Gunnin’ for peace

Wafaa Bilal, an artist in Chicago (IL, US), has a Web site where visitors can aim a gun that shoots paint balls. Cute, hunh? Well, Mr. Bilal lives in the room where the visitors can shoot the gun. People from around the world are shooting.

Design for equity

Designers do nifty things which most of us come to take for granted in our daily lives. Whoever figured out the spigot was a clever designer, no? These days, other than design for art, design is mostly focused on products and processes. Companies hire creative folks to create toys, clothing, furniture, as well as processes in chemistry and business. Design crosses art, engineering, and science. People pay lots of money for well-designed cars, watches, computers, etc.

Olds and Feiffer letters

I see from a forwarded e-mail message that Sharon Olds’ refusual to make a presentation at the US White House is making the rounds. In 2005, because she objected to the US war policies, Ms. Olds declined to attend a National Book Festival event hosted there by First Lady Laura Bush. She published a letter in the Nation explaining her views:

I tried to see my way clear to attend the festival in order to bear witness–as an American who loves her country and its principles and its writing–against this undeclared and devastating war.

But I could not face the idea of breaking bread with you. I knew that if I sat down to eat with you, it would feel to me as if I were condoning what I see to be the wild, highhanded actions of the Bush Administration.