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clipped from www.onthemedia.org

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The fonts that presidential candidates select for their campaign logos reflect an important act of political branding. Sam Berlow of The Font Bureau Inc. says the logos all speak volumes about the candidates they represent.

The Bush/Cheney was great. It just had that incredible NASCAR feel with the slanted sans serif saying, "We're going really fast. Hang on." If you look at Hillary’s campaign, it’s really a throwback to Reagan and Bush. It has that feeling of old typography from the '70s and '80s. It’s serif. It’s sort of highwaisted, as if the lower case, the pants had been pulled up too high. It feels sort of like a bad Talbots suit. Doesn't quite fit right.

Well, there are several oddities about the Huckabee design. The six stars that sort of floating down like snowflakes are a bit odd, and the swash that reminds me of Coca-Cola. And then there’s this yellow element in the type.

clipped from www.loosetooth.com

I needed to clean the apartment. Instead of cleaning the apartment, I took pictures of the mess in the apartment. It's a colorful mess.

A muffin tin holding plastic bags of beads and some jewelry tools. Haven't worked on jewelry in a long time, so this has been sitting out for a long time.

Da guys on the shelf next to the movie chair, owl, creature from the black lagoon, Stripus McGreenley the sock monkey, water bottle, more Mr. Sketch markers, Good magazine.

clipped from www.engadget.com

Why is Nokia always trying to outdo everyone with its fancy-schmancy concepts and designs? Why can't they just get in line and keep it simple?

We may never know the answer to those questions, but what we do know is that the company is presenting a new concept device called the Morph that would be right at home... in the year 3000. The unit is included in the MoMA's "Design and the Elastic Mind" exhibition catalog, and boasts the ability to stretch and flex to almost any shape a user could think of.

The nanotechnology-based device would deliver transparent electronics, self-cleaning surfaces, and the malleability to transform into any number of configurations. Of course, the actual technology required to put this together is years or even decades away, though Nokia expects to see some of these innovations making their way into high-end products within seven years. See the device doing its thing in some photos after the break.

clipped from tvdecoder.blogs.nytimes.com

Monday’s New York Times noted that CBS News recently introduced the “Fast Draw,” an animated series using dry-erase markers that tries to shed light on news developments. The feature, created by two new CBS employees, debuted on “CBS News Sunday Morning” last month and appeared on the “CBS Evening News with Katie Couric” on Feb. 8:

But “Fast Draw” is not the only instance of animation on television news, as several readers noted. Three days before the CBS segment, the ABC correspondent Robert Krulwich used cartoon drawings to explain the delegate rules for each party. Andrew Tyndall, a television news analyst, said he preferred the illustrations used by ABC to the metaphors used by CBS.

The Fox Business Network has also dabbled with animation. Each Friday on the new business network’s “Happy Hour” show, a pair of computer-generated characters named Hoofy and Boo present a short cartoon newscast. The segments are created by a financial entertainment Web site called Minyanville.

clipped from www.reuters.com

Two big genetic studies confirm theories that modern humans evolved in Africa and then migrated through Europe and Asia to reach the Pacific and Americas.

The two studies also show that Africans have the most diverse DNA, and the fewest potentially harmful genetic mutations.

One of the studies shows European-Americans have more small mutations, while the others show Native Americans, Polynesians and others who populated Australia and Oceania have more big genetic changes.

The studies, published in the journal Nature on Wednesday, paint a picture of a population of humans migrating off the African continent, and then shrinking at some point because of unknown adversity.

Later populations grew and spread from this smaller genetic pool of founder ancestors -- a phenomenon known as a bottleneck.

Populations that remained in Africa kept their genetic diversity -- something seen in many other studies.

clipped from www.socialedge.org

Almost all start-ups run into limitations in two critical areas - time & money. You can never have enough of either. Technology is supposed to help you save a bit of both, but it always seems to end up taking more time and more money than it ever saves you. Even when you find a solution that saves you money, it almost always takes more time than you have to give, and vice versa. What choices are available to help swing things back in the intended direction?

Open source tools are free, but expensive in terms of time lost to implement. There are free web services available that allow you to utilize their capabilities - sans your own branding. Gmail is great, but how long can you get away without having your own domain associated with your email? Same goes for free wikis and other collaboration tools.

clipped from www.reuters.com

Teenage fans of TV wrestling are more likely than their peers to be aggressive or take chances with their health, a study suggests.

Researchers found that among 2,300 16- to 20-year-old Americans, those who watched professional wrestling were more likely to be violent, smoke or have unprotected sex -- and the more they watched TV wrestling, the greater their odds of taking such risks.

The findings, reported in the Southern Medical Journal, do not prove that watching wrestling alters young people's behavior. "It may be the case that kids who have a personality that leads them to be aggressive also gravitate to watching wrestling on TV," noted Dr. Mark Wolfson, one of the researchers on the study and an associate professor at Wake-Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

Of the teenagers in their survey, just over 22 percent of males said they had watched pro wrestling in the past two weeks, as did 14 percent of females.

clipped from www.nytimes.com

The human brain, with its hundred billion neurons and hundreds of trillions of synaptic connections, is a cognitive powerhouse in many ways. “But a core limitation is an inability to concentrate on two things at once,” said René Marois, a neuroscientist and director of the Human Information Processing Laboratory at Vanderbilt University.

Mr. Marois and three other Vanderbilt researchers reported in an article last December in the journal Neuron that they used magnetic resonance imaging to pinpoint the bottleneck in the brain and to measure how much efficiency is lost when trying to handle two tasks at once.

Study participants were given two tasks and were asked to respond to sounds and images. The first was to press the correct key on a computer keyboard after hearing one of eight sounds. The other task was to speak the correct vowel after seeing one of eight images.

clipped from www.thepmpodcast.com

Wait... what's that on your back? Could that be a Monkey? In the course of our working days all of us acquire duties, chores and tasks.

Some of them are important and they need to be addressed so that we can finish our deliverables. Others must be considered as "Monkeys" - tasks that we got stuck with and now don't seem to be able to get rid of even though we might not be the right person to take care of them. And we all wonder - how did I get stuck with this?

Mike Graupner, PMP (http://www.pm-mind.com) describes to us today the techniques he uses to address the Monkeys in his life. We talk about Monkey Management in general and we also look at how this translates into managing the Monkeys on your projects.

clipped from www.wired.com

De Rossi, who has worked on robotic skin and motion-capture tech for Darpa and the US National Institutes of Health, began exploring the idea of fabric as a data-collection medium 12 years ago. Most of his designs employ thin, pliable strands of conductive steel spun with cotton or polyester fibers into yarn. The Wealthy suit has nine electrodes and conductive leads woven in, yet the fabric looks and feels completely normal.

The challenge in incorporating sensors into clothing — even skin-tight unitards — is that the fabric shifts when the body moves, resulting in sloppy, irregular signals. To deal with this, De Rossi's team developed software algorithms to clean up the data, along with code to reconstruct the wearer's movements. These programs are the real genius behind the company's work.

"Even when you are sick, if you have something that doesn't look nice, you don't want to put it on."

clipped from www.goodmagazine.com

In 2002, UNICEF compared public education in 24 nations around the world. The U.S. ranked 18th. So what's the problem? Are we spending enough per student? Are students spending enough time in school?

America needs to do some extra credit if its public education system is going to stay competitive.

To boost America’s economy we must focus on strengthening K-12 education.

Why? Economists estimate that if America raises student skills closer to that of European nations, the U.S. economy would grow by an additional 5% over 30 years resulting in an extra $1.5 trillion in 2037 alone—more than triple current U.S. spending on K-12 public education.