Archive for October 8th, 2009

The Cultural Subversion of Barcode Art

Invented by Bernard Silver in 1948, the barcode went on to become one of the greatest success stories of the late 20th century, adorning most commercially available products around the world. Its omnipresence in modern society makes the barcode particularly appealing to artists, many of whom have featured it in their works.

Barcodes are a ubiquitous part of modern capitalist society, but there are artists out there who actually use them subvert that culture. Click the link for a collection of the greatest pieces of art which incorporate barcode design, from Banksy and graffiti to barcode buildings and advertisements.

Link (Thanks Andy!)

Michelle Obama’s Family Tree

The NY Times have traced back Michelle Obama’s family tree to Melvinia (Michelle’s great-great-great-grandmother) – a slave girl valued at $475, who lived in rural Georgia.

Viewed by many as a powerful symbol of black advancement, Mrs. Obama grew up with only a vague sense of her ancestry, aides and relatives said. During the presidential campaign, the family learned about one paternal great-great-grandfather, a former slave from South Carolina, but the rest of Mrs. Obama’s roots were a mystery.

Now the more complete map of Mrs. Obama’s ancestors — including the slave mother, white father and their biracial son, Dolphus T. Shields — for the first time fully connects the first African-American first lady to the history of slavery, tracing their five-generation journey from bondage to a front-row seat to the presidency.

[Michelle Obama] is representative of how we have evolved and who we are,” said Edward Ball, a historian who discovered that he had black relatives, the descendants of his white slave-owning ancestors, when he researched his memoir, “Slaves in the Family.”

“We are not separate tribes of Latinos and whites and blacks in America,” Mr. Ball said. “We’ve all mingled, and we have done so for generations.”

Click the link for the full article.

Link

A Day At The Magic Kingdom

Disney have put together this stop-motion video, showing us what it’s like to spend a day at the Magic Kingdom. Clearly it’s very sparkly, has great amusements and has incredibly long queues.

Via Boing Boing

‘Whatever’ Voted Most Annoying Word

Quite unsurprisingly, the word ‘whatever’ has been voted the most annoying word in American English.

‘Whatever’ is a very popular conversational blocking tool, which can be spoken in response to a suggestion or comment made by another person to ‘block’ their statement. In other words it’s used to spare a person’s blushes in an argument which they know they can’t win because they’re wrong without admitting it, so the argument can end.

“The impetus of this poll was a casual conversation where we started discussing those words that get on your nerves. You hear them over and over again,” explained Mary Azzoli, director of media for Marist, a US college which conducted the research among 938 adults.

Nearly 50 per cent of people questioned said “whatever” was the word that bothered them the most. It was the most irritating word in all regions of the country, and among both sexes, all age groups, educational levels and income brackets.

“It is used so often in terms of casual conversation. Also, when you think of the meaning behind it, it is often a way to dismiss someone. It is irritating in that regard. It is much more off-putting compared to any of the other statement we asked,” she added.

A quarter of people selected “you know” as the phrase they would like to ban most from the English language. Eleven per cent simply could not tolerate “it is what it is,” while seven per cent found “anyway” irksome.

Link

Piano Stairs Psychology

Given the option of taking the escalator or the stairs, the majority of us would probably chose the escalator, but what if we tweaked the stairs to make them fun to walk on?

Well that’s exactly what this team tried to find out. In this Volkswagen commercial, the stairs have been modified to turn each step into a key on a piano. The behavior of the people was then filmed and the results were astonishing.