Ingrid Mwangi

The art of Ingrid Mwangi.
The collective's three solo shows last year were titled "Collective Desires", "Trophies" and "Man of War". The three theme exhibitions point towards the main issues that the artists' are dealing with currently: Firstly, questions and difficulties, on a global, collective level, of living together and overcoming cultural discrimination within the traumatic circumstance of historical and current injustices. Secondly, the use of the artists' body to generate imagery relating to these themes, the body being utilized as an interface between knowledge and insight. Thirdly, the omnipresent topic of living in a world ridden with violent conflict, destructive human action and the negative impact of media information - a desperate state which calls for attention.

C' mon

For those of you who are reading my blog, I know what you might be thinking o gosh, fashion oh c'mon. Like I said its about the stuff that rocks my boat. Just think about something that you are really passionate about, something that you do because you like to not because someone wants you too. Even better something that will makes you
wake up early on a saturday morning. Yes thats it... now we are on the same page.

Absolute creativity

Christian Dior 2007 haute couture collection

Aha!

Looks like something I have envisioned. Giles autumn/winter 2007/2008 collection
best of London fashion week.

Fashion week in India

Sonam Dubal autumn/winter 2007/2008 collection
I like his use of color and fabric, rich colors and textures very refreshing.

Analyzing business plans

I found this great blog...fashion incubator, she is serious about her stuff, I found this bit of advise inspiring it stirred me up inside, answered some of the questions that have been bogging me down so I am keeping it here for future reference, thanks whoever you are...

Based on the comments from visitors to part one of this series, I realize I should have I recommended that you read Factoring invoices: financing a fashion line and Financing fashion: 10 mistakes designers make as well as part one of this series. You may also wish to read about a bare bones but modest and simple business plan in How to start a clothing line. Picking up where we left off in the sample business plan, the bulleted list of long term goals are:

Long-term goals:

* Develop a leading market position
* Begin foreign sales in markets such as England, and France
* Sustain the commitment to the quality of the end product through quality fabric, workmanship, and design.
* Increase sales beyond the $1 million mark by 2011

I don't think it's very productive to scrutinize these goals because it's the long term goals that change the most and we all know it. How many of us even had a plan when we started? It seems that anybody I know who's succeeded -success is a process, not a goal- has fallen into it. It's rarely planned. Still, assuming we'd had business plans, would the long term goals we would have written yesteryear resemble anything like how things turned out? It's doubtful. Accordingly, I'm analyzing the long term goals in matters of form and cognition, rather than questioning the viability of the ideas.

The line reading "develop a leading market position" doesn't mean anything to me so I'll pass. Selling in foreign markets is just dandy. Most US citizens tend to be leery of shipping off shore. It is far away and it's scary. I think it's great if people look to develop relationships abroad. After all, the best way to practice what you preach is through commerce. That renders the longest lasting social change. However, I don't think I would have itemized England and France specifically but rather, would have referred to the EU . There's not much difference in selling to France than there is to selling to most countries within the EU. Saying so makes us look less provincial.

The point on committing to product quality, I really don't know what that means either, other than that in the long term, the commitment to quality will be sustained. One would hope this would be the case so I don't know that you need to say so unless you were planning to actually increase product quality by some easily communicated standard. Say, a goal to go from producing mid range sportswear up to bridge or something like that. I'd include that but otherwise, I'd leave it out. Add another bullet point of marketing mumbo-jumbo if you need to fill some whitespace because I agree that a 3 point bullet list looks kind of wimpy. You have to put in something; everyone's uncertain of the long term and resists writing it down lest we be tortured by posterity.

The last line though (increase sales beyond $1M) deserves an aside; not to say that a million in sales isn't doable because it is. It's worth discussing in another way, that the numbers in your plan must all agree. I realize this isn't a spreadsheet but even soft numbers have to be in agreement. For example,

* the short term goals list first year sales of $125K
* the mid level goals list an annual growth rate of 25%
* the long term goals list sales of $1M in five years.

If you project 25% annual sales growth, based on $125,000, the result will not equal anywhere near a million dollars in five years. Even though these are soft numbers, they have to add up. Otherwise, any projections or legitimate research you may have included with your plan will be considered equally suspect. The math in your soft copy matters; if your math is off, your plan doesn't look well thought out or well constructed. And just because you didn't notice it doesn't mean that nobody else won't notice it either. I see this in business plans all the time .

