A classic vintage yellow fit

 FASHIONS GLOBAL IMPACT | THE REBEL MENTALITY

By: Veronica Anderson

With the world in turmoil, it makes sense that there has been such a huge rise in
rebellious and extreme fashions in recent years. It seems that even on the runways, the
blend of couture with the extreme has been much more prominent in recent years. It may
not seem entirely obvious when looking at celebrities or magazines where spring means
floral and fall means jewel tones, but upon closer inspection the blend of high fashion and
the subculture is evident. It seems that everything now is covered in leather, studs, spikes,
and chains. These things used to be reminiscent of rebellion, and yet somehow they are
starting to become common items.

If you walk down the street, you will see dozens of people sporting radical hairstyles
and hair colors, spikes, and tattoos. When did all this start happening? The media used
to portray people who dressed a little more on the extreme side as rebels, but seems to
have taken a liking to their ideas more recently. It is possible to draw a link between the
younger generation taking a stand and asserting themselves as well as their new ideas and
the huge rise in popularity and social acceptability of their sometimes radical fashions.
When you walk into stores now, there are purses with studs on them and shoes with
spikes. While this may not be a great example of the full extent of these extreme fashions,
a blend of edgy and more conservative looks are becoming more popular.

Strangely enough, the state of the economy was once thought to be evident in women’s
hemlines, short meaning thriving and long meaning a weaker economy. This no longer
seems to be the case. The cause of this may be a blend of a failing economy and stress
around the world with a newfound fondness for recycled fashions. Rather than spending
money on new shirts or pants, the new trend seems to be shredding them, tying them, and
otherwise repurposing them. These types of styles once used to remain mostly in punk
rock fashions and are now being worn by many different types of people. Things such
as this make it interesting to see the new blend of the subculture fashions and every day
fashions emerging from the chaos.

Handmade, organic, and locally produced clothing are also rising in popularity. Items
such as these also help blend the two fashion cultures. With so many people offering
customizable items, it is becoming so much easier for people to blend the bizarre with a
more culturally acceptable style. All of these new ideas and options are changing the way
people dress and pushing the boundaries of how it is acceptable to dress all around the
world. Whether it is economic crisis, wars around the world, the public outcry for change
or some blend of it all, it is very easy to view these struggles going on through recent
fashion.

References: http://www.australianscience.com.au/industry/economy%E2%80%99s-
impact-on-fashion/
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2008/06/02/getting-dressed.html
http://anthrostrategy.com/2011/07/24/what-subcultures-and-fashion-teach-businesses/

ARTIST | MAN OF ACTION | HUMAN

Adam Nathaniel Yauch | aka MCA

By: Billy No

I remember the days hanging out at my buddies basement, listening to him spin vinyl and blending You Got’s to Chill by EPMD into Sabotage by the Beastie Boys.  I’ve had the fortunate chance to see the Beastie Boys in Concert and had the mind blowing experience in witnessing their amazing stage presence.

http://beastieboys.com/

Rest In Peace MCA

THE DIESEL DEBATE | What do you think?

By: Kai Haas

You read the paper. You flip through periodicals. You watch the news. Lately when it comes to autos, saving oil and the environment is at the forefront of all discussion. Why then, do the headlines always read the same? The discussions dance around the same cars and alternative fuels over and over again. The talk ranges from company financials, worries about consumer acceptance, all the way to how the cars might or do perform. In this mainstream media coverage there is something missing. There’s an elephant in the room, but very few people can see it. It’s the diesel engine.

Developed by Rudolph Diesel in 1893, the engine has since been implemented in countless applications ranging from marine, military, trucks, trains and cars. The diesel engine is significantly more efficient than petroleum combustion engines for several reasons. One of them is their high compression ratio. This means more energy is converted into useable mechanical force, rather than just wasted heat. Translation: Better fuel economy. There’s many other benefits to the diesel engine as well; such as the fact that diesel fuel is much less prone to explosion and tends to be the only engine of choice for military and marine vehicles. Beyond higher safety there’s higher reliability, as the engines require no complex electrical ignition components. If you’re an engineer in the military, perhaps the number one reason you might specify diesel for your notoriously heavy and large equipment comes down to one word. Torque, and lots of it.

Torque is a twisting force. It’s most often stated in Nm or lb-ft. Diesel engines generate lots of it due to high compression, longer burn time, and usually a greater stroke to bore ratio. The problem has been that horsepower (amount of work that can be done in a period of time) has typically been very low due to many of those same factors. What that means is that diesel engines can’t spin very fast, and since horsepower is directly made from engine speed times torque, most diesel engines typically find their homes in slow moving heavy machinery or trucks. That was the past. Audi and Mercedes would like to welcome you to the future.

