19th Century “Whistle O’Er The Lave O’T” Scottish Intaglio Wax Seal, Crystal, $85

I wasn’t familiar with the motto in this intaglio— it’s the refrain from a comic 18th century Robert Burns poem/song.  From my understanding, it translates to “whistle over the rest of it,” a Scots idiom, that in the case of the poem, is a sort of coping strategy for a disappointing marriage.

Megan Lorenz has added a photo to the pool:

This little guy cracks me up....I don't think I have one "normal" photo of him.

Parc and Recreation

Built for the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montréal, the Parc Olympique remains one of the city's most iconic landmarks in part thanks to its 540-foot-tall, italicized tower that looks over a stadium, which now hosts everything from fairs to exhibitions to social events; a 380,000-square-foot esplanade that is perfect for all kinds of outdoor events; and a sports center with pools for young and old and novice swimmers or professional athletes. As part of an effort that began in 2011 to revitalize the park and increase visitors, Parc Olympique has introduced a new identity designed by Montréal-based lg2boutique.

Taking cues from the world of sport, the logo is inspired by both athletic corridors as well as the oval of the Olympic Stadium, the symbol of the Montréal. The circles in the logo and the choice of the four colours in the platform symbolize the different installations in the Olympic Park: the Stadium, Tower, Esplanade and Sports Centre. The entire platform reminds us of the first calling of the Park and helps us relive the Olympic history that took place there.

Provided text

It's amazing how the mere use of the word "olympique" and a few concentric circles trigger associations to some of the quintessential Olympic identities, from Tokyo 1964 to Munich 1972 to Mexico 1968 to the subject at hand, Montréal 1976. For the Parc Olympique lg2boutique has only used four circles instead of the Olympics five both to represent the four attractions of the park and, I am guessing here, to skirt the ire of the IOC who keep the rings locked with a chastity belt. The resulting logo is as simple as you can get before verging into simplistic, thanks to a solid execution and a contrasting relationship between the circles and the typography plus a beautiful color palette.

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In application this is non-stop awesome, from the secondary inline typography to the blocks of solid color (not a hint of white on those either!) to the restraint shown in not plastering concentric circles everywhere. Overall, there is a really high level of sophistication in this identity.

An open letter

wocinsolidarity:

!!!!!!!!!

After a glorious Thanksgiving weekend of unseasonably warm days in the 60s and 70s, temperatures in the Bay Area are expected to come crashing back down to the point where you can no longer brag so much to your colleagues and relatives to the East. [ more › ]

The so-called "Thatcher Illusion" is named after its most famous, and original, example (left). Peter Thomson was the first to notice that if upside down, one hardly notices an inversion of individual facial features, but if that face is turned right-side-up, blammo: it's terrifyingly awful. There are a number of studies that try to explain the cause of this illusion, but these authors take a different tack. They wondered if other primates can see it too, which would imply a shared facial imagin

Sheidlower says you can trace "ax" back to the eighth century. The pronunciation derives from the Old English verb "acsian." Chaucer used "ax." It's in the first complete English translation of the Bible (the Coverdale Bible): " 'Axe and it shall be given.'

Here's a fabulous interview with activist Sarah Kendzior, a journalist and researcher who made a great, concise argument against unpaid internship as a series of four tweets last June. Policymic talks with Kendzior about her work on the "prestige economy" and the widening wealth-gap, and also talks about the theory of presenting arguments over Twitter, a subject on which Kendzior is every bit as smart as she is on matters economic and political.

Twitter is as effective as a blog for making concise, multipoint arguments. I am careful when I write these to make each Tweet stand alone as well as contribute to a broader point. It is tough to pull off. Umair Haque (@umairh) is the master of this style, but I see others embracing it too.

Twitter forces you to think aphoristically. Some say the character limit inhibits creativity, but I see it as a challenge that pushes you to carefully consider every word. It is a good exercise for any writer...

... In one generation, working for free for people who can pay you went from something laughable, to something wealthy people were doing in a few fields, to something everyone was recommended to do, to something almost everyone has to do. Entry-level jobs were replaced with unpaid internships. That same monopoly on opportunity reshaped lower-skill labor. Jobs that once offered on-site training now require college degrees. In response, universities ramp up tuition, knowing that students have little choice but to pay to compete. Instead of options, there is one path to professional success — one exorbitantly expensive path.

