From Kottke.org:

This is what Milton Glaser has learned (full PDF transcript): “Less is not necessarily more. Being a child of modernism I have heard this mantra all my life. Less is more. One morning upon awakening I realised that it was total nonsense, it is an absurd proposition and also fairly meaningless. But it sounds great because it contains within it a paradox that is resistant to understanding. But it simply does not obtain when you think about the visual of the history of the world. If you look at a Persian rug, you cannot say that less is more because you realise that every part of that rug, every change of colour, every shift in form is absolutely essential for its aesthetic success. You cannot prove to me that a solid blue rug is in any way superior. That also goes for the work of Gaudi, Persian miniatures, art nouveau and everything else. However, I have an alternative to the proposition that I believe is more appropriate. ‘Just enough is more.‘” (boldface mine, via bbj)

I *love* that. Just enough is more.

Glaser, if you don’t know, is one of the most influential publication designers of the latter half of the 20th Century.

The August issue of British Journal of Plastic Surgeons will apparently carry a story about “a hapless Romeo [who] suffered major ligament damage and a fracture to one of his fingers while tackling his lady’s brassiere,” according to The New York Post.

For one thing, it says surveys show that 40 percent of men in their 30s and 40s have difficulty removing bras.

And it cites a recent test that found men spend an average of 27 seconds taking bras off, when using both hands.

When right-handed men used their left hand, it took an average of 58 seconds.

From the Times:

Operator of the Money-Losing Tram to Roosevelt Island Wants to Sell Ads. It’s a New York vista: the red Roosevelt Island aerial tramway soars across the East River above the New York skyline, above the boats on the water and the graceful split-level Queensboro Bridge.

For those of you not from around here, Roosevelt Island lies in the East River, just across from the Upper East Side. It’s a planned community, mostly co-operative, with no cars allowed. When it was first built, access was via a bus from Queens or the tramway — which was intended as a temporary solution.

Cars still aren’t allowed on the island’s streets, but the subway now runs to Roosevelt Island. Every time someone suggests shutting down the tram, which loses money, great squawking occurs. Usually people on the mainland — the “mainland” being Manhattan Island — talk about closing the tram when it goes out of service for weeks at a time, requiring expensive repairs to keep what was a temporary solution running safely. The thing is as much a theme park ride as it is effective mass transit.

My favorite graf:

“In `Spider-Man,’ the climactic scene takes place on the tram,” he said. “They would have been the natural customer to wrap it.”

I haven’t seen “Spider-Man” yet, but I bet that climactic scene wasn’t one that would want to make people ride the tram, any more than the scene in “Nighthawks” did.

Personally I’m always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.

Sir Winston Churchill (1874 – 1965)

From Wired News:

Making Copy Right for All. A new nonprofit group will provide an alternative to traditional copyrights by making it easier for artists, musicians and programmers to share their works with the public.

I haven’t had a lot of time yet to explore the Creative Commons, but the idea looks interesting — extend some of the ideas from the Open Source programming philosphy into the world of more conventional intellectual property. Copyright law, as it now exists, locks down all rights at the instant of creation; Creative Commons seems to be designing a mechanism that would allow a creator to cede some of those rights in a controlled manner.

From the NYTimes:

Traders Also Swapped Broadband, Data Show. Big energy trading companies created the appearance of activity as they tried to build a market for trading high-speed communications capacity.

I never quite understood why telecom companies so badly overbuilt transmission capacity. (I know, I know — venture capitalists, who as a group are as dumb as squirrels, goaded them into it. Still…) This may be one reason: Enron and its ilk made it look like there was a demand for all that bandwidth.

It’s stuff like this that gives capitalism a bad name.

From The Register:

Microsoft opts Passport holders into spam hell. Trusted Computing at work.

Passport is Microsoft’s bid to authenticate users no matter where they go on the Net. (I wrote an in-depth article about how Passport works earlier this year for PC Magazine.) Microsoft has said over and over that no matter how attractive a business it might be, they’ll never ever sell all the information that Passport collects.

Good to know that we can trust Microsoft’s intentions, isn’t it?

From Wired News:

A Patent That Owns Humans?. A patent watchdog group discovers that the University of Missouri holds a U.S. patent not only on cloning technology, but on any product of the process — including, potentially, a human being. By Kristen Philipkoski.

Some lawywers say that the patent covers the process, not the product of the process. But it’s not like this has been tested in court or anything.

 

From the NYTimes:

TriBeCa Is Priciest Neighborhood. A ZIP-code by ZIP-code analysis of the New York real estate market shows that TriBeCa was the highest priced residential neighborhood in Manhattan last year.

This will probably not be true next year, given that the World Trade Center was in TriBeCa. As it turns out, “priciest” is not entirely accurate. At about 2,400 square feet (fairly roomy, actually), the average apartment in TriBeCa is roughly twice the size of the average place on the Upper East Side. On the Upper East, the average apartment costs $856 per square foot — and that’s assuming that the listed square footage is accurate, which it isn’t.

The bottom line: the real estate market in Manhattan is nucking futs.

 

Just to keep you updated:

SONICblue Wins Stay of Tracking Order. Electronic device maker SONICblue said on Wednesday it won a stay of a court order that would have forced it to track the television viewing habits of people using its ReplayTV digital video recorder. By Reuters.