the insignificant ramblings of a disturbed graphic designer
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Battle In Seattle
Next month will see the debut of an independent film about the 1999 demonstrations against the WTO in Seattle. The movie looks like it will be pretty good, not the average Hollywood tale in which the “terrorists” all have foreign accents. Independent director Stuart Townsend has taken pains to present the story from many points of view, including lead characters from amongst the protesters, the media, the police, and the general Seattle citizenry who got caught up in something they didn’t understand.
While the the film’s official site features the normal marketing pieces about the cast, et al, it also features three very personal and extremely interesting short clips in which Townsend talks about his impetus to write and make this movie. Even more interestingly, the site features a great deal of information about the issues the demonstrators were trying to bring to light (see screenshot below).
There’s even a separate site, Who Controls the World?, which acts as sort of a historical archive of the 1999 protests, featuring short video interviews with protest organizers and participants, a day-by-day timeline, participant memories, and much more about the pitfalls of globalization.
The film opens September 19 in San Francisco and a few other cities. For a higher quality version of the trailer, go to Apple.com. IMDB entry for Battle in Seattle.
Posted by espd at 7:16 PM |
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Monday, August 18, 2008
Free the Airwaves
Remember on old TVs how, when you used to switch from channel 5 to 7 (for example), there might be static on channel 6? Those unused spaces on the analog broadcast spectrum are called “white spaces.”
Currently more than half of the spectrum is unused. When TV broadcasters go fully digital-spectrum next year and discontinue their analog broadcasts altogether, there will be a lot more. A coalition including Google, Microsoft, Dell, and others, is asking the U.S. government to turn over white spaces to public use (broadcast spectrum is, after all, a legally recognized public resource). It could be used for better public access to wifi, Internet telephony, and many other things.
I predict this fight will get nasty when many other companies realize they stand to lose a lot too. Expect the traditional and cellular phone companies, for example, to form a similar coalition on the other side, lobbying Congress for strict licensing and fees which would effectively lock out public access the same way licensing has kept citizens from broadcasting their own TV or radio stations.
For more information, and to sign a petition, visit Free the Airwaves.
Posted by espd at 2:26 PM |
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Saturday, August 16, 2008
BushCo is trying to outlaw contraception, without congressional approval
From MoveOn:
Can you imagine living in a place where birth control is considered an “abortion” and health insurers won’t cover it? Where even rape victims are denied emergency contraception?
It seems unbelievable, but the Bush Administration is quietly trying to redefine “abortion” to include birth control. This could wipe out dozens of state laws that protect women’s reproductive freedom and protect rape victims. Access to basic health care for millions of women would be jeopardized. And it’s being pushed as a “rule change,” meaning: it doesn't need congressional approval.
Here’s what some others are saying about this proposal:
“The draft regulation would define birth control as abortion...it could deny access to critical family planning for women across the country.” [source: Letter signed by Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and 26 other senators]
“The draft rule could void laws in 27 states that require insurance companies to provide birth control coverage for women requesting it [and] laws in 14 states requiring that rape victims receive counseling and access to emergency, day-after contraceptives.” [source: Houston Chronicle editorial]
“The administration needs to stop playing word games with women’s health and state clearly they will reject any regulations that will undermine women’s access to basic health care.” [source: Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America.]
“The birth control pill, the IUD, and emergency contraception might all become unavailable — illegal — as a result.” [source: Brigid Riley, executive director of a Minnesota teen pregnancy prevention organization]
Orwell Diaries The Orwell Prize, a British award for political writing, is publishing George Orwell’s 1938–1942 diaries as a blog. orwelldiaries.wordpress.com
Free Rice Play a vocabulary game, and feed the world at the same time. www.freerice.com
Posted by espd at 8:13 AM |
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Sunday, August 03, 2008
Hey "New York's finest," don't forget: You work for us
On July 25 a New York City rookie cop assaulted a bicyclist participating in a Critical Mass ride. According to the New York Times, Officer Patrick Pogan has sworn a statement that the cyclist, Christopher Long, rode straight at him. Clearly, the video (seen below) shows another story. Meanwhile, Long has been charged with attempted assault of a police officer, disorderly conduct, and resisting arrest.
This is why cops get a bad name. This is why people hate cops. The New York City Police Department needs a reality check. Perhaps forcibly making all officers learn the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights might help. Protest is not a crime. Bicycling is not a criminal activity. Assaulting a protester is a crime.