By the way, $1 million in sales is not unreasonable in the fifth year, depending on what you're doing. It helps if you're selling pricier goods. Pushing the upper limits, I wouldn't consider projected sales of close to 3 million in five years unreasonable. I mean, it'd be ambitious. You could do it if you had it together, were growing responsibly (cutting to order) and staying private. By private, I mean growing according to growth rather than pushing it. Some people are tempted to find and take on investors and potential partners but the best advice I ever got was, don't take on partners if you can avoid it. I feel like I've dodged a bullet with all the horror stories I've heard about partnerships. Over half of all partnerships -like marriages- don't survive and you'll have to get a divorce. Again like marriage, some divorces are amicable and some aren't. By the way, divorcing partnerships are a big source of design theft. Maybe not design theft but the ownership of the intellectual property (designs and patterns) is often contested and it's not uncommon for ex-partners to compete with each other (at least initially) drawing from the same well. Not pretty. I'm sure you all have plenty of partnership horror stories too.

Hollywood goes to Africa

Here is a list of movies by hollywood made in Africa a dose of "fiction or "reality" presented through their lenses.

The African Queen UK/USA (1951)
John Huston, takes us on a great adventure navigating a small boat through Africa during WW1. Humphrey Bogart is the ever drunk captain who has to put up with themissionary played by Katharine Hepburn.

The Ghost and The Darkness USA (1996)
This action drama is based on a true story from 1898, when the British were constructing the railroad through Kenya (view photos from Kenya). Man-eating lions killed several workers and british engineers. The movie describes the Africans with the same ignorance as common hundred years ago, but it is still good old-fashioned action. Val Kilmer and Michael Douglas stars in the movie, which is shot on location in South Africa and Kenya.

King Solomon's Mines USA (1937)
The classic story of white hunter Allan Quartermain who takes the job of helping a young woman to find her lost husband somewhere deep inside Africa.

King Solomon's Mines USA (1950)
The best of the Solomon movies. Story is the same: Qartermain falling in love with the woman he is guiding through the wild and dangerous Africa. Starring Deboarh Kerr and Stewart Granger. Filmed on location in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Congo and USA.

King Solomon's Mines USA (1985)
The worst of the 3 versions features Richard Chamberlain and Sharon Stone. Mainly fails because it tries to copy the style from Indiana Jones. Several script errors, bad dialogue and directing. Some of the film is shot on location in Zimbabwe.

Congo USA (1995)
Directed by Frank Marshall
A silly adventure-action-horror film based on a book by Michael Crichton. The story is actually a modernised version of king Solomon's Mines with a touch of King Kong, Indiana Jones, Jurrassic Park, Aliens and a "talking" plastic gorilla on top of it all! Does it sound bad? It sure is. Parts of the movie are filmed on location in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda.

Mogambo USA (1953)
Directed by John Ford. A great Hollywood cast of Clark Gable, Ava Gardner and Grace Kelly.

Hatari! USA (1962)
Adventure film with John Wayne, directed by Howard Hawks. A group of men are making their living from trapping animals and selling them to zoo's in Europe and America. A woman shows up. She is a wildlife photographer and questions the mens methods. Filmed mainly in the national parks of Tanzania.

The Snows Of Kilimanjaro USA (1952)
A wounded writer rethinks his life while waiting for relief. Gregory Peck stars in this movie based on the short story by Ernest Hemingway. Not much is actually shot on location in Africa.

The Last Safari USA (1967)
Stewart Granger is onece again the great white hunter. He is hunting a giant elephant which killed his best friend. Filmed on location in Kenya and directed by Henry Hathaway.

Shaft in Africa USA (1973)
Starring: Richard Roundtree
Directed by John Guillermin
The third "blaxploitation" movie with Shaft takes him back to the African continent to infiltrate modern day slave business and bring it down. No great film, but funny and interesting if you are interested in how black Americans were portrayed in films in the early seventies.

A Far Off Place USA (1993)
Family adventure/drama directed by Danish Michael Solomon for Disney Pictures(!) Shot in Namibia and Zimbabwe.

Tarzan USA (1999)
The animated Disney version of the Tarzan story. Don't expect to see any Africans in this story. I guess it doesn't need further introduction.

