Ramblings and Junk

You Have Got to be Kidding

Long flights from the short reign of terror enter the cold Netherlands of the 19th floor in the building containing the little people of the brown and green occupation of the coomon nonsense being tossed about willy nilly during the hours of ad nauseum discurssions about this whole thing, right from the fet fo of the gathering of members of the expert psychological team, involving rabbits and elephants.

Really? A Creative Director for the country?

From FastCompany.

Design Revolutionaries: Should You Be the U.S. Secretary of Design?

BY Alissa Walker

Back in November, representatives from most of the major U.S. design organizations, from architecture to graphics to interiors met in D.C. to find a way for design to have a greater role in the incoming Obama administration. The resulting document named Redesigning America’s Future included an outline for an official U.S. National Design Policy, which was sent to all members of Congress, as well as the offices of President and Vice President, and corresponding departments like Commerce and Housing and Urban Development. The alphabet soup-like lineup of professional associations who endorsed the plan included AIA, AIGA, IDSA, SEGD, DMI, IIDA, ASID and more.

The ten policy proposals hope to create greater voice for design in U.S. government, something everyone can probably agree is needed when you compare the U.K.’s influential Design Council to what the U.S. has, which is to say, nothing. The goals focus on everything from pushing design and innovation to bolster U.S.’s economic competitiveness to using design to improve the clarity of government forms (and, ahem, election ballots).

Now the National Design Policy group is calling on designers to create videos of themselves answering the following questions:

What role does design play in U.S. economic competitiveness?
What role does design play in the U.S. democratic governance?
In what specific ways would a national design policy further enable design to play those roles?
What would you pledge to do to help design play that role?

The IDSA (that’s the professional association for industrial designers) will be putting together a video focusing especially on testimonials by “Design CEOs.” We can think of a few people we’d like to see up there. Who do you want to represent the design community to the U.S. government?

Vote for Rob Baban in Nation’s Best Fitness Professionals.

Barack Obama - A New Beginning

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Regardless of your political views, you have to admit today is the end of an era and the start of new beginning for the United States. Although I did not vote for Barack, I fully support him as our President and am enjoying the sense of hope and renewed interest in the country and its future as a whole. Today marked a historic event in our lifetimes and the history of the United States with the swearing in of our first African American President. I can’t remember the last time I could feel the sense of hope in the air from the country as a whole. It may because of where I am living, a primarily Democrat city, but I really think it goes beyond that.

I hope that the change Barack has promised the American people happens and he does not get bogged down in the politics of business as usual. Even as a Republican I feel the breath of fresh air coming from his election and hope he is able to do well by the American people.

UN Security Council calls for immediate Gaza truce

Image via Wikipedia

WHAT TOOK THEM SO DAM LONG?

* U.N. Security Council calls for immediate ceasefire

* Dozens more bodies recovered from rubble

* ICRC says Israel delayed access to casualties

* Gaza ministry says third of over 750 dead are children

By Sue Pleming and Nidal al-Mughrabi

UNITED NATIONS/GAZA, Jan 9 (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council called for an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip but Israeli warplanes launched intermittent attacks on Friday.

After days of intense haggling, the Security Council passed a resolution urging an “immediate, durable and fully respected ceasefire”, and for Israel to withdraw from Gaza after a 14-day air-and-ground offensive. The United States abstained.

The resolution, pressed for by Arab countries in the face of efforts by Britain, France and the United States for a more muted statement, called for arrangements to prevent arms smuggling into Gaza and for its borders to be opened.

It said there should be “unimpeded provision” and distribution of aid to the territory, home to 1.5 million people, many of whom are dependent on food assistance.

Moments before the resolution was passed, Israeli warplanes dropped bombs on areas on the outskirts of Gaza, the main city in the north of the coastal strip.

There was no immediate reaction from Israeli officials after the Security Council vote, but Israel had opposed the idea of a binding resolution. Israel’s military commanders are keen to pursue the ground offensive and secure more gains.

On Thursday, ambulance workers ventured onto the battlefield to gather decomposing bodies from the rubble. Hamas officials said the Palestinian death toll had risen to 765, of whom more than a third were children.

While the United States abstained from the U.N. resolution, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Washington backed the text and had abstained only because it wanted to see the results of an Egyptian mediation effort.

“The United States thought it important to see the outcome of the Egyptian mediation efforts in order to see what this resolution might have been supporting,” she said.

ROTTING CORPSES

In Gaza, local ambulance crews and the Red Crescent, using a time slot coordinated with Israeli forces, said they collected rotting corpses in places that had been too risky to reach since Israeli forces began a ground attack six days ago.

They found four children starving beside the bodies of their mothers and evacuated scores of trapped and wounded, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said.