Hiring rookie cops who have anger management problems, gigantic chips on their shoulders, and the barest possible understanding of the concept of civil rights should be a crime, and the bureaucrats that do it should be put in jail.
Here's a second video that shows some of the tactics (and incompetence) of the NYPD in dealing with Critical Mass.
Posted by espd at 7:48 AM |
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Sunday, June 22, 2008
The girl effect
“70% of the world's out-of-school children are girls. Girls deserve better. They deserve quality education and the safe environments and support that allow them to get to school on time and stay there through adolescence.” www.girleffect.org
Over half a century has passed, but thousands of WWII U.S. servicemen and women still remain unaccounted for.
In the jungles of Papua New Guinea, a chain of islands north of Australia, a Pentagon team of forensic anthropologists searches even today for the wreckage of over 2,000 downed U.S. fighter pilots who were embroiled in the Pacific Theater struggle against the Japanese army.
The Boston Globe has published a compelling multi-story series about the search for these lost warriors and the families they left behind.
Note: Apologies for cutting off a slice of the video player. Boston.com's Flash player wasn't built to industry standards; it has several problems: 1) the player is wider than the standard of 425px, 2) the normal way one would scale the player to make it fit into a narrower column doesn't work, 3) the player creates an unnecessary margin and also puts in that ugly gigantic Boston.com logo at the top. Very bad form.
Posted by espd at 5:29 PM |
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Thursday, May 22, 2008
Junk mailers pay less for postage than you do – a lot less
While individuals now pay 42¢ to mail a regular letter, direct mail marketers have once again been granted a much lower rate by the government bureaucrats who make up the rules. It costs just as little as 14¢ to mail one of those credit card offers you got twelve of yesterday.
ForestEthics.org believes junk mailers shouldn't be rewarded for invading our privacy and destroying the environment. Less than 10% of Canada’s Boreal Forest is protected. It is being logged at a rate of 2 acres a minute, 24 hours a day, to make things like catalogs and junk mail.
The Do Not Mail campaign has collected over 40,000 signatures since March. If you haven't made your voice heard yet, do it now.
Posted by espd at 2:31 PM |
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Wednesday, May 07, 2008
Tell politicians we need a Do Not Mail Registry
Unless you're a big fan of junk mail (I suppose there's someone out there like that) you may want to sign ForestEthics' petition to create a Do No Mail Registry that would work like the existing Do Not Call Registry.
An astonishing 100 billion pieces of junk mail are delivered in the U.S. each year, accounting for one-third of all the mail delivered in the world (!).
And guess whose forests are being cut down to make all that crap you just throw away?
Buy n Large From aerospace to food services, robotics to watermills. Now that's a global corporation. Ten points if you can figure out why this site is humorous. www.buynlarge.com
Five dangerous things you should let your kids do I guess I was lucky. I got to do all of these things as a kid. Although it wasn't spears, it was Jarts (later banned), and the I didn't do the driving bit until maybe 13 or 14. www.ted.com
"Lemme finish" In an interview with an Irish TV correspondent, Not-My-President Bush shows just how much of an idiot he is. "History will judge what I'm about." www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fze2J2Ve9is
English Russia A blog of Russian interestingness. Apparently written by actual Russians, since the English is a little broken here and there. www.englishrussia.com
We Can Solve the Climate Crisis Al Gore has launched a $300 million climate change initiative, one of the most ambitious and costly public advocacy campaigns in U.S. history, according to the Washington Post. When you play this video, notice the W in "we." How much do you want to bet it's going to flip over and become "me" if you go to the site and join in? www.wecansolveit.org
"Amateur" by Lasse Gjertsen I'm pretty sure I posted this a couple years ago, but it's such a classic I had to repost it. www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzqumbhfxRo
The fierce Humboldt squid When Jason sent me this description, at first he was playing an April Fool's joke on me. But the Humboldt squid is real. "A mysterious sea creature up to 7 feet long, with 10 arms, a sharp beak and a ravenous appetite, has invaded ocean waters off Northern California. Packs of fierce Humboldt Squid attack nearly everything they see, from fish to scuba divers." www.kqed.org/quest/television/view/774
Grolsch Gardens This is a really innovative branded game built with Flash. It's sort of a noir detective story; you have to collect clues and items and the story unfolds. You'll need a lot of time to play it, but it's really engrossing...or would that be engrolsching? www.grolschgardens.com
Posted by espd at 4:37 PM |
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Friday, February 01, 2008
Presidential bumper stickers
Well, it's almost over. A year from now George W. Bush will not be the USA's president anymore (for the record, he was never my president). Before it's a moot point, I wanted to post some of my favorite political stickers from the past four years:
And one of my faves was the Bush/Voldemort campaign sticker, which Velma and I first saw in St. Louis before the Idiotic Electorate re-elected the Idiot in Chief.
