the world, explained. 08.18
R10
“Shared Space” design:
Road signs suck. What if we got rid of them?
It seems counterintuitive, but there’s evidence that getting rid of signals, signs and barriers might actually make streets a lot safer. Towns all over Europe are starting to experiment with streets where cars, buses, bikes and pedestrians can travel freely in the same space. There’s a spot in Google street view where you can witness a town undergoing this exact kind of transformation. In Poynton, England there used to be a mess of signs and lights, a few small sidewalks and some haphazard guardrails to keep pedestrians safe. A few years ago, all of these were removed.
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The “IKEA effect”
Free public shelter
Simulation crime
Norse acorn myth
The moon smells like gunpowder, apparently By Davin Hiskey
Astronauts had the opportunity to smell fresh moon-dust, and they reported that the Moon smells like spent gunpowder. They also report it feels like soft snow, only near impossible to brush off. The taste is also similar to gunpowder, according to Apollo 16 astronaut Charlie Duke. But moon-dust and gunpowder aren’t similar in composition. The moondust itself is made up of primarily silicon dioxide glass that has been shattered into tiny pieces. There is also quite a bit of iron, calcium, and magnesium.
There are two main theories as to why the Moon dust smells like this. First, we might be seeing the “desert rain” effect, where the completely moisturefree dust comes in contact with the moist air in the lunar module, releasing odours from the dust that have lain dormant for years. Otherwise, there might be some sort of oxidation taking place but without the smoke. Sadly, by the time the exposed dust is back on Earth, it smells like nothing. So, who knows!
The “IKEA effect” How effort imbues everyday objects with personal value By Kurt Kohlstedt
A lot of modern food startups have learned from trial and error that some customers prefer to take an active role in preparing their meals. But that insight isn’t entirely novel — back in the 1950s, instant cake mixes met market resistance. There was a sense that maybe these mixes made everything too easy, undervaluing labor and skill. The Betty Crocker brand contracted psychologist Ernest Dichter, who advised them to make one small but critical change. As the story goes: getting customers to add an egg turned things around, increasing customer investment in the product by engaging them in the process. This, in turn, helped drive sales of the product. The full history is actually a bit more complex — for instance: fresh eggs made the cakes better. But like most urban legends, there is some truth to the tale: baking effort into the mix really does change our relationship to things. In 2011, a set of scholars dubbed this type of cognitive bias the “IKEA effect,” naming it after the global furniture giant famous for products that buyers have to assemble themselves. As explained in one of the studies published by Michael I. Norton of Harvard Business School, Daniel Mochon of Yale, and Dan Ariely of Duke: “labor alone can be sufficient to induce greater liking for the fruits of one’s labor: even constructing a standardized bureau, an arduous, solitary task, can lead people to overvalue their (often
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poorly constructed) creations.” Gaining satisfaction from a job well done is a familiar experience, but while some of that effect is tied to the product, their research shows that some of it also comes from the process. Other examples include things like Build-a-Bear (which allows people to assemble their own stuffed animals) and “haycations” (vacations spent working on farms). Notably, too, the IKEA effect is diminished if the completed object is then deconstructed, so just finishing something is not enough. The researchers behind the IKEA effect ran a number of tests and concluded that people are sometimes also willing to pay more for things they are involved in building, be it IKEA furniture or LEGO toys or origami paper cranes. The effect was present even when the results were not as technically impressive as those made by people with greater skill. Of course, there are limits — excessive challenge can lead to frustration, so making things too hard can be a problem. For makers and owners, the IKEA effect can also lead to higher degrees of attachment and valuation distortions. Someone who has worked extensively on their home or car, for instance, may be inclined to price it higher than the market value, factoring in their labors of love. That said, it is hard to imagine getting really attached to a BILLY
bookcase. The effect goes beyond products, too: people presented with barriers to entering a group have been shown to enjoy their inclusion more due to the challenge. Even some animals (like rats) have demonstrated a preference for food that is harder to get over easily accessible snacks. User experience designer Anton Nikolov suggests incorporating the IKEA effect into design strategies. Ideally, users should be able to add something “high value” but “low effort” (akin to the egg that facilitates a whole cake). “Digital designers, for example, can use sample data and editable templates to achieve the IKEA effect, ” he advises. “Make the first experience with your app feel dynamic and alive to the users. Prompt them to edit the templates and interact with the product.” Even something as simple as getting users to set up their accounts and fill in a few details can help them feel more connected to an application. Consumers, meanwhile, might want to keep in mind their own potential cognitive bias when shopping around for furniture and toys (or trying out new apps). For some, the assembly challenge may be enjoyable and worth the extra time and cost. But for others, well, there is also something to be said for ready-made design objects, even if it means missing out on the potential fun of pun-making trips to IKEA.