Israel lost three soldiers in combat with Islamist militants who hold the territory. Apart from a “friendly fire” incident which killed four, it was its heaviest one-day combat toll.

Ten soldiers have so far died in the campaign launched by Israel to crush Hamas forces and halt the firing of rockets from Gaza into Israel. Israel says it is doing what it can to avoid civilian casualties but accuses Hamas of deliberately placing its fighters close to homes and mosques.

About 20 rockets hit Israel on Thursday, fewer than at the start of the war but not the total halt it wants so that “quiet will reign supreme”, as Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has said. Rockets have killed three Israeli civilians since the offensive began. Olmert said Israel’s goal had not been achieved and a decision on further military action lay ahead.

Aside from a three-hour ceasefire which Israel ordered for a second day to let Gaza civilians venture out, there was no let-up in fighting. Air strikes and ground attacks killed at least nine civilians and three gunmen, medical officials said.

The dead included two brothers aged six and 13, killed when an Israeli air strike missed a group of Islamic Jihad fighters.

In Washington, the U.S. Senate adopted a bipartisan motion “reaffirming Israel’s inalienable right to defend against attacks from Gaza”, said majority leader Harry Reid.

The United States would do the same if “rockets and mortars coming from Toronto in Canada” hit Buffalo, New York, he said.

Israel says it accepts the “principles” of a ceasefire proposal by Egypt and the European Union, and Washington has urged the Jewish state to study details of the plan.

Hamas, shunned by the West for espousing violence, said it was still considering the ideas. But the militants say they will never accept Israel, whose establishment amid conflict 60 years ago dispossessed and uprooted Palestinian people.

European governments offered to back the plan with an EU border force to stop Hamas rearming via tunnels from Egypt. The deal would also address Palestinian calls for an end to Israel’s economic blockade of the Gaza Strip.

The ICRC accused Israel of violating the rules of war by delaying ambulance access to the house where its team found children huddled beside corpses, not far from the Israeli army.

The Red Cross said the army must have known of the situation but did not help the wounded, in violation of international law.

Israeli nerves were rattled in the morning when a rocket from southern Lebanon hit an old people’s home in Nahariya, raising fears that Hezbollah fighters were opening a second front to relieve pressure on Gaza.

Israel fought a 34-day war with Shi’ite Hezbollah guerrillas in 2006 and is in no hurry to engage them now. It responded with a few artillery rounds and played down the rocket attack. (Additional reporting by Louis Charbonneau at the United Nations and by Jerusalem bureau)

Today’s Reason to Drink

Celebrate Brumalia, a wine festival celebrated in the Byzantine Empire from this day until the winter solstice!

Today’s Reason to Drink

Happy Independence Day…in Lebanon!

Keep on Moving On

Image via Wikipedia

The Post Town Gazette published it, so it must be true, the towns people all read it, nobody questioned it and now the national news wires were beginning to pick it up. There is an old adage, well not really that old a few years or so, that you should not believe everything you read on that internet thing, well what about newspapers, should you believe everything you read there. Unfortunately there isn’t an old adage, or at least not one that has been heard for a long, long time, about believing everything you read in the newspaper - this is a sad truth when you think about it, somebody could have become famous writing a quote like that. With that said maybe I can take credit, here it goes, “Don’t believe everything you read in the newspapers.”, there I did it, I am on the record for the quote, I dare someone to refute it, come on, anyone - Bueller, Bueller, Bueller? So, what was printed that is so unbelievable? It is hard to even describe it as it is one of those things the average, sane, logical person would immediately dismiss as hogwash, which is an interesting word, who washes hogs anyway, or debunked as just plain nonsense. It is so far fetched that even the children of the readers of the Post Town Gazette don’t believe their parents when they tell them about it, not that they believe their parents about much as they are children and very suspicious and wary of adults and what adults do and say, ah, to live the life of a child again, how grand would that be. Going to the park to play with friends, no work to bring home with, at least while school is out, not a care in the world, not even what is printed in the Post Town Gazette, always suspicious, always curious, sometimes to much and a cat gets killed, but these are the life and times of children, why do we want to rush and grow up so fast? If we only knew then what we know today we would be really smart and breeze right through grade school, middle school and high school, how much fun would that have been, or not fun at all, maybe quite boring, maybe we should just be satisfied with what we know when we know it and move on with our lives.

Small Opinions

In their own words…

Why “Small” opinions? Cause we’re small and fabulous! Here you will find Philadelphia restaurant reviews, anything in Philly we find interesting, or on our many travels. So follow us, Olga and Lisa, on our adventures around the city of brotherly love. So whether you are going on a date, going out with friends or coworkers or even by yourself consult the Philly entertainment tiny gurus.

Visit their blog at www.smallopinions.com.

Design Revolutionaries: Should You Be the U.S. Secretary of Design?

Blogs I Follow