Sheena USA (1984)
This female version of Tarzan was first put on the screen in 1955 and like Tarzan, Sheena was created as a comic book figure. Directed by John Guillermin and starring Tanya Roberts as the orphaned blond girl growing up with an African tribe. Stereotypic, as can be expected, and skinny plot. Some audience (mostly male) will enjoy watching a half-naked Queen of the jungle riding on the zebras and fighting bandits. The story takes place in a fictitious African state, but was filmed on location in Kenya.

Sahara USA (1943)
World War 2 fought in the Sahara. starring Humphrey Bogart, but not very much about Africa.

* Out Of Africa
* I Dreamed of Africa
* Cry Freedom
* White Hunter Black Heart
* Gorillas in the Mist
* Black Hawk Down
* Amistad
* The Constant Gardener
* The Last King of Scotland
* Blood Diamond

Conceptual Style

GENIUS the cloths change, they get longer or shorter depending on time, or altogether disappear how is that for a wardrobe malfuction!

Hussein Chalayan s/s 2007, transformed www.style.com
For his s/s 2007 show presented in Paris earlier this week, Hussein Chalayan astonished the crowd with self-contained fashion retrospectives - garments that transformed themselves to represent styles from chosen eras. The magic was made possible by a collaboration between Chalayan and the team behind special effects for Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, who microchipped the garments to perform to the tune of the designer’s vision.

Chalayan is the first big-name designer to inject this kind of technology into fashion, forging the inevitable path ahead. There’s really no telling which direction the industry will take with this first effort. A few considerations regarding the use of technology in garment design with a purely creative intent (apart from functional intents such as RFID chipping for monitoring inventory or theft prevention, nanotech swarms repairing fabric tears and weaving computer and communications technology into the textiles):

1. How will the market respond?

2. Technology of this sort will probably not escape the fickleness of patent law and its stifling of creativity.

3. The possibilities of personalizing clothes are endless, opening up a whole new dimension for bespoke.

Mixed in with the novelty shapeshifting garments in Chalayan’s collection were wearable clothes, appropriate for the s/s season (which deserve mention later). If patent infringement nonsense doesn’t stifle the magic and hinder progress from the example he has set, there will come a day when the integration of technology in garment design will be seamless and practical, and will rightfully be defined as ready-to-wear.

figures

Pan African Film Festival

Its going to be at the Black Arts festival in Atlanta. On 7/20/07 to 7/29/07 at 12:00am.


The NBAF brings the popular Los Angeles-based Pan African Film Festival, the largest event in the United States dedicated to the exhibition of Black films to the Southeast for the National Black Arts Festival.

This festival within the Festival features films from across the Diaspora - the United States, Africa, the Caribbean, South America, Latin America, Europe, the South Pacific and Canada.

The Pan African Film Festival (PAFF) is a magnificant opportunity to move beyond the cineplex and experience the images, issues, imagination, intensity and artistry of people of African descent through this cinematic showcase.

Festival Location
Woodruff Arts Center/Rich Theatre
1280 Peachtree St. NE
Atlanta, GA 30309


7/20/07 to 7/29/07 at 12:00am

kwani

A few people got laid off at work, what happened to job security? It sucks!
I know this is pathetic and so is the nature of the current situation. Excuse the sulking, I need an outlet...It seems like the designers in the London fashion week were having a pathetic time too.

Fashion inspiration1

images to inspire

What is web 2.0 ?

Lately I have been hearing about web 2.0 so I decided to do a little walking, I found this article which made me curious to dive deeper, I was dissappointed at some of the assumptions the author makes. It seems to me as if he does not like to admit that web technology has evolved from memorising tags in HTML to basically just clicking on a layout and viola! a blog/web page (o.k its not that simple) has been created. For some designers this comes in very handy since they get to spend less time writing code, although its important to know both. He argues that "just because you know every programming language out there, from PHP to Ruby, that doesn’t make you a designer; "...read on.

This may seem a strange statement coming from someone who has designed a few sites that may be deemed as Web2.0 but there’s a big confusion as to what exactly Web2.0 means.

