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Entry no.: 596

27 Oct 2008, 7:00 PM

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Comments: 61

Design Romanian diacritic marks

How did we end up looking half-illiterate?

Lack of standards, wrong standards and then slow adoption of good standards—no wonder the Romanian diacritics turned into an endangered species. Magazine headlines, television supers and advertisements cheerfully disseminate incorrect letters.

The situation is so bad that even on national banknotes the spelling is bastardized (if you know who designed this, please encourage the person(s) to quit design):

Bad typography: A-caron incorrectly used instead of A-breve on Romanian banknotes

Shameless incompetence: A-caron incorrectly used instead of A-breve on Romanian banknotes, as pointed by Bogdan Dumitrache.

What happened? How did we end up looking like idiots?

Continue reading "Romanian diacritic marks" »

Entry no.: 591

20 Oct 2008, 11:21 AM

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Comments: 0

Life Those stubborn fools

McCain supporter confronting the crowd gathered to listen to Barack Obama. Cristian “Kit” Paul, Berlin, 2008.

McCain supporter confronting the crowd gathered to listen to Barack Obama. Cristian “Kit” Paul, Berlin, 2008.

I feel that we need to respect more those old stubborn fools pissing against the wind of change. They're ridiculous and annoying, but their role is vital—just like a car's shock absorbers they cancel out and dissipate the energy of ideological rubble, filtering out the unworthy ideas. Without them, the ride would be queasily bouncy and harsh.

A faster history would be a history of throw ups

Change is such a beautiful mechanism and although it's slow, maddeningly slow, it is so by design—a faster history would be a history of throw ups.

Not to worry, though. In the end the last, most resilient keepers of the past are overwhelmed by the the embracers of change. Because death is "very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away."1

Those old stubborn fools pissing against the wind, they're the future us.


1 From the text of the Commencement address that Steve Jobs delivered on June 12, 2005 to the graduating class of Stanford University.