More red meat for the girls. But no more junk food. Bu junk sex?

via Stop being Mr Potatoheads, say new guidelines.

via EU and fish quotas: Who will protect these fish from our feeding frenzy? | George Monbiot | Comment is free | The Guardian.

via Bloggingheads: Making College Cheaper – Video Library – The New York Times.

Moreover, Cannadine observes, depending on context and circumstances, both white and dark-skinned peoples of the empire were seen as superior; or alternatively as inferior. British imperialists loathed Indians and Africans no more nor less than they loathed the great majority of Englishmen and were far more willing to work with maharajahs, kings, and chiefs of whatever colour than with white settlers, whom they generally considered as uneducated trash. Just as Jamaican peasants and East End costermongers were viewed as equally inferior, so Indian princes and West African tribal chiefs were often understood as the social equivalent of English gentlemen. Indeed, British rulers were often amused that lower class white settlers were unable to comprehend that aristocratic breeding cut across differences of colour. Lady Gordon, wife of Arthur Hamilton Gordon, the governor of Fiji, thought the native, high-ranking Fijians such an undoubted aristocracy. Their manners, she wrote, are so perfectly easy and well bred… Nurse cant understand it at all, she looks down on them as an inferior race. I dont like to tell her that these ladies are my equals, which she is not!

via Kenan Maliks review of Ornamentalism by David Cannadine.

via Kenan Maliks review of Ornamentalism by David Cannadine.

via The Tyranny of Meritocracy – Megan McArdle – Business – The Atlantic.

This is Dierderek’s description: “The bunker has been finished for quite a while now and has settled into the country side very well. The Besser block air lock and smoke door went on with a minimum of fuss and we have practised sitting in it for a period of time. We have stocked it with food and water and sleeping gear (in case we lose the house). The metal file drawer is for insurance and personal effects. The sign is a personal touch and present from my Mother in law. I feel we have created an escape from a large fire and, at the least, i have not been complacent.”

“There is still a powerful sense around — fair or not — of a whole society paying for the errors and irresponsibility of bankers; of messages not getting through; of impatience with a return to ‘business as usual’ — represented by still soaring bonuses and little visible change in banking practices,” he said in an article published in The Financial Times.

With the Church of England’s leadership in a crisis over its handling of the protesters, the archbishop’s remarks seemed to offer a belated attempt to lay out an agenda.

Dr. Williams supported a Vatican statement last week endorsing the idea of a “Robin Hood” tax on financial transaction and for a separation of the retail and investment operations banks that have relied on bailouts from public funds.

“These ideas — ideas that have been advanced from other quarters, religious and secular, in recent years — do not amount to a simplistic call for the end of capitalism, but they are far more than a general expression of discontent,” he said.

“If we want to take seriously the moral agenda of the protesters at St Paul’s, these are some of the ways in which we should be taking it forward,” the article said, but it urged the protesters to be “a bit more specific,” arguing the three proposals made by the Vatican should become a springboard for debate.

“If religious leaders and commentators in the U.K. and elsewhere could agree on these three proposals, not as a fixed agenda but as a common ground on which to start serious discussion, the struggles and questionings alike of protesters and clergy at St Paul’s will not have been wasted.”

via Archbishop of Canterbury Endorses Tax on Bankers – NYTimes.com.

The goal is to expose the nine entrepreneurs on the one-week program to the ways Silicon Valley goes about innovating “and then bring those experiences back to Japan to spread to other entrepreneurs,” Kan says.

Among the stops on the trip: Lessons on design thinking from Adaptive Path and LUXr, learning about agile development from Pivotal Labs and product design from IDEO, and a prototyping session from Google+’s Bradley Horowitz.

Also on the docket: a workshop on pitching angel investors and venture capitalists at 500 Startups’ downtown Mountain View penthouse labs.

“You want to make sure you communicate confidence,” instructed Kandice Cota, the workshop leader and CEO of IP Franchise, a social game company, as Stanford Unversity’s famous Hoover Tower hovered in the distance, beyond 500 Startups’ floor-to-ceiling windows.

The TOFU Project is the brainchild of Lisa Katayama, a San Francisco-based journalist who grew up in Japan (and who writes for Fast Company as well as Wired, the New York Times Magazine, and NPR) and Tomo Saito, a designer and photographer who created Betabrand’s Japants cargo pants. Among its advisors are MIT Media Lab director Joi Ito, RISD president John Maeda, and Kiva cofounder Matt Flannery.

via How The TOFU Project Is Teaching Silicon Valley Values To Japanese Entrepreneurs | Fast Company.

