Cites, Sites, & Sights
It is common knowledge that most blogs are simply reposts of content found on other blogs or of news stories. That's something that I've tried to avoid though I do cite my sources and add a "For Your Consideration" section to recommend sites with more information (i.e., my post from 29 Oct). Recently, though, I found a story that is rather important so here is a 'reprint' from Yahoo! News.
Popular Snowman T-Shirt Raises Concerns
By DESMOND BUTLER, Associated Press Writer
Fri Nov 4, 4:44 PM ET
One of the hottest-selling T-shirts around the country shows a simply drawn snowman with a menacing expression.
It's not Frosty's evil twin. The image popularized by drug-dealer-turned-rapper Young Jeezy symbolizes those who sell a white substance known on the street as snow: cocaine.
Anti-drug campaigners and education officials are alarmed, saying the T-shirt and others like it are part of sophisticated marketing campaigns using coded symbols for drug culture that parents and teachers are not likely to understand. Some schools are banning kids from wearing the snowman images.
"The snowman is made of white, grainy stuff like sugar," said 12-year-old seventh-grader Mailik Mason, standing next to his mother in a Manhattan store selling the snowman shirts. "It has to do with a certain drug, crack or coke."
Young Jeezy's hit debut album, "Let's Get It: Thug Motivation 101," peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard album charts. On one of his songs he raps, "Get it? Jeezy the Snowman / I'm iced out, plus I got that snow, man."
The shirt was first produced solely for Jeezy by Miskeen Originals, a hip-hop fashion firm in New Jersey, the company says. The owner, Yaniv Zaken, says his artists produced a handful for the rapper to wear on TV appearances.
They then sold a larger batch to retailers, but pulled them when Zaken discovered that his employees had not licensed the T-shirt from Jeezy.
"I wasn't sure what the snowman meant until the artist explained to me that it was a drug dealer, the man delivering snow," Zaken said. "Now everyone is selling the snowman Â? all unlicensed. It's become a street-hood hit worldwide."
A spokesman for Young Jeezy's record label, Def Jam Records, confirmed that the rapper held the rights to the snowman image but declined to comment on complaints that it was sending children the wrong message.
"This is part of a phenomena in which parents have no idea what their children are exposed to. There is a code that children are aware of but not parents," says Sue Rusche, president and CEO of the anti-drug group National Families In Action.
Rusche's organization has tried to pressure companies that they believed were targeting children with drug messages, like fashion companies marketing "heroin chic" in the 1990s. She was unaware of the snowman T-shirt.
Mason says he'd like to have a snowman T-shirt Â? but that his school in Brooklyn has banned it. His mother, Autherine Mason, 34, said she had been unaware of the snowman's meaning and wouldn't buy it for her son now that she knows.
Dr. Gilbert Botvin, director of the Institute for Prevention Research at Cornell University Medical College, has been studying what influences children to use drugs and alcohol. He believes that pop culture does play a role.
"The research tells us that influences coming from the media can have a profound effect on kids and influence them to use drugs," he says. "All of these things help to convey the impression that engaging in these behaviors using drugs is normal and that drugs might help you be successful or sexy or something."
Botvin says parents need to educate themselves about the media their kids are consuming and pressure schools to monitor what messages they allow students to advertise.
But sometimes it's hard to overcome the buzz on the street.
Ali Kourani, a Manhattan wholesale salesman, says the T-shirt is their top seller across the country.
"It's big money," Kourani said.
Apologies to AP News for any potential copyright infringement, but that's a story I think everyone should know about. Following is my normal means of sharing news stories, the excerpt."Electronic paper moves from sci-fi to marketplace" - 'Electronic paper' is a display technology that makes possible flexible or even rollable displays which, unlike current computer screens, can be read in bright sunlight.Remember the newspapers from the movie Minority Report (2002)? That's where electronic paper is heading - live, wireless updates. Imagine being able to close your laptop computer and have it fit into a file folder in your briefcase. Astounding. No wonder I've been following news about electronic paper since the 70s.
A number of companies are currently working on such displays -- LG.Philips LCD and Massachusetts-based E Ink announced last month that they have developed a protype 10-inch display, and Fujitsu showed a color display in July.
Philips' Polymer Vision unit aims to mass-produce a rollable 5-inch display by the end of 2006, and among the first consumer products is a watch with a curved electronic paper display from Seiko Epson, due to hit the Japanese market next year.
Electronic paper was invented in the 1970s at Xerox' Palo Alto Research Center by Nick Sheridon, who now works as research director at Xerox subsidiary Gyricon, which makes electronic paper signs.
(Yahoo! News).
Check out E Ink's explanation of the technology and then click around on that site for example applications other than signs.
