So here it is, 2011. I’m hesitant to make resolutions, but believe that it is a good time to reevaluate decisions and actions. For the future, I’m going to try to procrastinate less and act on more. My tendency is to continually review and rewrite, to the point where I forget where I was going and take a break. Once I return from my break, there’s no way I could ever remember where I was going with a particular thought and so I delete everything or leave it as a draft for later publishing.

I already failed at daily photographic updates for the year, but will probably do another month of updates in February. I may even do a comparison with photographs from last year, when I did manage an update for every day in February. Looking back on those photographs, I can see a marked difference in the way I look. At that point, I had already lost 40 or so lb. and was well on the way to losing more. It’s amazing what I can do when I put my mind to it.

This is an issue close to me. I work in airport technology and have worked closely with both airlines in the past. I also have friends working for both airlines and their respective regional partners (ExpressJet and SkyWest). I’m hopeful for all of them, but there’s still that doubt.

As for all the hope, there’s one thing that stands out as bad from the outset and that’s branding. They have decided to keep Continental’s livery, which is pretty nice and Continental’s logotype, with the word United in place of Continental. The results are disappointing to say the least. For all the love I have for Continental, their branding doesn’t feature. United’s logotype is much stronger, even without the tulip/U mark. Even taking elements of both would be much better. If they’re going for color reduction, make it all blue, just ditch the stacked right justified serif font. It works to an extent with the words ‘Continental Airlines’, because ‘Continental’ is a larger word, but with the smaller ‘United’ on top, it just looks wrong.

Now, I’m a sucker for sans-serif in general, but I can appreciate strong branding with serif fonts too – US Airways for example. Even the old United branding with the small caps serif font was better (even if the dark grey livery is terrible). Maybe it’s the title case, maybe it’s the positioning, maybe it’s the typeface. All these things are possible, but it seems somehow lazy, almost as if the designer had the original Illustrator file to hand and just replaced the airline name without doing anything else. It also seems somewhat anachronistic. It won’t be able to stand the test of time, because it has failed to do so from the start.

The new airline needs a strong identity and, frankly, this is not it.

The biggest thing I took away from this show (and other related research) is that the USDA guidelines and supplied foods are total and utter crap. Our kids are being force-fed this grain filled trash all week long. Should anyone try to deviate from this and feed some real food, then they had better add some extra bread lest they fall short of the ridiculously huge grain allotment. This exact scenario happened at one point. Jamie was feeding the kids with his new menu and had to add some rolls just to be compliant with the guidelines. I could see the disgust and disbelief in his face when he was told this. The huge amounts of processed foods are also pretty scary, especially since he discovered that the same supplier can also supply fresh food just as easily.

He’s certainly had an impact, and has made people start thinking and talking about this and that’s fantastic. I’m just worried it’s going to get derailed by focussing on the easy scapegoat that is fat.

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via ethicurean.com

Inspring story about a permanent indoor farmer’s market in Ohio.

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