Winnipeg, Canada

Driving into the city this morning, I heard a great interview with prominent American social critic Chris Hedges on CBC’s The Current. Chris was expounding on ideas and observations expressed in his new book, Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle, in which he argues that western society (led by the U.S.) is being eroded by a celebrity-obsessed culture that encourages a form of narcissism that clouds our sense of reality (reminded me of similar thoughts I expressed six years ago in a HOW Magazine editorial).

Chris is an American journalist and author, specializing in American and Middle Eastern politics and societies. He spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans, has reported from more than fifty countries, and has worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News, and The New York Times, where he was a reporter for fifteen years (and was part of team that won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for the paper’s coverage of global terrorism). That same year, he received the Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism. Chirs has taught at Columbia University, New York University, and Princeton University, and is currently a senior fellow at The Nation Institute in New York City. Read more about Chris and his weekly contributions to truthdig (where he is also a columnist) here.

A young man wanting to find truth goes to see a famous guru. “Master, can you teach me meditation and truth?” he asks.

The guru agrees, and the disciple immediately assumes the lotus posture, closing his eyes and breathing rhythmically to show what he knows. The master doesn’t say anything but picks up two stones from the ground and starts rubbing them against each other. Hearing the strange noise, the disciple opens his eyes and asks, “Master, what are you doing?”

The guru answers “I am rubbing these stones against each other to polish them into a mirror so I can look at myself.”

The disciple laughs,“But master, if you don’t mind my telling you: you’ll never be able to make a mirror of these stones by rubbing them against each other. You can do that forever, and it won’t work.”

“Similarly, my friend,” the master says, “you can sit like that forever, but you’ll never be meditating or understanding truth.”

(as told by Jiddu Krishnamurti)

(sources unknown for top two images; just learned that the “hell” image is by the late Dash Snow [thanks Tim])

Today marks 64 years since the first deployment of a nuclear weapon (by the U.S.—the only nation to ever do so) on human targets in Hiroshima, Japan.

Technology may make us more powerful, but not wiser.

…the guy who failed his Rorschach Test? (hint—that’s a joke)

I work with a talented young designer named Adrian Shum (who’s coincidentally celebrating his birthday today). Adrian blogs at the eponymous and palindromic MUHSASHUM, where he posted an interesting piece about a fast-evolving online controversy amongst psychologists regarding public exposure of Rorschach’s famous inkblots last week, here.

Tehran, Iran

An exhibition of graphic works by the great Finnish designer Kari Piippo is currently on display at vitrinrooz.com. I had the pleasure of spending a week with Kari in Moscow in 1994 (we were both jurors of the 2nd Golden Bee) and we crossed paths again a few years back in Taiwan (this time as jurors of the Taiwan International Poster Design Awards). Kari is one of our generation’s outstanding visual minimalists… conveying much with a real economy of means.

A good idea… thanks, Gerald.

Hiroshima, Japan

For those involved in the peace movement around the globe, thoughts this week turn once again to the horrors of Monday, August 6, 1945—when at 08:15 the first nuclear weapon ever deployed on human beings (a bomb named Little Boy) was dropped on Hiroshima by the crew of the American B-29 bomber Enola Gay. Three days later, at 11:02 on Wednesday, August 9, Nagasaki was the target of the world’s first plutonium bomb (named Fat Man) dropped by the U.S. B-29 Superfortress Bockscar, flown by the crew of 393rd Squadron.

In 2005, I was one of 24 designers invited to contribute posters for Lest We Forget: Canadian Designers on War, an initiative marking the 60th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (I’ve posted on that previously, here). Michael Surtees attended that show opening at the Citadel Theatre in Edmonton—see his flickr photo gallery from the evening here.

Image above: a moving poster designed by the late great Yusaku Kamekura, considered by many to be the father of graphic design in Japan. The poster “depicts a cluster of multicoloured burning butterflies falling from the sky, caught in the flash of an atomic blast, their wings alight with hot red and orange flames burning like streaks of blood from their delicate wings—the beauty and grace of the image serves to undermine the horror and tragedy of war.” Hiroshima Appeals is a poster series that appears annually, initiated by Japan Graphic Designers Association for the Hiroshima International Cultural Foundation.

Takes one back to those halcyon days of yore, no? (from The Museum of Forgotten Art Supplies compiled by Lou Brooks… “where tools of the trade that have died or have just about died a slow slow death are cheerfully exhibited.”)

Thanks for the link, Nance!