Earlier this month, Britain’s Channel 4 aired The Root of All Evil?, a two-part exploration of religious faith hosted and narrated by Richard Dawkins, the eminent Oxford ethologist and author who is one of the world’s most outspoken proponents of the theory of evolution. He’s also an aggressive critic of religion. The Root of All Evil? follows Dawkins as he travels to some of the world’s religious centers—among them Jerusalem, Lourdes, and Colorado Springs—to observe services and to interview leaders and followers of various faiths.

Tipped off by a thread on Echo, I bittorrented both episodes a few days ago. From the vantage point of the United States, the program is remarkable: You simply would never encounter such a brazen denunciation of religious faith on this country’s airwaves, because the outcry from the religious right would be deafening. Dawkins’s narration drips with contempt; as he goes about his rounds, it’s as if he can hardly restrain himself from shouting, “I’m surrounded by IDIOTS!” The smoke coming out of his ears leaves a trail behind him wherever he goes.

In the seven-and-a-half minute clip linked through the image below, Dawkins visits Colorado Springs to attend a sermon by an influential but proudly ignorant pastor. In a conversation with Dawkins after the sermon, the pastor likens the event to a rock concert. Dawkins suggests that it was more akin to a Nuremberg rally—a comparison that the pastor appears to be too uneducated and ignorant to be offended by.

[I found the two torrent files on a members-only site. You can download the torrent for the second of the two parts here; the first episode is surely available on other torrent sites, too. For information about bittorrenting files, see this item I posted in July.]

posted by Andrew Hearst  •  permalink

categories: News and Politics, Science and Technology, TV and Video

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Even the most conservative, unimaginative logotype can be very effective at putting forth a brand identity. Take the Crate & Barrel logo—it’s basically Helvetica Bold (or a minor tweak of it) with a very round, un-Helvetica-like C:

When it comes to corporate graphics, nothing is hoarier than good old Helvetica Bold. But the Crate & Barrel logo is memorable enough, and it pops nicely when stamped in big black type on the white bags and boxes that customers carry out of the store.

In Crate & Barrel’s early days, company executives probably paid tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars to the design firm that created the logo, and the company likely considered dozens or hundreds of variations on the current logo before choosing one. The creation of a logo is often a painstaking process, and the end result is supposed to be an unalterable design whose elements are always rendered in exactly the same way.

So I was amused last fall when I noticed that some things had gone terribly wrong with the sign above the Crate & Barrel store on the northwest corner of Broadway and Houston. Below is what the sign looked like in late September. The r in “Crate” and the e in “Barrel” have rotated counter-clockwise, as if drunk, and the second r in “Barrel” is hovering above the baseline, as if it’s trying to float away:

A few weeks ago, I walked through that intersection and noticed that someone had performed first aid on the sign. It looks better, but it’s still not perfect. Here’s a photo from this afternoon:

The r in “Crate” looks fine now, and the e in “Barrel” has been rotated back into more or less the proper position. But the second r in “Barrel” is still trying to escape. Fly away, poor little r! Run off and join the American Apparel logo, where at least the use of Helvetica Bold is somewhat ironic!

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categories: Art and Design

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Happy new year, and apologies for the extended break. I was both busy and lazy during the holidays, and now I’m waist-deep in my first-ever New York apartment search. I’ve lived in New York since 1987, but this is the first time I’ve ever actually had to look for a place. After a decade in a rent-stabilized 400-square-foot studio on a great Upper West Side block a few yards from Riverside Park, I’m planning to move downtown in the next month or two, probably to the East Village. I spent most of the weekend racing around looking at apartments in a few downtown neighborhoods, and I actually found a couple of places that I’d be happy to live in. I’m hoping to score one of those places in the next few days.

I have a big backlog of cool links and other material that I’ve been meaning to post. I’m going to be swamped this week, too, but I’m planning to get back to a more regular posting schedule by next weekend.

I’ve got apartments on the brain, so for now I’ll leave you with a link to Architecture of Density, an amazing series of Hong Kong images by the photographer Michael Wolf. Here’s a brief description of the project from Wolf’s site:

One of the most densely populated metropolitan areas in the world, Hong Kong has an overall density of nearly 6,700 people per square kilometer. The majority of its citizens live in flats in high-rise buildings. In Architecture of Density, Wolf investigates these vibrant city blocks, finding a mesmerizing abstraction in the buildings’ facades.

The photographs are on display through February 26 at Robert Koch Gallery in San Francisco.

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categories: Art and Design, Miscellany

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