There's a big collection of really good anti-Bush bumper stickers for sale here.
Posted by espd at 8:57 PM |
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Wednesday, January 09, 2008
"The Story of Stuff"
"The Story of Stuff" is a 20-minute history lesson and an economics course all in one, but it won't put you to sleep like your professors did. It's a fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns and was produced by Free Range Studios, the same folks who did "Store Wars" and "The Meatrix."
Jim Houser interview A typically conversational Fecal Face interview with illustrator Jim Houser. The best part is the ton of pictures of his home/workspace. www.fecalface.com/SF/
The Small Stakes I have this Death Cab for Cutie shirt I really like, and it was designed by Jason Munn, who has churned out some amazing posters and designs over the past five years from his Oakland studio. www.thesmallstakes.com
Consumer Consequences An interactive game that asks, "What would the world look like if everyone lived like me?" You may have played games like this before (sometimes it's more like a quiz), but this one is notable in that it allows you to compare your answers at the end to other people's, including some American Public Media personalities. Thanks to Ynnej for the link. sustainability.publicradio.org
The Friday after Thanksgiving is always Buy Nothing Day. "But wait," you say, "isn't that the biggest shopping day of the year?" Exactly. That's why it's Buy Nothing Day.
Adbusters has been trying to get a major network to air it spublic service messages for years, with no luck. This year, MTV said the message "goes further than we are willing to accept on our channels." To which Adbusters replies: "Gangsta rap and sexualized, semi-naked schoolgirls are okay, but apparently not a burping pig talking about consumption." Hunh.
Room 641A: AT&T's complicity in Bush's Orwellian America
I pass this windowless, metal-clad behemoth of a building every day. It's practically across the street from my office downtown. It's an AT&T building, but I never understood why it would have absolutely no windows. I always wondered what was inside.
A whistleblower who used to be a technician working for AT&T in this building revealed that it contains a room which is only accessible to National Security Agency (NSA) personnel, into which all communications traffic — internet and telephone — flows and is copied.
"My job was to connect circuits into the splitter device which was hard-wired to the secret room," said whistleblower Mark Klein. "And effectively, the splitter copied the entire data stream of those internet cables into the secret room — and we're talking about phone conversations, email web browsing, everything that goes across the internet."
In January 2006 the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a class-action lawsuit against AT&T, accusing the telecom giant of violating the law and the privacy of its customers by collaborating with the NSA in a massive, illegal program to wiretap and data-mine Americans' communications.
The traffic routed through these secret rooms is not limited to AT&T customers, and AT&T is not the only telecom company complicit in the government's conspiracy to surveil the entirety of American civil communications. The EFF has filed briefs seeking information on similar locked rooms in facilities owned by Verizon, MCI, and others.
Posted by espd at 9:09 PM |
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Thursday, October 11, 2007
Thursday top 5
"Helvetica" A beautiful film about a very pedestrian thing: The most common typeface of all. (I liked the film so much, I pre-ordered the DVD.) www.helveticafilm.com
Leaving Home... A very eloquent, moving, eye-opening story from a surprising source. riverbendblog.blogspot.com
"So You Want To Be a Movie Intern" Apple and the makers of the movie "The Seeker: The Dark is Rising" did some sort of promotion that filmed the experiences of nine interns on this movie. There are some short episodes available on the ITMS and they're kinda interesting. [This link will launch iTunes Music Store to view the videos] phobos.apple.com
Donate blood I'm not sure when the next CNET Networks donation day is scheduled for, but you can always make an appointment at the Blood Centers of the Pacific's downtown location, which is only about three blocks away. I went last week. www.bloodcenters.org
Iggy Pop's entertaining rider A rider is a document that spells out what a band requires a venue to provide for the artist. There have been some legendary strange requests over the years, but this one's just plain fun to read. www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/1004061iggypop1.html
Posted by espd at 2:04 AM |
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Tuesday, August 14, 2007
My Gap photo used alongside an article on NowPublic
Kaitlin posted an article on NowPublic, a social media site, about Gap founder Donald Fisher's intention to open an art museum in San Francisco's Presidio. She found my photo on Flickr and asked if she could use it along with the article. Thank bog some people ask.