So what does it really mean? Everyone is talking about it but it has different connotations for each person. What originally started out as a label for a set of technologies, later expanded to include a specific graphical look and even a general philosophy on interaction methods. As far as technology goes, web founder Tim Berners-Lee said it best: “this ‘Web 2.0,’ it means using the standards which have been produced by all these people working on Web 1.0.” So nothing new here, except, maybe, that the continuous evolution of browsers may have finally enabled the use of those technologies as it was meant from the beginning. In any case, the tools were finally developed and they suddenly provided the regular user with a lot more power than before; and with all this new found power, be it in the form of blogs, social networking solutions, wikis or content publishing and sharing systems, came a new breed of internet thinking, which some may refer to as the Web2.0 philosophy. It’s all about empowering the user as an active contributor of information in ways that are so straightforward that anyone can do it. Whereas a few years ago, you had to have at least some basic knowledge about HTML to put together and publish a few texts and images, now it’s as simple as a few clicks.

We now have myriads of users actively publishing content on the internet; but when it’s so easy to do it and all the barriers have been removed, what will the user do with this absolute freedom, especially considering his general lack of whatever publishing skills were necessary before? Too much freedom can be dangerous and the user will eventually abuse it. Just take a look at MySpace or other similar sites to see what I’m talking about. The designer’s nightmare is upon us – users are given the power to choose layout, colors, fonts, and all the flashy gimmicks they want.

All this freedom is not a bad thing in itself. What’s bad is that its results are mimicked in an attempt to gain from all this Web2.0 hype: “We want our site to look more like a ‘do-it-yourself’ type so that people will know it’s new and cool and Web2.0”. Trends have always been set by leaders and who are the leaders of this movement? Sites like MySpace, YouTube or FaceBook, who have generated an enormous amount of hype but, in the end, have done so through their innovative concepts and certainly not through their design, which is sub par at best.

This recent empowerment also led to a false sense of knowledge for a lot of people who otherwise don’t have anything in common with the intricacies of high quality design. Just because you’ve been browsing the web since the 14.4K modem, that doesn’t make you a designer; just because you know every programming language out there, from PHP to Ruby, that doesn’t make you a designer; just because you’re running 5 blogs and a very successful YouTube account, that doesn’t make you a designer; just because you know by heart every effect and filter available in Photoshop, that still doesn’t make you a designer.

I’m going to stress this one more time: Web2.0 is not about design, it’s about the quality of the interaction methods and the principles behind those have seen little change since the beginning of the web, whereas design trends come and go all the time. Quality interactive design is still what it’s all about, maybe even more today than before.

African Fashion designer

Here is the list of Designers, post is still in progress. I am living vicariously through them but not for long.

Kenya| African Heritage,Kikoromeo

Uganda| sylvia owori's http://www.sylviaowori.com/

South Africa| Sun goddess

North Africa.

Embarking on the fashion b/ed

So You Want to Start Your Own Clothing Line some of the things to consider...How big the market is for your product- revenue, units, average selling price, etc.

Who is your target market? Imagine who you want to sell to and who your perfect customer is. Describe them in detail.

What are your customer's needs? You can find this out by conducting surveys or interviewing people in the industry

What are the different segments of your target market (by needs, demographics, etc)

How are you going to market to these customers? (through what type of media or message)

What are the best channels to sell to these customers - retail, wholesale, or distributors?

Kenyan Film

I am guilty of not utilizing my skills in this area, this article made me go hmmm you have a point. We as Africans need to tell our own stories. Its very doable it can be low budget

Kenyan Film Industry Written by Amina Mohamed Monday, 23 April 2007

Last month Nigerian films made a sweep at the African Movie Academy Awards. Incidentally, only one film from Kenya was nominated, Voice in the Bin for Best Film.

A quick glance at the nominees shows that Nigerians had the most number of nominees in any category. Nigerian films have become increasingly popular in Kenya and the rest of Africa.

Every street corner has hundreds of these films-- a dime a dozen. When I first watched them I was amused by the Nigerian character. However, the charm soon wore off and the yelling and juju-filled stories only irritate me. There are not too many African films to write home about, however, Totsi from a few years ago comes to mind as a great story.

Too many times we criticise Hollywood for misrepresenting us, for telling our story, not through our eyes, but through theirs. Many of us criticize Hollywood films, even if slightly accurate in historical context, such as Blood Diamond and all the renditions of Idi Amin and other African dictators. For even if our rulers were evil, even if some of our past and present is not glorious we would rather not have Hollywood retell that story. At the same time, it isn't Hollywood's responsibility to tell our story.