explained. - Aug - 2018
“Shared Space” design: Road signs suck. What if we got rid of them? Continued from cover story...
By Kurt Kohlstedt t seems counterintuitive, but there’s evidence that getting rid of signals, signs and barriers might actually make streets a lot safer. Towns all over Europe are starting to experiment with streets where cars, buses, bikes and pedestrians can travel freely in the same space. There’s a spot in Google street view where you can witness a town undergoing this exact kind of transformation. In Poynton, England there used to be a mess of signs and lights, a few small sidewalks and some haphazard guardrails to keep pedestrians safe. A few years ago, all of these were removed. The town spent four million pounds to expand sidewalk space and strip the city center of traditional demarcations. Now, the only marker left is this little sign denoting the “Poynton Shared Space Village.” The concept is that the absence of separation will make everyone more cautious — so commuters slow down, make eye contact, and negotiate. And because cars don’t spend time waiting at traffic lights, it takes less time on average
An innovative thinking could make intersections, roads and shared public spaces safer and less congested. Illustration by Jomiro Eming. for them to get through the crossing. Even when cyclists and pedestrians are absent cars drive slowly due to a something called “edge friction.” It’s the idea that nearby vertical elements in a driver’s peripheral vision (like trees or lamps) create a visual cue for how fast they’re going. On a highway, those are often totally absent, so the sidelines blur. In a shared space, those lines play an important mental trick to slow down drivers. In theory, shared spaces work well for pedestrians, allowing them to follow their desired path while walking. Instead of being limited to a strict path, they can walk exactly in the direction they want to go. In practice, that doesn’t always seem to be the case — often, people will still walk where they would expect to see crosswalks. And those pedestrians frequently report that they prefer things the way they used to be — but the “way things used to be” is relative. If you look at old footage of city streets in the early 1900s (or listen to the episode above), cars mixed freely with
pedestrians, bicyclists, and streetcars. Vehicles couldn’t go very fast back then, so there wasn’t a huge concern about separating them from walkers and bike riders. With plenty of city streets, that’s still the case without any intentional urban planning. But the big question is whether these deliberately stripped-down designs actually make people safer. It seems that in many cases, they do — we know that the number of accidents drops after shared spaces are installed. We also know that shared spaces are more free-flowing based on analysis of “traffic conflicts” (where someone makes an evasive maneuver to avoid an accident). But that doesn’t mean these designs work for everyone. From the beginning, shared space designs have been under fire for providing insufficient protections for disabled pedestrians, especially the visually impaired. A 2015 House of Lords report called for a temporary ban on shared space designs. And in August of 2016, a select committee of the House
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of Commons launched an inquiry into the accessibility of such environments. Their final report in April of 2017 asked the government to put all shared space schemes on hold until they improved the process of consulting disabled communities. Preliminary designs by groups like the Danish Building Research Institute hint at what a balanced approach might look like. They include both the mixed traffic of shared spaces but also raised street textures and button-activated crosswalks for pedestrians with disabilities. Shared spaces can be effective, but for this kind of plan to function well across communities, a lot more research is needed to determine what will work in different places and serve the needs of all the people sharing the streets. This will also require a radical rethinking of how we move through our daily lives, raising questions about signs and infrastructure we see everywhere but take for granted — and it will mean rewriting the rules of what a city can look like.
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Why is it called a “nick”-name? By Melissa Blevins
An empty house in the Scottish highlands waits for travellers. Image by Alastair Humphreys.
