A newspaper, alphabetical, would be an ‘aeenpprsw’

 Posted by on 8 November 2010  Modern Life
Nov 082010
 

Kim Rugg from Cool Hunting on Vimeo.

Among other projects, artist Kim Rugg will take a page from the newspaper, cut out every individual letter, and re-arrange it, so that it is alphabetical.

The result is a presentation that is all messenger, no message, as she puts it.

I find it oddly soothing, to have the graphic design of a newspaper without the screaming alarm of content blaring at me, and yet oddly unsettling, to have familiar letters arranged in a familiar pattern and presented in a way that I am conditioned to believe is important, but doesn’t convey any information.

(Cool Hunting, via Boing Boing)

So I guess I need a new reason to hate McDonald’s?

 Posted by on 6 November 2010  Modern Life
Nov 062010
 

A little while ago, Grant posted about an experiment being conducted by artist Sally Davies. She left a Happy Meal out, and took a picture of it every day. And, somewhat alarmingly, it didn’t decay.

Well, another intrepid soul decided to take it upon himself to conduct a little experiment of his own. J. Kenji Lopez-Alt at Serious Eats figured there was probably an entirely rational (and scientific!) reason for the Happy Meal not turning into a pile of smelly, moldy grossness.

What he decided to do was make his own burgers, and leave all of them out.  Here are the variations he experimented with:

  • Sample 1: A plain McDonald’s hamburger stored on a plate in the open air outside of its wrapper.
  • Sample 2: A plain burger made from home-ground fresh all-natural chuck of the exact dimensions as the McDonald’s burger, on a standard store-bought toasted bun.
  • Sample 3: A plain burger with a home-ground patty, but a McDonald’s bun.
  • Sample 4: A plain burger with a McDonald’s patty on a store-bought bun.*
  • Sample 5: A plain McDonald’s burger stored in its original packaging.
  • Sample 6: A plain McDonald’s burger made without any salt, stored in the open air.
  • Sample 7: A plain McDonald’s Quarter Pounder, stored in the open air.
  • Sample 8: A homemade burger the exact dimension of a McDonald’s Quarter Pounder.
  • Sample 9:A plain McDonald’s Angus Third Pounder, stored in the open air.

He found that the burgers roughly the same size as the Happy Meals did not rot. The larger Quarter Pounder-sized ones, however, did.

Why? Because mold needs moisture to grow. And the tiny burgers just didn’t have any. From Lopez-Alt’s conclusion:

So there we have it! Pretty strong evidence in favor of Theory 3: the burger doesn’t rot because it’s small size and relatively large surface area help it to lose moisture very fast. Without moisture, there’s no mold or bacterial growth. Of course, that the meat is pretty much sterile to begin with due to the high cooking temperature helps things along as well. It’s not really surprising. Humans have known about this phenomenon for thousands of years. After all, how do you think beef jerky is made?

Now don’t get me wrong—I don’t have a dog in this fight either way. I really couldn’t care less whether or not the McDonald’s burger rotted or didn’t. I don’t often eat their burgers, and will continue to not often eat their burgers. My problem is not with McDonald’s. My problem is with bad science.

For all of you McDonald’s haters out there: Don’t worry. There are still plenty of reasons to dislike the company! But for now, I hope you’ll have it my way and put aside your beef with their beef.

(via)

Pot-infused soda is so much better than drinking bong water — and it could be good for newspapers, too?

 Posted by on 23 October 2010  Modern Life
Oct 232010
 

First, if you happen to live in California, vote yes on Prop 19.

It’s embarrassing to me, as a Canadian, that you’re going to beat us to it. But I believe that taxation and regulation is the best way to handle mind-altering recreational substances, whether it’s marijuana or alcohol.

Now, a Colorado company is offering marijuana soda — if you have a medicinal marijuana license. They’re available in eight flavours from Dixie Elixirs.

Now, how long before someone makes a vodka cocktail using this marijuana soda?

Aside: According to the New York Times, legalizing marijuana is good for the newspaper business:

“Medical marijuana has been a revenue blessing over and above what we anticipated,” said John Weiss, the founder and publisher of The Independent, a free weekly. “This wasn’t in our marketing plan a year ago, and now it is about 10 percent of our paper’s revenue.”

…

Alternative weeklies are not the only publications raking in medical marijuana lucre. Dailies like The Denver Post and The Bozeman Daily Chronicle in Montana are taking advantage of the boom and making no apologies.

“My point of view is, for the moment at least, it’s legal,” said Stephanie Pressly, publisher of The Daily Chronicle, adding that the paper generates about $7,500 a month in advertising from medical marijuana businesses. “The joke around here is that it’s a budding business.”

Some of the largest newspapers — even staid, conservative ones — are even producing regular supplements devoted to marijuana. Now that’s interesting.

(via Discovery News)

Thomas Pynchon, set to music

 Posted by on 16 October 2010  Everything Else
Oct 162010
 

Gravity’s Rainbow is probably Thomas Pynchon‘s most famous and recognizable book. It’s currently sitting on one of my bookshelves, in the queue of “books I need to read at some point in my life.”