I am not much of a movie buff, but a well-produced African film, especially a Kenyan one, would appeal very much to me. The film industry is undoubtedly an expensive venture. Bollywood and Nollywood , in their growing industries, have both shown that on a low budget one can still produce a film.

According to a recent report by ComMattersKenya Limited, 80 per cent of television programs are foreign, while almost 100 per cent of films shown at the cinema are foreign. One would think that the Kenya Film Commission (KFC) aims at creating an opportunity for Kenyan films, and growth for Kenyan film producers and actors and actresses. However, KFC's goal is much like that of the Kenyan Tourism Board, that to sell Kenya's image to Hollywood in what a great locale Kenya is.

Kenya is not without talent. A few years ago, a young Kenyan man produced a film that has been critically acclaimed-- HipHop Colony. Other noteworthy film producers and directors include: Njeri Karago and Judy Kibinge. Last year, the program Lola Kenya Screen gave an opportunity for budding Kenyan youth to produce animation films. Out of this came a complitation of nine films that in March won the Africa Grand Prize for achievement in a film made by children at t the fifth World Summit on Media for Children, held in Johannesburg.

The argument has been, for many, that films are too expensive to produce. However, Nollywood, Bollywood and Independent films across the world have proved that low-budget films are possible. Digital video recording, and increased access to technology will make what was an impossible feat a few years ago, a dream within reach.

While we must not follow all the way in Nollywoods steps, we could take a step or two in their direction. Following the history of Nollywood it is not difficult to see why its rise, albeit critism of poor quality, has resulted in its growth.

So, how about a movie with a real story, afterall, "Kenya is not just about fast running men and giraffes."

Fashion as art

I read this article by a fashionista who was wondering why the heck designers tend to create bizzare cloths such as these... well if you ever read my blog its because its just an expression of their artistic creative talent. I personally like the fact that they are so out there.

Digital Viral fashion

HMMM... very cool in theory? great digital media project. No more laundry maybe. Read on... According to MIT researchers, fashion in the physical world is moving at a much slower pace than online. "[In the online world,] fashion has been moving faster and faster as communication systems become faster and faster," said Judith Donath, director of the Sociable Media Group at the MIT Media Lab, who is conducting this research with student Christine M. Liu.

Urbanhermes defines a communicative fashion framework that would ultimately consist of OLED-integrated clothing material that could display digital images and designs, updating whenever the user desired. For instance, a T-shirt could be solid blue one day and striped the next, she said.

These digital images could then be transmitted wirelessly to clothing worn by other people, thereby creating a sort of viral fashion, propagating in much the same way a virus does online. Each piece of clothing, in this example, would also have user-set permissions that could allow/disallow this propagation, or enforce a degradation of images upon transmission, ensuring that the original artwork is always the best quality.

The key to Urbanhermes, Donath explained, is to bring this propagation speed to the physical world so that changing the pattern displayed on your shirt or pants would be as simple as absorbing fashion from the person next to you, or even subscribing to a feed from a designer.

"In the physical world, fashion is not limited by the communication rate [like an RSS feed] but by material," Donath said. "People can't discard their clothing on a daily basis."

The proof-of-concept, which Donath admitted is simplistic, consists of a Sharp Zaurus PDA woven into a messenger bag. The LCD screen of the Zaurus, which features a Linux-based development platform, is visible through a clear plastic window. The device uses Bluetooth and infrared technology for proximity detection and data transmission.

While the idea of OLED-integrated clothing is not new -- the military has been researching adaptive camouflage for years -- the MIT approach to fashion and viral propagation is innovative.

Flickr, which is an website dedicated to photo sharing, is an example of electronic fashion, according to Donath. Images on Flickr's photo feeds change on a real time basis, and are propagated via the Internet. One method to display Flickr fashion, for example, would be to stream an RSS feed of community-supplied images from Flickr to a desktop PC to display as a screensaver.

"[With Urbanhermes,] the notion of fast fashion, as we've seen it on blogs and on Flickr, can migrate to the physical world of face-to-face urban integration," Donath said.

The Scramble for Africa

Yinka Shonibare

Art Sophisticate from Indonesia to Africa.

