In a 1958 letter to his friend Hume Logan, 20-year-old Hunter S. Thompson proves to be wise beyond his years:

A man who procrastinates in his CHOOSING will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance. So if you now number yourself among the disenchanted, then you have no choice but to accept things as they are, or to seriously seek something else. But beware of looking for goals: look for a way of life. Decide how you want to live and then see what you can do to make a living WITHIN that way of life. But you say, “I don’t know where to look; I don’t know what to look for.”

And there’s the crux. Is it worth giving up what I have to look for something better? I don’t know—is it? Who can make that decision but you? But even by DECIDING TO LOOK, you go a long way toward making the choice.

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

If you’ve got a couple of minutes to kill online but dread the prospect of yet another misspelled meme on Facebook, Drexel University’s The Smart Set is worth a look-see.

Currently on the site, Colin Fleming examines Orson Welles’s Macbeth—”what amounts to a classic 1940s horror film, although no one ever talks about it that way,” Stefany Ann Goldberg reflects on Betty Willis and her “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas” sign, and Michael Lind asks the question no one else dares: “How did Conan the barbarian and Dracula manage to slaughter Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock?”

It’s almost always a welcome diversion.

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

Fifty years ago today, the Warlocks plugged in their borrowed instruments at Magoo’s Pizza in Menlo Park, California. But it wasn’t until December of that year—at one of Ken Kesey’s Acid Tests—that they performed as the Grateful Dead.

None other than George R. R. Martin, the man behind the Game of Thrones juggernaut, has admitted to the band’s influence on his work; as for me, of I had to choose one album to listen to for the rest of my life, it’d be 1969’s Live/Dead. Mr. Martin and I aren’t alone in our admiration, either: tickets to the band’s upcoming Fare Thee Well concert, with Phish’s Trey Anastasio filling in for the late Jerry Garcia, sold out in minutes.

Meanwhile, David Browne, author of the just-released So Many Roads, has some thoughts on the Dead’s enduring “hippy cool.”

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

Left to right: Mojo director of photography/editor/sound designer Kevin Graham, me, Avista marketing communications manager Colette Bottinelli (photograph courtesy of Mojo).

You never know where you might end up when it comes to shooting film projects. It’s one of the reasons they make for interesting assignments. Our recent shoot for an Avista TV spot proves the point, from spinning underground hydroelectric turbines to a meal in the Union Gospel Mission kitchen, from rotating 432-foot-tall wind turbines on the Palouse to sharing the stage with adorable seven-year-old ballerinas turning pirouettes, from shooting the exterior of Avista’s 1958 mid-century modern headquarters to a friendly and well-behaved Malamute named Chobi.

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

In my lifetime, there have been 105 solar eclipses, the global supply of bananas per person has doubled, and the East Pacific Rise—a “seafloor spread in southeastern Pacific Ocean, pulling Australia, South America and Antarctica apart”—has moved 23 feet 2 inches.

Plug in your own numbers over at the BBC’s Your Life on Earth.

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

McSweeney’s Honest College Rejection Letter is brilliant:

You should also know that our committee did not fall for your attempts to look “humble” or “well-rounded.” Volunteering in developing countries is nice, but truly generous individuals volunteer to improve their local communities, while truly wealthy families buy a third-world country for their child to gentrify.

And:

…we know that your minimum-wage job did not teach you “patience, teamwork and leadership.” No one learns anything from minimum-wage jobs except how much they hate people and that they shouldn’t have majored in political science.

(While you’re there, be sure to check out the equally hilarious What Your Favorite ’80s Band Says About You.)

posted by: Aaron Bragg  |  category: random thoughts  |  comments(1)

Our relationship with maps has always fascinated me. Whether in hard-copy or app format, we expect them to work correctly and be user-friendly. If not, we throw paper-ripping, phone-throwing fits.  (What, you don’t do that?)

Why this happens, of course, is because the trouble with information design is that things can get over-complicated. This makes skill and finesse crucial ingredients. Or, as Edward R. Tufte explains in The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, “Graphical excellence is that which gives to the viewer the greatest number of ideas in the shortest time with the least ink in the smallest space.”

But is that excellence possible in a map? Yes. And it is beautiful.

posted by: Courtney Sowards  |  category: random thoughts  |  make a comment

From James Boswell’s Life of Johnson (1776):

I gave [Johnson] an account of a conversation which had passed between me and Captain Cook, the day before, at dinner at Sir John Pringle’s; and he was much pleased with the conscientious accuracy of that celebrated circumnavigator, who set me right as to many of the exaggerated accounts given by Dr Hawkesworth of his voyages. I told him that while I was with the captain I caught the enthusiasm of curiosity and adventure, and felt a strong inclination to go with him on his next voyage. JOHNSON. ‘Why, Sir, a man does feel so, till he considers how very little he can learn from such voyages.’ BOSWELL. ‘But one is carried away with the general, grand, and indistinct notion of A VOYAGE ROUND THE WORD.’ JOHNSON. ‘Yes, Sir, but a man is to guard himself against taking a thing in general.’

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