The values of the wealthy elite became the rules that everyone had to live by.

At the same time, the rising cost of living made it “normal” to pay a lot of money for basic things. Ordinary life has been redefined as a luxury good. Health care and home ownership are unaffordable for most young people. This makes them feel desperate, particularly when they begin adult life saddled with stratospheric debt. They feel they have no options but to play along, even if that means being party to their own exploitation.

What they have discovered is that even playing by the rules will destroy you in a prestige economy. Institutional affiliation is promoted as a way to advance professionally by building personal prestige, which is why people are paying to intern at prestigious companies or going into debt for prestigious schools. But these are hollow victories, designed to suck you dry and leave you even more desperate. Prestige decreed by institution means nothing when institutions are rotting.

Why You Should Never Have Taken That Prestigious Internship [Sam Bakkila/Policymic]

(via Making Light)

He's been referred to as "Super-Pope" for his superheroic feats of faith, but is Pope Francis an honest-to-Godness superhero?

Read more...

Paul McGann. *dreamy sigh* Previously in Eight

Let’s talk about paisley. It’s one of the world’s most venerable and most-travelled patterns, from Sassanid Dynasty Persia (200-650 AD) where it was regarded as a Zoroastrian symbol of life and eternity, to 19th-century Scotland, where it helped fuel the British textiles boom, to mid-60s Swinging London, where it adorned tab collars and psychedelic backdrops alike, to the frockcoats of Prince in the mid-80s; Paisley Park is in your heart, indeed, and now it can also be over it and tucked in just above it, thanks to our multi-hued paisley pocket squares and snug-but-snazzy scarves, all made in Italy from the finest wools and all featuring contrast borders to offset the “Persian pickle” – I’m particularly keen on the sky blue and navy scarf, which adds hints of cypress trees and peacock feathers to the mix, and the chocolate-orange trim pocket square, which is good enough to eat. They’re perfect for adding a splash of opium-fugged, sitar-plucking counter-cultural chutzpah to your buttoned-up winter outfit; as Prince so wisely said, there aren’t any rules in Paisley Park.

Since the mid-1980s, Italian architect Luigi Prina has been making fantastical flying ship models that, despite their delicate appearance, actually fly. The flying ships are handcrafted from balsa wood and very thin paper and are powered by special natural rubber bands. Over the years he has made more than 200. For more photos, and to see the ships fly, check out this Blinking City article & video.

photos and video via Blinking City

via Blinking City, MetaFilter

Excerpted from Yé-Yé Girls of '60s French Pop. Copyright © 2013 Jean-Emmanuel Deluxe. All rights reserved. Published by Feral House

In spite of its light-as-a-bubble appearance, pop music can tell us more than many a sociological essay. Take, for instance, one of the songs Serge Gainsbourg penned for France Gall, “Baby Pop” (1966):

Sur l’amour tu te fais des idées
(You get ideas about love)
Un jour ou l’autre c’est obligé
(One of these days you’ll end up)
Tu seras une pauvre gosse
(As one poor kid)
Seule et abandonnée
(Alone and forsaken)
Tu finiras par te marier
(You’ll have to get married)
Peut-être même contre ton gré
(Maybe even against your will)
À la nuit de tes noces
(On your wedding night)
Il sera trop tard pour

(It’ll be too late) Le regretter
(For you to regret)
Chante, danse Baby pop
(Sing and dance, Baby pop)
Comme si demain Baby pop
(As if tomorrow, Baby pop)
Ne devais jamais Baby pop
(Would never, Baby pop)
Jamais revenir
(Never have to come back)
Chante, danse Baby pop
(Sing and dance, Baby pop)
Comme si demain Baby pop
(As if tomorrow, Baby pop)
Au petit matin Baby pop
(In the early morning)
Tu devais mourir
(You just had to die)

The disastrous fate of thousands of carefree teenyboppers was never better exposed than it is here, on the A-side of a successful single. The lyrics provide a cruel inside view of the ephemerality of youth: many youngsters of that time would very soon embrace the sadness of adult life and leave the lights of the Bus Palladium (the club in the mid-sixties) behind for good. We’re talking pre-May ’68 here, and despite the steps (albeit small) women had achieved toward equality, most female teenagers knew what they were expected to do: conform, as their own mothers did, to the views of a (still) very patriarchal society indeed.

