Impulse

A Taxonomy of Stupidity

Rob McKaughan — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 01:21:38 +0000

In a status update, my friend Niff pondered the difference between insanity and stupidity. Inspired by that status update—and the fact that I’ve had my nose in academic books for the last several months—I decided to come up with my own little taxonomy of stupidity, insanity, and rationality:

Stupidity = doesn’t know what’s rational
Insanity = can’t be rational
Bravery = doesn’t care what’s rational
Adolescent = hasn’t yet figured out what’s rational
Adolescent = doesn’t want to be rational (see Stubbornness)
Genius = understands the rationality better than you
PMS = too upset/uncomfortable to be rational (see Insanity)
Stubbornness = doesn’t want to listen to what’s rational
Engineer / Scientist = annoyingly rational
Policy = devoid of rationality (see Insanity)
Blondeness = confused by rationality
Oscar Wilde = humorously rational
Robin Williams = humorously irrational (see Insanity)
Wisdom = discovering the rational the hard way
Zen = there is no rational

Feel free to add more in the comment thread below.

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Creative Self-indulgence

Rob McKaughan — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 06:03:06 +0000

While working on projects for my typography class, I got hooked on re-creating Constructivist and Modernist posters. I find it a great way to learn about design. Here’s my take on a Bruno Monguzzi poster (original here).

Though these posts seem simple at a glance, there’s a lot of underlying geometry to the design. For example, in my re-creation above, the bar thicknesses and headline type sizes are in ratios of 4:3:2 to each other, and the word “Typography” fits exactly in the space between the red & blue bar edges. Oh how I would’ve loved to have the lower case “h” in “Typography” line up with the blue bar edge, too…

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Experimenting with type

Rob McKaughan — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 23:36:27 +0000

Here’s a little experiment: to create a typographic illustration using a pair of antonyms, choosing a typefaces and arrangements that complement the connotations of each word.

Typefaces: Mrs. Eaves italic and Superba RR Bold.

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My fictional alphabet

Rob McKaughan — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 20:17:40 +0000

As an assignment in my typography class, we were asked to create an alphabet essentially from scratch. Each of us created a list of words beginning with each of the phonemes of the 26 latin characters, then created pictograms of each. Then, emulating a few thousand years of calligraphic evolution in my sketchbook, I morphed these pictograms into an upper & lower case alphabet. Then, just to see how it looks on the page, we each wrote a page in our new script, complete with fancy drop cap.

Here’s my alphabet & page. It looks like greek to me! The variety of styles in the class was amazing–some looked like medieval blackletter, some arabic, some egyptian. Mine was one of the least regular of the bunch–probably more to do with my barely developed drawing and calligraphy skills than anything.

It was a very fun exercise that really taught me a lot about alphabet development. For instance, I had never really noticed that the Latin alphabet is strongly biased towards vertical characters: All capitals are generally the same height, as are lower case (and ascenders and descenders are all uniform in height). So, you can’t have a wide & thin character in the alphabet–it’ll look more like punctuation than a letter. If you make that character the same height as the others, it’ll look enormous because of it’s width.

See the full gallery on posterous

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Just do it

Rob McKaughan — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 20:37:53 +0000

I always wanted to make a typographic poster… So I did.

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OC Quattro nearing finish of RAAM 2009

Rob McKaughan — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 00:59:06 +0000

Team OC Quattro, the team I filmed three years ago for my documentary, will be crossing the finish line again in the Race Across America 2009. They’re currently in third place, and have maintained an average speed of 19 MPH (and that includes the Rockies & Appalachia!). Not only that, they’ve raised over $100,000 for their charities. By the time I wake up tomorrow, they’ll be celebrating their finish (probably by going to sleep!).

I’m psyched that they’re doing so well, and really wish I could be there with them. Congratulations to the team & crew!

