2008 Postage Stamp-Sized Mini Calendar [Calendar]

2008mincal.gif
Figure out what day any date or month in 2008 lands on with the postage stamp-sized Super Minimalist Micro Calendar, pictured here. It looks like a meaningless grid of numbers and letters, until you learn how to read it:

The first column contains numbers for the months of the year. The middle gives the weekday on which the first falls. The last column gives the date of the first Sunday of that month. With this data, you can easily figure out the rest of the dates that you need to…

2008 Postage Stamp-Sized Mini Calendar [Calendar]

American Crescent

Designer name to come

When I first saw American Crescent, I immediately thought of an Economist cover I saw a year or so ago. Turns out the magazine has an archive of their covers, and I was able to find it.


In less talented hands, American Crescent would feature a shot of the Statue of Liberty facing us, with the crescent somehow affixed to the statue. And that would betray the nature of the book, which is about an acceptance of Islam that’s (perhaps) yet to come. The photo…
American Crescent

Eva Kor, a Mengele twin and Auschwitz survivor, was giving a talk on campus that semester, and I encouraged my students to go hear her. What could be more relevant? “Extra credit?” someone asked. The question made me crazy with exasperation. Here’s a woman who survived the Nazis, I said, and you want me to turn her life into points to add to your grade? I couldn’t do that. The best kind of extra credit, as I told those students and still tell my students, is the kind you give yourself: by working harder on an essay, by doing some extra reading, by taking in an exhibit or lecture for its own sake, because you might find it interesting, because you might learn something.

Orange Crate Art: “Extra credit?”

Half Life

Wound Man - 1460

Medizinische Texte und Traktate - (Cod. Pal. germ. 644) - 1460

Cod. Pal. germ. 644 - Medizinische Texte und Traktate - Süddeutschland, um 1460 jpeg a

Medizinische Texte und Traktate - Süddeutschland

Medizinische Texte und Traktate - Süddeutschland a

The famous Wound Man* together with the anatomy and phlebotomy diagrams and the urine ‘connoisseurs’ illustrations [see also: Tabula Urinarum] come from a collection of medical treatises from South Germany compiled into the one manuscript and dated from about 1460 – Codex Palatinus Germanicus 644 at the…
Half Life

this is not your father’s library

Library bookshelvesWe’ve heard it so often, it seems like a truism: in this era of instant electronic information access, libraries are like dinosaurs that don’t know they’re already extinct.

Well, maybe not.

A new survey has found that Generation Wired uses libraries far more often than you might think. In fact, Internet-savvy youth between 18-30 are the largest user group for library research services and resources. Furthermore, the survey found that library usage actually declines with…

this is not your father’s library

Something to Tell You

Designer name to come

Briefly noted in the Guardian’s preview of upcoming fiction for 2008 is this: “Hanif Kureishi also returns to the 70s, and the territory of his enduringly lovable The Buddha of Suburbia, with a much-tipped new novel, Something to Tell You (Faber, March). His narrator is an analyst looking back on the violence, confusion and first love of his youth, while deeply engaged in contemporary politics and culture: Kureishi’s London landscape is a vivid kaleidoscope of…

Something to Tell You