The evolution of the status of youth, its subcultures, and its rites of passage are all reflected in the music industry. The condition of women has evolved, decade after decade, as clothes and music have evolved. More to the point: the latter can be seen as structures that allow us to analyze the evolution of morals and the place of women in society. Let’s take two examples: first, in 1965, the infamous “Sucettes (À L’Anis),” a hymn to oral sex in the guise of innocent praise for lollipops:

Annie aime les sucettes
(Annie loves lollipops)
Les sucettes à l’anis
(Anise-flavored lollipops)
Les sucettes à l’anis
(Annie’s anise lollipops)
D’Annie
Donnent à ses baisers
(Give her kisses)
Un goût ani-
(A real taste of Ani-)
sé lorsque le sucre d’orge
(-se as the barley sugar)
Parfumé à l’anis
(Anise-flavored)
Coule dans la gorge d’Annie
(Pours into Annie’s throat)
Elle est au paradis
(She’s in heaven)

Fifteen years later, Lio sang more or less the same thing on “Banana Split,” with music by Jay Alanski and lyrics by Jacques Duvall:

Baisers givrés sur les
(Frozen kisses on)
Montagnes blanches
(Snowy mountains)
Na na na
On dirait que les choses
(Seems things)
Se déclenchent
(Are going to start)
Na na na
La chantilly s’écroule
(Whipped cream is falling down)
En avalanche
(In an avalanche)
Na na na

And in between these two huge hits by two icons of French pop music? May '68, the first oil crisis, the women’s lib movement, the abortion laws, coming of age at eighteen, gay and lesbian activists (the FAHR, the Gazolines). Glam, punk, new wave. The end of the Vietnam war, the Six-Day War, General de Gaulle’s and Pompidou’s deaths, the second TV channel (in color!), then the third. Scorsese and Coppola’s New Hollywood, then a return to the serials of yesteryear, such as Star Wars.

If I’ve gone through such a long list, it’s to insist on the fact that the two smash hits I’m mentioning serve as a good introduction to the zeitgeist of the periods in which they were written. Both tried, odd as it may seem, to match the mood and preoccupations at the time. One has to have intuition (or be completely unconscious of the consequences, which is often the same thing) to write a song that will help define its time and become a standard. And of course, one needs a singer who corresponds to an archetype of the era itself. France Gall in 1965 and Lio in 1980 were indeed miles apart: Gall gentle and naïve, and Lio a Girl Power pop-feminist singer.

Studying what the girls in pop music have achieved since the 1960s, it’s shocking to discover how the ways women express themselves have changed. However, it’d be a huge misunderstanding to think that the female pop singers of fifty years ago were mere puppets, prompt to follow the orders they were given without questioning. Jacqueline Taïeb was a true songwriter, as was Françoise Hardy — and Stella’s humor was as sharp as Jacques Dutronc’s. Contrary to popular belief, girl bands didn’t start with Les Calamités in the mid-eighties. In the 1960s, groups such as OP4, Les Fizz, Les Gam’s, or Les Milady’s had no reason to envy their male counterparts.

Nonetheless, female artistic directors, sound engineers, and arrangers are pretty scarce in music companies, even today. Although the number of female songwriters has become more and more important as the years go by, it’s still risky for a woman to be fully independent in the pop music business. This has been confirmed to me by all the artists I talked with for Yé-Yé Girls of '60s French Pop, whatever their age, whatever period their career was at its peak. Starting with cute little songs for teenage daydreams, you can arrive at the same conclusion as essayists and philosophers: it is definitely, as Pierre Bourdieu (and James Brown) said, said, “a man’s, man’s world!”