Highland Bothies: Free public shelter on private land
By Kurt Kohlstedt Dotting the mountains of the Scottish Highlands, picturesque dwellings offer hikers and cyclists a chance to rest, relax and spend the night, free of charge. This long-standing network of retreats is maintained primarily by volunteers organized by the Mountain Bothies Association, a Scottish charity which works with landowners to care for the structures. Today, almost all bothies sit on privately-owned land — the MBA itself only owns one building in the network they oversee. Though more concentrated in Scotland, bothies can be found in Northern England, Ireland and Wales as well. Historically, the term “bothy” was mainly used to describe modest dwellings for itinerant workers, but the meaning has expanded to include this class of retreat. Many of the structures in the current bothy network were originally built for other functions, serving as post offices, schools, wilderness retreats, coastguard stations and more. Some sit up in the mountains, others along private beaches or on cliffs overlooking the ocean. “Bothying” started to become popular in the wake of early 1900s rural depopulation. Initially, walkers would simply hole up in deserted buildings, with or without explicit permission. And for many years, finding and staying in these was a largely informal process — location information was passed around by word of mouth. Then, in 1965, the MBA was formed to help protect the structures from
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decay and ruin, preserving them for present and future generations of hikers. In recent years, MBA group began putting maps up publicly online. Books like The Scottish Bothy Bible have raised awareness, too. Structural shifts in land accessibility played a critical role as well. As England and Wales began implementing their Countryside and Rights of Way Act in the early 2000s, increasing regional “freedom to roam,” Scotland decided to take things a step further. In 2003, the country passed its own Land Reform Act. This did a number of things, but, first and foremost, it codified a long tradition of public access. Basically, if people are respectful of other people and property, they can roam even more freely on private land up north. Because most bothies are located on private land, people using them are expected to be conscientious of the structures and their surroundings. A code of conduct governs behavior — visitors should come in small groups , for instance, unless they seek out specific permission. They should also avoid damaging live trees on owned property and, if possible, leave kindling for the next folks (some owners restock wood, too). Travelers hoping for a hotel-like stay (or even hostel-style environment) should be aware, though, warns the MBA: “When going to a bothy, it is important to assume that there will be no facilities.
No tap, no sink, no beds, no lights, and, even if there is a fireplace, perhaps nothing to burn. Bothies may have a simple sleeping platform, but if busy you might find that the only place to sleep is on a stone floor.” Some, however, do feature stoves, insulation or even little libraries. Free overnight shelters are by no means limited to the British Isles — backcountry huts can be found in countries including Sweden, Norway, Russia, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States. So bothies are not a unique phenomenon, but do differ from a lot of shelters that are purpose-built and municipally run. They represent a creative way to reuse old buildings, too, engaging landowners as well as volunteers who are invested in nature (and wilderness adventures). And they thrive in part on a particularly permissive approach to land use, enabling people to wander in the truest sense of the word. As England and Wales began implementing their Countryside and Rights of Way Act in the early 2000s, increasing regional “freedom to roam,” Scotland decided to take things a step further. In 2003, the country passed its own Land Reform Act. This did a number of things, but, first and foremost, it codified a long tradition of public access. Basically, if people are respectful of other people and property, they can roam even more freely on private land up north. Fancy that, hey?
