Thanks Tiina for introducing me to Moomin, my new favorite storybook star! Finland’s version of The Little Prince… entertains kids and breaks adults hearts.

Something I found while flipping through an All-American Ads book ha… Guard your foods and women against rapid drying out!

CUP’s Making Policy Pubic collaborators page is up… look Ma, I’m on the interweb!

A New York Times graphic tallying the number of times the Democrats and Republicans used particular words during their conventions.

Helsinki is 7 hours ahead of NYC, but that didn’t stop me from staying up until five in the morning to frustratingly watch the RNC. If they’re going to boo Obama for not calling the war  a “victory” and for ensuring all people are read their rights, well I don’t know what to say. Democrats referred to McCain by his name more than Republicans referred to Obama by name. Instead, they just called him “our opponent” which reminded me of the way creepy governments depersonalize “the enemy.”

Whoever wrote the graphic caption seems to be a Republican and said that “Republicans talked about reform far more frequently than the Democrats” - hmm yes they said “reform” 22 to 6, but the Democrats said “change” 89 to 30… Maybe this word focus isn’t such a good way to gage anything… but I would like to know how many times the Republicans said, “we need to drill, drill, drill!”

The other day I hung out with my friend Jesse Shapins, who co-created the cool personal-story-sharing-through-mobile-technology public art project Yellow Arrow, which inspired my local-history-sharing-through-mobile-technology public art project Cripplebush Ghost Tour. He’s currently getting his PhD in History and Theory of Urbanism and Film and Visual Studies at Harvard and just finished teaching an interesting course at Columbia called Critical Urban Media Arts. Students combined urban theory, social media, and psychogeography to create SMS-based walking tours of specific areas in NYC. Another cool way of using cell phones to share experiences and explore the city!

A high-brow collage I made while watching the DNC… I Heart Barry!

Labor Day is around the corner and made me wonder what I was doing Labor Days of yore - banging on keyboards! Here’s a flyer I made when I played synth in The Sems and we performed at Pianos in NYC. A night of proletariat good times for the working class.

Sign in Diepsloot in Johannesburg

PSAs just got a little more media savvy. Recognizing the extent and accessibility of cell phone use in India, the BBC World Service Trust launched an HIV prevention campaign via humorous cell phone ring tones. Now your phone can belt out an acapella chorus of “condom condom condom!” Which contacts would you assign that ring to? Maybe not Mom… And what other health messages could we turn into ring tones… how about “fat kid fat kid fat kid!”

Reminds me of other services via mobile technology like Wireless Amber Alerts that send out depressing but powerful text messages on missing children in your area. Seems like there’s a lot more we can do with this kind of set-up, including neighborhood-centric text messages between residents, public transportation text messages on changes with your local line, government text messages on free flu shot services, etc.

NYC’s 311 service has definitely made it easier for citizens to report pot holes, complain about noise, and collectively improve the lay of the land. After choking on gnarly fried chicken vapors in our Red Antenna office (the vent from Popeye’s Chicken shoots out by our window) we called 311 and a health inspector came out the next week. City services in action! Of course he came out during the hour when the smell disappeared, but now I sit in fried chicken vapors knowing the City works, sort of… This is just the beginning…

Left to right: Steve Baker (Red Antenna), Rosten Woo (CUP), John Mangin (CUP), Sean Basinski (The Street Vendor Project), and James Reeves (Red Antenna) discuss big things.

CUP’s Making Policy Public project continues and we all met at our Red Antenna office yesterday to discuss the scope of content that will go into the final fold-out poster for The Street Vendor Project. How much will be directed towards street vendors as a much-needed resource, and how much will be an educational/advocacy tool about street vendors and regulation reform? How much will be about clarifying the convoluted regulations into clear graphics and how much will be about showing just how convoluted it currently is? Will the tone be neutral, pleasantly reform-suggestive, or fight-the-man militant? Probably not the latter, but it’s fun to imagine the extreme… I’ve always wanted to draw a big fist. Stay tuned for next week when I come up with some design directions!

Hey kids, it’s collage time again! And Men In Hats is now a series… Words from Pocket Calculator by Kraftwerk.