I was thinking of how African art, has evolved...or not.
well I guess it depends on where you are looking. At the Venice Biennale only the most "sophisticated" artists get invited. The craftsman who reproduces "art" for tourist commercial art, or colonial or tourist art has no place. I was delving into this subject trying to define my space. For a while it seemed as if thats all I saw. I was trying to understand why it seemed so post colonial, from gallery watatu, to African colours. I came to the conclusion that it was nolstagia driven. Don't get me wrong I came accross some phenomenal pieces like the Zimbabwean sculptures, saw quite a few of them at the airport in Atlanta Rodin step aside. They are massive and very expressive, not as predictable as the thinker. I like the thinker but what really blows me away about it is its massive larger than life size, Cest tout.

Back to the the Biennale my most favourite artist Yinka Shonibare, all his art is closely related to fashion. His statues wear the so called African fabric which is from Indonesia. The fabric got assimilated into the west African market and become the so called African batik, the Europeans come, with it from the Netherlands where its mass produced. Ever wonder why the batiks from Indonesia look so African?

Oumou Sy

Oumou Sy from Senegal is one of the most important African designers. She knows all techniques for making fabrics, coloring them and fashioning: her art of making clothes begins with weaving, dying, stitching. Oumou Sy combines fabric with materials like metal and vinyl and connects traditional African dessins with Western elements and motifs - sometimes the products have their own humor.

Kenya's fashion week

Nostalgia, enough said...

A tasty Mandazi

I want this book...

In his book "A Tasty Maandazi" Kwame Nyongo highlights contemporary life in Africa, through this day in the life of a young boy, Masu, in a coastal Kenyan town in this coming of age story.

Artistic goodness

Found this article, very inspiring... Somerset Community College art instructor Darlene Libbey worked with some 40 children in the Mathare Children's Art Program located in the slums of Nairobi, Kenya. The program was started by Jacob Watchira, a Kenyan artist who spent the Spring Semester of 2006 visiting the University of Kentucky and SCC.

Wangechi Mutu

Wangechi's art has stepped out of the typical kenyan art, which mostly mirrors a nolstagic representation of precolonial (traditional) life.

Text written by SFMOMA

Wangechi Mutu, a Kenyan-born artist based in New York, makes luscious yet unsettling pictures of female figures. Her painted and collaged works on Mylar function as potent social critique while simultaneously exploring more poetic strains of mythology and allegory as well as the sensuousness of form, color, and pattern. Particularly interested in myths about gender and ethnicity that have long circulated in Africa and the West, Mutu has adopted the medium of collage — which by its nature evokes rupture and collision — to depict the monstrous, the exotic, and the feminine.

For those who missed my Show.

well here is a peek.
(O.K dreams are free, one of this fine days)
This is sylvia owori's show very talented
Ugandan I am living vicariously through her.

Fashion week in South Africa

Yes its fashion week in Cape town.

Motorized baiskeli

so cool Motorized baiskeli...made in Kisumu uses petrol.

African toys

I found this blog on wire toys, that boys used to make...

http://www.afrigadget.com/2007/02/15/african-truck-toys/

I think someone else is making big bucks from those ideas.
Patents anyone?

Fashion in Africa

The biggest contenders, Nokia face of Africa....more to come

Okay, I should have done this.

Film on all the issues, I have made short documentaries on.
http://www.artmatters.info/film/theday.htm

Start ups in Kenya

I was so impressed by this blog I just have to share it. Some good things are happening at home, even though we mostly hear about the problems, the complaints, the comparisons... this is like a breath of fresh air. Najivunia kuwa Mkenya.

http://startupkenya.blogspot.com/

kenyan blogs

I like this site formerly by pundits from Harvard, mostly political. Good resource for people like who don't read kenyan new daily, oops.
http://www.kenyanpundit.com/

God of the genome

This would have been a perfect title for my digital media installation on mapping the human genome project.

I am always fascinated by this kind of articles, yes they are those that claim to be atheists, if there is no God, how do explain ...everything? that encompasses all the examples I was thinking of but obviously its everything I cant even isolate one event...infinity where would I even begin...Oh I remembered something about those creatures from Darwins theory of evolution, yes dinosaurs, some scientists discovered that, the creatures were hybrids of bones collected from different species, yeah go figure.
After so many theories the truth still remains a supreme being, God created the universe.