Audi has been winning races for years now with turbo diesel machines that would make any warm blooded creature salivate. Audi has proven diesel can equal acceleration. Now Mercedes would like Europeans to bring it home. If you want to see what the car of the future looks like, look no further than the SLK 250 CDI. Specs: 368lb-ft, 204hp, 0-60mph in 6.7s, and 57mpg fuel economy. This is a fast, fun, and sexy vehicle that is even kinder to the environment than a Toyota Prius. There’s really not much more one could ask for.

There’s a catch. You’re not going to read about it in the paper. You’re not going to see it being discussed onU.S.television. In fact, if it weren’t for online articles and journalism such as Top GearUK, people in the states might not even know it exists. Mercedes most likely isn’t going to offer it in the states, as to avoid upsetting their marketing team. So here we have the real problem at hand in waging the war on pollution; marketing, politics and greed. We have the technology staring us in the face to make gargantuan improvements in vehicle pollution, but instead the industry and government focuses all its energy on persuading consumers to buy a product that meets a sales goal and current trend in their own interest, not ours. Ridiculous discussions in the news about auto makers “struggling” with extremely trivial California emission standards do nothing more than to confuse the real issues even further.

The power of personal publishing and the internet has been used with great success to drive independent business and advertising. Now it’s time for people who know better about the automotive industry to stop sitting idle. We need to make our voices heard through the same online avenues in addition to what we purchase as consumers. The message is clear. The state of the environment is too imminent to forego real solutions in lieu of passively accepting marketing trends like hybrids and model fixing profit strategies.

We’ve already discussed how an engine platform that’s over a hundred years old is beating out today’s most advanced hybrid in terms of fuel economy. Could you imagine the pollution reduction of that same diesel engine already achieving 57mpg being run on biodiesel or WVO? How about that diesel engine coupled with a small electric motor? What’s possible in that configuration… 75mpg, 100mpg, maybe even more? Why are we waiting? It’s up to you and me to ask these questions and get answers. The automotive industry has proven that it cannot change fast enough as needed without reducing profits to a level which they refuse. Too bad profit is not a thing that nature recognizes.

I used to blame the car makers. Now I realize it’s my own responsibility to make change happen. The question is how you can make a difference right now in your actions, since cars like the Leaf are hard to come by and the Tesla isn’t even out yet. The answer is to buy advanced diesel cars such as BlueTec VW, Audi, and Mercedes models. Can’t afford those cars? Buy a used Jetta or Golf TDI. Write to Honda and ask them what’s taking them so long to release their TDI which we read about years ago in the states. Speak out. Research and talk about diesel’s benefits. Most importantly, never be satisfied or stop looking for a way to use something even better than diesel. For cars to be successful in environmental conservation, genuine progress will need to be valued by consumers over technological trends in marketing. As environmentally concerned car owners, it’s our duty to educate and help other consumers decide what genuine progress actually is.

Redefining Leadership: Going “gLocal”

By: Tanny Men

As I projected my gaze upon a class of ASU students in a Global Career Development class in February, I had an unwavering determination in my mind– be confident and compelling. In the past couple of months, I have had the opportunity to do a bit of motivational public speaking and influence some of the hearts and minds of one of the most driven and social impact conscious groups of our society. Well-known by many as Gen Y, Gen Me, Google Generation, Echo-boomers, Millennials, these titles are often associated with the new “movers and shakers” of Silicon Valley and social media, global change makers and microfinance gurus, and everything in between. But in my view, I saw them simply as future global citizens who sought to ‘do well by doing good’ across borders. As it was a humbling experience to stand up in front of an 80-student classroom and talk about my own international work experiences, it equally amounted to a critical self-reflection and an opportunity to impress upon the future peace corps volunteers, government and UN officials, international human rights lawyers, and business executives of the world.

What do I want to convey about the global workforce? Who are the most influential global leaders of this era? And what makes me qualified to give advice on global career development, an area that I myself was still trying to navigate?

With these and other questions swirling in my head, I may have overlooked my true responsibility to the students as first and foremost, their peer and a recent graduate, and second, as a young global professional. Reflecting now on my presentation, much of my inspiration came from working to help support the Oath Project and gaining some perspective on how global leaders and organizations are living the oath whether it’s through their products, services, or human resources. For one, I was running off the idea of redefining leadership, a theme that hits home for many respectable thought leaders on business and society. Although the easy thing might have been analyzing an inspirational TED talk (which was my initial intention) or making sense of abstract global challenges and social business models supporting one global cause to another, I had to ask myself how would the students relate as bright-eyed pra-cademics?

