Irony & Sarcasm marks, part 2 of 3

via shady characters
“The irony marks proposed by John Wilkins, Alcanter de Brahm and Hervé Bazin proved stubbornly resistant to putting down roots, and Bazin’s 1966 point d’ironie would be the last to be publicly promoted for some decades. Before the Internet reinvigorated their cause, though, the hunt for a foolproof method of conveying verbal irony took an abrupt detour: if a self-contained irony mark was not enough, perhaps an entire alphabet was the answer. And whereas the concept of an irony mark had exerted a strange pull on a select few French writers, the idea of signalling verbal irony with a different typeface altogether was instead the preserve of English-language journalists…”
Read the rest here; and more on an irony font here.

Legacies & Transformations

via Bacon is NOT an Herb


Back on September 1st, trueindigo posted some writing I had done in conjunction with a previous art project:

“While growing up in the 1960s, I recall my grandmother telling me proudly that her father, Henry, was a one of the best shots in the area. He and other locals would get together and have shooting matches — and that these matches evolved into the annual Labor Day pigeon shoot in Hegins.

There were photos of him and my great-grandmother in the back dining room of my grandmother’s home. To me at the time, they didn’t look like very friendly people. I’m sure part of that was that they had to hold still for a long time for the photographer, as well as the fact that life was hard maintaining a farm in remote Schuylkill County…”

Read the rest on her blog, Bacon is NOT an Herb, just one of the many projects of hers that I am so very proud of.

The Hello Crow

As I woke up this morning, Terri told me that the “hello crow” was back. There were at least five crows in the trees and on the ground near our bird feeder and suet, and though we couldn’t ID which crow it was that was vocalizing, we could hear it quite clearly. This crow, or one that has also picked up on the vocalizations, has been in the area for at least 16 years. I Googled “crow that says hello” and came across this YouTube video of a Hello Crow, perhaps it is the same one that visits us in central PA.

Images of the Day: Mabon

The variations from cool greens to blazing reds attracted my eye this morning.

A touch of dew on the quince.

Craig Thompson’s Habibi

We just started reading Craig Thompson’s Habibi yesterday, and I am only about half-way through it. His previous graphic novel, Blankets, is powerful in many ways, but this latest work is very complex on a lot of levels. I came across this interview with Thompson at Mother Jones, and also wanted to pass along links to his blog, Doot Doot Garden, and the Habibi site which includes a Process Gallery — be sure to click on the images there to enlarge them.

Of course, when I saw these images of the cover
being printed,  I had to include them here as well.

Money Trees

A money tree with copper and silver coins
hammered into the wood near
Ingleton, North Yorkshire

via dailymail
“…The coins are usually knocked into felled tree trunks using stones by passers-by, who hope it will bring them good fortune. These fascinating spectacles often have coins from centuries ago buried deep in their bark and warped by the passage of time. The tradition of making offerings to deities at wishing trees dates back hundreds of years, but this combination of the man-made and the natural is far more rare. It used to be believed that divine spirits lived in trees, and they were often festooned with sweets and gifts — as is still done today at Christmas. The act is reminiscent of tossing money into ponds for good luck, or the trend for couples to attach ‘love padlocks’ to bridges and fences to symbolise lasting romance…”
Read more, and see additional images, here. A Flickr group can be found here.

Greg Dunn’s Hippocampus

via boingboing
“That’s no dandelion. It’s a painted close-up of a slice of human hippocampus. Jessica Palmer at the Bioephemera blog introduced me to the gorgeous artwork of neuroscience grad student and painter Greg Dunn. His images of different neurons are really lovely…”
Read more at Bioephemera, and visit Dunn’s site too.

Image of the Day: Closed Cinema

I discovered this a few months ago, tucked between two buildings near where I live. Unframed, unadorned, and strongly striking an inner cord with me. Reminding me of an early study by Kandinsky, it has stuck with me, surfacing now and again in my mind. Unintentional creation? It is hard to say, and I will probably never find out. But, perhaps, it will surface again, repurposed. 

Dominic Wilcox’s Watch Sculptures

Watch Sweeper

via a raven
Dominic Wilcox’s latest project, Watch Sculptures: Moments in Time, makes me smile. He placed tiny figures onto watch hands to create a series of stories...
See more images and a video, here. 

Image of the Day: Late Afternoon Desktop

4:39 p.m.
Getting things prepped for tomorrow morning;
desktop image of Ganesh from a photo by Arron Scott.

