In some of the reading I've been doing on health-care aesthetics, one article favorably cited various programs that bring artists and entertainers--specifically clowns--into hospitals to cheer up patients. Clowns? The last thing I want if I'm hospital is an annoying clown trying to "entertain" me. Apparently British kids agree. Reuters reports that in a survey of 250 patients ages 4 to 16, ALL of them said they "disliked the use of clowns, with even the older ones finding them scary." (Duh.) "We found that clowns are universally disliked by children. Some found them quite frightening and unknowable," says a researcher.
UPDATE: These people need to get a clue.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on January 16, 2008 • Comments
I'm keen to buy a new Mac laptop with a brighter screen so I can work outside. The super lightweight MacBook Air sounds great. But at 13.3" wide, it probably won't fit in my already-oversized purse. (And the word in fashion circles is that oversized bags are OUT.) What's wrong with 12" like my PowerBook G4? I'll check it out, but I'm guessing that the MacBook Air will prove too big and too expensive for me.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on January 15, 2008 • Comments
Or, to put it in words of one syllable, Which flags look good? With letter grades and comments, e.g., "Automatic weapons on a flag are especially bad." "Do not put a picture of a parrot on your flag" [Via Design Observer.]
Posted by Virginia Postrel on January 10, 2008 • Comments
Obsidian Wings, where Andrew Olmsted used to post under the name G'Kar, explains his family's wishes for a fitting memorial and posts a LOOOONG list of the many blogs and media outlets that have covered his death and his final blog post. [Via Jim Henley, who also has interesting posts on Ron Paul.]
UPDATE: Contributing to his friend Gary Farber's pledge drive would also be a good memorial.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on January 09, 2008 • Comments
In response to my post below about Ron Paul, reader Bill Sullivan writes:
My wife and I were big Ron Paul supporters (until yesterday, in fact). We're also 29 and 30 years old, which means we weren't paying attention to Ron Paul in the 90's. We donated money to the campaign, and I suppose we failed to do the due diligence on Paul, as we didn't dig through archives of his old newsletters. We feel terrifically betrayed, not only by Ron Paul, but by older libertarians like yourself for not publicly warning us about him. If you knew he was such bad news and that he was becoming one of the biggest mainstream representatives of libertarian thought, why didn't you warn us? I've been reading your work for about ten years, and I consider you a very fair and smart writer and if you had given a public warning about Ron Paul, I, for one, would have listened. But now my wife and I and probably thousands of other young libertarians and libertarian sympathizers have been tricked into supporting something that sickens me. Even your colleague at the Atlantic, Andrew Sullivan, was taken in among lots of other public people. I'm stunned by what Ron Paul turned out to be, but I'm also stunned that waited to mention him until it was too late to do any good.
Bill makes a good point. Someone should have told him. There are plenty of people who get paid to do that sort of thing. I did not mean to criticize the essentially apolitical people like him and his wife who heard some good things from Paul and decided to support him.
As I told Bill in an email, I was never particularly interested in the Paul campaign, which I considered a fringe effort in both its chances (nil) and much of its rhetoric (too many conspiracies). Rightly or wrongly, I didn't consider Paul "one of the biggest mainstream representatives of libertarian thought." I'm not sure whether I would have written about him if I had. Life is short, I don't make my living as a professional libertarian any more, and I don't feel responsible for commenting on every libertarian-related development that comes along. These days, I am more interested in understanding culture and economics than focusing on policy, much less policing the libertarian movement. Plus, as the Paulites will be quick to note, I disagree with Paul on his sexiest issue, the Iraq war (and on his second sexiest issue, opposition to immigration).
