive, it was only responsible for Mayor Palin to ask about library policies. At the time, the area around Wasilla was engaged in a local debate concerning challenges to books at libraries and the Wasilla library was in the process of reevaluating its book-challenge policy. As the Wasilla Librarian said in 1996, the Wasilla Library did have a book-challenge policy that had been tested in 1995 — before Palin became Mayor.

· Mayor Palin NEVER mentioned any specific books — contrary to the smear emails circulating around the Internet. In the past few days, several reporters have presented the McCain-Palin campaign with lists of books that Mayor Palin supposedly sought to ban. These lists are clearly drawn from smear websites as they are factually inaccurate. For example, one list shown to the campaign by a mainstream news outlet listed the Harry Potter books as supposedly banned by Governor Palin in Wasilla. However, the timing shows this to be completely false: Governor Palin’s involvement in this issue occurred in 1996 and the first Harry Potter book was not published in the United States until 1998.

· Upon taking office, Mayor Palin did ask for several department heads to resign — including the librarian. This was in no way related to Mayor Palin’s rhetorical questions because the librarian ultimately retained her position. The resignations requests were nothing more than Mayor Palin taking over as the city’s chief executive and seeking to have department heads in place who supported her agenda in Wasilla

This New York Times article suggested this book banner situation on September 3rd:

"...Shortly after becoming mayor, former city officials and Wasilla residents said, Ms. Palin approached the town librarian about the possibility of banning some books, though she never followed through and it was unclear which books or passages were in question.

Anne Kilkenny, a Democrat who said she attended every City Council meeting in Ms. Palin’s first year in office, said Ms. Palin brought up the idea of banning some books at one meeting. “They were somehow morally or socially objectionable to her,” Ms. Kilkenny said.

The librarian, Mary Ellen Emmons, pledged to “resist all efforts at censorship,” Ms. Kilkenny recalled. Ms. Palin fired Ms. Emmons shortly after taking office but changed course after residents made a strong show of support. Ms. Emmons, who left her job and Wasilla a couple of years later, declined to comment for this article.

In 1996, Ms. Palin suggested to the local paper, The Frontiersman, that the conversations about banning books were “rhetorical.”

Ms. Emmons was not the only employee to leave..." http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/03/us/politics/03wasilla.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=palin%20book%20ban&st=cse&oref=slogin

Also, Obama's official website had a blog chat thread going about this; it seemed like by posting this supposed rumor, it did nothing more than make obama look bad.

Here's one of the last comments posted: By Moonbat from Cincinnati, OH Today at 11:00 am EDT (Updated Today at 11:00 am EDT)

" This is on Obama's official website?
You guys keep doing more and more to fire up the Right, and it's going to come back and haunt you come
election day.
You don't even realize what you're doing. Smart thing would be to sit down and shut up.
But that's not how you do it. You need lies because your candidate is a puppet."





check out supposed banned books list:
http://www.adlerbooks.com/banned.html

WHat do you think??

haha olympic fan?

flight costs these days...the way the airlines are saving?

olympics opening ceremony

Beijing held its formal opening ceremony on 8.8.08 for the 2008 Summer Olympics. The ceremony, held in the National Stadium known as the Bird's Nest, was attended by thousands, and watched by millions more on television. Featuring more than 15,000 performers, the ceremony was reported to have cost over $100 million to produce. There were many highlights to the nearly 4-hour performance; I'll talk about a few of my favorites:

1) 60-seconds Countdown and Fou Drum Performance:
The opening ceremony proper began with a contemporary drum sequence by 2,008 Fou drummers on a backdrop of a giant LED paper scroll, representing the first great Chinese invention, paper, and displaying animated graphics. The LED-embedded Fou drums and their glowing drumsticks were lit up by the drummers. In formation, the drummers lit their drums to form giant digits (in both Western and Chinese numerals) to countdown the final seconds to the Games and herald the start of the opening time of 8.00 pm, local time.





2) Fireworks
A trail of 29 colossal firework footprints were seen going off at the rate of 1 per second, one after another, from outside the Stadium, marching along Beijing city's central axis into the national stadium. They symbolized each of the 29 Olympiads, and celebrated the invention of gunpowder, which is one of the Four Great Inventions of ancient China.
One should know that the ceremony was directed by Chinese filmmaker Zhang Yimou and was noted for its focus on ancient Chinese culture, and for its creativity. (Side note: In 2006 the Beijing Organizing Committee initially chose American film maker Steven Spielberg, Yves Pepin, head of the French entertainment group ECA2, and Sydney Games opening ceremony director Ric Birch as special consultants. In February 2008, Spielberg pulled out of his role as advisor in protest over China’s continuing support of the Sudanese government and the escalating violence in the Darfur region.) Some parts really did feel like a movie though. Actually, I read in an article that part of the series of giant footprints outlined in fireworks processed gloriously above the city from Tiananmen Square was in fact computer graphics, meticulously created over a period of months and inserted into the coverage electronically at exactly the right moment. (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersports/olympics/2534499/Beijing-Olympic-2008-opening-ceremony-giant-firework-footprints-faked.html)







3) Olympic rings
Next, twenty "fairies" were suspended in midair as they hovered near giant Olympic rings, each holding 45,000 beads. The Olympics rings were then lifted up high vertically to show the complete Olympics emblem, seemingly by magic.



