Well, I finally saw return of the king last night. I thought it was (predictably) great, and I (predictably) kicked myself for having not seeing it on the big screen. I’ll probably watch it again tonight so I can see all the parts I missed while Melissa was chatting, cheering, crying etc.

Tonight when I watch it though I’m going to drink… and from the looks of things heavily. Tim and I made up a few rules to a Lord of the Rings drinking game today during lunch time. Let me know the results if you end up trying it out yourself. Use the comments feature on this site to suggest/add your own rules too.

Every time someone falls off a cliff… take a drink

Every time Sam cries… take a drink

Every time a close-up of Frodo’s eyes takes up more than 50% of the screen… take a drink

Every time you mistake the (male) elf briefly for a hot blonde chick… take a drink (NOTE: your ability to distinguish between the two is sure to diminish the longer you play this game, making this particular rule a very slippery slope)

Trying watching all three The Lord of the Rings movies… The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King… sequentially while playing this game and you have a whole weekend full of entertainment right there!

Talk about some mad Photoshop skills! This site is running a very cool image editing contest… dress up famous nudes. I’ve posted my ‘winner’ below but definitely worth a click-through. We’re not talking run of the mill famous nudes here like Pamela Anderson or other Playboy bunnies… we’re talking classical famous nudes like David, Venus, etc.. These uber-talented Photoshop users are prolly the same guys who make the women on the covers of magazines look so amazingly beautiful… and fake.

From time to time inevitably everyone has to justify their existence within a corporation. “What do you do exactly?” “What value do you provide the organization?” “What impact would it have on ‘us’ if ‘we’ didn’t have ‘you’?”

When it comes to design, measuring quantifiable value can be difficult and we are often forced to use more qualitative metrics to measure the value that good aesthetics and proper design brings to a company.

In the past couple days I’ve found a couple good resources that attempt to illustrate in quantifiable terms the impact of design on an enterprise. The net net of both is a conclusion that most of us who work in the applied arts field already know… companies that are design-driven outperform those that are not. Now bring on the charts and figures!

Impact of Design on Stock Market Performance - The Design Council
The design council has produced an excellent research report documenting the valuation of companies considered to be ‘design-driven’ vis-a-vis those that are not over a period of 10 years. A great test in terms a CFO can understand. Over time what is the tangible effect of design on a company and it’s shareholders The results? Design driven companies outperform the market by 200%!

“Companies recognized as effective users of design strongly outperform their peers on the stock market - that is the key finding of a ground-breaking study which has tracked a total of 166 design-led companies over ten years of UK share price activity.

A group of 63 companies, grouped into a ‘Design Portfolio’ for their consistent showing in various design award schemes, outperformed both the FTSE All Share and FTSE 100 indices by around 200% between 1994 and 2003, the study reveals.”

The Power of Design - Business Week
A great feature on design house IDEO and some case studies on how they have made their clients money through good design and design process.

My buddies have a little non-profit fundraising group called Debauchery for Donations and they’re pulling together a great benefit party this weekend call Spring Bling to benefit Big Bam; an organization that provides medical services to women who experience age, financial or cultural barriers that prevent detection and treatment of breast cancer. Team Debauchery (Aaron Crossley, Bixby Jamison, Dana Pauls, David Dolby, George Hume, Jessica Sterling, Jim Black, and Lisa Ludwig) is known for having some of best events in the City and you should come check it out.

The party will take place on Saturday, May 22nd and will feature live music from one of the Bay Area’s hottest tribute bands - STUNG!, the ultimate tribute to the POLICE. Followed by hip hop beats spun on two turntables and a microphone.

I’ll be there… and if you’re lucky I’ll be wearing this!

This is not a politcal blog or activism website. I don’t have an agenda, but I do have a problem with the way we are running our international affairs. Specifically, I think we are loosing the war in Iraq.