Yé-Yé Girls of '60s French Pop does not aim to be an exhaustive treatment of women in French pop music. It is mainly intended to provide insight into what Gallic artists have to offer the genre, especially as such artists are fairly unknown outside French territory, with the noticeable exception of the usual suspects: Brigitte Bardot, France Gall, Françoise Hardy, Jane Birkin, or, some years later, Vanessa Paradis. However, taking a walk on the less-trodden paths and discovering the likes of Stella, Lio, Jil Caplan, Helena Noguerra, or Fifi Chachnil can be just as gratifying.

April March, whose “Chick Habit,” a cover of Gall’s “Laisse Tomber Les Filles” gained her a wider audience through its inclusion in Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof, Laetitia Sadier (Stereolab), Françoise Cactus (ex-Lolitas and Stereo Total), Fabienne Delsol, Yasuharu Konishi, and Maki Nomiya of Pizzicato Five: for fifteen years or so, from New York to London, Tokyo to Berlin, punk, indie rock, and electro artists have been rediscovering this Francophile heritage and adapting it to the tastes of the day.

Already in the 1960s, Petula Clark, Sandie Shaw, and Marianne Faithful released songs especially for the French market. Françoise Hardy was known in Britain and the States as “the yé-yé girl from Paris,” got her picture taken with Mick Jagger, and had Bob Dylan totally smitten with her. Zouzou from Montmartre was dating Brian Jones and hanging out in trendy clubs with the Beatles or the Byrds. Nancy Sinatra (and many others) adapted Gilbert Bécaud’s “Je T’Appartiens (Let It Be Me)” and had hits. Our filles de la pop were clearly more exportable than male French rockers such as Johnny Hallyday.

In the 1980s, Lio was very close to working with the Human League, and recorded Suite Sixteen with Sparks. Her “Banana Split” was adapted into English and became the irresistibly kitsch “Marie-Antoinette”:

It’s the economy, it’s really bad, na na na.
What do they want of me?
I’m really mad, na na na.

Let them eat pizza, let them eat cake. Na na na na na na na na na…

A French woman in exile in New York’s no-wave 1980s, Lizzy Mercier Descloux, created new wave world music before the term was even coined (she’s the songwriter on “Mais Où Sont Passées Les Gazelles?”, recorded in Soweto). In 1987, a fourteen-year- old Lolita, Vanessa Paradis, had a worldwide number-one hit single with “Joe Le Taxi” (even the Reid brothers from Jesus & Mary Chain, seemingly light years away from this kind of music, proclaimed their love for the song). Paradis went on to release a Motown-influenced record sun entirely in English in 1992, then married Johnny Depp, and appeared on the front pages of cheap newspapers and gossip magazines throughout the world. Let’s not forget Elli and Jacno’s Stinky Toys, the first French punk band who played the 100 Club in London in 1976, and ended up on the cover of Melody Maker. The duet eventually moved on to minimalist but classy electropop in the early ’80s, composing the soundtrack for Eric Rohmer’s best-known film, Les Nuits De La Pleine Lune (Full Moon In Paris).

This is all to show the subterranean influence of French filles de la pop on some of the strongest currents of international pop music. According to April March, such flavor is due to its unique blend of Anglo-Saxon rhythms and continental sensitivity. The subjects French women dared to sing about in the 1960s were much more adventurous than those chosen by their English or American counterparts: the pleasures of fellatio, stories of bad LSD trips (Gall’s “Teeny Weeny Boppy”), or more generally speaking, sheer enjoyment of the most sullen moments of existence (nearly all of Hardy’s stuff).

Today, because of the changes in production and distribution, female French singers tend to think more globally: Helena Noguerra (who’s half French and half Belgian) is probably going to sing exclusively in English on her next album, while the American Francophile April March is currently working with French band Aquaserge. The differences are being blurred, identity is becoming multiple, and the choices are much wider after more than forty years of struggle in a sexist business.

But let’s not be unfair: there were (and still are) men who mentor and encourage female artists. To name but a few: Jacques Dutronc, Étienne Daho, Jacno, Jacques Duvall, Jay Alanski, Bertrand Burgalat, Olivier Libaux, and Marc Collin. And, of course, Serge Gainsbourg.

And now I’ll leave you to explore this panorama of Gallic girly pop. I hope that through this book you’ll come to share my passion for these extraordinary women!