Not so long ago, I had been sitting in like-minded classes in Sweden trying to make sense of international development in theory while wishing I knew how to make an impact in practice. So I realized, my challenge to the students that day was quite simply making a connection that could inspire the intention for global work, and especially work that was physically in reach and which could be a means to redefining leadership. For this meant that, even though it was a global studies class, there is much value in first creating the foundations of how to approach local problems as global citizens. I like to think of it as going “gLocal.” So stepping outside of the mold of the tried and tested global leader idols and half way through my presentation, I flipped the switch a bit and instead challenged the students to think critically about local problems, such as working in the ASU and Arizona communities (which were inherently global anyways), and the who, what, why, where, how of potential solutions. This seemed to better stimulate the interaction and out-of-the-box thinking amongst the students, which nicely set the tone for my overall presentation on working outside the U.S.

On a deeper and more personal level, I believed I gained first from the experience of improving my public speaking abilities, and second from investing in others courage to think positively, to act and not just react, and to lead with conviction and humility. As it is especially true for all types of global citizens—CEOs, managers, teachers, lawyers, volunteers, students—that just as we arrive in foreign workplaces bringing with us input, passion, intention, and expertise, we should take care, that when our jobs are finished, to not leave with the knowledge we brought or created, but instead to harness it in the people with whom we worked. At this point in my own career development, as I push forward across international borders, I am held to my actions and interactions with the people I meet across social and economic levels based on this idea. And to this end, I hope to continue investing in myself through developing others.

References: The Oath Project: http://www.theoathproject.org/

BLENDED KIDS | THE POWER OF LANGUAGE

BLENDED KIDS | THE POWER OF LANGUAGE

By: Veronica Anderson

Interracial couples are becoming a commonplace in today’s society, and many of these couples are choosing to raise their babies in a multilingual home. Having a bilingual or multilingual child can greatly increase their brain development, sound recognition, and vocabulary. In addition to all of the immediate benefits, raising your child to be bilingual will open up a world of opportunities for them once they enter the workforce and expose them to their own or other cultures at an early age. With all of these benefits, it is hard to believe that every family is not introducing more than one language to their child after birth.

Babies begin recognizing the sound differences between languages very early in life, some believe as early as 10-12 months, which is well before they begin speaking. One common misconception about teaching your children multiple languages when they are first learning to speak is that the children will confuse the two languages. While they might use both languages in a sentence initially, it is more of a sign of a good vocabulary. They have long understood how to differentiate between the two languages, they are just using the words they know to form a sentence.  If you take advantage of this early language discrimination, it actually causes their brain to work in a very special way. Since their brain has to separate the two languages every time they speak, it causes their brain to work a little harder. Not only is this a great brain exercise, but it can help to lengthen the period of time when children can fully learn and comprehend a language.

As adults, it can be difficult to learn another language and speak it comfortably. This is because we only have a few years after we are born to be able to learn and fully understand another language. So, early exposure is very important. Studies have also shown that children from multilingual households show greater aptitude when learning to read. They are able to comprehend the connection between letters and words easier and sooner than other children. This also comes into play with problem solving. Since their brain is programmed to work a little differently than monolingual children, they have a greater ability to weed out the important information when solving problems. All in all, raising a multilingual child is something that can benefit all families for multiple reasons, and is something that should be seriously considered by all parents.

Sources:

http://www.spongelearners.com/benefits_and_advantages_of_being_bilingual

http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/09/08/baby-talk-the-benefits-of-bilingualism/

http://www.npr.org/2011/04/04/135043787/being-bilingual-may-boost-your-brain-power

BANSKY | BILLY NO | COLLABORATION

A friend of mine once said, Billy “ GRAFFITI is not a crime if you have a purpose to use it wisely.  I never understood what he meant by that, but as I got older, it became self evident that GRAFFITI is more than street art, it’s more than stunning visual spontaneity.  It’s freedom of the human mind, expressing itself freely.  The FREEDOM to express oneself, to socially impact it’s society to bring attention to the suffering of people around the world through this art form we call GRAFFITI.

Shop at BANSKY

MAKING AN IMPACT WITH DESIGN

By: Billy No

It’s obvious, that design has had an incredible impact on our society.  From the very clothes we wear, from the cars we drive down to the hand held computers we are now using to communicate with one another.  Design is not only used to create the next great gadget or shoe, but it has an important role in society to inspire the young generation to make a social impact and change how we view the world and how we interact with that world.  The decisions that we make today will determine the future for our young generation and generations to come.  I encourage all designers to find the time to utilize their talents and shine a bright light on areas in our society that need to be addressed.

Make an IMPACT!

#GRAPHICDESIGNERSUNITED

#SOCIALCHANGEMAKERS2012