I've noticed a trend on the roads today.
:2015 Nissan Murano
Category: Art/Design
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Beware of the Unicorn
This is the actual cover of the January 2009 issue of the Journal of Consciousness Studies (a publication I have read recreationally, albeit sporadically, since college). -
Duck and Cover
Two months ago I came home and found Britney Spears on the cover of my April Atlantic. I immediately sent off an email to Gawker:
Subject: wintry mix, chance of locusts
omg srsly, what is the world coming to when britney graces the cover of the fucking atlantic?(Here‘s Ryan Tate’s write-up.)
Last week I found that the Atlantic had answered my question with its June cover. This is what the world is coming to:
Apparently asteroids will be saving the rest of the universe from Brit Brit. (The attentive will also notice that the mercurial mastermind Professor X has a byline in the issue. Coincidence?)
In just two months the Atlantic, which usually features politics on its cover, has gone from US Weekly to Discover. Looking forward to the Alfred E. Neuman portrait in August. (Calling Andrew Hearst!)
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Lost in Translation
In 1937, a long-lost Vermeer was revealed at auction, heralded by experts as one of the Dutch painter’s greatest works. Only it wasn’t a Vermeer at all. A man named Han van Meegeren had produced this and many other expensive forgeries. Once he stepped forward, their value dropped like the jaws on his customers. Why?Read the full post at Brainstorm.
I’ll give you a hint. It relates to magical thinking.
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The Copycat Unconscious
Considering how lazy many e-daters are, and how clever many other e-daters are, it should come as no surprise that plagiarism runs rampant in the online dating world. On Friday the Wall Street Journal reported on copycat personal profiles, mentioning that in one survey 9% of respondents admitted to lifting material from someone else, and that lines from some sources appear on dozens of people’s profile pages. In some cases people cop to lack of imagination, but I suspect in others people subconsciously appropriate the sentiments behind the words so as to justify their claims of authorship. -
Just Say Maybe
Focus on Hallucinogens: This is a little gem I've held onto since my friends Ken and Glen mailed it to me as part of a care package when I was working in Alaska after high school. It's from 1991 and out of print but still in near-perfect condition. I wrote children's science books for two years but never wrote one as fun or useful as this. It explains to 9-year-olds everything from neurons to shamans. Rad!
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Mirage Montage
I'm sure a lot of people think of Burning Man as a big mindless party, but a more accurate (albeit only slightly less simplistic) account would have it as a rave in an art museum. The playa would be nothing without the art installations dotting the landscape (to say nothing of the art people wear and ride and drive, etc.). Here are a few of my favorites. Award for Best…
Boys' Toys: Big Rig Jig
Explaining the geometry of this one is a bit tricky so I'll just let you look at the picture. Yes, those are 18-wheeler tanker trucks stuck together and planted in the desert. You can see people climbing on them, but what you can't see is people climbing IN them. The inside is a jungle gym filled with fake vines, and you could go all the way to the top. When I reached the tip, I found one of the builders lounging on pillows sans clothing. He looked like he'd been there a while and asked if anyone had any games to play. Devoid of Pictionary, we thumb wrestled. (Here's a video and an article about the Jig.) [image source]
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Go ¶huck Yourself
I'm in a ranty mood.You know what I hate? The use of the pilcrow (paragraph sign, ¶) as a design element. Often in magazines, articles will begin with a block of text that's in bigger type than the rest of the piece. If the part of the story filling that block is more than one paragraph long, instead of using a line break and an indent as usual the designer will keep the text flowing but stick a pilcrow in there.
There are several reasons to stop this. First, it's an ugly, elaborate character, especially for what it does. Use a pipe or a bullet (| or •) or some other arbitrary symbol, as long as it's clean.
Second, it's too explicit. The reader shouldn't stop to think, even subconsciously for a few milliseconds, "Oh, that symbol looks like a backwards P with an extra leg, and P stands for paragraph, and they're telling me that they're starting a new paragraph here." No, don't spell it out. Keep it simple. Again, any subtle visual cue would work. Did I mention the bullet?
Third, it just looks like someone forgot to turn "display formatting" off. Stop being meta and trendy.
Why do I have so much anger?
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Don’t mind the pit stains.
I hate heather grey. It just might be the worst color there is. I don't understand why people wear heather grey clothes when they don't have to. Once in a while I can make an exception for a t-shirt or sweatshirt, like if it has a school logo on it (as if you're at team practice!), but anything beyond that is beyond me.Heather grey has several associations I can't suppress. It reminds me of a high school gym class. The kind in 80's movies where they suit you in heather grey duds, presumably the cheapest cloth available, where appearance is not an issue. Why would you wear a blouse made out of gym clothing material? Related: I expect to see sweat stains on anything made of that stuff. And heather grey tube socks I won't touch even if they're clean.
What gives it that cheap look? I can only assume that the manufacturer doesn't bother to fully mix the solid grey and the solid white. It looks like it's made of random leftover shreds of cotton half-assedly blended together and then somehow melded into a fabric. Heather grey is the sartorial equivalent of chipboard.
Heather grey accent stripes elicit this response: Oh, they almost had enough normal material to make a full shirt. All but those thin stripes. So close!
