Ok, I have to admit it… I am an anime sports nerd. And when you combine boxing and anime you got a formula that cannot fail. Or rather it can well and easily fail. But not when it comes to Hajime no Ippo! Hajime no Ippo is one of the few series that I watch that makes me really really excited, will he win the fight or not? The director and scipt are alos really really well thought through. Ippo can lose, and does! And does so when you least expect him to… so every fight is nail-biting-tense from beginning to end. Anyways… this is the second series and I belive Ippo is aiming for world championship in this one but you can never be sure as there are a lot of side stories going on here as well.  So if you have the chance check it out!

And I do not mean the crustacean but the band. They’ve been around for while now but since I am not really that updated when it comes to music I just recently found out about them.

Now, the hermit crabs are a scotish band which means that they have a lot to prove.. since everyone in Scotland are in a band the same way that everyone in LA are actors. And they do! Prove it I mean.  Sweet tunes & good lyrics (they won a price for ‘em you know!). So give them a chance:

The Hermit Crabs on Myspace

Now usually I don’t really care for short anime, 23 minutes is pretty short as it is, but DMC is something special. With two episodes in 15 minutes it really has to focus on what it wants to tell, and the team at Studio 4°C does a really good job of it.

The story revolves around a sweet “easy listening”-struck teenage boy, Soichi Negishi, that has moved to Tokyo to study at university with a dream of staring in a swedish indie-pop band. But instead of singing about love and lemon tarts and tea and what not he ends up as the main singer in a soon-to-be-cult death metal band Detroit Metal City, DMC for short. He now has to balance his personal life that revolves around romance and pa-pa-pi-pi la la la music and his alter ego band where he is famous for singing the word rape 11 times in one second. It gets even worse since has a hard time separating his different personas.

Well, what can I say, I love it… and so will you.

On a side note, there is a live action movie I haven’t seen yet but it seems there’s been an interest from some US companies to do a remake.

The following two dilemmas where presented in a lecture by Anthony Land and are based on real life situations.

Adoption
A weak, malnourished woman dies in labour. The child is alive but its chances of survival seen minimal. with careful nursing from you, the child survives the first days, then weeks of life and seems to be out of danger. You then discover that, as a prostitute, no one in the community is willing to take care of this “child of sin”. you continue to take care of the child for the remaining months of your contract and when the time comes to leave, you feel that you cannot abandon this young life into a community who feels no responsibility for its care. You decide to adopt the child, despite this being totally against the policy of you agency. You intend to return to your home country and bring the child up outside of its own culture-

What are the ethcial issues and boundaries of this dilemma?

The truth or the whole truth?
The project which you have been managing for the past two years is being evaluated by a donor. You know that the results of this evaluation will be a big factor in the descision as to wheather or no to continue funding. There still remains a lot to bve done and the loss of funding at this point would reslut in a big loss of support to the beneficiaries. In four of the five sites in which the porject opeates, things has been going well and objectives have been achived. In the fifth, however, there has been one problem after another and, despite you best efforts, little prgoress has been made.
You, and you headquarters, are worried that if the donor knows the extent of the problem at the fifth site, funding to the whole project may be jeopardised. You think of all the possible reaons why, int the limited time avilable for the evaluation, you can only manage to arrage visits of the evaluatots to three of the five sites and carefully leave the poorly performing site off the agenda. Hopefully the evaluation team will be satisfied wih the programme you have arranged for them and leave without ever knowing about the problems.

If you do this, ahve important ethical boudaries been crossed? Was there a better way?pe

Now I personally don’t have any problem with any one of these questions, but it is always interesting to see how others percive and answers them.

These two bands are my latest twee catch. They are both from HK and both play a cutesy type of twee sounding a little bit like 90ies Japanese bossa-pop with lots of french influences.

The Marshmallow Kisses The Marshmallow Kisses - My Dear Giant In a second you may come back and I may fall I lost my papers missed the chances I owe you all Though they change and burn and sink I dare not try to break the promises at all Say it sucks and rots and stinks It’s not some homework just for hand in after all

My Little Airport

My Little Airport
- when the part is over, i miss my dear pornstar (demo)

when the party is over i miss my dear pornstar x2

do you have any boyfriend in beijing
do you have any boyfriend in beijing
i don’t think you have boyfriend in beijing
and i am the decay of hong kong

i can only sing cha-la-la, because i don’t know putonghua x2

you will be queen of indie in beijing
i will be hong kong in decay
oh what am i saying
i’m just kidding

cha-la-la-la-la-la-la la-la-la la-la x2

i know tomorrow you will be leaving
and your [...] is going
and i know your postman music is going
back to beijing

The Better Programming Initiative (BPI) is a tool developed by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) with the aim of facilitating analysis of aid program impacts in a post-conflict area.