I saw this video last week and as I mowed the lawn over the weekend I mowed angrily at the sheer waste and lifelessness of this ‘future’ that microsoft is seeing. Then it seemed like such a pretentious thought – elf righteous almost. So I didn’t post the long train of thought – and finished up the lawn edging with a whipper snipper.

Then thankfully someone else is taking a shot at Microsoft’s vision. Yes a decade or more after minority report. And almost as bad as Volkswagon 2028 – but they acn be forgiven for they are after all only a car company – no visionaries there.

See an interview of the vsion here

If you want to see the vision this is the link – in Youtube.

What do you think of Microsoft’s vision?

“What we’ve been talking about since my first day on the job two years ago is how artists can change places,” Landesman said – have a listen on ABC RN here (http://www.abc.net.au/rn/artworks/stories/2011/3336130.htm). He was talking about the role artists (which is all creative people – including Industrial Designers) play in a society and the economy. He went on to say that artists (Industrial and Fashion Designers) create events and works. People flock to places where a concentration of such works happen (Melbourne?) – and where the city acquires a reputation as a creative cluster. Where there are people – there are jobs: people eat, watch and go out spending on a whole load of other consumables. The service industry in Melbourne continues to grow. Melbourne is a creative cluster – one of the big ones. How aware is Melbourne of this creative ecosystem? How well does Melbourne support and nurture this creative ecosystem?

Below are a few additional/ useful/critical readings on creative clusters and Richard Florida.

Reading:

PDF download from here - http://portal.unesco.org/culture/en/files/40782/12705583895CIs_dev_strat_Chapter1.pdf/CIs_dev_strat_Chapter1.pdf

Where does Melbourne rank among cities as a creative cluster: http://www.amazon.com/Whos-Your-City-Creative-Important/dp/0465003524

In 2009 I started a few different kinds of engagements with creatives (designers) – the ones that I had worked with in their formative stages. I had a hand in their development – and I decided that it would be good to walk with them as they took baby steps through entering creative practice – this was one intervention – careers curation. I have a few other interventions.

One was to speak loudly in the hearing of the people in the Victorian government (Lyn Kosky in the old days and then the Innovation-wallahs who supported the labour policy on innovation and more recently the people in the Bailleu Govt)  that DESIGN IS AN INDUSTRY and as such needs support like an industry. Everyone in this city agrees that Design contributes to the economy – as in a sector that employs many people. It is a sector, that is not in doubt. But can it claim status as an “industry” and then become eligible for government support – and development projects (a 100 hectare design precinct and incubator estate – with state of the art prototyping facilities – like China has in most cities, possibly also with a visionary like like Bao Fu Han leading it)? Instead we got a festival (not bad for starters) and an Industry support organization (modelled on New Zealand and 1970s UK) – not bad as mild commitment. But not necessarily anywhere near what cities, that wished to be leaders in innovation, were doing. Will this change? Probably not anytime soon.

The orthodoxy sees the situation in two ways: One, industry and the potential employers of designers need to be educated bout the economic benefits of design. This ignores the fact that contemporary society is ‘saturated’ with design – and anyone needing design help knows where to go – the internet. This was not the cse in 1960s UK and so the design council had a programme of workshops and training courses. Is it valid to spend resources educating potential clients to use designers? Why wouldn’t it be a better idea to seed designers to go off and do some creative activity. Like an arts council – only as a new age ‘design council’. Two, more damagingly another view is that designers need to be re-educated to fit into industry and workplaces. Damaging – because it superfluous – or even that these workplaces need fresh ideas not creatives trained to “fit in”. Hence these orthodoxies are fallacies. Have you heard me say this – Yes this has been the way my litany has run for a fair few years.

Still to move on.

Then there was an attempt to find out what the 321 people were doing. This last suddenly seems a very interesting line of inquiry to follow. What I would like to do is first have a group of people – who I can then chat to. If I can get an understanding of what they are doing – then I can get some ideas of what manner of support they could do with. Or I can propose that ‘creative insurgency’ with the willing ones. I can also add to this 50 additional people – the ones who came to us from overseas (mainly from NID in India) and walked some way with us. Right so I have 371 people.

Next I create a place – I tried a NIG network in 2008. It wasn’t perfect. I am trying facebook now – and it looks promising. I have about 200 people at hand.

Then I need projects! First I tested the ground with a ‘pilot’: DIY Pads. Then started looking further afield. I have been looking around and talking to agencies about projects. It looks like there are two projects that have potential for 2012. (If you want to know more about this – express your interest in the comments section.)

My goal initially was to find work for graduating designers, that became bigger and I was looking to figure out all the places where a designer could potentially work in Melbourne. Its now all that, plus – why not create work, workplaces and projects!