I found this article which I just had to add to my blog.

Editor's note: Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D., is the director of the National Human Genome Research Institute. His most recent book is "The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief."

ROCKVILLE, Maryland (CNN) -- I am a scientist and a believer, and I find no conflict between those world views.

As the director of the Human Genome Project, I have led a consortium of scientists to read out the 3.1 billion letters of the human genome, our own DNA instruction book. As a believer, I see DNA, the information molecule of all living things, as God's language, and the elegance and complexity of our own bodies and the rest of nature as a reflection of God's plan.

I did not always embrace these perspectives. As a graduate student in physical chemistry in the 1970s, I was an atheist, finding no reason to postulate the existence of any truths outside of mathematics, physics and chemistry. But then I went to medical school, and encountered life and death issues at the bedsides of my patients. Challenged by one of those patients, who asked "What do you believe, doctor?", I began searching for answers.

I had to admit that the science I loved so much was powerless to answer questions such as "What is the meaning of life?" "Why am I here?" "Why does mathematics work, anyway?" "If the universe had a beginning, who created it?" "Why are the physical constants in the universe so finely tuned to allow the possibility of complex life forms?" "Why do humans have a moral sense?" "What happens after we die?"

I had always assumed that faith was based on purely emotional and irrational arguments, and was astounded to discover, initially in the writings of the Oxford scholar C.S. Lewis and subsequently from many other sources, that one could build a very strong case for the plausibility of the existence of God on purely rational grounds. My earlier atheist's assertion that "I know there is no God" emerged as the least defensible. As the British writer G.K. Chesterton famously remarked, "Atheism is the most daring of all dogmas, for it is the assertion of a universal negative."

But reason alone cannot prove the existence of God. Faith is reason plus revelation, and the revelation part requires one to think with the spirit as well as with the mind. You have to hear the music, not just read the notes on the page. Ultimately, a leap of faith is required.

For me, that leap came in my 27th year, after a search to learn more about God's character led me to the person of Jesus Christ. Here was a person with remarkably strong historical evidence of his life, who made astounding statements about loving your neighbor, and whose claims about being God's son seemed to demand a decision about whether he was deluded or the real thing. After resisting for nearly two years, I found it impossible to go on living in such a state of uncertainty, and I became a follower of Jesus.

So, some have asked, doesn't your brain explode? Can you both pursue an understanding of how life works using the tools of genetics and molecular biology, and worship a creator God? Aren't evolution and faith in God incompatible? Can a scientist believe in miracles like the resurrection?

Actually, I find no conflict here, and neither apparently do the 40 percent of working scientists who claim to be believers. Yes, evolution by descent from a common ancestor is clearly true. If there was any lingering doubt about the evidence from the fossil record, the study of DNA provides the strongest possible proof of our relatedness to all other living things.

But why couldn't this be God's plan for creation? True, this is incompatible with an ultra-literal interpretation of Genesis, but long before Darwin, there were many thoughtful interpreters like St. Augustine, who found it impossible to be exactly sure what the meaning of that amazing creation story was supposed to be. So attaching oneself to such literal interpretations in the face of compelling scientific evidence pointing to the ancient age of Earth and the relatedness of living things by evolution seems neither wise nor necessary for the believer.

I have found there is a wonderful harmony in the complementary truths of science and faith. The God of the Bible is also the God of the genome. God can be found in the cathedral or in the laboratory. By investigating God's majestic and awesome creation, science can actually be a means of worship.

What is your take on this commentary?

want a raise...

Yes I want a raise, so I am keeping this for my records...

More money is good, right? You're going to be doing your job anyway, so you might as well ask to get paid more for doing it.

But you actually have to do a lot of preparation in order to ask for a raise effectively. The most obvious preparation is to find out what everyone else is getting paid for what you do. A recent New York Times story gives a good overview of online resources for salary comparisons.

Here are five other things you can do to get a salary increase:

1. Understand your boss's perspective.

This is not a moment of truth, it's a moment of negotiation. You convince your boss you're worth more and your boss convinces you he or she is fair, and you reach some sort of compromise that makes everyone happy.

So be reasonable in your approach. You don't deserve a raise just because you've been doing your job well for x number of months. It's your job to do your job well -- that's why you were hired. You need to show that you're doing more than you were hired to do, or that you're doing different work that's typically paid at a higher rate.