So I probably can’t appreciate (as much) The Thomas Pynchon Fake Book:

Thomas Pynchon is one of the great unheard lyricists. His award-winning novel, Gravity’s Rainbow, is full of song lyrics. Depending on how you count, there are around 100 in the book. Over the course of a year, the Thomas Pynchon Fake Book managed to set twenty-eight of them to music. A limited run CD the group put out also featured two bonus instrumentals inspired by the work, “The White Visitation” and “The Lonely Rocketman.”

The project doubled as an experiment in online music collaboration. Thirty seven people and three animals across four states contributed tracks. In June of 2009 the group held a CD release party in Portland, OR. Check back later for footage from that event.

It’s a pretty interesting project, and just one more reason to read Gravity’s Rainbow.

How geo-savvy are you?

 Posted by on 11 October 2010  Modern Life
Oct 112010
 

The author of this infographic cleverly shows just how immense the continent of Africa is. And cunningly places it in the public domain, ensuring that teachers everywhere will feel able to share it with their classes and magnify its impact.

Well played, sir or madam!

Welcome to weekend-tober! (again)

 Posted by on 6 October 2010  Modern Life
Oct 062010
 

So, this meme is making the rounds:

Which sounds great. I mean, who hates weekends, right? (My birthday’s in October, and it happens to fall on a Monday this year, so I feel kinda ripped off if there’s so many weekends, and I *still* don’t get one.)

But now I don’t feel so bad. Because the meme has been fixed:

Sigh.

Can we also kill those “mathematically significant” days that seem to happen every couple of weeks, but will “only ever happen once in your lifetime.”

Turn your expensive SLR into a crappy pinhole camera

 Posted by on 4 October 2010  Photography
Oct 042010
 

The absolute cheapest camera possible is a pinhole camera. All you need is something thin with a tiny hole in it. That hole is your “lens” and you can project the picture anywhere you want.

If you’re taking pictures of something really bright, like the sun, you can just project it willy-nilly. Sometimes it even occurs naturally. Otherwise, you’ll also need a light-proof box, and some film or something to expose.

On the other hand, digital SLRs are some of the more expensive cameras you can buy. Now, thanks to Photojojo, you can spend an extra $50 on your dSLR and turn it into a crappy pinhole camera!

Yes, it’s a lens cap, but sans lens. It has a tiny pinhole in it that’s not really a pinhole — they say it’s a laser-cut hole, but covered with clear plastic, so absolutely no dust can get through into the inner workings of your camera. And it’s $50 here, Nikon or Canon.

The photos it manages look to be about what you’d expect from a cheap pinhole camera, though they are gigantic mega-pixel images. Here are a couple of images that the company provides:

See? It’s cool that they’re 2000×3000 pixels. But as actual photographs, they’re not really that, um, good.

Plus, this pinhole lens looks exactly like the kind of thing you could make at home, and save yourself $50. Perhaps you could even make it out of wood?

(via Gizmodo)

This bike has no gears or chain

 Posted by on 19 September 2010  Modern Life
Sep 192010
 

This Hungarian prototype of a new kind of drive system for a bicycle shows off an asymmetric curve that uses a wire instead of a chain to connect the pedals to the rear wheel.

Do I fully understand the design? No. But it sounds as if it has a few really cool advantages:

  • Infinite number of gears between the high and the low.
  • No delay in changing  gears.
  • Easy quick-removal of the back wheel, since the wire isn’t integrated with it.
  • And, as Gizmodo points out, no fooling with oil or grease.

I am intrigued!

A half-century of cyborgs and we don’t even have one yet?

 Posted by on 14 September 2010  Modern Life
Sep 142010
 

Apparently, it’s been 50 years since the word “cyborg” was first used, in an issue of Astronautics, which you can read via pdf here. If you’re interested, the original definition is this:

For the exogenously extended organizational complex functioning as an integrated homeostatic system unconsciously, we propose the term “cyborg”.

But I think we know what they mean. Or do we?

Are we all cyborgs, just because we live in computer controlled buildings? Is my office cubicle just a primitive Dalek body?

Anyway, this is all just prelude, really, for the introduction of today’s Must-Follow Tumblr:

50 Posts About Cyborgs

To honour the half-century of the cyborg term, the authors of 50 Posts About Cyborgs are planning, yes, 50 posts, and yes, about cyborgs, but the twist is that they’re going to get it all up there in a month.

So this isn’t something you have to commit to forever. DO IT. The posts are thoughtful, insightful, entertaining.

(thanks Pat!)

How to make a polygonal portrait

 Posted by on 13 September 2010  Modern Life
Sep 132010
 

Jonathan Puckey draws portraits, like the one of Obama, above, that are made out of interconnected polygons of different colours. They way they stick together and are shaded, it looks to me like origami.

He uses a process called Delaunay triangulation and a program called Scriptographer to make the drawings. Check out a video of how he does it:

He’s got more examples at his website, as well as links to some of his other projects that I might post some time.

