The Simple Pleasures is a blog dedicated to all those people who share a common interest in the little things, you know, the things some people take for granted. Its about those people who have realized that even in the midst of the 21st century, there are still things that are worth stopping in your tracks for, taking a breath for, the simple things, the ones that make you smile.
Katrina Hodge has two titles. By profession, she's Lance Cpl. Hodge of the British Army. Off duty, the 22-year-old is Miss England. Her nickname: "Combat Barbie."
At Hodge's urging, pageant organizers are nixing the swimsuit competition (news). Instead, the contest will feature a new challenge.
"I think it's nerve-racking enough for girls to get up on a stage and speak," Hodge tells the Telegraph, "let alone appear in a swimsuit."
Not that Hodge is against wearing bikinis (photos). She models in ads for this lingerie company. Her typical attire, however, is camouflage (photos).
Now on six-month leave, Hodge enlisted on a dare from her veteran brother. When she reported for duty in an ultra feminine outfit, her commander dubbed her "Combat Barbie." Is anyone else thinking "Private Benjamin" (clips)?
For the record, Hodge served with distinction in Iraq. She earned a bravery commendation after this life-threatening incident.
"I like the fact I can come to work with no makeup on and roll around in mud," Hodge tells the Daily Mail. "But I like being glamorous and girlie as well."
Coy about her personal life, Hodge is helping soldiers find romance.How?
Originally runner-up, Hodge became Miss England when her predecessor lost the title for bad behavior. After crowning 2010's winner, she'll have time for her next project.
and therefore, even though i've pondered this a lot, my conclusion is to let you guys also appreciate his genius.
plus, all of you out there [ 3 people and a cricket ], please resend this blog's link to anyone you wish to annoy...see, i really wanna pass this course! :D
contribute to my A, and who knows, i might be PR-ing your ass out of trouble in a few ;)
1. Busca buenos clientes. Aquellos que pagan.
Buenos proyectos vendrán de buenos clientes. Buenos clientes son aquellos que aprecian lo que haces y si, apreciar quiere decir pagar lo que uno se merece.
Puede ser que el buen cliente seas tu mismo y que tu futuro está en crear tus propias obras (publicar tus propios libros o crear tus propios productos para vender al público).
Por otro lado, puede ser que te guste trabajar para otros y que dependas de buenos clientes para hacer buenos proyectos. Existe la teoría que dice que es posible educar a un cliente. Es posible, pero ese no es tu trabajo. Eso es trabajo del mercado. El mercado le dirá a tus clientes si aciertan o se equivocan. Si se equivocan, aprenderán la lección y vendrán a ti con la lección aprendida.Lo que si es tu trabajo es hablar de forma clara a los clientes y mostrarles tu punto de vista de forma clara. Si tienes un punto de vista claro y lo comunicas, atraerás a clientes afines a tus ideas. 2. Ideas, Ideas, Ideas. Cobra por tus ideas, por el valor añadido, no por la ejecuciónEl valor añadido es lo único que te puede salvar. También puedes vender ejecución, pero ese sector es más complicado y la Indica o China están a la vuelta de la esquina. Vende el valor añadido de las ideas.El buen diseño no es color, no es forma, no es composición. El buen diseño son buenas ideas. Ideas que ayudan, ideas que ayudan a entender, ideas que entendidas ayudan a crecer, desarrollar, decidir. 3. El buen diseño empieza en el buen contenido. Deberás escribir.Para diseñar bien necesitas buen contenido. Esto lo sabes tu, no tu cliente. Tendrás que reescribir o escribir de cero el contenido para que tu proyecto quede bien.Redactar titulares que se ajusten a tu diseño, destacados, cifras, crear gráficas, etc… deberás ajustar el contenido del cliente a tu diseño para que todo quede como esperas.Es casi imposible hacer buen diseño sin un buen fundamento. Ese fundamento suele ser contenido. Puede ser que el contenido sea “fotos”, “texto” o una “necesidad”. Si la necesidad que cubre el diseño es floja o con poco sentido, tu diseño tambien lo será. 4. El buen diseño es eternoLas tendencias no te llevarán lejos. Aspira a crear un diseño eterno. Ayuda a que tu cliente tenga soluciones duraderas. Construye un futuro sostenible basado en proyectos duraderos que te permitan ir sumando elementos a tu proyecto.Si te subes a las tendencias, tu proyecto estará construido de piezas que tendrás que ir reemplazando cada temporada con lo que no crecerás. 5. El buen diseño es para todos
Esto no quiere decir que tengas que hacer cosas mediocres. Pero el buen diseño (puede ser duro, blando, emotivo o seco…) ha de ser capaz de llegar a todos. Lo que no tiene sentido es hacer algo que sólo se va a entender dentro de un contexto.Uno nunca sabe hasta donde van a llegar sus piezas de diseño. Puede ser que el contexto para cuando te quieras dar cuenta haya desaparecido.Piensa en diseñar basándote en buenas ideas y en resolver problemas. Eso hará que las soluciones lleguen a todos.