explained. - Aug - 2018
Who the hell is “Nick?” When someone has an alternate name, other than their legal one that they go by, why is it called a “nick”-name? A form of nickname has been around since the early 14th century - eke name, literally meaning “an additional name.” Eke is an even older word, dating back to about 1200 meaning “to increase.” (Eke also meant “to lengthen,” and it was this meaning that eventually became the meaning of to “eke out” or make just enough.) The first documented instance of “eke name” comes from the 1303 Middle English devotional Handlyng Synne, by Robert Manning of Brunne. In it, he states on line 1531 to 1534, “As moche þan he ys to blame Þat ȝeueþ a man a vyle ekename Ȝyf hys ryȝt name be withdrawe Gostlychë…” So how did we get “nickname” from “ekename”? This is one of the numerous examples of metanalysis or rebracketing. In this case, “an ekename” became “a nekename” and ultimately, today, “a nickname.” We can see this transformation starting in the 1440 work Promptorium Parvulorum (“Storehouse for Children,” the first English to Latin dictionary) by Geoffrey the Grammarian of England, where it states “Neke name, or eke name, agnomen.” Similarly, the 1483 English to Latin dictionary Catholicon Anglicum has an entry: “An Ekname, agnomen.” We see another incarnation of this in Sir Thomas More’s Confutation of Tyndale’s Answer published in 1532:
“I shoulde here call Tindall by another name: it were no nyck name at all and yet would there some then say that it were not honest so to do; and this will some such folk say as in the villainous words of his spoken by this blessed sacrament will find no fault at all. But meseemeth surely that at the first hearing of such a shameful word spoken by the mouth of such a shameless heretic by this holy sacrament of Christ, the whole Christian company present should not be able to contain themselves from calling him “knave” all with one voice at once.” Fast-forwarding a bit to the 17th century, we find several instances of the more modern “nick-” spelling, such as in the 1617 Itinerary by Fynes Moryson, where it states, “James Fitz-thomas was by a nickename called the Suggon Earle…” Within a century of this, “nick-name,” “nick name,” and “nickname” became relatively commonly used in place of older variants and the original “eke name,” with the latter being phased out completely.
Some science on hangovers, what cures them, and why we get them By Rachel Barclay
While science hasn’t discovered a cure for hangovers yet, some remedies can help speed (or slow down) recovery. Healthline spoke with Gantt Galloway, PharmD, senior scientist in the Addiction & Pharmacology Research Laboratory at the California Pacific Medical Center Research Institute in San Francisco, California, to learn about which ones work best. These are some of Galloway’s hangover “do’s and don’ts”: 1. Do hydrate. Alcohol acts as a diuretic, meaning that it causes the body to lose water. Although replacing the lost water won’t cure your hangover, it will make it less painful. Try Gatorade or another sports drink to replenish lost electrolytes and get a bit of sugar at the same time. 2. Do eat. Ideally, eat both before and after drinking. Having food in your stomach slows the rate of alcohol absorption. And make sure you aren’t letting drinking substitute for eating a meal. “There are some indications that part of the difficulty people experience is because they haven’t eaten enough food while drinking,” said Galloway. “You always want to engage in basic self-care in order to do well.” 3. Do sleep. It’s easy to let drinking alter your sleep schedule. “Independent of any other effect alcohol might have, sleep disruption causes you to feel worse the next day and causes cognitive disruption the next day,” Galloway said. Since alcohol impairs sleep quality, try to be sober for as much as your sleeping time as possible. 4. Do take Vitamin B6. It won’t cure your hangover, but it will reduce the symptoms. Vitamin B6 can be found in poultry, fish, liver, potatoes, and non-citrus fruits. You can also find it in your daily multivitamin. 5. Don’t drive or operate heavy machinery. Although not as severe as the effects of alcohol, simply being hungover also dulls reaction times and decision-making skills. The effects last for 16 hours, so if you’re planning on drinking enough to get hungover, don’t plan to drive the next day. 6. Don’t take Tylenol. The acetaminophen in Tylenol causes your body to metabolize alcohol
more slowly. It can also cause liver damage in high doses. In particular, Galloway warns against drinking Nyquil as a source of alcohol, since it contains acetaminophen. Instead, he recommends you take an NSAID pain reliever, such as ibuprofen or aspirin. NSAIDs also reduce the inflammation that may be associated with hangover. 7. Don’t keep drinking. Drinking occasionally doesn’t pose health risks, but regularly drinking enough to cause hangovers is a ma jor risk factor for alcoholism. And although many myhts about alcohol are completely false - like that coffee can cure your hangover, for example - some conventional truths are in fact quite reliable: 1. Dark liquors cause worse hangovers than clear liquors. Dark liquors contain congeners, byproducts of alcohol production found primarily in brandy, red wine, and tequila. Congeners make hangovers more severe and long-lasting. Clear liquors like silver rum, vodka, and gin contain fewer congeners. 2. Eating salty, fatty food helps. Food that is high in fat and protein can delay alcohol absorption, giving your metabolism more time to clear the alcohol from your system. The salt will help replace lost electrolytes, and meat contains Vitamin B6, which reduces hangover symptoms. 3. Another drink helps. Although a hangover is very different from alcohol withdrawal, it might produce acute discontinuation syndrome, which a little alcohol could relieve. Galloway cautions that this isn’t a good longterm strategy, though. “The conventional wisdom is that it’s effective,” he said. “But if you’ve consumed enough alcohol to cause hangover and substantial impairment and discomfort the next day, you need to be looking at your drinking. More alcohol the next day may fuel the fires of excessive drinking.” “If you’re somebody who is having frequent hangovers and you think that you can’t become alcoholic because you’re in control of it now, you’re in the same boat as everyone who becomes alcoholic,” said Galloway. “They didn’t think they could become alcoholic, either.” So watch your glass, and stay hydrated - with water!
