Not sure what to make of this: In the two weeks (!) since since our last blog post, there’s been nary a peep from anyone.

On the one hand, it’s good to know that, when things get crackin’ around here, we can focus on client business without upsetting our regular readers. Or—and this is far more likely—it could be that we just have no readers to upset.

Whatever. We’re back. With a story that, quite frankly, explains a lot. (At least about the company I keep.)

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

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rexKqvgPVuA

From The Open University comes this creative, funny, and—strangely enough—quite informative look at the development of our language over the years. Do try to watch all of it.

posted by: Aaron Bragg  |  category: the writing life  |  make a comment

Because I was a dork long before it was cool, acute schadenfreude is really the only possible response to a story like this.

It seems that some Webster University “student athletes” are upset that (gasp!) a couple members of the school’s national championship-winning chess team are featured on a billboard in athletic garb. As if that weren’t offensive enough, the billboard reads “Our top recruits are chess players.”

Oh, the humanity!

“Webster directly compared the chess team, which does not compete as a part of the athletics program, to the rest of the athletes on campus,” whined WU basketball player Kevin Miller, who then went on to complain—apparently without irony—about “the lack of facilities our athletics department has for student athletes and the other students who want to come in and have a good workout.” Miller also tweeted his displeasure: “I train all year 2 be able to run up and down a basketball court to represent my school. Not just move wooden pieces.”

By the way, Webster’s chess team is coached by Susan Polgar. Yes, that Susan Polgar.

Here’s the thing: the billboard is funny. It’s memorable. It’s self-deprecating. And it shows that the school attracts some really smart people—which is, you know, what colleges ought to be doing, right? Most important, though, is that the billboard works, a concept apparently too complex for Webster athletes to grasp.

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

Another shot from our Hanford tour. (Check out yesterday’s post for a quick explanation.) Off in the distance you can see the steam cloud from Energy Northwest’s Columbia Generating Station—the only commercial nuclear energy facility in the region.

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

So. Daylight Saving Time comes mercifully to a close this weekend—2 a.m. Sunday morning, to be precise. Right up there with Crystal Pepsi and Keeping Up with the Kardashians, it’s one of the dumbest ideas ever foisted on an unsuspecting public.

Allison Schrager not only wants to retire DST, she recommends that the U.S. move to just two time zones one hour apart. Clever girl.

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

Teo Macero was born on this day in 1925. A jazz saxophonist and composer in his own right, Macero is best known for producing two of the most famous—and best-selling—jazz albums of all time: Dave Brubeck’s Time Out and Kind of Blue by Miles Davis, both released in 1959.

It’s Macero’s work on Davis’s late 60s–early 70s albums, though, that reveals his genius as an artist. Armed with a razor blade and tape, he’d isolate, splice, and sequence melodic phrases and snippets of improvisation—sometimes working with little more than a chord or two introduced right there in the studio. (Listen to Davis’s “Honky Tonk” from the 1974 album Get Up With It to get a sense of the layering involved.)

Macero died in 2008. His influence on jazz is impossible to overstate.

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

What happens when graphic designers take themselves too seriously? This. Ed Mitchell, who doesn’t like how “discordant” U.S. state flags are as a group and was alarmed to learn that they “break just about every rule of flag design,” decided they ought to be redesigned:

I love the idea that we can argue and fight with each other and that we have the freedom to redesign potent, historic symbols. Freedom of expression—of speech and ideas—is what makes this nation great. But lately it feels like we’re off balance. I believe design can be used as a tool to challenge our current beliefs—in this case, to make people think about what we represent, what image we want to project, and how it will look when we’re all working together.

Really, you need to see the results.

(This is our 700th blog post, by the way. And yes, it’s customary to present gifts on such occasions.)

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