6. Debes ser un maestro técnicamente aunque no ejecutesTrabajar con imprentas puede ser un infierno si no controlas el proceso.
Lo mismo pasa con los diseñadores que desconocen el mundo digital.Debes dominar todos los procesos, para preservar la integridad de tus ideas. Los aspectos más delicados son las tipografías y color.Los mejores dise�adores que he conocido han sido maestros técnicamente. Lo sabían todo técnicamente (aunque no tocaran las teclas).
Es muy importante saber todo sobre técnicas, herramientas, proveedores, resultados, probar diferentes métodos. Si no dominas la técnica puede ser que tus ideas no lleguen a ser ejecutadas como se debería y la culpa ser� tuya. Construir castillos en el aire requiere saber como se construyen. De lo contrario se pueden quedar sólo en bonitas ideas. 7. Comparte tus ideas.
No tengas miedo de decir lo que piensas.
No tengas miedo de que alguien te copie.
Es más fácil acabar haciendo una mala idea que no hacer una buena por miedo a compartirla.
El mundo está lleno de malas ideas, no tengas miedo a compartir las tuyas. Puede ser que se de el caso de que alguien te las robe. Será raro, pero si se da y lo puedes demostrar, demanda. 8. El buen diseño es aquel que se paga
Cobra y cobra bien por tu trabajo. El diseño es un trabajo que hace visible las ideas, servicios, productos. No creas que es efímero. El diseño hoy en día es la capa que “habla” entre las empresas, organismos, individuos y la sociedad.
Haz el ejercicio de salir a la calle y quitar la capa de diseño de tu vista. ¿Qué queda?
Procura consultar salarios, tarifas y cobra lo que sea necesario. Evita trabajar gratis para tus clientes. Tus ideas, diseños valen su precio. Antes de empezar a diseñar, acuerda un precio. Una vez está aprobado, ponte a trabajar. 9. No trabajes para / con amigos si hay dinero de por medio
Te ahorrarás muchos problemas.
Lo mejor es trabajar con los amigos de forma gratuita. De buen rollo. Entre colegas. Pero delimita claramente el tiempo y el trabajo.
Si hay dinero de por medio, evita el trabajar con amigos. Ellos se tomarán el trabajo como un favor y no sabrán apreciarlo. 10. Copia de los buenos
Uno aprende a tocar el piano interpretando obras de otros maestros. Haciendo estos ejercicios uno se da cuenta de la dificultad que tiene la obra, de sus secretos, de porque las cosas están hechas de una forma y no de otra.
Luego, cuando uno alcanza cierta maestría puede lanzarse a interpretar sus propias obras.
Aprende: observando y equivocándose. El aprendiz imita lo que consume, y generalmente imita a alguien a quien admira. Tiende a equivocar sus decisiones si no se le aconseja o dirige. Sin embargo, es capaz de admitir sus equivocaciones y a evitar cometer el mismo error en el futuro.
Diseña: basándose en el presente.
Trabaja gratiutamente cuando: le da experiencia o prestigio. El aprendiz principiante toma cualquier proyecto, sin importar cuan pequeño o irrelevante que sea, generalmente sus primeros proyectos fracasan. El aprendiz avanzado toma proyectos que le dan prestigio, participa en concursos o toma proyectos de perfil mediano que le vayan a dar visibilidad profesional, aunque en ocasiones puede ir en contra de sus principios.
Vivienda: vive con sus padres, dormitorios universitarios, departamento financiado por sus padres. No es autosuficiente.
Modo de trabajo: generalmente se le encargan trabajos talacheros, escanear fotos, darle estilo a un cuerpo de texto en base a una guía de identidad. No tiene visión.
Pros: imparables en energía. Idealistas, entusiastas, trabajadores cuando les gusta el proyecto.
Contras: dejan los proyectos a medias cuando se aburren. No saben enfocar su energía a una sola cosa. Cometen errores que cuestan tiempo y dinero.
Journeyman
Experiencia: 7 - 15 años.
Aprende: haciendo. El journeyman lee y se informa mientras hace un proyecto. En su tiempo libre afila sus conocimientos, manteniéndose al día con respecto a las herramientas más novedosas.
Trabaja gratiutamente cuando: cree en el proyecto. Tiene la convicción de que va a funcionar y beneficia a la sociedad. Para un journeyman un proyecto sin éxito no significa nada.
Diseña: basándose en el pasado y el presente.
Vivienda: renta sólo o compañeros de piso. Vive con su familia por elección o conveniencia, no por necesidad. Es autosufuciente.
Profesión: diseñador senior, consultor junior.