3) Painting Scroll/ Chinese Writing (Calligraphy)/ Blocks
A giant scroll slowly unfurled. At its center was a piece of white canvas paper, which then ushered in a performance of black-costumed dancers whose bodies were dipped in black ink. They performed a dance while leaving their squirming trails on the block of white paper, reminiscent of Chinese ink and wash art. (Later, the giant white paper was lifted vertically to reveal a drawing of mountains and waters with a smiling face as the sun.)
The giant scroll was then transformed into a fluid array of 897 movable type blocks that formed three variations of the character 和 (harmony), representing the third great Chinese invention: the movable type press.

The blocks changed swiftly into a small-sized version of the Great Wall (very cool), which then sprouted peach blossoms, the Chinese symbol for openness. At the end of the sequence the tops of the "movable type" blocks came off to reveal 897 performers, who waved vigorously to the crowds.



4) Arrival of the astronaut
This section symbolized modern space exploration with a gigantic, 60-feet, 16-tonned ball structure representing the earth. 58 acrobats tumbled rightside up, sideways or upside down on its surface, which was then transformed into a glowing Chinese red lantern.




The Chinese singer Liu Huan and British singer Sarah Brightman, standing on the central platform, sang the 2008 Olympic theme song: You and Me.

5) Parade of Nations: Athletes' Entry
Finally, the athletes taking part in the 29th Olympiad parade of nations marched out to the centre of the Stadium.
In accordance with Olympic tradition, the national team of Greece entered first; the host country came last. As Chinese is written in characters and not letters, the order of the teams' entry was determined by the number of strokes in the first character of their respective countries' Simplified Chinese names. This made Guinea (几内亚) the second country to enter following Greece as it only takes two strokes to write the first character in the country's name (几). Australia (澳大利亚) marched 202nd, just ahead of Zambia (赞比亚), which was the last country to march before China. The athletes marched along the tracks toward the center of the stadium, which was encircled by white-capped Chinese cheerleaders welcoming each contingent. As they did so, they would step on colored ink before treading on the Chinese painting done earlier by the children and the performance artistes (I loved this idea!)



According to the Nielsen Media Research, the 2008 Summer Olympics Opening Ceremony was also the most watched Olympic Opening Ceremony ever held in a non-U.S. city by American audiences. This was despite the fact that American broadcaster NBC did not televise the ceremony in the United States until 12 hours later on time delay, and some Americans ended up watching clips of it earlier on YouTube and other online video websites.

All in all, great show! A little intimidating though... (check out wikipedia for more detailed info)

new yorker cover from a few weeks ago...

I meant to post this earlier, but what do people think about this cover...really?

the torch

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/08/01/sports/20080802_TORCH_GRAPHIC.html?th&emc=th

The Mummy Olympics 2008

Did anyone see the marketing campaign combining the Olympics and the feature film The Mummy 3? At first you think it's a parody but I've seen it a few times now, both on tv and in taxicabs on their small screens.

The campaign, which capitalizes on the fact that both productions are set in China (and expected in early August.) The spot utilizes special effects that fuse Olympic footage with "Mummy" scenes. One such moment includes a backflip by Michelle Yeoh who morphs into a gymnast on a balance beam. In another, a fight between stars Brendan Fraser and Jet Li is transported to fisticuffs in a boxing ring.

Do you think this is funny? strange? 'The Mummy 3' (which looks like it will be a total flop) being associated to the Olympics a good thing??

check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnJL-uTik38

obama's wailing wall note revealed...

In time honoured tradition, the Democratic White House hopeful wedged a prayer note in a crack in the wall when he visited in the early hours on Thursday.

When he had gone, someone took it out again. A message intended by Obama for his Maker alone, could be read by Israelis over their breakfast, reprinted in full on the front page of a national newspaper.

"Worshippers could not resist the curiosity and pulled out the note," reads the caption on Maariv, unable to resist publishing it, either.

In the private note, handwritten on the headed letter paper of the hotel where he was staying, the presidential hopeful asks God to: "Give me the wisdom to do what is right and just" and "protect my family".

Predictably, the publication has ignited an unholy row.

The wailing or western wall, as it is also known, is the holiest place Jews can visit, because it is the remains of the foundations of the Second Jewish Temple, destroyed by Romans two thousand years ago.

Rabbis for the site have condemned the publication of the note as "disgraceful" saying reading any prayer note is forbidden.
More than a hundred people have complained on the newspapers' website.

Twice a year, religious authorities collect the thousands of prayer notes stuffed into the wall and bury them on the Mount of Olives.

In the digital age, making a western wall prayer note no longer requires paper or going there.

On the wall's official website, a free service allows you to send your own message which will then be printed off and stuck into the wall.

A more confidential service future high profile visitors may prefer to use, given what has happened to Obama.

thoughts??

pole dancing anyone?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/25/world/asia/25pole.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

You've heard of Germany's famous Oktoberfest? Well this is like Obamafest.

Be Kanye??

check this new ad campaign for Absolut: haha

I first noticed it in the subway as an actual ad. At first I thought it was real but then noticed that it was completely absurd.



http://www.absolut.com/campaign/bekanye/