Vintage photographs of the construction of the Statue of Liberty

 Posted by on 23 August 2010  Vintage/Retro
Aug 232010
 

It’s really neat to see something so familiar in a completely unfamiliar context. Here’s a view of the Statue of Liberty’s head, outside in the Paris workshop where it was constructed.

A few photos were featured at How to be a Retronaut, but they’re originally from the collection of the New York Public Library, and you can see a bunch more just by searching their site.

One of the things that I’ve always casually wondered about the Statue of Liberty was whether it had always been green. It’s made of copper, I knew, and I knew that copper turns green — it’s used on the roofs of the Canadian Parliament buildings, for example, and I have a vague childhood memory of my dad telling me the same about my elementary school, but it may have just been painted a similar green, and it’s certainly not copper now.

However, copper takes a few years to slowly age itself to green, and I wondered if, when the Statue of Liberty had been erected, it had been a bright copper instead of subdued green. (It kind of looks copper in the alternate-world ‘Manhatan’ of Fringe, though.)

Was the statue bright and shiny when it first when up? Or had the copper been aged before the statue was erected — perhaps in the years that it took to build, so that it was green right from the start?

Obviously, the monochrome photos aren’t going to answer my question, though they did inspire me to actually sit down and see if I could find the answer.

First, I found a painting, from the official dedication of the statue, in 1886:

But that doesn’t solve anything! The colour is neither copper or green!

Then, I read the entire Wikipedia article — and finally found my answer:

Originally, the statue was a dull copper color, but shortly after 1900 a green patina, caused by the oxidation of the copper skin, began to spread. As early as 1902 it was mentioned in the press; by 1906 it had entirely covered the statue. In the belief that the patina was evidence of corrosion, Congress authorized $62,800 to paint the statue both inside and out. There was considerable public protest against the proposed exterior painting. The Army Corps of Engineers studied the patina for any ill effects to the statue and concluding that it protected the skin, “softened the outlines of the Statue and made it beautiful.”

Bingo! It was originally a “dull copper” — not bright, but completely covered by 1902.

Vintage-style WD-40 packaging is awesome

 Posted by on 21 August 2010  Vintage/Retro
Aug 212010
 

Every now and then I’m rooting around in my parents’ basement, and I see some tool or can or carton that just screams out at me with its vintage design. I’ve thought several times about starting a “From my Dad’s Workshop” series on this blog, but the problem is, he’d probably notice if I started taking things out of his basement and photographing them.

Anyway, maybe I don’t have to. Maybe hardware manufacturers will take a cue from WD-40 and release a vintage-inspired product or packaging.

To celebrate its, uh, 57th birthday? super-lubricant WD-40 is selling two packs — one of the old design, one of the new — at “selected retailers.”

Luckily, one of those retailers is Amazon, so for $11, we can all get two cans of WD-40. Which I have no idea if that’s a good price or not.

By the way, the WD-40 website maintains a list of user-submitted uses for the product. They’re at 2,000+ and counting. You can even download an official PDF.

(via Doobybrain here, and here)

Vikings were known for their cleanliness

 Posted by on 21 August 2010  Everything Else
Aug 212010
 

Today, I am just outside the small town of Baldur, Manitoba, where I am standing up with my friend Kent as he marries my other friend Ally.

Baldur is just one of the places in the province with a strong Icelandic heritage, and it has rubbed off on Kent, who. despite his Anglo-Saxon heritage, might just be the most Viking-esque person I know (though his ‘axe’ is a bass).

Well, good news, Ally! According to this treatise on health, grooming and medicine in the Viking Age, those Scandinavians were famed for keeping cleaner than other people:

John of Wallingford, the abbot of St. Albans Abbey wrote in his chronicles that the Norse invaders in England were far more attractive to Anglo-Saxon women since, unlike Anglo-Saxon men, they combed their hair daily, took baths weekly, and laundered their clothing regularly.

Sadly, this wasn’t always a good thing:

The Anglo-Saxon defenders of England realized that the Norse invaders took regular baths, and were known to delay their attack until Norse bath time, when the Norseman had shed their clothes (and their weapons).

Congratulations, you two … but if you decide to invade England on your honeymoon, keep bath-time a secret.

The timeless yellow border of National Geographic

 Posted by on 20 August 2010  Vintage/Retro
Aug 202010
 

Over at Retinart, Alex Charchar takes a look at the timeless classic design in National Geographic.

That yellow border is instantly recognizable — iconic, even — but beyond that, he does a really neat job of taking you through the evolution of design inside the magazine:

In a sense, the magazine does exactly what design should. It’s hardly noticable. The typography doesn’t stand out in a way that’ll win it mountains of awards for innovation in design and the layouts aren’t exactly something you’d see on many (any?) design blogs. But it’s for exactly this that it’s a kind of perfect design — it sits behind the content, not in front of it, and is beautiful while it works.

Exactly. That’s one reason why National Geographic magazines are kept around by the shelf-ful, while other magazines are disposed of every month.

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