?? September 2005 | Main | November 2005 ??
Fox News throughout the ages
Some enterprising photoshoppers have given us a chilling vision of a world where Rupert had access to time travel.
Mr. Calm and Mr. Angry
It's not so often that you see a totally new optical illusion, but Mr. Calm and Mr. Angry certainly fit the bill.
Marginal Revolution on Bernanke
The growing consensus is that the new Fed chairman is decidedly *NOT* a Brown / Miers crony, and will actually do a pretty good job. The market likes him, the economists seem to like him. Marginal Revolution posts some summaries of his life work.
Taking on O'Reilly through Satire?
Three reviews on "The Colbert Report".
I've been pretty impressed so far. Despite some stumbling over words, the satire seems spot-on. He condescends, he promises to do the thinking (or feeling) for the audience, and postures grandly about his mission to serve the masses. It's O'Reilly too clever by half, and it would make a great one-off special or even feature.
Can the conceit last, though? It works fantastically in "The Word" segment and in each episode's final thoughts, but seems a distraction in the interviews. So far, they've worked well despite the satire, not because of it, and often because Colbert has a very quick wit. Several guests have come off a bit like they were dragged to the studio drugged and disoriented, but Jim Cramer of "Mad Money" seemed to get it, as he's already fluent in infotainment theater.
I do hope that the show's well recieved and finds a sure footing, because overall, I'm convinced that satire is a better approach to O'Reilly deflation than imitation of the format, ala Air America. Liberals don't like to be talked at.
Lifehacking in the NYT
This somewhat roundabout article in the NYT Mag moves at a leisurely pace from the issues of screen size and desktop management to the hipster pda / GTD cult. Glancing on multiple monitors, program notifications, and the halo of post-it notes that surround many monitors, the article gels together around the notion that modern computer workers spend most of their time getting interrupted from one task to the other.
For me, switching tasks is like turning an aircraft carrier, primariliy because of the way files are handled. Say I'm working on a flash design for Acme and I have to switch to a flash design for Zenith. For both tasks, I need the following items open:
- photoshop
- flash
- correct set in font manager
- whatever email (changes, copy) is pertinent
- IM to the art director for that project
- project's folder on the server
- project's folder on my desktop
So, the task of switching gears requires switching the default load and save location for the applications, opening a new IM window, finding the pertinent email, and going the location on the server and desktop. Now imagine doing that every 30 minutes when a change comes in. Every day I'm going home one step closer to living outside of port authority and talking to myself.
If somehow the os were project aware, that would help. I hit a single button and each program knows to change its default folder, a different set of contextually pertinent emails show up. But it's not a simple task, and if it took more than 15 minutes to set up a project, I probably wouldn't bother doing it. I dunno.
Or, I suppose,
Fonts might recall certain personalities rather than eras or genres. Though I should point out that Bodoni is considered a Romantic font, despite its description here. Sharp wit and clean fingernails hardly conjures Beethoven or Goethe.
Judging movies by their typographical anacronism
When kottke linked to this article as "typography in the movies", I assumed he meant typography in opening titles. But he's talking about print within the mis en scene, as we used to say in film school -- printed material that's supposed to be there, in the 1860s.
To nitpick about specific typefaces is a fun exercise, but goes unnoticed by 99.99% of the population. More interesting, to me anyway, is the pop understanding of typeface. Cowboy letters, we all know, have giant serifs, almost as if they were to match the boot heels and wide-brimmed hats of the era. The coke-addled late seventies and early eighties are always announced by model-thin, glamorous avant garde gothic. A patch of wide-kerned, geometric Futura screams fifties (even though it should be more associated with Weimar Germany).
To be sure, these typefaces, or similar analogues, were used in the periods they're now emblematic of. I have a RAND corporation textbook on game theory (The Compleat Strategist) from the fifties with beautiful Futura titles. But they weren't the only typefaces in use. They've come to represent their eras through a process of selection: Their artistic resonance with the period, snowballing through the years with continued positive reinforcement, leaves us with a typographic shorthand for every human era.
And even eras before man: I've always wondered why the Jurassic Park logo was set the way it was. Is this how dinosaurs carved letters in stone? Or does it harken back to the use of rough-ewn sans-serif capitals in films like King Kong and Casablanca, where they were symbolic, for whatever reason, of romantic exoticism?
Why Orthodonture and Small Pox Vaccines are So Important
You know how Cosmo always says "beauty is back in this year?" And you always think, "well when was it out?"
1889. It was out in 1889.
Via Mr. Sun.
What I don't like about Google on the desktop
Ok, for starters: it NEVER finds folders. Like, I have all my folders organized by client, and sometimes all I want Desktop to do is open the folder named "Pinsky" if I want to open the Pinsky account. That should be the first thing that comes up. It's not.
Second of all, it got rid of my gnotifier. This may have been google talk, which I also installed. Well whoever did it, I don't have a little mail icon anymore. It's like part of Google Talk or something.
Third, what the hell is the point of the images area? It just scrolls randomly through my images folder and rss feeds i'm subscribed to. I don't get it.
I'm thrilled with just about everything Google's done online, but so far they've yet to wow me on the desktop. Maybe this web-openoffice deal with sun will be different.
Any technology sufficiently advanced...
.. is indistinguishable from a bad sci-fi movie? To the uninformed, a game of Mindball might look like a Tolkeinesque magic-off. But it's not even particularly advanced technology: just a couple EEGs and a magnet under the table gets you a battle of alpha waves. Wanna know if you have the right stuff? It'll cost 19k. Pretty expensive.
