December 2008
17 posts
“With all of those neat rectangular boxes, you’d think Mondrian would be rational...”
– Alan Moore, MAGIC IS AFOOT: A Conversation with ALAN MOORE about the Arts and the Occult
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Inventor produces $1 self-adjustable prescription... →
Silver has devised a pair of glasses which rely on the principle that the fatter a lens the more powerful it becomes. Inside the device’s tough plastic lenses are two clear circular sacs filled with fluid, each of which is connected to a small syringe attached to either arm of the spectacles.
The wearer adjusts a dial on the syringe to add or reduce amount of fluid in the membrane, thus...
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Patton was assassinated by the OSS →
The newly unearthed diaries of a colourful assassin for the wartime Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of the CIA, reveal that American spy chiefs wanted Patton dead because he was threatening to expose allied collusion with the Russians that cost American lives.
- The Telegraph
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WatchStanley Kubrick’s Boxes - A documentary by Jon Ronson
In 1996 I received what was - and probably remains - the most exciting telephone call I have ever had. It was from a man calling himself Tony. “I’m phoning on behalf of Stanley Kubrick,” he said.
“I’m sorry?” I said.
“Stanley would like you to send him a radio documentary you made called...
“While I was sitting one night with a poet friend watching a great opera...”
– Loren Eisley
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Bokeh Photographers
Bokeh (derived from Japanese, a noun boke ぼけ, meaning “blurred or fuzzy”) is a photographic term referring to the appearance of out-of-focus areas in an image produced by a camera lens using a shallow depth of field.[1] Different lens bokeh produces different aesthetic qualities in out-of-focus backgrounds, which are often used to reduce distractions and emphasize the primary subject.
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Totally AWESOME Computer Textbook Covers
reddit has a thread on the main page, started by someone pointing to this rocking cover for “Modern Operating Systems - Second Edition” (click for hi-res version). Any designer who can work clowns and horse crap into an information graphic deserves some form of adulation:
Someone then brought attention back to this classic, “Forth on the ATARI: Learning by Using”:
And...
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WatchPhilip Zimbardo: The Time Paradox
What if your attitudes toward time could explain why you are chronically late, why you’re likely to fight for rainforest preservation, or why you might be predisposed to addictions? Philip Zimbardo, renowned for his notorious 1971 Stanford Prison Experiments, will discuss how internal time perspectives determine every single one of our thoughts, feelings...
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Triple Canopy - Arts, Literature, and Research... →
Triple Canopy works collectively with writers, artists, researchers and other collaborators on projects that deal critically with culture and politics, and the ways people engage them, both online and in the world at large. These investigations are realized in an online magazine as well as in public programs and print publications encompassing various fields and locales. We aim to present work and...
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Star Wars: A New Heap →
Thirty years ago, American film audiences pressed low in their seats as a massive white wedge of machine parts passed overhead. With the release of George Lucas’s Star Wars, the smooth, silvery flying saucers that had dominated postwar sci-fi became embarrassing reminders of an obsolete version of the future. Lucas envisioned a World of Tomorrow dominated by black, white, and gray;...
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Five simple steps to designing grid systems →
The first part of this Five Simple Steps series is taking some of the points discussed in the preface and putting it to practice.
Ratios are at the core of any well designed grid system. Sometimes those ratios are rational, such as 1:2 or 2:3, others are irrational such as the 1:1.414 (the proportion of A4). This first part is about how to combine those ratios to create simple, balanced grids...