the guardian weighs in on egypt

the guardian newspaper offers a peek at what is currently happening in egypt and the near east and draws a (possible) parallel between the wave of protests in 1989 in eastern europe which felled the soviet union and ended the cold war with what is currently taking place in the near east.

berlin fashion week dawid tomaszewski as well as unrath and strano

we’re a bit slow on the uptake reporting on this. sorta loved the unrath and strano show. will give more details on that one later.

tomaszewski’s show was a bit of a revelation. we loved the highly sculpted fur, the textures and the jewels (real?) and the highly crafted look from this polish-german designer. authentic is the perfect one word description for this show.

will post photos soon.

michael sontag berlin fashion week

it took us a while to find this location. we used ‘stadplan berlin’ to find a map to romanische hof –since this event wasn’t at the main tent on bebelplatz. well stadtplan berlin sorta sucks. we rode our bicycles (yes, bicycles) down unter den linden to the brandenburg gate. no luck. then we asked the doormen (yes, men, not doorman) how to find this place. they had no idea. we somehow managed to track down one of those roving mercedes benz’s connected with fashion week. the dudes were kind enough to point out that the building was directly across from the tent on bebelplatz. our bad.

the sontag show was more like an installation. the models stood like waxed dummies for about an hour and you could move around the periphery taking photographs.

one video guy was way into the models. i mean, we all know that with digital video you can stand in the back of the room and get a really amazing close up. but it seems with this guy, in order to get the full effect, he had to basically videotape the model’s asses from up close.

will post photos soon.

berlin fashion week day 1

it was a busy day in berlin, the first day of fashion week. we got bounced from the balkan catwalk. but weren’t too put out by this. we passed on the obtuse event at soho house and somehow missed the soiree at the hungarian cultural center. but we managed to get ourselves together by 11pm just in time for the Guess after party. and it was grossartig, as they say in berlin. loads of people, tons of red bull (which we passed on) and somehow the dudes ran out of wine short before 1am. but we’re not complaining.

can sarah palin and the tea party be blamed for gifford’s gunman

the answer to that is ‘absolutely not.’ and there’s a logic to this answer that’s grounded in the theory of ‘personal responsibility.’ and that also goes for blaming the likes of glenn beck, rush limbaugh and talk radio.

john hinckley shot ronald reagan. since he claimed that he did it to get her attention? can we blame jody foster for this? considering that jody foster was a-political at the time (or we think she probably was). anyway hinckley was so delusional, he couldn’t recognize a carpet muncher when he saw one.

boris johnson, currently mayor of london, once espoused his love for american a.m. radio. saying essentially that talk radio was uniquely american and has no counter-part in the uk.

while gifford, being shot is a tragedy, the only person responsible is the guy who shot her. not the guy who sold him the bullets or the taxi driver who drove him to the rally or sarah palin.

reuters tows government line?

in this article explaining why guantanomo bay won’t be closed as per barack obama’s campaign promise, the journalist allister bull or his editor makes the point of inserting ‘reluctantly’ into the following statement please note the italics are ours:

‘President Barack Obama, in a setback to hopes for the quick closing of the Guantanamo Bay prison, reluctantly signed a bill on Friday barring suspects held there from being brought to the United States for trial.’

you can read the full article here but bear in mind, the link is from yahoo and their links expire after a certain time.

for us at ablogaboutwhatever it was always clear that git-mo could not be closed. because the question was always, where will you put these guys? no state in the u.s. wants them. not even the governor michigan.

the most obvious choice would be to send the prisoners back to their home countries. but some of the prisoners are technically american. it is what spaulding grey (RIP) would’ve called, a slippery slope.

ces and laptops for the emerging world

the bbc has a reporter in las vegas covering ces. she spoke with the company one laptop per child –a company dedicated to bringing laptops to the emerging world. apparently OLPC has created a tablet with such low wattage that the battery lasts almost 12 hours. what the reporter neglects to ask is where are people supposed to plug in to top up the batteries.

it’s an innocent enough mistake to make, given that the reporter is in the capitalism capital of the universe (las vegas) and that she presumably comes from a western country where electricity is just taken for granted.

but it is a big question that the reporter failed to ask or include in her final article.

the other question is why would OLPC spend in excess of 20K for a booth at a convention that is not their target audience?

hillary clinton to be replaced by bill richardson?

bill richardson, who recently declined to pardon billy the kid (never mind that billy was gunned down in what 1881) just might be the guy to push hillary clinton out of the u.s. secretary of state seat–aka the prez’s look i believe in diversity spot. not that we care, but when was the last time one saw a waspy guy in that slot? we may have to go back to 1992 when bill clinton initially took office.

why did this turn into the hot seat for diversity? with the exception of madeline albright, (who bill clinton appointed during the height of the monica lewinsky sex scandal to manipulate the media and give them something else to discuss since he made albright the first female to warm that seat), almost everyone has had stellar credentials–colin powell, condi rice, etc. and bill richardson served at the united nations and has first rate credentials as well.

the bigger question is why wasn’t hillary clinton pushed out immediately after wikileaks started dripping state department documents? is barack obama still afraid of the clintons? and female voters in the democratic party? does he now believe that he doesn’t need them anymore?