just some random ish that i ran across.....
I'm an Artist, But Not the Starving Kind
By J. D. Jordan
Newsweek
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9287027/site/newsweek/
Sept. 19, 2005 issue - "I could get an art student to do it for $35 and a six-pack." I remember the first time a prospective client said that to try to intimidate me into accepting dramatically reduced fees for Website design services. I was newly self-employed and hungry for work, so I conceded. I delivered a great Web site, but I hated my client for making me work for so little—and myself for not knowing how to get what I deserved.
It was 2002, and I had just opened my own graphic-design studio in my basement, where I was working with two old friends. Back then, I thought I had to compete with local students—to accept it as just another part of doing business. Now I find myself at one of Atlanta's premier art colleges, standing at a podium and teaching those very same students.
In my small, windowless classroom, in front of a baker's dozen of powerful G5 computers that line the walls, sit tomorrow's crop of great graphic designers, illustrators, filmmakers and animators. But despite their skills, their burgeoning individual styles and their unlimited creativity, they are crippled by the narrow focus of their education.
It took me a couple of years out of college to realize that my own B.A. in history was an asset. I landed my first salaried job during the heady days of unstoppable Internet growth, when the fact that I hadn't gone to art school was no impediment to getting hired as a senior Web specialist at a studio. Then the World Trade Center was attacked, and suddenly, I was answering questions about Islam, oil policy and our government's struggle against a new enemy for my colleagues—degreed artists all—who didn't understand the basic issues of the day.
As surprised as I was by their lack of knowledge, I was even more shocked by how helpless they were in light of our impending unemployment. The tech bubble had burst several months before 9/11, and our company, like many, was discarding its creative services staff to buoy sagging growth. My colleagues were unprepared to manage their own work—not as artists, but as businesspeople.
Unlike most college and university educations, art-school curricula do not revolve around math and language, writing and economics. Instead, they revolve around fundamental artistic principles such as color and light, figure and still-life drawing, basic electronic arts and art history.
What about creative business and copyright law? What about intellectual rights and business ethics? For that matter, what about basic history or civics? In a field largely defined by individual inspiration and accomplishment, where is the foundation for personal and financial success? Perhaps in an attempt to compensate for public schools which have stripped their curricula of arts education, art schools have left their graduates unprepared for the real world.
During my first semester as a teacher, I noticed a hunger in my students—a drive to crack the marketplace and build a portfolio, not just of teacher-assigned projects, but of real work for real clients. I also imagined I saw the threat in their eyes that my old boss saw in mine when I resigned to start my own company: "I can do this better than you ... and for less." It wasn't long before I realized that what I was seeing was simply untrained enthusiasm.
Now, a couple of semesters under my belt, I've learned how to get the kids excited not just about art, but about succeeding as businesspeople. I squeeze as much business education into my courses as my required curriculum will allow. I lead my students in roundtable discussions and offer anecdotes from my own experience. I use whole lectures to give them primers on service pricing, contracting, good business practices and copyright protection. I teach them to fight the tendency that lingers in all artists to give their art away. I tell them that their art is a specialty, not a commodity, and that they deserve to get paid for it.
But what can one professor do? These kids should have to take business education as a freshman requirement to learn how to manage their artistic enterprises before their enthusiasm sweeps them into a depreciated marketplace.
It took me a long time to learn how to answer that prospective client's $35 challenge. A long time before I learned to say, "You get what you pay for," and walk away.
My students often ask me what they should charge for the work they do outside of class. I help them come up with a fair estimate, then tell them the story about Carolyn Davidson, the Portland State University student whom Nike paid $35 for its "swoosh" logo in 1971. (Years later, the company gave her an undisclosed amount of stock.) I tell them about the calls I still get, clients trying to drive down my rates with "Any student will do it for $35 and a six-pack."
I tell them not to be that student—that it hurts our industry and that it'll hurt them in the long run, when they're in my shoes.
© 2005 Newsweek, Inc.
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Dutch Talk-Show Host to Take Heroin on Air
By TOBY STERLING, Associated Press Writer Wed Sep 21,10:11 AM ET
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050921/ap_en_tv/tv_netherlands_drug_show
A television presenter on a new Dutch talk show plans to take heroin and other illegal drugs on air in a program intended to reach young audiences on topics that touch their lives, producers said Wednesday.
The show, scheduled to premier on late-night television Oct. 10, is called "Spuiten & Slikken," or the "Shoot Up and Swallow" show.
Even in the liberal Netherlands, where marijuana is sold and used openly, the proposed action by presenter Filemon Wesselink is illegal, and the idea was met with dismay by the governing center-right Christian Democrat party.
"This is dangerous and it sets a bad example," party spokesman Pieter Heerma said. "We're going to ask the justice minister for his view on what the law says about this, and his view on the dangers and risks involved."
Justice Ministry spokesman Ivo Hommes said it was not immediately clear whether Wesselink could be prosecuted. Possession of any amount of heroin is illegal, but in practice police usually do not have resources to chase after people with less than a half a gram of the highly addictive narcotic.