Depending where in the world you find yourself, the cure for a hangover will differ quite dramatically. Illustration by David McCandless.
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Hogan’s Alleys: Simulating crime, riots and terrorism in surrealistic fake cities
PICTURED ABOVE: Buildings inside Hogan’s Alley stand ready for imitation missions, carried out by the FBI under simulation-like conditions. PICTURED BELOW: The original poster for the 1984 Nintendo game which inspired Hogan’s Alley. Images courtesy of FBI.gov.
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By Kurt Kohlstedt An angry mob hurls bricks and molotov cocktails at riot-geared officers against a backdrop of burned-out cars and firescorched buildings on a street strewn with broken glass. The fire is real, as are the uniformed police. Zooming out, though, the reality of the scene begins to collapse. The architectural facades are just one-brick-thick shells propped up by metal support braces. Angry citizens are officers in plainclothes. The scenario is an elaborate simulation acted out in the streets of a so-called “Hogan’s Alley” located in Gravesend, England (an ominously named place where 14thcentury Black Death graves ended). Home to one of the highest (fake) crime rates in the world, the Metropolitan Police Specialist Training Centre has been the site of burglaries, assaults, riots and terrorist attacks. Robberies are attempted in parks, restaurants and nightclubs. Hijackings and bombings are foiled at aircraft, train and tube stations. The population varies, but the complex can house up to 300 participants at a time. Designed by Advanced Interactive Systems (AIS), the training center was opened in 2003, complete with “livefire ranges with internal ballistic and anti-ricochet finishes.” On the one hand, training grounds like these give officers a chance to learn before jumping into real-life action. On the other hand, people like photographer Chris Clarke say “Gravesend can be interpreted as a warning – a prophecy of society’s potential to alienate itself from itself, and kill its collective identity.” Either way, this is not the first fake urban environment of its kind. The Origins of Hogan’s Alleys The term “Hogan’s Alley” dates all the way back to an 1890s comic strip about a crime-ridden area. In the 1920s, the name was adopted by a firearm training facility constructed at Camp Perry (Ohio) for urban police officers as well as National Guard members. It was made to be a shared learning space for various armed forces around the country. Over time, these kinds of facilities slowly evolved from simple shooting ranges to more elaborate simulated environments and facades. Still, these vintage versions were flatter, less complex and interactive, often with targets propped up in simple door and window openings. A 1984 Nintendo game named Hogan’s Alley tested player reflexes on a “light gun” as they aimed to hit enemies and avoid innocents. It drew inspiration from analog facilities with their popup cardboard cutouts. Through these various uses over the decades, the phrase “Hogan’s Alley” slowly became a catch-all for police training simulators, many of which have evolved to be ever more sophisticated
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and realistic. Life in the FBI’s Convincing Fake Town “It’s a hotbed of terrorist and criminal activity,” says the FBI of their facility, which sits on a 60-acre section of the FBI Training Academy in Quantico, Virginia. “Its only bank is robbed at least twice a week. Mobsters, drug dealers, and international terrorists lurk around every corner. Hogan’s Alley is exactly the way we want it.” Funding for its construction was made available following a 1986 Miami street shootout in which multiple FBI agents were injured or killed. This particular complex was designed with help from Hollywood set designers, and looks much like a Los Angeles filming lot — it has a level of historic mainstreet realism within limited boundaries. The mini-city comes complete