• Gin, Television, and Social Surplus
  Clay Shirky gets to the crux of our current social state over at WorldChanging. Fundamental change in society frees up people’s time, which they fill with nonsense at first: Gin in 1700s England, TV in our recent history.
  (tags: sociology ethnography writing connectivity futurology)

• Design books for sale
  Just in case anyone reading is interested, I recently put a bunch books from my design-related bookshelves up for sale on Amazon Marketplace. Link in the title.
  (tags: books graphic design)

• Sign of the Economy/Economy of the Sign
  The new Weiden + Kennedy offices in London sport some beautifully economical toilet sign icons.
  (tags: graphic design wayfinding advertising interior)
• Commands
  Witty typographic screenprints for Apple geeks, using common shortcut commands within well-worn phrases.
  (tags: graphic design apple)

• Monocle: design notes
  The verbose but supremely smart Dan Hill has left Monocle after their first year. These are his notes on the design and structure of Monocle’s online presence. Great stuff.
  (tags: graphic design web magazines)

• Interesting 2008?
  It looks like Russell Davies is planning to do it again. 2007’s gathering of interesting people was fantastic.
  (tags: interesting)

Since Clive Thompson’s comments system over at Collision Detection is broken, I’m leaving this post with a trackback to his recent piece on some Japanese scientists recreating traffic jam behaviours by driving round and round in a circle.

There’s a full report over at New Scientist, and an unintentionally hilarous video of the experiment (at double speed, no less) which you can view larger on YouTube.

This experiment shows on a really small, easy to follow, level that driving smoothly without excessive braking can all-but eliminate traffic jams. Clive makes the link to a 1989 study by an electrical engineer called William Beatty, who thinks he has some solutions.

I’m now dying to try the William Beatty method for myself. I know it wouldn’t work though … because everywhere I can test the theory there will be a second lane of traffic from which other drivers could switch into the gap I’m trying to leave.

• The Charms of Wikipedia
  Nicholson Baker is a brilliant writer. Here at The New York Review of Books his review of Wikipedia: The Missing Manual becomes a fascinating essay on Wikipedia itself. Good start-of-the-week reading.
  (tags: writing,connectivity)

• Garfield minus Garfield
  Reimaginings of Garfield comic strips have been done (very well) before, but this take is particularly good. Remove the cat and you’re left with Jon Arbuckle in the throes of an existential crisis.
  (tags: comics,humour,art)

• The Optimist’s Almanac
  Two good ideas here: Resurrecting ye olde format of an almanac as a daily blog, and Richard Wilson’s central conceit of posting one bad thing from history on this day, then following it with something far more cheerful.
  (tags: writing history)

• What specifically do generalists do?
  Steve Hardy at Creative Generalist puts his money where his mouth is by setting out precisely what it is he thinks he does (and to a lesser degree me too). “… curious of everything but expert at nothing …”
  (tags: creativity design networking)