Max came in to visit us today. That is all.
Turns out eunuchs live longer than, um…non-eunuchs. Nineteen years, on average. Given that folks seem to have no problem whatsoever going under the knife to look younger—often with disastrous results—we wonder whether some men might choose a much simpler procedure to actually extend their lives.
And if it does catch on, a word of warning: you might want to avoid places like these.
In honor of National Punctuation Day today (yay!), The Atlantic gathered some writers to talk about their favorite marks.
If I had to choose just one, I’d probably settle on the semicolon—if for no other reason than that graphic designers hate the way it looks. Oh…and because it enables one to write much longer sentences, which graphic designers also hate.
It took Homo sapiens 200,000 years, but we’ve finally perfected breakfast: a cup of Cravens coffee and a still-warm flatliner from Donut Parade.
What’s the occasion? It’s Haley “The Hammer” Anderson‘s last day as AMD intern.
Normally, when someone like Haley leaves, you do something nice for her. Like buy her lunch or something. But The Hammer isn’t normal. No, she brought everyone treats this morning. And when you consider all she did over the summer—including yeoman’s work on our upcoming MAC exhibit—well…I’m not ashamed to admit that I get a little misty at the thought of her bidding adieu.
Farewell, Hammer. If my heart stops beating this morning, don’t you worry. It was totally worth it.
Here’s something that occasionally pops up: Is it into or in to?
Into is a preposition that tells the reader where. “Frank went into the café.” “Betty dove into the pool.”
In to is used when the where is understood—and to communicate intent. “Frank went in to order lunch.” “Betty dove in to escape the zombie horde.”
If there’s still some confusion, try reading the sentence out loud. Chances are, you’ll hear the difference right away.
This is the most beautifully designed site I have ever seen. A fitting tribute to the 2,983 men, women, and children killed in the attacks of September 11, 2001—and the six victims of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
Tucked away in New Canaan, Connecticut, is architect Philip Johnson’s famous Glass House (1949). It and several other buildings—including the Painting Gallery (1965) and Sculpture Gallery (1970)—are located on 47 beautiful acres.
Because of our firm’s ongoing research into mid-century modern architecture for an upcoming Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture exhibit, this location was of particular interest to me.
The house itself remains completely original. (Here’s Andy Warhol visiting in 1964; you can see that little has changed since then—including the Poussin painting and the Ludwig Mies van der Rohe Barcelona chairs, table, and couch.)
Coincidently, artist Bernard Perlin was a guest of Philip Johnson’s in the 1950s.
In 1995 I arranged for renowned painter and World War II poster artist Bernard Perlin to visit Spokane. His arrival coincided with a propaganda poster exhibit we designed for what was then known as the Cheney Cowles Museum. Bernard gave a talk about his work for the Office of War Information and his travels during the war as an artist for Fortune and Life magazines. Among his many exploits was being on board the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay during the Japanese surrender on September 2, 1945.
Today, Bernard lives in Ridgefield, Connecticut—and even at 93 years of age, he still paints. It was a treat for both my family and me to be able to spend the better part of a day visiting with him last week.
Today’s roundup of odds and ends (mostly “odds”) comes entirely from Fortean Times—the world’s foremost authority on “strange phenomena and experiences, curiosities, prodigies and portents.” Or, as I prefer to call it, The Greatest Magazine Ever. Here we go…
Neelesh A. Patankar, professor of mechanical engineering at Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science, has been hard at work doing precisely what one would expect of someone in such an esteemed position: “using the right kind of texture and chemistry to prevent bubbling during boiling.”
From the Things that Go Bump in the Night file: A North Carolina woman learns that what she thought might be a poltergeist is in fact her ex-boyfriend—from 12 years ago—living in her attic.
Fancy a six-inch gastropod in your salad? Giant Spanish slugs are invading the UK, “threatening to wipe out local species with new diseases and parasites or by simply devouring them.”
Think that 32,000-piece Ravensburger puzzle you got for Christmas is hard? Try piecing together 6 hundred million scraps of paper. And when it’s all said and done, we may not want to know what’s on those scraps.
Asked to respond to some rather scurrilous charges of plagiarism, Bob Dylan has choice words for his Rolling Stone interlocutor: “All those evil [rhymes with ‘other truckers’] can rot in hell.”
Alas, it appears you have to buy the magazine in order to read the full interview.
One of the few truths we can cling to in this uncertain age is that all government websites suck wet dog fur. They’re badly designed and horribly written—not to mention completely counter-intuitive.
I totally need a smoke right now.
People are occasionally curious about where our employees come from. And I don’t mean their home towns or almae matres, but where they actually worked prior to joining our firm. While we do focus on prospective employees’ portfolios, previous work experience says a lot about the kind of environment and culture they’re familiar with.
So to keep the statistical nerds and pollsters happy, we’re offering the above chart—an accounting of all employees who have worked for AMD since we began in 1988. And even though math is typically not a design firm’s strong suit, we at least made sure that the numbers all add up to 100.
Yesterday was John Cage’s 100th birthday. Not that one; this one.
One of my favorite pieces of his is the 1947 “Music for Marcel Duchamp.” It’s written for prepared piano, which means that the instrument has been temporarily altered in such a way that it produces different tones.
Here it is, performed by renowned Cage authority (and 1973 Rogers High School valedictorian!) Stephen Drury:
[audio:https://helveticka.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/02-Music-for-Marcel-Duchamp.mp3|titles=02 Music for Marcel Duchamp]By the way, the album it comes from—In a Landscape—is a beautifully played and thoughtfully programmed introduction to Cage’s earlier work. For $10, you really can’t go wrong.