with a bank, post office, laundromat, barber shop, pool house, apartments and more. Some businesses were built with insider references to agency history in mind, like the Biograph Theater, a replica of the place where John Dillinger was gunned down by the FBI in 1934. Reality is blurred. The cars aren’t really for sale, and the mailboxes are welded shut, but the deli does serve food. Actors roam the streets, playing the parts of terrorists, thieves, drug dealers and other criminals as well as innocent bystanders for full effect. “Simunition” (realistic paint balls) are used in some scenarios. In 1990, shortly after it opened, crime paid $8/hour in the newly built complex. At the time, though, many civilian participants reported they would do the job for free just for the experience and thrill of it. The place may look quiet and tame at a glance, but “there are plenty of surprises along the way,” explains the FBI. “We’ve asked some of our actors to resist arrest and to turn seemingly routine events into life-and-death situations. That way, our new agents learn how to make the right decisions under stressful conditions.” Veteran agents follow trainees around, observing as they make decisions about when to pull (and fire) weapons. They also monitor how students handle routine choices like when to kick down a door or how to frisk a suspect. Like the scripted hero and villain stories played out within them, it may be too easy to paint these facilities with black-and-white brushes as either “good or “bad.” Hogan’s Alleys could be viewed as dystopian, a way to desensitize people to life-and-death situations. But they also offer a chance to learn from mistakes and try things again, something trainees will not get to do once they head out into the real world. As with most questions of the built environment, it may be less a question of how a place is designed and more an issue of how it gets used.
Macintosh led PC-graphics By Kurt Kohlstedt
“Seed banks” and why they’re under threat
By Andrew Griffin
The Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway was built to look after the future of mankind. But as the species faces difficulty so does the bank, and the Norwegian government will spend R100 million on upgrading the vault so that it can last against its challenges. Famously, the bunker – which sits in the wastes of an Arctic island – was hit by freak weather events in late 2016, showing the dangers that are faced by the vault despite the fact it was built to withstand the end of the world. The new money will fund the “construction of a new, concrete-built access tunnel, as well as a service building to house emergency power and refrigerating units and other electrical equipment that emits heat through the tunnel". The vault was built to help humanity live through and withstand the most profound challenges that face it: the destruction of the environment and the important things it provides for us. If we were hit by a destructive event like climate change or even nuclear war, we would turn to the library of seeds to replenish what we’d lost. Among the challenges facing agriculture, the world needs to produce more food that is more nutritious, and to do so “on less land, with less water, less pesticides, less fertiliser to keep within what the planet can stand”, Haga said. An unexpected thaw of permafrost meant water flowed into the entrance of the vault’s tunnel in late 2016. The seeds were not in danger, but Norway said on Friday it would spend 100 million krone (R130 million) to upgrade the vault. “When I came up here the first time in 1985 ... there was always ice on the fjord. Now you never see complete ice on the fjord,” Haga said. Scientists have warned that the Arctic Ocean could be icefree much sooner than previous predictions, which forecast sea ice would first disappear completely during summer months between 2040 and 2050. Fowler but welcomed Norway’s decision to strengthen the vault. “We’ll be tight and dry and we’ll deal with whatever climate change gives us,” he said.
