21
Sep 15

On design, tea and today’s quality of life

I have a friend who is a designer. Specifically an architecture, communicative environment, and product design specialist. Basically he creates things, and judges the rest of the things. I think that’s what he does. Interesting fellow. Full of explanations for how things work, why they work and, sometimes, how things ought to work.

He’s the sort that, when you talk to him enough, you start trying to imagine what he’d say about this handgrip or the size of that door knob or the spacing of those signs. It is the shared experience of understanding his experience, while having no qualifications whatsoever to match his experience.

if you’ve ever seen a photograph of a right angle sidewalk and the path worn in the grass cutting the corner labeled “Design” and “User experience” then you understand that. I felt like that today:

Tea

So I sent him that picture. And he simply wrote back “Like there’s need for such a thing as un-sweet tea.” Which I took to mean, “There’s no need to wax on about the employee addition of non-linear, open-manipulated, closed-environment design systems using upward communication for uncertainty avoidance. Let’s just say we only need one, you know, for the real tea.”

Which is a hard argument to overcome, as far as I can tell.

I will watch every one of these I see, because they are all amazing and unique and wonderful and provide the glimpse of young people that we all need from time to time. And this one is local:

I bet you didn’t know you needed a modular Nerf gun. You need a modular Nerf gun.

Not because of that, but … We’re Living Through the Greatest Period in World History:

The problem, the doctor said, is that these advances happen slowly over time, so you probably don’t hear about them. If cancer survival rates improve, say, 1% per year, any given year’s progress looks low, but over three decades, extraordinary progress is made.

Compare health-care improvements with the stuff that gets talked about in the news — NBC anchor Andrea Mitchell interrupted a Congresswoman last week to announce Justin Bieber’s arrest — and you can understand why Americans aren’t optimistic about the country’s direction. We ignore the really important news because it happens slowly, but we obsess over trivial news because it happens all day long.

Expanding on my belief that everything is amazing and nobody is happy, here are 50 facts that show we’re actually living through the greatest period in world history.

Unfortunate as it is when someone has to visit a doctor for a procedure, I’m always interested to hear about the latest thing and the faster recuperation or the newest therapy. Everything, as Louis C.K. says, is amazing:


21
Sep 15

Catember, Day 21

Catember


20
Sep 15

Catember, Day 20

Catember


19
Sep 15

Catember, Day 19

Catember


18
Sep 15

When the blacktop sings to you

And, now, scenes from an all-important, utterly inconsequential and I hope never elusive 20-mile bike ride.

I have some history on this road, I realized, as I pedaled down it today. And not just because I’ve made tiny circles with my feet on it before. I’ve raced on it. I have friends that grew up on this road. I re-learned to run on the path that meanders alongside it. I’ve been caught in the rain on this road and failed to outrun hail on this road. I have history on that little ribbon of asphalt, pretty neat.

cycling

To be sure, I do spend a lot of my time on this road with this view:

cycling

On a different road. Same ride, different light:

cycling

What was going on on the other side of the camera at that same moment:

cycling

And now, for two podcasts. If you like Arkansas:

And if you prefer your football to be full of Gator bites:

Some other stuff here and there. Mostly, though, that road, and this weekend.