Hello President Barack Obama

Rob McKaughan — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 11:17:06 +0000

As thousands huddled in winter coats & hats in D.C. yesterday morning, I shivered in layers of blankets in my living room (no, it wasn't an act of solidarity--my heat's been out for a week), glued to the TV to watch Senator Obama become President Obama. It was a great moment that I'd been looking forward to for a long time--especially the inaugural address. I've long been a fan of great oratory and had high hopes for this speech from an excellent orator on a momentous, long awaited day.

I was a little disappointed. It was a scattershot speech. He was solid on each of the myriad points he made, but there was no overall message, no guiding principle that drove everything else. It was an opportunity lost. I think William Safire nailed it on NYTimes:

‘
Our 44th president’s Inaugural Address was solid, respectable, uplifting, suitably short, superbly delivered, but — in light of the towering expectations whipped up that his speech might belong in the company of those by Lincoln, F.D.R. and Kennedy — fell short of the anticipated immortality.

[...]

A good speech has to have a memorable theme, stated early and reprised at the end. It did not emerge in this address.

To mobilize people to collective action, you have to have communicate a single guiding principle. Taxation without representation; "Free at last"; man on the moon by the end of the decade--that sort of thing. This not only gives people a framework for understanding your policy, but guides their own decisions. It gets individuals excited because they understand how they can change things. If anything, Obama's campaign was about change and grass-roots action. Having a guiding principle in the speech would have been a perfect method for launching grass-roots change in support of his policy.

Shisol was glad that "there was no swinging for the rhetorical fences". I agree. You win more baseball games by consistently hitting solid base hits than gambling on home runs. Happily, Obama's team demonstrates a lack of self-grandeur. Still, you don't have to have Lincoln-worthy rhetoric to ignite a movement. You just have to make a clear point. If Obama had done that, I would've felt much, much more inspired by his speech, making me forget my unfair expectations of immortal oratory (my expectations are my mistake).

All that said, I still can't say the phrase "President Barack Obama" without a big ole satisfied grin spreading over my face.

Observations on service

Rob McKaughan — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 11:15:58 +0000

A recent support call proved to me a few things about service. I called to start the transfer process of my domains from register.com to another registrar. The operator convinced me to stay:

Everything is negotiable. My reason for switching registrars was price: Register.com charges $35/y/domain; the competition charges $10). Talking with the operator, it turns out that there’s some flexibility in pricing. Now I’m renewing at $8/y/domain.

Small talk goes a long way. The operator didn’t put me on hold while she was working–she asked about the weather. We chatted about grey winters & snowstorms between trading information for the domain renewals. The net result: I felt like I was being treated as a real human by a real human instead of being a participant in a machine-like, protocol-driven transaction. It made a huge difference and all it took was the age-old conversation tactic of talking about the weather.

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RAAM: Finish line

Rob McKaughan — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 21:42:08 +0000

After almost two and half years, I've finally completed my Race Across America movie. No, really! It's done, finished, fertig, finis. It's ready to show.

Wow! It's still sinking in that it's done. I've been working on, thinking about, worrying about, and fussing over this thing for over 2 years. It's defined my thinking for that entire time. The idea that there's nothing left to do feels kind of alien.

And extremely freeing. I've got so many projects I want to start.

This time: No projects bigger than one week. I think I'll be sticking to weekend projects for a little while.

There have been several times that I thought I'd never finish this thing. Heck, I didn't think it was even possible, for a while there. Thanks to everyone who kept encouraging me. You've made my life better by helping me achieve one of my big goals in life.

And a word to any aspiring feature-length filmmakers out there: don't try to do everything all by yourself. True, it makes the credits really easy, but everything else takes a lot longer.

What's next for this project? I'm going to make copies for all those who helped out, enjoy the holidays, and have a big party in January. No plans for festivals right now; I've missed all the festival deadlines for this season, and there's a bunch of legal legwork to do first. Meanwhile, I'll just bask in the glow of having accomplished something I've wanted to do for years, and see what the future brings.

A good day

Rob McKaughan — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 23:50:06 +0000

(poster designed by the talented Jonathan Hoefler)

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