Book cover design is a funny thing. Those of us who actually read pretend we’re above these “little billboards”; those who don’t, well…I’m not so sure they’re the audience. The real question, though, is why American and British versions of the same book differ from each other—sometimes dramatically so. C. Max Magee offers a comparison.
If you’re blue and you don’t know where to go to
Why don’t you go where fashion sits…
It’s Peter Gabriel’s birthday today. He’s 62. So we’re going to listen to him sing and play piano on “Here Comes the Flood,” mmkay? (For you sharp-eared listeners out there, that’s Robert Fripp noodling in the background.)
[audio:https://helveticka.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/15-Here-Comes-the-Flood.mp3|titles=15 Here Comes the Flood]As Iran edges ever closer to building a working nuke, violence escalates in Syria, and the simmering culture war here in the U.S. is about to reach a full rolling boil, Joshua Tyree asks the important questions. Namely, why would the architect of the Death Star design a trash compactor that is implausible, unworkable, and inefficient?
An alert reader going by the nom de guerre “Chef Curtis” sent us this photo from a gas station near West Valley High School. The funny thing is, the February 14 election is all about school district levies, isn’t it?
Here’s hoping some of that money goes toward spelling classes.
Dan Cohen wants to strip distractions from reading while Alan Jacobs shows that a little cognitive friction might actually be good for us.
Both, however, seem to agree that an environment that makes it easy to read—a less-cluttered website, for example—also makes it easy to believe what’s being read. Which leads Cohen to conclude that “legibility and the absence of distractions are not just design niceties.”
Funny. That’s what we keep trying to tell our clients.
Thanks to Google, pretty much everyone knows it’s Charles Dickens’s 200th birthday today. To celebrate, consider purchasing a copy of Hard Times—on a single sheet of paper.
Sure, the U.S. National Library of Medicine says that this is a 1926 chromolithograph of the human digestive and respiratory systems as visualized by Fritz Kahn. Looks to me, however, like a blueprint for the Cylon race.
See it in greater detail here.
Of all the diversions you face today, I guarantee none will be more worthy of your time than reading this letter from a former slave to his “old master.”
Simply beautiful.
According to Bleacher Report, former GU standout Adam Morrison is the second-worst NBA draft pick of the last decade.
In a town where the 11th commandment is “Thou shalt not speak ill of your Zag brethren,” it’s probably best we keep this mum.
Take a gander at a short film made by Charles and Ray Eames of their home—Case Study House No. 8—in Pacific Palisades. Bonus: the accompanying music was written and performed by Elmer Bernstein, the composer responsible for some of the most memorable film scores of the 20th century.
Courtesy of NASA, here’s a link to an 8000 x 8000 HD image of Earth, shot January 4. Enjoy.
The comma has a way of bedeviling even the most careful of writers, particularly when grammarians can’t come to an agreement on even its most basic function—that of separating elements in a series.
But I digress. Let’s talk about when not to use a comma. More specifically, let’s talk about what’s wrong with the following sentence:
My home was designed by architect, Steve Clark.
I see this a lot, and I’m not sure why. Architect is a nounal adjective modifying Steve Clark. In that sense, it’s no different from any other adjective. Like brown, or enormous, or droopy. Yet you wouldn’t normally see something like this:
Just beyond the brown, house was an enormous, willow tree with droopy, branches.
See? Doesn’t work. Let’s look at another example:
Noted composer, John Cage, would have celebrated his 100th birthday this year.
Noted is an adjective; composer is a noun. Together, they form an adjectival phrase that modifies John Cage. In principle, that phrase is no different from a single-word adjective that likewise serves as a modifier—like, say, controversial or minimalist, neither of which would require a comma in the above example. So let’s fix it:
Noted composer John Cage would have celebrated his 100th birthday this year.
Much better, don’t you think?
It pains me to admit it, but words aren’t always necessary to deliver a compelling message.
If the entries in our Stupidest Song Ever contest are any indicator, the last word has precisely three readers. The good news is, that’s two more than CK figured.
So who won?
If you’ll recall, the challenge was to come up with a stupider song than “We Built this City,” a steaming pile of earnest, self-aware lyrics compounded by the cheesiest of mid-1980s instrumentation and a horrifyingly bad video.
Susanna came up with Shakira’s “Whenever, Wherever”—a promising suggestion. She also put to bed my denunciation of “ask” as a noun. But then she went too far: trying to curry favor with a compliment. the last word can’t be bought, Susanna.
Spimbi tried the shotgun approach: “I’m too Sexy” by Drop Dead Fred, “Hearbeat” by Don Johnson, “She’s Like the Wind” by Patrick Swayze, and Eddie Murphy’s stomach-churning “Party All the Time.” She then administered the coup de grace: Kris Kardashian’s “I Love My Friends.” (Really, folks, you have to see it to believe it.) These are all stupid songs, to be sure. But are they stupider than “We Built this City”?
No, that honor would have to go to “I’m a Gummy Bear (The Gummy Bear Song)” by Gummibär. In fact, it’s not even close.
That makes mcw3 our winner! Come on by AMD corporate headquarters (we’re on the 81st floor) and claim your prize!