Modo de trabajo: es el arquitecto de proyecto, toma las piezas que arman los aprendices y las arma en un construcción coherente. Tiene una visión a plazo inmediato.
Pros: son los que hacen realidad los proyectos. Son pragmáticos, trabajadores, realistas.
Contras: se van en cuanto encuentran pastos más verdes. Si se aburren de hacer lo mismo todos los días. Seguramente habrá alguien que les ofrezca un trabajo mejor pagado con retos más interesantes.
Maestro
Experiencia: 15 + años.
Aprende: viviendo. El maestro es capaz de consumir el mundo que lo rodea y aplicarlo de una manera coherente a sus proyectos
Diseña: basándose en el presente, pasado y futuro.
Vivienda: casa o departamento propio, solo o con su familia.
Trabaja gratuitamente cuando: organiza el proyecto, y tiene la convicción de que va a funcionar y beneficia a la sociedad.
Modo de trabajo: dirige y administra. Es el único capaz de visualizar los cambios a futuro. Tiene una visión a largo plazo.
Profesión: director de arte, consultor senior, maestro universitario, dueño de un despacho.
Modo de trabajo: dirige, administra y educa.
* Pros:* nunca se rinde, idealista. Son capaces de ver el futuro y a dónde se dirige la teoría y práctica.
Contras: nostálgicos. Se quedan rezagados tecnológicamente, tiene que recurrir a otras personas para llevar a cabo sus ideas.
By Deborah BlumPosted Friday, Feb. 19, 2010, at 10:00 AM ET
It was Christmas Eve 1926, the streets aglitter with snow and lights, when the man afraid of Santa Claus stumbled into the emergency room at New York City's Bellevue Hospital. He was flushed, gasping with fear: Santa Claus, he kept telling the nurses, was just behind him, wielding a baseball bat.
Before hospital staff realized how sick he was—the alcohol-induced hallucination was just a symptom—the man died. So did another holiday partygoer. And another. As dusk fell on Christmas, the hospital staff tallied up more than 60 people made desperately ill by alcohol and eight dead from it. Within the next two days, yet another 23 people died in the city from celebrating the season.
Doctors were accustomed to alcohol poisoning by then, the routine of life in the Prohibition era. The bootlegged whiskies and so-called gins often made people sick. The liquor produced in hidden stills frequently came tainted with metals and other impurities. But this outbreak was bizarrely different. The deaths, as investigators would shortly realize, came courtesy of the U.S. government.
Frustrated that people continued to consume so much alcohol even after it was banned, federal officials had decided to try a different kind of enforcement. They ordered the poisoning of industrial alcohols manufactured in the United States, products regularly stolen by bootleggers and resold as drinkable spirits. The idea was to scare people into giving up illicit drinking. Instead, by the time Prohibition ended in 1933, the federal poisoning program, by some estimates, had killed at least 10,000 people.
Although mostly forgotten today, the "chemist's war of Prohibition" remains one of the strangest and most deadly decisions in American law-enforcement history. As one of its most outspoken opponents, Charles Norris, the chief medical examiner of New York City during the 1920s, liked to say, it was "our national experiment in extermination." Poisonous alcohol still kills—16 people died just this month after drinking lethal booze in Indonesia, where bootleggers make their own brews to avoid steep taxes—but that's due to unscrupulous businessmen rather than government order.
I learned of the federal poisoning program while researching my new book, The Poisoner's Handbook, which is set in jazz-age New York. My first reaction was that I must have gotten it wrong. "I never heard that the government poisoned people during Prohibition, did you?" I kept saying to friends, family members, colleagues.
I did, however, remember the U.S. government's controversial decision in the 1970s to spray Mexican marijuana fields with Paraquat, an herbicide. Its use was primarily intended to destroy crops, but government officials also insisted that awareness of the toxin would deter marijuana smokers. They echoed the official position of the 1920s—if some citizens ended up poisoned, well, they'd brought it upon themselves. Although Paraquat wasn't really all that toxic, the outcry forced the government to drop the plan. Still, the incident created an unsurprising lack of trust in government motives, which reveals itself in the occasional rumors circulating today that federal agencies, such as the CIA, mix poison into the illegal drug supply.
During Prohibition, however, an official sense of higher purpose kept the poisoning program in place. As the Chicago Tribune editorialized in 1927: "Normally, no American government would engage in such business. … It is only in the curious fanaticism of Prohibition that any means, however barbarous, are considered justified." Others, however, accused lawmakers opposed to the poisoning plan of being in cahoots with criminals and argued that bootleggers and their law-breaking alcoholic customers deserved no sympathy. "Must Uncle Sam guarantee safety first for souses?" asked Nebraska's Omaha Bee.
