Joe Mills

From Wired

Image courtesy of Wired

I saw this in the recent issue of Wired. I just thought it was a great illustration. It has a pixel feel to it, but it is definitely made up of lines and shapes. Plus, the colors match up perfectly, and it has a lot of depth to it even though it is a flat illustration.

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Screaming Girl

I’m not sure where I found this picture, but it just cracks me up. I guess I’m into funny child pictures this week. I don’t know what is funnier…the look on the girl’s face or the look on the mule’s (?) face.

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Hunter Freeman

Image courtesy of Hunter Freeman

I came across this picture by Hunter Freeman over the weekend. Even though you know (I assume) there is no Photoshop techniques used here, I love how it looks distorted. The angle, the location choice, and of course, the screaming child just make for a great picture.

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American Girl Sucks!

I recently wrote a post about The Rebel Sell. Amongst many of the points that Heath and Potter, they point out that the American quest to be an individual and different has lead to competition amongst people and corporations. In other words, in our quest to not conform, be “against the system” and become a rebel, we have fueled capitalism. They have stated that companies and the system are not (fully) to blame for consumerism, but rather, it is the mindset of Americans that have caused the supposed consumerism in America.

I’m not sure where this story about a 6-year-old girl getting humiliated at an American Girl store for bringing in a Target doll she bought by herself to get her hair styled fits in, but I think it proves and disproves the points made by Heath and Potter.

It proves their point because the attitudes of people in the store show how much we as citizens of the United States are to blame for the rampant consumerism in this country. As was stated in the story:

One mom just smiled and said “Well, American Girl Dolls aren’t for everyone, you know.” A sentence cleverly crafted to make Etta feel like someone cared about her but also to be aware that she really didn’t belong there in your fancy store with the other, richer, better girls. How compassionate!

Obviously, pressure is put on this girl (and her mom) to make her feel like they need to “Keep up with the Jones’”. Consumerism is fueled by the pressure of others.
On the other hand, the girl was chided for being different and going “against the system” to an extent. When she presented the doll to the stylist, here is what happened:

“This isn’t a real doll!” the stylist exclaimed.

And in this case, the company was the one forcing conformity. While we as American strive hard to be different, companies want to hold your business. In some ways, the only way they hold you is by forcing conformity and wanting people to play by their rules. Yes, you can certainly walk away if you want, but there are people who are not strong enough financially or emotionally to fight a large corporation. In many ways, they have you under the thumb. It is a terrible cycle.

Yes, I have mentioned something that doesn’t have extremely large consequences (except for the fact this girl is scarred), but it is a microcosm of the larger problem. This is not over for me…

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Garfield

Image courtesy of Garfield

I used to love Garfield when I was a kid, so it is good to know that Jim Davis still “has it”. Just check out Garfield’s face in the second frame…perfect. Thanks bro!

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Season in Review – Looking Ahead

We have been spoiled. Since 2000, we have seen the Illini as a power house in the NCAA. Unfortunately, that time might be coming to an end soon. Programs go up and down, and unless we get it together, we might be headed down. I’m going to try to keep a positive attitude, but it is going to be hard to undo the bad things that happened this year. A lot of people want to blame Weber and want to see him leave, but that is not the answer. I think he needs some time to get comfortable recruiting for a Big Ten team before we need to reevaluate. 2004-05 is still looming over him and he needs to get out from under that to see what he can really do with out all of the pressure. I think he has some strong players coming in this year even with the players he lost to other teams. I’d like to see what he can do over the next 4 or 5 years before we tell him to pack it in. Is that too much? Maybe, but I believe in his coaching skills, so I’d hate to lose that just because he supposedly can’t recruit. HE has mediocre players good and he has made good players great. I want to give him time. Here are my best case scenarios for next year:

1) One of the freshman steps up. Quinton Watkins, Demetri McCarney, Mike Tisdale, and Bill Cole are the names to get familiar with for next year. McCarney probably has the best shot since he is the only 4 star in the bunch. This is an important class for Weber since Rose and Gordon were lost. If he can turn one of these guys in to a star, all will be forgotten.