The Better Programming Initiative Process

In the 1990s aid practitioners and donors started to feel that their efforts and resources where being exploited for political and military purposes in conflict situations and there was a need felt that there was needed more knowledge of secondary impacts of aid in conflict settings. To accomplish this the Local Capacities for Peace Project (LCPP) was launched in 1994 which set out to answer the question: “How can humanitarian or development assistance be given in conflict situations in ways that, rather than feeding into and exacerbating the conflict, help local people to disengage and establish alternative systems for dealing with the problems that underlie the conflict?”. After conducting a number of field-based case studies with a number of NGOs in conflict situations, the LCPP revealed clear patterns in how aid interacts with local tensions which lead to the development of a methodology of how to apply the findings in a practical manner. Testing of the methodology lead to a revision of the LCPP and the creation of BPI by the IFRC where BPI was developed primary as a tool to be used by the IFRC and Red Cross and Red Crescent National Societies.

Some of the main differences between LCPP and BPI is that while LCPP was designed to be used by organisations in live-conflict situations, BPI is a tool for post-conflict recovery programming. BPI has a narrower focus than the LCPP and focuses on improving the analytical capacities of the Red Cross and Red Crescent National Societies staff and delegates providing them with a tool to analyse the context in which they are operating.

Cat and Girl has done it again! Not sure if this fits into disaster management or not but I think it is interesting if you look at cats disaster from a holistic/systems point of view. Nothing exists by itself.

Well there is … if you like space operas, vampires or supernatural police stories. I’ll pass and stick to Naruto for the time being and hope that my personal anime drought will come to an end soon.

Tytania
After venturing into outerspace, humanity have built many planetary cities. Most of these cities were affiliated to the Interstellar Federation, and it became the biggest force in the galaxy. Therefore, people believed that the Age of the Federation would last long. However, the situation changes when a tribe called “Tytania” secedes from the Federation and receives the title of Lord from the Emperor of Vardhana. Tytania obtains a victory over the Federation, and they assert that the Empire cannot exist without them. Tytania puts most of the Federal Territories under its control, and they hold hegemony in the galaxy.
Meanwhile, a war begins between Euria and Tytania over their respective rights and interest. From that moment on, the galaxy enters into a tempestuous period.

Kurozuka
While Minamoto Yoshitsune was escaping from his elder brother, Minamoto Yoritomo, he encountered a beautiful woman named Kuromitsu living alone deep in the mountains. Before long, they fell in love with each other. However, she had a horrible secret – she was a vampire, an immortal.
Yoshitsune was seriously injured by his pursuers, but he could survive by turning into a vampire through a blood ritual. Since then, they have continued their eternal journey which began during the Kamakura Era until the present day.

Yozakura Quartet

Ohma is a city in which monsters live. In this city, there are two kinds of people; normal people, and those who possess monstrous powers. However, many people think of monsters as a different existence, and tend to persecute them. Therefore, monsters usually hide their true nature, living secretly.

To solve this problem, the grandfather of the protagonist, Akina, and his friend bred a cherry tree called “Nanago”. It had the special power to stabilize the power of monsters. This is the origin of Ohma; the city protected by Nanago. Ohma was the one and only city managed by monsters, and in this city people and monsters have been living together. However this situation changed dramatically two years ago…

Thanks AnimeNfo for images and synopsises.

If you still haven’t hear of Tullycraft, even though they’ve been around for at least 15 years or so, now is definitely time to do so.

Tullycraft is teh quintessential american indie pop band with lyrics that don’t mean anything and don’t try to. Catchy melodies and sweet chourses.  Well,  have  look at the vid and decide for yourself.

Latest, greatest song from Cars Can Be Blue from their new album! Listen to them, read a review of their latest album and make sure you sing along!

Cars Can Be Blue — Doubly Unbeatable

Oh yeah he’s my boy
Oh yeah I’m his toy
Oh yeah he’s my boy
Oh yeah

Gonna love him ’til the sun blows up
That’s how long he’s gonna be my boy
And my heart will palpitate when we go on a date
And my friends all say “we should go all the way”

Oh yeah he’s my boy
Oh yeah I’m his toy
Oh yeah he’s my boy

He’s gonna call me on the telephone I’m waiting here in my room
And when he tells me that I’m his girl well be together real soon
Gonna love him ’til the sun blows

Thats how long he’s gonna be my boy
And my heart will palpitate when we go on a date
And my friends all say “we should go all the way”

Oh yeah he’s my boy
Oh yeah I’m his toy
Oh yeah he’s my boy

Mom says that I am too young to feel this way
Too young to know what is real
To him I will be true and true I’ll stay
I only know what I feel

Gonna love him til the sun blows up
That’s how long he’s gonna be my boy
And my heart will skip a beat when we walk down the street
And my friends all scream that he’s A DREAM!

Oh yeah he’s my boy
Oh yeah im his toy
Oh yeah he’s my boy
Gonna love him til the sun blows up