Gather as much information about your boss's perspective as possible in order to form your strongest negotiating position. Consider this list of 10 things bosses hate most about employees.

2. Expand your job duties.

Get really good at your job immediately so that you can take on more responsibility in another job, in another capacity. Look around for something more to do, and figure out how to do it. Then tell your boss you're doing more than one job and you want to be paid extra for doing the other job you've already been doing.

If you think your boss will balk at the idea of you taking on more responsibility, start looking like your current job is under control. One way to do this is to have a completely clean desk. A clean desk says, "I'm totally on top of my workload. Please give me more." A cluttered desk says, "Help. I'm drowning."

(I'm not making this stuff up -- researchers actually study offices. Here's a summary of why you should have a clean desk.)

3. Consistently over-deliver.

Even during a salary freeze there's always more money for superstars, because losing a superstar costs a company a lot of money. So getting a raise is about conveying to the office that you're a superstar. This could be in the form of taking on more areas of responsibility, but it could also be in the form of exceeding expectations in a very obvious way.

Exceeding expectations is something that must be announced. If you finish your project, that's what people will understand. If you finish your project with incredible results, you need to remind everyone what the expectations were and what you delivered. If you don't toot your horn, no one else will. A hallmark of a superstar is they know how to toot their horn with out being annoying.

Superstars aren't overnight sensations -- they work at it. So start performing like a superstar six months before you want to ask for a raise.

4. Get a mentor.

Employees who have mentors are twice as likely to be promoted as those who don't, according to Ellen Fagenson Eland, a professor at George Mason University. A mentor can help you position yourself, time and again, to receive a raise.

An effective mentor helps you see your path in a way that maximizes your talents and stays consistent with your goals for life. This isn't small task, and almost all successful people say they have more than one mentor. But start with one, because that will significantly increase the likelihood that you'll get the raise you're going to ask for.

Unfortunately, for some people finding a mentor is almost as difficult as asking for a raise. So here are seven ways to find and keep a mentor.

5. Think in non-financial terms.

If more money isn't happening for you, try asking for something else. Telecommuting, a job for your spouse, extra vacation time, training, even relocation to a company branch in a city with a lower cost of living -- these are all things that are worth a lot of money to you, but look a lot less expensive than a salary increase in a company's budget. So non-financial rewards are a good place to compromise in salary negotiations.

Also, you can turn these benefits to cash next time you change jobs. When you negotiate salary at your next company and they ask you how much you made in your last job, add up all the benefits and include them in the number you give. Some people's benefits total up to 30 percent of their salary.

If the shy ones among you are thinking this isn't a fair negotiating tactic, get that thought out of your head. Even CareerHub, a group blog of career coaches, recommends that you include benefits in the total calculation of your salary next time you negotiate.

It's Not Just About Money

If none of these steps work, try not to be so obsessed with getting a raise. Think about it -- most raises amount to about 4 percent of your salary. That's nothing. Even if you earn six figures, 4 percent isn't going to be life-altering.

There are so many more things you can ask for that will actually improve your life, like training in a skill area you're interested in, or the ability to telecommute a few days a week.

Try focusing on the things that really matter to you instead of the dollar amount attached to your title. You may find that your salary will increase as a natural offshoot of the passion you develop for your work.

Caught the bouquet at a friends wedding, I was elated!

I have a passion for art, I recently found an image of an artist I used to work for back in the day I could not resist posting it. His name is Expedito Mwebe, really good artist I thought until I read this...Expedito mostly works in wood, etching, carving, crafting and creating incredible doors, panels and wood relief wall hangings that are three dimensional in effect. Using rich mahogany woods from Uganda and Congo, Expedito’s intricate wood incising has a subtle yet warm effect which will fill one whole room at the Kampala Serena. Covering his walls with surreal sorts of water creatures [including everything from mudfish to crested crane], Expedito’s designs are in keeping with the hotel’s motif of rivers and waterfalls such as one finds all over Uganda. In another article they called him a genius. I must say I have done searches on him before but this was the first tome in years that I was able to find an article on him, not to mention they placed the wrong name under this image.

back to blogging

Its been a while, I am back...ready to blog. This is going to be fun.

First and foremost, my most current project www.mappingfgm.com
site about the horrible reality of fgm