rolling stock

The departed pair of graphic design pioneers Massimo and Lella Vignelli bequeathed their papers—some sixty years-worth of drawings, layouts and logo ideas, to the Rochester Institute of Technology, where a single archivist is discovering and documenting previously unknown treasures with regularity. Among the latest striking finds includes these circa 1973 proposals for an abstract diagrammatic map for Washington DC’s Metro system. The authorities ultimately opted for another concept but did incorporate some of Massimo’s ideas. Be sure to visit City Lab at the link up top to learn more about the artists and their legacy and to discover more artefacts.

jumpman

Wanting to establish Nintendo reputation in the arcade—its first games flattering in popularity compared to rival Atari—the original concept for Donkey Kong was to feature Popeye, Olive Oyl and Bluto as an ensemble of characters.
The legendary video game engineer Shigeru Miyamoto, however, was not able to obtain the rights to these characters (until the following year—that is, and released a forgettable title based on the sailor man) so designed a world with an unnamed protagonist whose mission was to rescue Lady (later to be called Pauline) from a brute ape. Referred to as Jumpman in the instruction booklet and styled Mister Video by Miyamoto himself with the idea he would be a reoccurring character across all games, the character was limned out with a family and profession for his next appearance in Mario Bros., being the namesake of Mario Segale, the real estate developer that owned the warehouse where Nintendo had set up its US division. After a heated exchange between the company’s executives and the landlord over being behind on rent, game developers opted to name the character after him with assurances that they would be caught up on payments soon.

the betterment of well people

Fresh Air host Terry Gross interviews food ethnographer Michael Pollen (known for the adage “eat food, not too much, mostly plants”) on the history, experimentation, therapeutic application, social impact, suppression and current revival of psychedelic drugs—both natural and synthetic—with some first-hand anecdotal evidence.
Not only do clinical trials seem promising in providing patients and the non-remarkable a way to step outside of their repetitive narrative and re-write it, the general view of society is shifting to one more willing to take the potentially scary step towards self-reflection and dissolving one’s ego. Do listen to the entire programme and check out the author’s book, but one of my favourite take-aways (of several) that can help explain why this once broadly accepted and praised method became so demonised: the rite of passage of young people during the Counter-Culture was in part drug-laced and an experience that the elders had not shared and thus felt threatened by it. Timothy Leary earned the appellation The Most Dangerous Man in America by Richard Nixon for saying that these kids taking LSD aren’t going to be the ones to fight your wars and wholly outlawed all consciousness expanding expedients as having no pharmacological merit and other jurisdictions quickly followed that example.

inland empire

We are finding the wealth of New World charts depicting what’s presently the State of California as an island and separated from the continent to be quite fascinating.
I wonder what other geographic misconceptions have been perpetrated and fossilised in the same fashion (see more examples here—having discussed this very subject before but having quite forgot—plus another island that existed only as a cartographical error)—the a-drift version of California (the name itself coming from a early fourteenth century romance about an earthly paradise) reappearing over the decades despite the fact that explorers had confirmed that the Baja peninsula was in fact firmly attached. See the whole curated selection of maps and learn more at the Public Domain Review at the link up top.

6x6

el diablo: a ghoulish gallery of the comic and pulp art of Mexican publications of the 50s and 60s

和菓子: Edo period illustrations of Japanese confections called wagashi

in memoriam: ten stunning structures designed by recently departed architect Will Alsop

red carpet: Star Wars actress dazzles with a Vivienne Westwood original that celebrates increasing diversity in science fiction

landlines: an assortment of vintage telephones from Western Electric, via Weird Universe

from bauhaus to our house: celebrating the wide-ranging contributions and influence of author and journalist Tom Wolfe

trennung von staat und kirche

Controversially (but one is forgiven for not glomming on to this particular problematic mandate since there are so many others to choose from) Bavaria’s new Minister-President has decreed that crosses must hang in all state government buildings from 1 June on wards. Every city hall I’ve been in already has a crucifix hanging non-obtrusively in an office corner but I think that was out of a personal choice and affirmation, rather than something regulated as explicit symbolic value and a way to show solidarity and “commitment to Bavarian identity and culture.” The president went on to explain that the crosses are not in violation of the principle of government neutrality in religious matters because they are specifically agnostic and instead represent the universal values of charity, human dignity and tolerance. No word if there are to be standard-issue crosses to be displayed or if the manner of participation will be left up to individual municipalities or how compliance will be monitored.
Kontrovers (aber man verzeiht, dass man sich nicht auf dieses spezielle Problem berufen hat, weil so viele andere zur Auswahl stehen) der neue bayerische Ministerpräsident hat angeordnet, dass ab dem 1. Juni in allen Regierungsgebäuden Kreuze hängen müssen. Jedes Rathaus, in dem ich schon war, hat ein Kruzifix, das nicht aufdringlich in einer Büroecke hängt, aber ich denke, das war eine persönliche Entscheidung und Bestätigung, anstatt etwas als ausdrücklichen symbolischen Wert und eine Art Solidarität und ,,Engagement zu regeln zur bayerischen Identität und Kultur.” Der Präsident erklärte weiter, dass die Kreuze nicht gegen das Prinzip der Regierungsneutralität in religiösen Angelegenheiten verstoßen, weil sie spezifisch agnostisch sind und stattdessen die universellen Werte der Nächstenliebe, Menschenwürde und Toleranz darstellen. Aber keine Angabe, ob Standardkreuzungen angezeigt werden sollen oder ob die Art der Beteiligung den einzelnen Gemeinden überlassen bleibt oder wie die Einhaltung überwacht wird.

kobe hyakkei

Rummaging through the archives of Present /&/ Correct, we discover latter day reprisal of One Hundred Scenes of Kobe (Kobe Hyakkei, 百景 digging how there is a concise way of saying one hundred views of something) by woodblock print artist Hide Kawanishi.  His first edition depicted his native city as it appeared between 1933 and 1936, and later in the early 1950s Kawanishi produced a second collection, reflecting on post-war Japan.
The municipal website hosting Kawanishi’s renderings and accompanying essays (also available in English) on each location also matches each artistic impression with a photograph of the site, viewed from the same vantage point.

top priority

Despite having yet to formulate a clear and comprehensive divorce settlement from the European Union with crucial deadlines approaching, law-makers in the UK have devised a somewhat elegant solution to another crisis of their own making: namely, to prevent underage people from accessing on-line pornography, as Gizmodo reports, by enlisting kiosks and corner shops to sell passes for £10 (cheaper than identity-theft but still a strange, arbitrary sort of surcharge) with a sixteen digit code that will allow the bearer to access adult websites.
The newsstand agent (previously), purveyors of all sorts of vices, will verify that the purchaser is of majority age and is a filthy, raunchy deviant. While this method seems far preferable to having the government maintain a database on all of its porn-lookers (primed to fall into the hands of extortionists and opportunists) or demanding credit card information as a means of authentication with the exchange being essentially anonymous, it is still the lesser of two evils to implement and enforce a rather needless, ridiculous and unenforceable response to the latest moral panic.