I do fault my friends at Reason, who are much cooler than I'll ever be and who, scornful of the earnestness that takes politics seriously, apparently didn't do their homework before embracing Paul as the latest indicator of libertarian cachet. For starters, they might have asked my old boss Bob Poole about Ron Paul; I remember a board member complaining about Paul's newsletters back in the early '90s. Besides, people as cosmopolitan as Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch should be able to detect something awry in Paul's populist appeals. (Note that by "cosmopolitan" I do not mean "Jewish." I mean cosmopolitan.) I suspect they did but decided it was more useful to spin things their way than to take Paul's record and ideas seriously. As for Andrew Sullivan, his political infatuations are not his strong point as a commentator.
UPDATE: I've found the Texas MonthlyRon Paul profile, alluded to in the earlier post.
UPDATE 2: Tim Cavanaugh has a smart take on the Paul controversy, made all the better by his swipe at Jim Crow-lover Woodrow Wilson. [Via Hit & Run.]
Posted by Virginia Postrel on January 09, 2008 • Comments
My new Atlantic column looks at today's profusion of typefaces (and it's not behind the dreaded wall this month! UPDATE: Wrong. It is behind the wall, but this link is good for three days.). Here's the opening:
Given its subject, Michael Bierut's Seventy-Nine Short Essays on Design, published last May by Princeton Architectural Press, is remarkably plain. It has no pictures. It isn't oversized. It doesn't even have a dust jacket.
Yet the book is a graphic extravaganza. Each of the 79 essays is set in a different typeface, ranging in age from Bembo, designed in 1495, to Flama, created in 2006. This profusion of typefaces would have been inconceivable when Bierut, 50, was starting out as a graphic designer. "I'm not sure in 1982 I could have come up with 79 different text fonts," he says.
Nowadays, even nonprofessionals take an abundance of typefaces for granted. My computer includes about 100 English-language fonts, many of them families encompassing multiple weights—Baskerville in bold, bold italic, italic, regular, semibold, and semibold italic, for instance—and all available instantly. Basic cultural literacy now demands at least a passing familiarity with typefaces: witness a November episode of Jeopardy that featured the category "Knowledge of Fonts," with correct responses including "What is Helvetica?" and "What is Bodoni?" A thoroughly entertaining (really) documentary called Helvetica, tracing the rise and fall and rise of the 20th century's most ubiquitous typeface, played to sold-out crowds on the film-festival circuit last year.
The profusion of fonts is one more product of the digital revolution. Beginning in the mid-'80s and accelerating in the 1990s, type design weathered the sort of radical, technology-driven transformation that other creative industries, including music, publishing, and movies, now face. Old business models and intermediaries disappeared seemingly overnight. Software replaced industrial processes. Tangible products—metal, film, computer disks—dissolved into bits and bytes sold over the Internet. Prices plummeted. Consumers started buying directly. From their kitchen tables, independent designers could undertake experiments that had once required bet- the-company investments. "Having an idea for a typeface used to be like having an idea for a new-model car," says Bierut. Now the distance between idea and execution, designer and user, has contracted.
Though still a tiny number—maybe a couple hundred worldwide—more people than ever are making a living designing type. Many others, mostly graphic designers, have turned type design into a profitable sideline. And more people than ever are buying fonts. Tens of thousands of fonts already exist, and more are created every day. The question is why.
Read the rest here, and be sure to check out the online sidebars, including my interview with Helvetica director Gary Hustwit and this terrific video of Michael Bierut.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on January 08, 2008 • Comments
In some of the reading I've been doing on health-care aesthetics, one article favorably cited various programs that bring artists and entertainers--specifically clowns--into hospitals to cheer up patients. Clowns? The last thing I want if I'm hospital is an annoying clown trying to "entertain" me. Apparently British kids agree. Reuters reports that in a survey of 250 patients ages 4 to 16, ALL of them said they "disliked the use of clowns, with even the older ones finding them scary." (Duh.) "We found that clowns are universally disliked by children. Some found them quite frightening and unknowable," says a researcher.
, tracing the rise and fall and rise of the 20th century's most ubiquitous typeface, played to sold-out crowds on the film-festival circuit last year.