Fascinating New York Times Magazine article: “The untold story of the fight over the legacy of ‘H.M.’—the patient who revolutionized the science of memory.”

The story of the war over Henry’s brain didn’t begin in a fancy conference room on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, but that’s where one of its climactic battles would take place. It was March 2013, and there were more than a dozen participants, an impressive roster of scientists and administrators affiliated with four major institutions — M.I.T.; Mass General; the University of California, Davis; and the University of California, San Diego — as well as two major grant-­giving organizations, the Dana Foundation and the Simons Foundation. But the essential participants, the chief antagonists, were Suzanne Corkin and a man named Jacopo Annese.

Meanwhile, more than 200 members of the “international scientific community,” including faculty at MIT, have responded to the article.

posted by: Aaron Bragg  |  category: random thoughts  |  make a comment

The next time you find yourself near Basel, Switzerland, be sure to stop by the Basler Papiermühle. Earlier this week I blogged about its most famous artifact; today I’m noting (and showing) a few other reasons to pay a visit.

If you appreciate paper making, printing, and all the old-school equipment and craftsmanship used in the process, then you’ll enjoy this museum. Located in the heart of one of the most famous design communities in Europe, it’s also a working and functioning facility. Which is to say that it has an amazing gift shop.

It’s also worth noting that the Paper Mill’s logo was designed by none other than Max Miedinger, who, along with Eduard Hoffmann, created Neue Haas Grotesk—which later became…Helvetica.

posted by: CK Anderson  |  category: the design life  |  make a comment

With a little bit of sleuthing and some dumb luck, my wife Linda and I recently managed to find the birthplace of Helvetica. That’s right: the very place where Helvetica’s famous linotype matrices were first produced. Located in Münchenstein, Switzerland (just outside of Basel) the Haas Type Foundry moved into their new production plant in 1921.

Haas began operations in 1580 and continued all the way up to 1989. That 409-year run made it the oldest type foundry in the world. The book you see in the foreground above (Helvetica Forever, Lars Müller Publishers) shows two small photographs of the Haas Type Foundry’s interior and exterior. Today, the facility is home to the Rudolf Steiner Schule Münchenstein, appropriately located at Gutenbergstrasse 1.

What can I say? It was a religious experience.

posted by: CK Anderson  |  category: on location the design life  |  make a comment

So I’m finally getting around to reading Jonathan Franzen’s Purity. The other day I came across the following passage:

Her body looked to be only a healthy diet and some regular exercise away from greatness, but her face and hair were on the verge of confirming a wicked little dictum of Leila’s: Blondes don’t age well. (Leila saw middle age as The Revenge of the Brunettes.)

This, by the way, is offered without any comment whatsoever. None. Remember: I’m just the messenger.

posted by: Aaron Bragg  |  category: the writing life  |  comments(1)

posted by: CK Anderson  |  category: on location the design life  |  make a comment

“I get satisfaction of three kinds. One is creating something, one is being paid for it, and one is the feeling that I haven’t just been sitting on my ass all afternoon.” — William F. Buckley, Jr.

posted by: Aaron Bragg  |  category: random thoughts  |  make a comment

In  February 1974, three-eyed extraterrestrial time travelers entered Philip K. Dick’s bedroom through a portal of pink light. “Trying to make sense of it, he wrote an 8,000 page commentary he called his Exegesis. In it, he proposed that the source of the pink light may have been God, the KGB, a satellite, aliens, a 1st century Christian named Thomas with whom he was in telepathic communication, the CIA, a version of himself from a different dimension, or possibly his deceased twin sister contacting him from the spirit world.”

Riverside Cemetery, Fort Morgan, Colorado, 2016 

So was Dick a madman or a mystic?

Kyle Arnold, a psychologist at Coney Island Hospital and Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at SUNY Downstate Medical Center, wrote a “psychobiography” of Dick to get to the bottom of it. In it, he recounts “the author’s mental illnesses one by one, including anorexia, paranoia, severe anxiety, vivid hallucinations, suicidal tendencies, and violent outbursts followed by amnesia.”

What ultimately did him in wasn’t mental illness or suicide, but something far more pedestrian: a stroke—less than four months before the theatrical release of Blade Runner, which was based on Dick’s 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?.

Long one of my favorite authors, I finally got a chance to visit his grave a couple of months ago. Though I had neither a mystical experience nor a spiritual awakening, I can report that the site—in a quiet corner of a cemetery in a small town on the windswept plains of northeastern Colorado—is peaceful. Which, really, is what Philip K. Dick needed most of all.

posted by: Aaron Bragg  |  category: random thoughts  |  make a comment

What can science tell us about morality? Not much, it turns out.

Speaking of philosophy, Roger Scruton weighs in on the absence of belief: “What we might have taken to be open-mindedness turns out to be no-mindedness.”

Bookies have apparently slashed the odds on either “a UK prime minister or US president” revealing the presence of aliens before the end of the year.

So you want to make a Tibetan leg flute. Nothing complicated, just “a simple length of femoral bone, from the knee joint to about half way up the thigh.” But where do you start? Well…”the most perfect specimen would be from a Brahmin child, male or female, free from worldly stains or faults.” On the other hand, “it should not be from someone who died of tuberculosis, plague or other contagion, or some accident or misfortune.” Sound a little daunting? Not to worry—”REAL Buddhist bone…taken during properly conducted, Chod based sky burials, can currently be acquired for $550 to $750, depending on quality.”

Surprise! The Soviets were jerks.

Geoffrey Hill died last week at 84. His poems, says David Yezzi, are “moral without being religious in any conventional sense, skeptical of power and the duplicity of language, and tonally fluent in ways that recall both the Jeremiad and the Psalm.” David Yezzi has more.

Bob Gimlin on the film that launched the modern Bigfoot phenomenon: “It ruined me.”

posted by: Aaron Bragg  |  category: random thoughts  |  make a comment