Feral House Deluxe Yé Yé Mix Deux by Feral House on Mixcloud

As part of Adobe’s ongoing mission to help support the Hamilton Wood Type and Printing Museum, several members of our team have been digitizing antique typefaces for the Hamilton Wood Type Foundry (a partnership between the Hamilton and P22 type foundry). My co-worker Frank Grießhammer threw his hat into the ring, so to speak, unleashing one of those strangely wonderful “circus types” onto the world. In celebration of its release today, I’m happy to share with you a little insight into the making of HWT Tuscan Extended. Although Frank has not yet been able to visit the Hamilton—a “wood type wonderland,” as he imagines it—he feels strongly about the importance of the museum, and its mission to preserve and promote such a rich part of typographic culture.

“Wood type is this genre of type that very much has its own rules, and I think that is great,” Frank said. “I imagine it like this big guy, just doing his own thing, not caring about what anybody else will say (please understand that this is supposed to be a compliment!).”

“Leafing through Rob Roy Kelly’s American Wood Type, I have yet to find one page which is not awesome,” Frank continued. “Often, I will laugh when seeing the specimen of a wood type alphabet—something that does not happen very often with digital fonts.”

In choosing which type to digitize for HWT, Frank decided to work on a less-than-typical design, focusing on the fun and challenging aspects of reviving a little-known antique face. “I wanted to digitize the craziest typeface Rich [Kegler of P22/HWT] had to offer; first, because I wanted to have a bit of fun while working, and also for the sake of drawing something I had not drawn before.”

A wild hybrid fluctuating between a Gothic Tuscan and an Antique Tuscan, HWT Tuscan Extended is an extremely wide face, abundantly decorated with spikes and crossbars. Although this Tuscan is not overly ornate, each letterform is a study in complexity—unique combinations of spikes and bars dress each character’s outrageous curves with cheeky exuberance.

“Creative freedom is much more of a possibility in wood type; I can imagine it is quite a different way of working with large-scale patterns than it is with the file and a metal punch,” Frank said. “The sheer size of wood type letters allows for decorations and solutions impossible in metal type.”

HWT Tuscan Extended is closely based on the 1872 William Page & Co. cut, but also resembles versions from Morgans & Wilcox, Tubbs Manufacturing Co., and Heber Wells. (All four of these competitors were eventually acquired by Hamilton Manufacturing as it became the dominant producer of wood types in the United States.)

Frank worked primarily from photos of specimen books and of the actual wood sorts taken by Rich Kegler and Adobe type team member Miguel Sousa. Luckily, Frank also found some photos on Flickr. “This was a great resource just for checking how some characters actually looked like in print, outside of the specimen books which do not always include the whole alphabet,” he said.

Frank’s digitization of Tuscan Extended was a fairly straightforward revival, although he did encounter some minor difficulties along the way: “In some of the photos (especially of the wood sorts), it sometimes was really difficult to see where the actual border of the letter would be. I sometimes just drew a very rough digital outline and then refined it based on information from other glyphs.”

Frank’s first iteration over the alphabet was quite literal. He then refined the outlines and matched the proportions of the letters to better work with one another. “It is still a pretty crazy typeface,” Frank said, “but since I had prints of various very different point sizes as samples, it was necessary to unify the shapes somewhat.”

A technical point of pride for Frank is that HWT Tuscan Extended is his “first 100% UFO-project.” (UFO stands for Unified Font Object—a cross-platform/cross-application format for storing font source data.) “I worked in [Frederik Berlaen’s] Robofont from start to finish. A very pleasant experience.”

Weighing in at just over 300 glyphs, HWT Tuscan Extended contains “enough characters for your next circus poster, and then some,” Frank said. As with most antique types, a number of essential glyphs were naturally absent from the original design. Frank drew several new forms in order to make the font usable, including the “German Sharp s” (ß); the Icelandic Thorn and eth glyphs (Þ,ð), and the Pound Sterling symbol (£). With this slightly fleshed-out character set, the font now supports a large subset of Western languages.

“You just have to arrange travel plans for your circus in a way that it does not stop in countries where the language uses unsupported glyphs,” Frank recommended.