America hasn’t made friends of the Iraqi people.
In the poll, 80 percent of the Iraqis questioned reported a lack of confidence in the Coalition Provisional Authority, and 82 percent said they disapprove of the U.S. and allied militaries in Iraq. (Salt Lake Tribune, May 13)

Bremer, and the Iraqi Governing Council have failed and their jobs will be turned over to the UN if it’s a mission they choose to accept.
“We sit in the council while the country is burning and argue over procedure,” says Sheikh Yawar, a Sunni tribal leader who lived abroad until last year. “We’re like the Byzantines in Constantinople, debating whether angels are male or female with the barbarians at the gate.” Under Mr. Brahimi’s plan for a transitional government, all 25 members of the US-appointed council would be culled in favor of a team of technocrats to be chosen next month by Brahimi’s team and influential Iraqis, with US input. The group would take power in July and shepherd Iraq to elections next January - in which, ideally, they would not participate. (Christian Science Monitor, May 13)

The coalition is a sham and is falling apart.
Spainish Troops Leaving (Yahoo!, April 19)
Poland Pulling Out (Irish Times, April 20)
Honduras Pulls Troops (CNN, April 19)
Nicaragua Done (Reuters, April 20)
Ukraine Pulls Back (MSNBC, April 21)
Dominican Republic Removes Troops (CBS, April 20)

The war is expensive, bloody, and indefinite.
The official, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, acknowledged that a surge of violence and other problems in Iraq had led to rising costs, with no certainty yet when they would fall. (NY Times, May 13)

The world is less safe than it was before we started, and there are more terrorists now than ever.
The AP-Ipsos poll, released Wednesday at The Associated Press annual meeting, found: Half feel that, in some measure, the terrorists might be winning the war on terrorism. One in five in the poll feels strongly the terrorists are winning while an additional 30 percent say there is at least “a little truth” to that statement.
More than one-third say they have less faith in government’s ability to protect them, and an additional one-fourth say there’s at least some truth to that idea.
Nearly half feel strongly they are more pessimistic about the possibility of there ever being peace in the world while an additional one-fourth say there may be some truth to that. (MSNBC, April 22)

More than 50% of America’s troops are deployed, reservists tours are extended again, and the military is stretched thin.
The US has committed most of its heavy ground forces and deployable aircraft carriers, as well as a large share of its best attack aircraft and air- and sea-lift units. (Washington Post, April
The newly announced troop extensions — which broke the Pentagon’s promise that Iraq tours of duty would be limited to one year — are forcing many to change plans, cancel weddings and delay return to normal life. Meanwhile, the anxiety felt by those at home increases each day. (ABS News, April 23)

America has failed to uncover the weapons that led us into this war.
During the annual Radio and Television Correspondents Dinner this week, Bush presented a slide show of quirky photographs from inside the White House. In one, the president is looking under furniture in the Oval Office. “Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere,” Bush joked. “Nope, no weapons over there … maybe under here?” (CNN, May 6th)

Google launched a cool new service called Gmail. I’ve landed a beta account and it seems pretty hot. You get 1000megs of space vs. MSN Hotmails 2megs making it an actually useful mailbox. It’s pretty interesting how it turns back and forth barrage of short emails into threads or ‘conversations’. It also takes advantage of Google search technology to keep my email life organized. I’ve set up my kk@burnkit.com address to forward there. Gmail would be really cool though if you could POP several accounts like you can over at Hotmail where I had been popping my old TWU mail, my Burnkit mail, and my groovy.com mail. Anyway, I’m hooked. Checked it out when it becomes generally available.

I’ve also been expiramenting with this other online networking tool called LinkedIn. I got turned onto it from a good friend, Ean Jackson, in Vancouver who always seems to be on the cutting edge of this type of thing… he got me up and running on Plaxo too. It kinda seems like Friendster but for business contacts. You upload information about yourself and your professional experience and jobs you’ve held. People who have worked with you in the past can write testimonials or references. It’s kinda fun to mess with and a good way to ‘practice’ marketing oneself, but I’m still skeptical that I’ll get any good job leads or new contacts from it… we’ll see. Lemme know if any of you guys sign up and I’ll write you up a little reference and beg you for one for me as well. Here’s my work-in-progress page.