Acorns:
A mythical Norse protection from being struck by lightning
By Christina Hole
Oaks (Quercus spp.) are thunder trees, once sacred to Thor, and as such they are thought to protect against lightning … The branches, or their acorns, kept in a house protect that house from being struck. When ‘pull-down’ blinds were fashionable, the bobbins at the ends of the blind-cords were usually shaped like acorns for this reason. This statement, finding supposed ancient survivals in everyday objects, is typical of those made by folklorists at that time. Undoubtedly bobbins, even plastic ones produced today, are often acorn-shaped, but is there any evidence that they are shaped thus to provide protection? There are early twentieth-century records of acorns being thought to provide protection. In her Discovering the Folkore of Plants, ed. 2, 1996: 109, Margaret Baker (b.1926) records: In a Sussex cottage, where the writer stayed as a child, oak twigs and oak apples and acorns stood in a spill jar on the mantelpiece, summer and winter, against lightning. The Cuming Museum in the London borough of Southwark holds a collection of ‘charms’ presented by Edward Lovett (1852-1933) in 1916. This includes a number of cord-knobs or blind-pulls shaped like acorns, umbrella tassels ‘with wooden acorns’, an acorn-shaped brass pendant in the form of an acorn, and a glass perfume bottle pendant also in the form of an acorn, all of which were said to provide protection against lightning (see the Museum’s website). And, according to an article in the Weekly Telegraph of 5 February 1938, ‘ever since the days of the Druids, the acorn has been the accepted charm against lightning’. As might be expected in a newspaper article, no evidence is provided to support this statement, but useful information on current practices is given: Quite a number of airmen carry with them when flying an acorn … At an inquest on the body of a farm labourer killed by lightning, a witness testified that it was the worst storm he had ever been out in. ‘But I was not frightened’ he added, ‘I had acorns in my pocket.’ Not only airmen but others carry this charm among them steeplejacks. Many steeplejacks would not dream of going aloft in stormy weather without carrying an acorn. Thus it appears that in the first half of the twentieth century acorns and acorn-shaped objects were believed to provide protection from lightning, but there is no evidence to suggest that this belief is a survival of ancient Scandinavian or Druid beliefs.
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From the friendly smiling startup icon to the dreaded bomb icon (signalling a fatal system error), it was the graphics that brought early Macintosh computers to life and set them apart from textbased PCs. But few Mac users computing in the 1980s knew at the time how much of their visual experience traced back to one woman: Susan Kare. Kare’s influence both initially and over the decades that followed is hard to overestimate. Her pixel art formed the basis for digital tool icons still in use today, including the command symbol as well as the lasso and paint bucket commonly found in visual editing programs. Typefaces like Chicago and Gothic also persisted long after the original operating systems for which they were designed went away. Later designs made for other computing companies like IBM and Microsoft, including notepad and control panel icons, have also stuck around in some form or another (with iterations along the way). In recent years, Kare has done work for Facebook and Pinterest as well. But Kare’s big break came back in 1982 when a friend invited her to apply to Apple. She arrived with a gridded notebook and began sketching out ideas around pixel-based design constraints. Kare later recalled in interviews how she “loved the puzzle-like nature of working in sixteen-by-sixteen and thirtytwo-by-thirty-two pixel icon grids, and the marriage of craft and metaphor. Bitmap graphics are like mosaics and needlepoint and other pseudo-digital art forms,” she said, “all of which I had practiced before going to Apple.” Macs weren’t the first computers to use a kind of virtual-reality, point-and-click desktop in place of a commandline approach. This kind of graphical user interface had been experimented with for years. But Steve jobs recognized its potential — the way it could attract non-computer geeks, artists, musicians and everyday users. And Kare’s innovative work operated in parallel with his vision. Her designs were intuitive, meant to communicate ideas rather than being realistic, and were instrumental in making both useful products and sales.
