Peace, Propaganda & The Promised Land: And The Slaughter Goes On

The Gaza Strip

The Gaza Strip is a rectangle along the Mediterranean coast between Israel and Egypt. The majority of its approximately 1.4 million residents are Palestinian refugees, many of whom have been living in refugee camps for decades; 80 percent were estimated to be living in poverty in mid-2007, a figure that has doubtless grown. Its population density is among the world’s highest, at an average of more than 3,000 people per square mile.

In 1967, following a war between Israel and the countries of Syiria, Jordan and Egypt, Israel military occupied the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. That year, The United Nation Security Council passed Resolution 242, calling on Israel to withdraw the troops from the occupied territories. Israel never complies. Today, 3 million Palestinians live under illegal military occupation. Today, the lives of both Israelis and Palestinians are plagued by daily violence and insecurity.

Under the Oslo peace accords signed into 1993, Gaza was turned over to the newly created Palestinian Authority, to form one wing of a nascent Palestinian state, along with the West Bank and a potential land corridor between them. Yassir Arafat, the president of the authority and leader of the Fatah movement, ruled both areas. But as the years passed, it became clear that the Fatah party had less of a hold on Gaza than on the West Bank. Hamas, the political party denounced as a terrorist group by the United States and Israel, became steadily more popular in Gaza, both because of the social services it provided and because of its more militant stance.

The History Behind Car Brands

Origins of Auto Emblems or logos

Logos and emblems are less important in the automotive world than what auto designers call “down the road graphics. The goal is that from a distance the three dimensional form of a vehicle read itself reads a flat image, a stop-action graphic. Ideally, the brand of the vehicle should be visible form the any angles. The term “Down the road graphics” have to be visible from all angles, including the most oblique ones.

6 Drinks That Change The World

Tom Standage urges drinkers to savor the history of their favorite beverages along with the taste. The author of A History of the World in 6 Glasses (Walker & Company, June 2005), Standage lauds the libations that have helped shape our world from the Stone Age to the present day.

“The important drinks are still drinks that we enjoy today,” said Standage, a technology editor at the London-based magazine the Economist. “They are relics of different historical periods still found in our kitchens.”

Take the six-pack, whose contents first fizzed at the dawn of civilization.

More Fascinating Food Facts

More fascinating food trivia:

Food is something we interact with on a daily basis – frequently in fact. There are many very obscure facts about food that are fascinating and definitely worthy of knowing. Here are another 10 interesting trivia about food following the previous one posted earlier:

The Stories Behind Hollywood Studio Logos

You see these opening logos every time you go to the movies, but have you ever wondered who is the boy on the moon in the DreamWorks logo? Or which mountain inspired the Paramount logo? Or who was the Columbia Torch Lady? Let’s find out:

1. DreamWorks SKG: Boy On The Moon

In 1994, director Steven Spielberg, Disney studio chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg, and record producer David Geffen (yes, they make the initial SKG that stands for Spielberg-Katzenberg-Geffen on the bottom of the logo) got together to found a new studio called DreamWorks.

Spielberg wanted the logo for DreamWorks to be reminiscent of Hollywood’s golden age. The logo was to be a computer generated image of a man on the moon, fishing, but Visual Effects Supervisor Dennis Muren of Industrial Light and Magic, who has worked on many of Spielberg’s films, suggested that a hand-painted logo might look better. Muren asked his friend, artist Robert Hunt to paint it.

Hunt also sent along an alternative version of the logo, which included a young boy on a crescent moon, fishing. Spielberg liked this version better, and the rest is history. Oh, and that boy? It was Hunt’s son, William.

The DreamWorks logo that you see in the movies was made at Industrial Light & Magic from paintings by Robert Hunt, in collaboration with Kaleidoscope Films (designers of the original storyboards), Dave Carson (director), and Clint Goldman (producer) at ILM.