Posted by espd at 6:19 PM |
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Thursday, August 09, 2007
Thursday top 5
Lions vs. water buffalo vs. crocodiles This video made me emotional it's so incredible. You'll never guess who wins in the end. www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU8DDYz68kM
Presidential candidate selector This is based on a popular chart from 2decide.com, but a coworker of mine made it tons more useful. Hover over the left-hand column to select your position on the issues. jrm.cc/extras/candidate-selector/
To catch an iJacker NBC's "Dateline" set out to see if it could track down a stolen iPod. They left out brand new iPods in places like shopping malls and on the dashboard of a convertible in Santa Monica, New Jersey, Las Vegas, and the the Bay Area. Using hidden cameras and the serial numbers from the lifted electronics, they tracked down some of the thieves. It's a long show, but if you watch all the segments, you'll get to the part where they start asking Apple why the company isn't doing more to help customers whose iPods get stolen. video.msn.com
Asperger Test I'm an "Average male scientist." How geeky are you? www.piepalace.ca
Posted by espd at 4:02 PM |
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Thursday, August 02, 2007
No, this is not OK: Oklahoma fights global terrorism with, um, license plates
This is just dumb for so many reasons. Plenty of others will, I am certain, point out how retarded this is. But since few of them will likely discuss how retarded the design is, let me just do it briefly.
1. Dessert camo? Really? In...Oklahoma? And need I point out how completely offensive it is to presume that all terrorists live in dessert regions?
2. Nice clip art, buddy. Who designed this, an admin? Just so you know, copying a clip art building to make two of them does not exactly make you a designer. And you might want to make it the right building, or at least close. The World Trade Center didn't have big horizontal stripes between floors, you twat.
3. Design 101: Black on red is not readable. Especially tiny black numbers on a tiny little red banner...from a distance.
Hey Oklahoma. This makes you look like a bunch of idiots. And I'm not even talking about the design. I really wouldn't expect much better from a state agency, nor a license plate. I'm talking about the whole idea of commemorating (celebrating?) the "global war on terrorism" with a license plate. That's so incredibly nationalistic it's hard for me to put it in words how offended I am.
Not to mention the mind-boggling idea that some official at the Oklahoma State Tax Commission actually had the thought, "Hey, we could make money by offering a terrorism plate."
top 5 quotes for the Independence Day holiday weekend
"The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials. One's right to life, liberty and property, to free speech, free press, freedom of worship and assembly and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote. They depend on the outcomes of no elections." – Justice Robert Jackson, 1943
"In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary, patriotism is defined as the last refuge of a scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer, I beg to submit that it is the first." – Ambrose Bierce
"I love my country. If Dick Cheney loved his country, he wouldn't be voting for himself." – Green Party Vice Presidential candidate Patricia LaMarche explaining why she was going to vote for John Kerry instead of her running mate, Ralph Nader
"I don't understand how poor people think." – George W. Bush
"Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so." – Douglas Adams
and a big -1 for...
"God said, 'Earth is yours. Take it. Rape it. It's yours.'" – Ann Coulter
Posted by espd at 5:02 PM |
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Tuesday, July 05, 2005
Eritrea
All the news coverage of the G8 meeting (on NPR and the BBC at least, since you won't hear anything about it on the US media) has meant that I've heard an unusual amount lately about African nations that one doesn't normally hear covered that much even on NPR and the Beeb. Within two hours today I heard two pieces on two different shows about Eritrea.
You've probably never heard of Eritrea. Neither had I in 1993 when I met a tall, lanky Eritrean named Teclu Tesfazghi. At that time, almost no one had heard of Eritrea, because it was the world's newest nation, after having just won independence after 30 years of war with Ethiopia.
Tec asked me to donate my design services to help fundraise for the International Committee for the Eritrean Blind (ICEB). Three decades of war had devastated the small North African country's population. Nearly everyone had been touched by the war; tens of thousands had lost limbs, eyes, and so on.
The ICEB was establishing itself in the U.S. through expatriots living and working here. Tec was doing some contract work with the City of Palo Alto, where I had worked until very recently, and he was volunteering to raise money for the ICEB.