"The actual taking of drugs is a health problem, not a criminal act, though it's obviously hard to take drugs without possessing them first," Hommes said. "In any case it's not something we endorse, and doing it on television is undesirable."
The Shoot Up & Swallow show's main hostess will interview guests about drug use and abuse, while Wesselink and another presenter will carry out in-the-field experiments with sex and drugs.
Wesselink, 26, plans to smoke a heroin pill, said Ingrid Timmer, a spokeswoman for the show's producer BNN.
"It's not our intention to create an outcry. We just want to talk about subjects that are part of young people's lives," Timmer said.
In other segments of the show, Wesselink plans to go on a drinking binge in a series of pubs. He also plans to take the hallucinogenic drug LSD — on his couch under the supervision of his mother.
The Netherlands is known for its marijuana policy, where sale and use of the drug in small quantities are not prosecuted even though technically illegal. Other drugs, including LSD, cocaine, Ecstasy and heroin are outlawed and dealers are prosecuted. The legal age for the consumption of alcohol and tobacco is 16.
According to information from the Netherlands' Trimbos Institute, which monitors international drug use, the Dutch are about average. The institute says 6 percent of Dutch have used marijuana recently, compared with 8 percent in the United States, 9 percent in Britain and 9 percent in France. For cocaine, it was 1.1 percent in Holland — and rising quickly — compared to 1.3 percent in the United States, 1.5. percent in Britain and 0.3 percent in France. Comparable data for heroin use were not available.
BNN has drawn viewer complaints for programs in the past, including a sex education program called "This Is How You Screw." One segment discussed how to have sex in a nightclub and featured life-size mannequins with sex organs.
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If the Children Can Drink Uncola, What About Unbeer?
By ANDREW ADAM NEWMAN
Published: September 19, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/19/business/worldbusiness/19beer.html?ex=1284782400&en=e227b87adacafa6a&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
Kidsbeer, a Japanese soft drink bottled and formulated to look like beer, may soon be available throughout Europe, but watchdogs of underage drinking say they will fight any effort to ship it to the United States.
The drink, which comes in a brown bottle and is advertised with the slogan "Even kids cannot stand life unless they have a drink," is lager-colored and foams like beer, but tastes like cola.
Introduced two years ago, it is sold by more than 150 restaurants and supermarkets in Japan, according to Tomomasu, the small bottler that makes it. Beer is widely available in vending machines in Japan, where the legal drinking age is 20.
An article in August in The Sunday Telegraph in London about plans to introduce Kidsbeer, first to Britain, then to the rest of Europe, caused a fuss among alcohol industry critics and government officials.
Tim Loughton, a member of Parliament, told The Telegraph that the drink's expected arrival was "an alarming development." Neither a British soft drink association nor an alcohol watchdog group could confirm that Kidsbeer was in Britain.
Amon Rappaport, a spokesman for the Marin Institute, an alcohol industry watchdog based in California, said Kidsbeer would "unwittingly play into the alcohol industry's efforts to glamorize drinking and introduce kids to beer." The group criticizes beer product placement in youth-oriented PG-13 movies like "Dodge Ball" and "Hell Boy."
"The last thing we need is another product that introduces kids to drinking when the alcohol industry already spends billions doing that," Mr. Rappaport said.
George Hacker, director of the Alcohol Policies Project at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a nonprofit group based in Washington, said that if any company were to introduce a similar product in the United States, there would be immediate opposition. (Tomomasu has not said it has such plans.) "Given the strong antidrug movement in this country, my sense is the outrage would be immediate and overwhelming," Mr. Hacker said.
The last company that marketed a look-alike beer ended up with a public relations hangover. In 1995, Royal Crown drew the ire of Lee P. Brown, then the White House drug policy adviser, for its Royal Crown Draft Premium Cola, which also was in a brown bottle and beer-colored. The company agreed to change the soda's packaging, most notably its label, on which "draft" had been by far the largest word.
In 1978, Anheuser-Busch inflamed politicians, clergy and doctors when it introduced Chelsea (slogan: "the not so soft drink"), which also foamed like beer but had less then a quarter the alcohol content of regular beer. After critics called it "baby beer" and said it would foster underage drinking, the company withdrew the beverage.
While tomorrow's barflies may lack pretend booze, they can still pretend to light up. Both Necco and World Candies continue to produce candy cigarettes, which are widely available on the Web and in candy stores. According to an article in The British Medical Journal in August 2000, some cigarette makers once authorized candy makers to mimic their package designs and logos.
The article, by Jonathan D. Klein, a pediatrician, and Steve St. Claire, a lawyer, found that "sixth graders who reported having used candy cigarettes were twice as likely to have also smoked tobacco cigarettes, regardless of parental smoking status."
Canada, the United Kingdom, Finland, Norway, Australia and Saudi Arabia are among the countries that have banned candy cigarettes, according to the article. Proposed federal legislation banning them in the United States, however, failed in 1970 and 1990.
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