Thesaga began with ratification of the 18th Amendment, which banned the manufacture, sale, or transportation of alcoholic beverages in the United States.* High-minded crusaders and anti-alcohol organizations had helped push the amendment through in 1919, playing on fears of moral decay in a country just emerging from war. The Volstead Act, spelling out the rules for enforcement, passed shortly later, and Prohibition itself went into effect on Jan. 1, 1920.
But people continued to drink—and in large quantities. Alcoholism rates soared during the 1920s; insurance companies charted the increase at more than 300 more percent. Speakeasies promptly opened for business. By the decade's end, some 30,000 existed in New York City alone. Street gangs grew into bootlegging empires built on smuggling, stealing, and manufacturing illegal alcohol. The country's defiant response to the new laws shocked those who sincerely (and naively) believed that the amendment would usher in a new era of upright behavior.
Rigorous enforcement had managed to slow the smuggling of alcohol from Canada and other countries. But crime syndicates responded by stealing massive quantities of industrial alcohol—used in paints and solvents, fuels and medical supplies—and redistilling it to make it potable.
Well, sort of. Industrial alcohol is basically grain alcohol with some unpleasant chemicals mixed in to render it undrinkable. The U.S. government started requiring this "denaturing" process in 1906 for manufacturers who wanted to avoid the taxes levied on potable spirits. The U.S. Treasury Department, charged with overseeing alcohol enforcement, estimated that by the mid-1920s, some 60 million gallons of industrial alcohol were stolen annually to supply the country's drinkers. In response, in 1926, President Calvin Coolidge's government decided to turn to chemistry as an enforcement tool. Some 70 denaturing formulas existed by the 1920s. Most simply added poisonous methyl alcohol into the mix. Others used bitter-tasting compounds that were less lethal, designed to make the alcohol taste so awful that it became undrinkable.
To sell the stolen industrial alcohol, the liquor syndicates employed chemists to "renature" the products, returning them to a drinkable state. The bootleggers paid their chemists a lot more than the government did, and they excelled at their job. Stolen and redistilled alcohol became the primary source of liquor in the country. So federal officials ordered manufacturers to make their products far more deadly.
By mid-1927, the new denaturing formulas included some notable poisons—kerosene and brucine (a plant alkaloid closely related to strychnine), gasoline, benzene, cadmium, iodine, zinc, mercury salts, nicotine, ether, formaldehyde, chloroform, camphor, carbolic acid, quinine, and acetone. The Treasury Department also demanded more methyl alcohol be added—up to 10 percent of total product. It was the last that proved most deadly.
The results were immediate, starting with that horrific holiday body count in the closing days of 1926. Public health officials responded with shock. "The government knows it is not stopping drinking by putting poison in alcohol," New York City medical examiner Charles Norris said at a hastily organized press conference. "[Y]et it continues its poisoning processes, heedless of the fact that people determined to drink are daily absorbing that poison. Knowing this to be true, the United States government must be charged with the moral responsibility for the deaths that poisoned liquor causes, although it cannot be held legally responsible."
His department issued warnings to citizens, detailing the dangers in whiskey circulating in the city: "[P]ractically all the liquor that is sold in New York today is toxic," read one 1928 alert. He publicized every death by alcohol poisoning. He assigned his toxicologist, Alexander Gettler, to analyze confiscated whiskey for poisons—that long list of toxic materials I cited came in part from studies done by the New York City medical examiner's office.
Norris also condemned the federal program for its disproportionate effect on the country's poorest residents. Wealthy people, he pointed out, could afford the best whiskey available. Most of those sickened and dying were those "who cannot afford expensive protection and deal in low grade stuff."
And the numbers were not trivial. In 1926, in New York City, 1,200 were sickened by poisonous alcohol; 400 died. The following year, deaths climbed to 700. These numbers were repeated in cities around the country as public-health officials nationwide joined in the angry clamor. Furious anti-Prohibition legislators pushed for a halt in the use of lethal chemistry. "Only one possessing the instincts of a wild beast would desire to kill or make blind the man who takes a drink of liquor, even if he purchased it from one violating the Prohibition statutes," proclaimed Sen. James Reed of Missouri.
Officially, the special denaturing program ended only once the 18th Amendment was repealed in December 1933. But the chemist's war itself faded away before then. Slowly, government officials quit talking about it. And when Prohibition ended and good grain whiskey reappeared, it was almost as if the craziness of Prohibition—and the poisonous measures taken to enforce it—had never quite happened.
Correction,Feb. 22, 2010: The article originally and incorrectly said that the 18thAmendment banned the sale and consumption of alcohol. It banned the manufacture, sale, or transportation of alcohol, not consumption. (Return to the corrected sentence.)
This new release of the original Michael Jackson song was released in order to bring out funds to help Haiti after the devastating (countless) earthquakes....
Inspiring. but thats just about what it does, it doesn't necessarily bring relief to those people since half the money is never even seen again. *sigh* but, there's nothing that can really be done, so heres to a half-assed effort. hooray.