I designed and wrote content for a calendar that was to be sold by local volunteers to raise funds to send back to Eritrea, in order to create skills-building programs that would allow the blind to go back to work.
We had almost no photos or other graphical assets for the project, and it's not as if you could go to a stock agency for photos of Eritrea, so I had to be very creative. I also had to do a lot of research on this country, in order to create some interesting text for the calendar. This was a bit of a challenge, since the country was brand new and encyclopedias still had it listed as a province of Ethiopia, if it was mentioned at all. This was, I might add, before the time that the Web made such research a lot easier.
In the years since the project I've followed the small nation's progress with interest, whenever I came across and information on it. While Eritrea's future was very bright in the mid-1990s, war with Ethiopia flared up again and the democratically elected head of Eritrea shifted towards dramatically totalitarian policies.
In one of the NPR pieces I heard today, I learned some new things about Eritrea I had never known, but which shouldn't surprise me. For example, I didn't know that the U.S. had poured money and weapons into the country for years and had maintained a strategic listening post there for use during Cold War spying on the U.S.S.R. and other nations. Terry Gross interviewed author Michela Wrong, whose new book, I Didn't Do It For You, is a history of Eritrea. I should very much like to read this book. I have strategically and un-subtly added it to my Amazon Wish List in case you would like to purchase for me as a belated birthday gift ;)
There are precious few books about Eritrea, but another one I enjoyed quite a bit was To Asmara by Thomas Keneally, who is most well known for having written Schindler's List (the book which the movie was based on). To Asmara is a novelized version Keneally's own travels in the land during the last years of the revolution that set Eritrea free from Ethiopia, and it was a very good book indeed.
Posted by espd at 4:25 PM |
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Friday, November 12, 2004
Okay, so I'm a bad person. It's still funny.
President Bush was visiting a primary school and he visited one of the classes. They were in the middle of a discussion related to words and their meanings. The teacher asked the president if he would like to lead the discussion on the word "tragedy".
So the illustrious leader asked the class for an example of a "tragedy."
One little boy stood up and offered:
"If my best friend, who lives on a farm, is playing in the field and a tractor runs over him and kills him, that would be a tragedy."
"No," said Bush, "that would be an accident."
A little girl raised her hand: "If a school bus carrying 50 children drove over a cliff, killing everyone inside, that would be a tragedy."
"I'm afraid not," explained the president. "That's what we would call a great loss."
The room went silent. No other children volunteered. Bush searched the room.
"Isn't there someone here who can give me an example of a tragedy?"
Finally at the back of the room a small boy raised his hand.
In a quiet voice he said: "If Air Force One carrying you and Mrs. Bush was struck by a 'friendly fire' missile and blown to smithereens, that would be a tragedy."
Fantastic!" exclaimed Bush. "That's right. And can you tell me why that would be tragedy?"
"Well," says the boy, "It has to be a tragedy, because it certainly wouldn't be a great loss and it probably wouldn't be an accident either.
Posted by espd at 2:32 PM |
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Tuesday, May 25, 2004
Air America Radio on iTunes
May 2008 update: A reader alerted me today in the comments below that Air America is no longer listed in iTunes (I confirmed this by looking myself — I have no idea why it's gone). However, the link to the stream, described in the March 2007 update below, still works.
March 2007 update: Air America has changed the location of their stream, and now if you click on it in iTunes, you'll probably get a "loading" bar forever, like I did.
Per Alan's comment at the end of this thread, you can solve this by selecting "Advanced > Open Stream..." in iTunes and paste this URL into the dialog box: http://aarlive.voxcdn.com/live.m3u (see screenshots below).
You can also just download the .m3u (right-click and save as...) and open it in iTunes.
October 2006 update:Air America is available in iTunes under "Radio > Talk/Spoken Word". In iTunes 7x it'll look like this picture. See Rob's comments at the end of this thread for more info. (Thanks Rob!)
March 2006 update:It appears that the WKIZ playlist file is no longer viable. Air America is apparently now charging for their podcasts (info here, tutorial here), and I haven't been able to find an iTunes stream anymore. There are, however, various radio stations listed on this page where you can still listen to free streams using Windows Media Player or RealPlayer.
While individuals now pay 42¢ to mail a regular letter, direct mail marketers have once again been granted a much lower rate by the government bureaucrats who make up the rules. It costs just as little as 14¢ to mail one of those credit card offers you got twelve of yesterday.
March 2006 update: 