Wow, I thought I'd seen my share of ugly modern architecture. However, the new building for the Ontario College of Art and Design really takes the prize for the most abhorrent monstrosity to date. I saw parts of the construction when I was visiting Toronto recently, but had not viewed a conceptual drawing of the finished product until today. Apparently I'm joining the herd in my criticism, but can you blame me? That's hideous.
I discovered two things this past weekend that are worth pointing out:
One. While playing Trivial Pursuit on Friday night¹, I discovered that CNN was once derided as the Chicken Noodle Network by other news organizations.
Two. While briefly watching CNN on Sunday, I discovered that it deserves the name. During their extended-play coverage of the whole Saddam spectacle, CNN conducted a phone-in survey asking "Should Saddam have been taken alive? Yes or No." I certainly hope I'm not the only one who found the question preposterous and a simple invitation for a bloodthirsty response.
Actually, come to think of it, calling CNN the Chicken Noodle Network is disparaging to wonderful chicken noodle soup which is both delicious and heart-warming.
I've been a big fan of Sam Brown's beautiful drawings at Exploding Dog for a long time. If you haven't visited before, you must be the last person on the internet and you should head over there right now.
However, almost as impressive as his drawings is Sam's prolific and steady additions to the collection. I draw most of silverorange's dinky slices of the month, so I can somewhat attest to the difficulty in maintaining momentum when regularly drawing for the web. It's difficult to keep up a regular contribution and to come up with fresh creative ideas on a regular basis. Congratulations to Sam for his tenacity as well as his ability.
"I'm Listening to Sad Songs" by Sam Brown
The last top five list I tried was very entertaining, so I'll try another. These are my choices for top five flags from around the world. Flags are some of the finest and oldest examples of 'branding' to be found and there are some truly wonderful examples. Simplicity and originality are the most important criteria I give points for. And, entirely by coincidence I think, most of them are primarily red.
- Hong Kong, see the flag
- Switzerland, see the flag
- Bhutan, see the flag
- Tunisia, see the flag
- The Isle of Man, see the flag
My flag vocabulary isn't as strong as some people, so I hope you can trump my top five list with your own suggestions.
Just to be absolutely clear, I can't stand the band Nickelback and you won't be able to convince me otherwise. However, my twin brother recently pointed out the uncanny resemblance between Nickelback frontman Chad Kroeger (see photo) and 15th-century German artist Albrecht Dürer (see photo). Coincidence? You tell me.
A news headline yesterday raised a question that's been nagging me for quite some time. Several news services reported on Tuesday that Exxon has been fined ten million dollars by Nigeria for spilling between 40,000 and 100,000 barrels of crude into a river there. A company spokesman responded that they would contest the ruling and was quoted saying, "There was no discernible adverse effect on the people and the environment." (CNN)
Now, I'm not that naive. I know that most of the world's oil companies have done similar things. However, I still use my car occasionally and I need to fill the tank. Is there such a thing as a responsible company in the gasoline business? Is there one that is less evil than the others? And, please don't tell me to ride my bike through the snow to the grocery store four kilometers away.
Before Air Canada swallowed it several years ago, Canadian Airlines had one of the most beautiful logos in the skies. The company's goose was an absolutely elegant logo that looked striking at its tickting booths, on its print materials, and most especially on its planes. Kudos to its designer and may we lament a beautiful logo mergered out of existence.
Logo for the now-defunct Canadian Airlines
A while ago I was happily chomping down on a spring roll while absentmindedly reading the back of a container of so-called plum sauce when I discovered that plum sauce is actually made up primarily of pumpkins! Now I’m not sure if this has always been the case but since this first discovery I’ve checked several brands and all seem to be made of pumpkins with plums way down on the list of ingredients. Makes you wonder what other misnomer foods are out there.
I reached an exciting pinnacle in my battle against spam today as I received my ten thousandth junk email since I began using email filtering at the end of May. That's an average of about 55 pieces of junk mail per day, which isn't as bad as many people, but is still incredible. I nominate all junk emailers to Steven's "Punch in the Face Tour 2003".
I still love this story about how Slashdotters found the address for one of the big spam senders and signed him up for every mail-order catalogue on earth. And then he had the gall to be upset about it...