When asked how this wacky Tuscan might be used, Frank suggested, “Everywhere from encyclopedias to phonebooks; on labels for nutritional information; and, of course, also engraved on coins and jewelry. And on stamps.” But, seriously!? “This is a pretty unusable design, but I am confident it will find a place somewhere,” Frank said. “You can see some of the Adobe Wood Type designs in the craziest applications. Maybe in 25 years, that will also happen to Tuscan Extended! It would be funny to see it cut in wood.”

Frank Grießhammer works in Type Design and Font Production at Adobe. In between drawing type, programming, and admiring photos of glamorous lettering, he’s pondering the possibilities of metal type—he’s heard it’s the “next big thing.”

Additional information

 HWT Tuscan Extended at the Hamilton Wood Type Foundry

Follow HWT on Facebook

More of the story behind HWT Tuscan Extended

More info on the Gothic Tuscans and Antique Tuscans from the Rob Roy Kelly American Wood Type Collection

 

 

Listen To The Second Half Of The Third Sentence And Try To Tell Me America Is The Best Country. The good stuff starts at 0:30. Make sure to stick around till 1:34.

aliemlicious:

my-edits-have-no-remorse:

Sir Ian had to act to these stands with the actors’ faces pasted on them. It’s hilarious. xD But at the same time, my heart also goes out to Sir Ian.

now this is neat

Now this is a professional.

“With our thoughts, we make the world,” said Buddha, who sought spiritual enlightenment through the denial of worldly pleasures. That quote is printed on the menu of Tao Downtown in Manhattan, which sells bottles of Johnnie Walker Blue for $800. Yes, this is where children of all ages dress up to drink $15 mango martinis. And this is where two giant Buddha statues, one at repose, the other with 24 arms, overlook the revelry, as Top 40 hits play from the DJ booth.

New York Times

Fate of Detroit's Art Hangs in the Balance New York Times With a ruling by a federal judge on Tuesday that Detroit is eligible to enter bankruptcy, the fate of the city's art collection — one of the finest in the country — now moves front and center in the legal battle over the city's future. RPT-ANALYSIS-Detroit bankruptcy expected to survive appeals processChicago Tribune Judge: Detroit can proceed with bankruptcyCNNMoney Union workers protest Detroit bankruptcy rulingUSA TODAY Detroit Free Press -Southgate News Herald all 1,244 news articles »

The Independent

Ukraine pro-EU protests: Police forced to flee as 100000 demonstrators take ... The Independent Riot police have been driven out of the centre of Kiev after more than 100,000 people defied a government ban on protests in Ukraine's Independence Square. After the violent scenes of a police crackdown in the early hours of Saturday, demonstrators ... and more »

The Long Now Foundation, located in Fort Mason next to Greens, is opening an as-yet-unnamed salon that in the meantime they're just calling The Salon. They've been raising funds for a while now, but plans are to be open early in 2014. Jennifer Colliau is leaving the Slanted Door Group soon, where she's bartended for over eight years, to take the job as Bar Manager. You also know Colliau as the producer of Small Hand Foods syrups. The new bar sounds very cool for a few reasons. The Long Now Foundation is dedicated to long-term thinking, so the theme of the bar is time. The actual bar top will be a slab of stone cut out from a mountain where the foundation is building a 10,000 year clock. The Salon will be filled 3,500 crowd-chosen books containing the information thought necessary to restart civilization. (So let's hope there's a distiller's manual in there somewhere.) Keeping with the time theme, they'll be making a variety of aged drinks like Mexican Ponche de Granada that will be made every year and be offered in vintages, as well as barrel (or possible stave)-aged cocktails. The other cool thing is that since the Salon...

[Visit Alcademics.com for the full post.]

deviatesinc:

Sarah Bernhardt in Jeanne d’Arc, 1890

This scene, captured by a video camera hidden in a wiring closet at MIT, was the beginning of a probe that led to federal charges against the late coder and activist Aaron Swartz.

richardsilverphoto.com


richardsilverphoto.com


richardsilverphoto.com

Looking up

Instant Corbusier

scalesofperception:

Airship heaven that never was | Via

2 more years…

SoP - Scale of History

I grew up in Troy.  What an odd place for such a futuristic vision.