2) The guards get it together. My friends give me a hard time for supporting these guys, but I think one of these guys can turn into a star. I think Frazier has the best chance since he seems to be growing the most, but he needs to develop a shot. Meacham has one year under his built, but he often looks uncomfortable out there. Brock got minutes this year and I think he could be something special if he also develops a shot. Smith…I don’t even want to hypothesize.

3) Randle needs to make a HUGE leap. Pruitt is already a strong player and will probably be the go to guy early in the season, but he is not going to become a 16-18 point player next year. Randle can be that guy. His supposed athleticism is a gift, but he has not proven that he is a complete player. His shot doesn’t fall often, he fouls out way too easy, and he often disappears when you need him the most. I hope he puts the nagging injuries behind him and works his butt off this summer.

See you in November…

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Season in Review – Looking Back

I’m going to do this in two parts. First, I want to talk about 06-07 in Illini basketball. Then, I’m going to spend tomorrow to talk about the 07-08 Illini.

I think it was proper how we lost to Virginia Tech the other night. It was a microcosm of our entire year. What was bad about this year:

1) The external problems, loss of recruits and multiple injuries hurt the entire program. It put a long shadow over our entire season, and it was hard to escape from it. Injuries aren’t always unavoidable, but I’m sure it makes it hard to practice with players in and out of the training room. Legal problems are another thing. If this was happening to another team, I’d be making fun of them. Now, it is happening to the Illini. It is just a shame, but this is how our season will be remembered. I’m hoping they sort this out over the summer because it will be devastating if it rolls into 07-08.

2) We didn’t have any go to scorer. Basically, we had no offense. When you can’t count on anyone to put the ball in the hole when the clock winds down, you are in trouble. When you can’t count on anyone to put the ball in the hole when you are having offensive troubles, you can’t do much on offense. Someone who can create opens up opportunities for other people on the team. We did not have it.

3) We couldn’t put other teams away. While we had no bad losses, we had no big wins. I guess our biggest win this year was Indiana during the Big Ten tournament. Out of our 12 losses we had leads in the second half for 9 of them. Let me repeat that…9. That means we were able to hang with many teams in and out of our conference. Since we had no scorer or offensive plan, we never got that big win.

Now, the good things:

1) We had great defense. I know a lot of people dog the Big Ten type of play, but I love it. And, we should be proud of the way we played defense. Weber and the team had that down.

2) Despite the adversity, we won games and made the tournament. Some people say Weber did a great job coaching this year even though his record does not really indicate that. Even with everything that happened. Even with the lack of talent. Even with all that faced our program, we had what I would call a successful season…I don’t care what anyone says.

Let’s talk about the seniors:

I expected more from Marcus Arnold but it never materialized. He could never be counted on to adequately take the place of Shaun Pruitt. He did have some games were he looked good, but he was so often over-matched.

Warren Carter is the man. He really grew into a strong player this year. He was one of our star players and the glue that held our team together when we couldn’t count on our guards. He will be missed.

Rich McBride…I’m glad this is it for you. You should have been the leader on this team but the DUI ruined your season. You could not be counted on to hit a big 3 and you often disappeared during games. All the talent just went to waster. And sadly, we will miss what you did do for our team this year.

Until tomorrow….

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The Rebel Sell

If you are at all interested in consumers or consumerism or American culture and why it is the way it is, then I implore you to read The Rebel Sell. I bought this book month ago because it looked like something that would interest me. I read the first 25 pages or so and it seemed to be bogged down in a lot of theoretical stuff that frankly, seemed over my head. I put it down and 7 months later decided to pick it up because I wanted to dive into something that I thought would really make me think. It did, but not in the way that I thought it would. I guess in some ways I think of myself as a rebel, so this book sort of made me reevaluate why I feel the way I feel toward consumers, the corporate machine, and government. I felt like Heath and Potter were throwing my ideas back in my face and saying, “Try again!” I don’t mean to make it sound like this book was life-altering, but it did give me a new perspective on things I believe.