Daniel Wintle’s “Kern Over” Alphabet

spotted on Green Chair Press
DesignSponge had a Design Your Own Alphabet Contest last fall. Among the entries was “Kern Over” by Daniel Wintle, who picked the name because ‘kerning is the process of adjusting white spacing in a proportional font...’
Visit Green Chair Press to find links to the entries and winners. Just a tad disappointed that there was no ampersand in Kern Over...

Image of the Day: Migration

With the last few hours of the warmth of Summer's sun,
a monarch fuels up on honey-scented nectar

Miquel Barcelo’s Gran Elefandret

via designboom

“Sitting on a traffic island in New York's Union Square, the 9-meter tall sculpture depicts a balancing elephant that is holding itself up by the tip of its trunk...”

Photo taken today by Arron Scott

No. 101-0655: Manhattan's Last Single-Space Parking Meter

via dna.infp
“As the crew from the Department of Transportation surrounded the street in front of meter No. 101-0655 with orange cones, the end of an era was drawing nearer. A few minutes later DOT worker Dennis Weber pulled the mechanical innards out from the single-space meter on Frederick Douglass Boulevard between 125th and 126th streets. Next came the jackhammer as his partner Kemraj Bowani worked his way around the base of the metal pole holding the 80 pound meter in place. Twenty minutes later it was all over. Guy Agostino hoisted the last working parking meter in Manhattan into the back of a DOT truck…”
Read the rest here, more at npr, and the Gothamist. Interestingly, in the New York Times, it noted that the parking meter made its Manhattan debut on Sept. 19, 1951, at a formal ceremony in Harlem that attracted the boxer Sugar Ray Robinson. 

New Logo

via savage chickens

Image of the Day: Omar

Outside of Bellefonte’s Omar Bar and Gill

And, The 27th Letter of the Alphabet

via Now I Know
“There are 26 letters to the English alphabet, with two of the letters — ‘A’ and ‘I’ — themselves also constituting words. But as seen to the right, another character — the ampersand (&) — also, at times, was included among the current 26. And amazingly, the word ‘ampersand’ is probably a byproduct of the symbol’s inclusion. The picture here is from a 1863 book called ‘The Dixie Primer, For The Little Folks,’ — a book which like many around even today, aimed at teaching children their ABCs and some basic words and phonics. Notably, the ampersand is included in the alphabet, just next to the Z and ending the entire set. While not necessarily the standard usage, it was not terribly uncommon either to include the ampersand here — it had been there for centuries…”
Read the rest here.

October 7: Ada Lovelace Day

via FindingAda
Ada Lovelace, a brilliant mathematician in the early 1800s, is considered to have written the first ever computer program. Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of celebration of the achievements of women in science, technology, engineering and maths. This year Ada Lovelace Day will be held on Friday 7 October, so we  hope that you’ll join us in honouring the inspiring women who have excelled in their fields!
Find out more here.

‘To Dream Tomorrow’ is a film about Ada Byron Lovelace (1815-1852) and her contribution to computing, a hundred years before the start of the computer age. Daughter of a mathematically gifted mother and the ‘mad, bad, and dangerous to know’ poet Lord Byron, Ada was 17 when she began studying a prototype mechanical calculator designed by mathematician Charles Babbage. By the time she was 27, she had moved beyond her famous contemporaries and predecessors such as Leibniz & Pascal, to describe universal computing much as we understand it today. Alan Turing, who also worked at Bletchley Park, was familiar with Lovelace’s work.
Read the rest here.

Lonni Sue Johnson: Anatomy of an Illustrator’s Illness

via the daily heller
“Lonni Sue Johnson, whose illustrations have appeared in The New Yorker and The New York Times, among scores of books and magazines, was stricken with viral encephalitis in 2007. The disease left her with severe, memory-impairing brain damage — amnesia.  Johns Hopkins University has been engaged in a research study into the ‘artistic aspect’ of her illness. An announcement and video of her cognitive struggle was just released by Johns Hopkins and an exhibit of Johnson’s post-illness work, ‘Puzzles of the Brain: An Artist’s Journey through Amnesia,’ will open on September 17 at The Walters Museum in Baltimore…”
Read the rest here; with lots of great links to follow.

Scoutmob and Public Bikes

Scoutmob is giving away a PUBLIC C7 or V7 bike every Friday in September.
Enter the giveaway here.