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The unusual story of the interrobang: What makes this punctuation mark so special By Joe Rosenberg In the beginning was the word, and the word was … well, actually, there was just one word … one long, endless word. For thousands of years, in some written languages, there was no space between words. People were expected figure out sentences and clauses while reading aloud. Scriptio continua was the dominant form of writing for the Greeks and the Romans. Sometimes, this never-ending string of letters would execute what was called an ox-turn, first reading left to right, then switching to read back from right to left. In the 3rd century BCE, a librarian in Alexandria named Aristophanes introduced the idea of putting in dots to indicate pauses, like stage directions for people performing texts out loud. Dots of ink at the bottom, middle, or top of a given line served as subordinate, intermediate and full points, corresponding to pauses of increasing length. Aristophanes’ system became the basis for Western punctuation. A partial thought — followed by the shortest pause — was called a comma. A fuller thought was called a kolon. And a complete thought — followed by the longest pause — was called a periodos. These rhetorical units eventually lent their names to the comma, colon and period we know today. More punctuation followed. Medieval scribes gave us the earliest forms of the exclamation mark. And in the 8th century, Alcuin of York, an English scholar in the court of Charlemagne, quietly introduced a symbol that would evolve into the modern question mark. Ever since, we’ve ended our sentences with one of these three ancient marks, called end marks. Questioning Exclamations There have, however, been attempts to expand this typographical toolkit, and include other end marks. One such example has made it into dictionaries: the interrobang. It was created by an ad man named Martin Speckter just over a half-century ago. In the 1950s and 60s, he repped some of the biggest names in publishing, such as Barron’s, Dow Jones, and the Wall Street Journal. Speckter was also a typography nerd, constantly reading
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books on punctuation and the English language. He and his Penny wife, Penny, collected hundreds of printing presses of all kinds and sizes. In the spring of 1962, Speckter was thinking about advertising when he realized something: many ads asked questions, but not just any questions — excited and exclamatory questions — a trend not unique to his time. Got milk?! Where’s the beef?! Can you hear me now?! So he asked himself: could there be a mark that made it clear (visually on a page) that something is both a question and an exclamation?! Speckter was also the editor of the typography magazine TYPEtalks, so in March of 1962, in an article for the magazine titled “Making a New Point, Or How About That…”, Speckter proposed the first new mark of English language punctuation in 300 years: the interrobang. The interrobang was a new kind
of end mark. It denoted a question that expressed surprise or incredulity. This also made it useful for rhetorical questions, most of which are also incredulous. In his article, Speckter was already envisioning exclamatory-slashrhetorical advertising slogans that could take advantage of the new mark, such as “What?! A Refrigerator That Makes Its Own Ice Cubes?!” Speckter laid out a few different potential ideas for what the interrobang should look like, but quickly zeroed in on a favorite. His design collapsed the question mark and the exclamation point into a single glyph. The two marks, instead of being placed back to back, were now conjoined, sharing the same dot at the bottom. At Speckter’s request, readers of the article also wrote in with proposals for alternate names, including “emphaquest,” “interropoint” and “exclarogative.” But he stuck with the original name — “interro” for interrogate and “bang” for the
“The Interrobangcast” is a podcast hosted by Travis and Tybee, and makes use of the punctuation mark as both a springboard for its content, as well as in its logo. Image courtesy of Interrobangcast.com.
explained. - Aug - 2018
proofreader’s word for the exclamation point. (When giving dictation, people didn’t use the phrase “exclamation point.” They would just say “bang.”) But, as punctuation expert Keith Houston explains, “it’s not easy to invent a mark of punctuation that actually sticks.” Houston loves the interrobang, but notes that history is littered with failed attempts to create new end marks. “Around the 16th century,” for instance, “the percontation mark, this rhetorical question mark, lasted about fifty years before it disappeared. There was one invented by a kind of renaissance man called John Wilkins who proposed an irony mark and it went nowhere.” And then there’s the interrobang, which, seemingly from the day it was born, faced a string of bad luck. For example, an article praising the interrobang appeared in the New York Herald Tribune in 1962. In the Tribune article, the writer called the interrobang true genius. Unfortunately, his article was published on the first of April and it may have been that the readers took it as an April Fool’s joke. Still, this punctuation mark persevered. In 1966, a company called the American Type Founders — a legendary design firm that created some of the most widely used typefaces of the 20th century — unveiled a new typeface called Americana that included an interrobang, but the foundry was in decline, and Americana was the last type typeface they ever cut. Then, in 1968, the iconic typewriter company Remington announced that their latest model typewriter would feature an optional intrerrobang key. Still, it was optional — an extra — costing extra money. It failed to catch on. Today, the interrobang is just barely hanging in there. It has its own character in Unicode, the common directory of symbols which all computer fonts must reference. But Keith Houston points out that it still hasn’t cleared the biggest typographical obstacle of all: “I think that in order to really consider it to be a real mark of punctuation, people have to use it without thinking about it.” In other words: a truly remarkable mark of punctuation must be unremarkable.