It’s Pi (Approximation) Day today ( 22/7 ) first celebrated 20 years ago by Larry Shaw at the San Francisco Exploratorium. Pi or π is the mathematical constant which represents the ratio of any circle’s circumference to its diameter in Euclidean geometry—it’s also an irrational number (it cannot truly be expressed as a fraction, and its decimal representation never ends or repeats), as well as a transcendental number (no finite sequence of algebraic operations on integers [powers, roots, sums, etc.] can ever produce it). More on Pi here or here.
Happy Pi Day :-)
Winnipeg Beach, Manitoba
We’ve spent an interesting day of serendipitous garage-sailing along the lake… lots of stimulating objects (old tools, whatchamaycallits, etc.) that will find themselves repurposed and/or fashioned into art objects.
Stimulating images of reuse near and far… sources unknown.
Winnipeg, Canada
So… I’ve been thinking a lot about “bias” of late (“a tendency or preference towards a particular perspective, ideology or result”) and the not-so-nuanced role that it plays re: objectivity in this communication age… especially cognitive bias, for which Wikipedia offers an excellent resource list here.
Thanks Chris Lee (an intern at Circle last year) for the brain-image; thanks Marie-Aline Oliver (in Ottawa) for pointing me to the bias list.
Winnipeg Beach, Manitoba
Well, we finally launched my old canoe this past weekend… Ev’s been living on the shores of Lake Winnipeg for five years now (it’s the largest of Manitoba’s 100,000 lakes, the 11th-largest freshwater lake in the world, and at 23,553 km² [9,094 sq. miles] it’s larger than both Israel and Slovenia) and we’ve only been out on the open water a few times. Thanks to a special arrangement with Boundary Creek Marina, the old red Obukwin now has it’s own exclusive mooring on the island in the middle of the harbor, allowing effortless access. (For any friends in the area—if you care to use the canoe, just drop by Ev’s first for the padlock key and paddles—access to the island is across the dock-bridge you can see in the photo above).
Amazing as it may sound, our canoe seems to be the only human-powered vessel in the harbor… among the hundreds of yachts, cabin cruisers, sea-doos, and commercial fishing boats. As we sipped a cool beverage on the yacht-club deck on Sunday, I’ll admit we felt a little smug—we couldn’t help but overhear the party beside us discussing the cost of the 600 liters of fuel they had just pumped into their own cabin cruiser.
“Everyone must believe in something. I believe I’ll go canoeing.”
Buenos Aires, Argentina
The Society for Environmental Graphic Design (SEGD) has honoured Ronald Shakespear, founder and principal of Diseño Shakespear Design Consultants in Argentina, with the 2008 SEGD Fellow Award. Ronald is an internationally acclaimed designer and the “father of environmental graphic design in Argentina.” Diseño Shakespear is an award-winning design firm specialising is the planning and design of signage, wayfinding, and identity programs for a wide variety of facility types, including the Buenos Aires Underground (Subte), Municipal Hospitals, Buenos Aires Signage System, Temaiken Zoo and many more.
SEGD Fellows are selected for promoting the highest values in environmental graphic design, and significantly contributing to the direction and growth of the field. Past SEGD Fellows include Garry Emery, Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, Lance Wyman, Ivan Chermayeff and Tom Geismar, Deborah Sussman and Massimo Vignelli.
Congratulations, my friend!
London, U.K.
Banksy, the mysterious guerrilla artist famed for his lightning graffiti art attacks, is a 34-year-old former public schoolboy called Robin Gunningham, the British newspaper Mail on Sunday claims… to be determined: how this may affect the man’s remarkable work. I’ve long admired his satirical take on politics, culture, and contemporary ethics… and I’ve posted re: Banksy before, here and here.
Re-mixed works by Micah Wright (who seems to have disappeared from the Internet)…
Adrspach, Czech Republic (from the New York Times)
“While it may seem suicidal, leaping across a gaping crevasse is actually an extreme sport that is gaining in popularity. Called rock jumping, or simply ‘jumping’ by the locals, this adrenaline-charged activity is taking place in the Adrspach-Teplice Rocks, a remote nature preserve in the northeast part of the Czech Republic.”
Known for its roughly 11 square miles of phallic sandstone formations, the region has been a breeding ground for lifelong rock climbers, including Jaroslav Houser, 63, the purported conqueror of more than 1,000 sandstone spires. In their frenzy to subdue as many unclimbed tower tops as possible, seasoned climbers like Houser unwittingly gave rise to rock jumping in the Adrspach. “The objective is to get to the top of as many towers as you can,” said Vladimir Prochazka, known as June Bug, a 59-year-old climber and a collector of Czech rock climbing histories. “You try to reach the hardest summit, sometimes by jumping.”
Read the full story in today’s New York Times here. Reminds me of doing the heart-in-throat Jump Traverse above 600 feet of air on Durance, Devil’s Tower, Wyoming….