While I don’t agree with everything Heath and Potter say, they make many excellent points in this book. Let me see if I can get to the heart of their point. The American quest to be an individual has helped to create the consumer society in this country. In other words, in our quest to be non-conformist, we have only added fuel to the fire of the consumer machine. We don’t want to be a “part of the system” so we try to be different. We want to compete with each other by showing how cool we are with what we buy and what we do.

For example, Heath and Potter reference the baking industry during the 1960s. At that time, people started to bake their own bread in response to the uniformity of buying Wonder Bread. Now, Wonder Bread might not be a great product, but it is cheap and many people like it. What if you want to be different? What if you don’t want what everyone else is having? Well, you make your won bread which requires time and money. Then, a competitive market opened up for “home-style” breads. People were willing to buy the more expensive bread because it was different from Wonder Bread. Even today, we have many stores that make bread their business like Panera and Great Harvest Bread Company. If you go to any grocery store, how many different types of bread there? This reminds me a lot of what Chris Anderson talks about in The Long Tail. The point made is that in order to not conform, you are only adding to the choices in the marketplace and creating multiple competitive markets. In order to rebel against “the man”, you only make opportunities for another “man”. I had never thought about it this way, but it is true. This point makes me think.

As counterculture rebels are fighting against corporations and the evils of society, they are only helping it. In order to be different, they need products to reflect their individuality. Consequently, new markets open up. Instead of trying to work with corporations, create legislation, and institute meaningful political action, they want a revolution for their way of thinking. As Heath and Potter point out, it is tough to get people to change in that manner.

While it might not be an explicit point of the book, I like how Heath and Potter value compromise, working together, collaboration, and cooperation.

If we are going to figure out how to live in harmony in an increasingly populous world, the insistence on individuality at any cost is not a helpful point of departure. We need to start figuring out which compromises are inevitable and which can be avoided.

This might be a rather naive and Disney World stance, but I think it is important to make since an all out revolt against corporations and government is not likely to happen. Heath and Potter argue that the capitalist system we have in place is good, but it needs to be used correctly.

It is not the system that is at fault; the problem is with the loopholes that exist within it. The solution is to plug the loopholes, not abolish the system.

With the right legislation in place and a slow attitudinal change within ourselves, we might be on to something…

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The Wireframe Car

Photo courtesy of Engadget

I think this is just plain cool. How do you make a sculpture (or, at least, that is how I see it) look invisible? It has such an electric quality to it even though it is standing still. I guess I sound pretty amazed by this whole thing, but when something really gets me, it is almost hard to put into words why it is cool.

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I Can’t Begin to Tell You How Mad This Makes Me

After reading this article about Congressman Howard Berman from California, I was disgusted. Basically, he wants to hold universities accountable for the rampant amount of piracy and file sharing that goes on at universities.

Berman has announced that he is accelerating his subcommittee’s hearings on piracy at American colleges and universities, and he is preparing an multi-fronted attack on what he characterizes as the hypocrisy of higher-education in the United States. Berman is upset by the apparent difficultly both the RIAA and the MPAA are having working with universities to catch file sharers.

Why does this make me mad? Simple, the government and big business need scapegoats. They are afraid to point the blame for a slumping economy on their own greed, lies, cheating, stealing, and general devious and evil nature, so they chose to blame college kids. As much as this country likes to do things, as my father says, “for the children”, they are quick to drag high school and college students through the muck when it serves their purposes. It is truly pitiful. When will big business and politicians realize that THEY are the problem. They want to protect their money and their power, so they will do anything to protect it…even if it means placing the blame on kids downloading the new Fall Out Boy online.

Need another reason…read the snippet below from this article:

When Congressman Berman stands up for Hollywood, Hollywood stands up for him—and that means campaign contributions. In the most recent election cycle, Berman received just over $166,000 from the movie and music businesses, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. This was by far his largest single bloc of support (it was followed by lawyers and real estate agents). The top seven contributors this year to his campaign read like a Hollywood roll call: Time Warner, News Corp., Viacom, Sony, Disney, General Electric (owner of NBC), and Vivendi.

I rest my case.

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