Vida Enigmática

"Who speaks for Earth?"

Who speaks for Earth?

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Adani rebrand

December 14, 2016 — leslie dean brown

Knowing what I know, I’m sodded if I’m going to sit back and make it easy for Adani.

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Get your new adanï re-branded merchandise from my online store! Hurry! Before they send me one of those nasty “cease and desist” letters.

Well, technically they can’t do anything unless they register the word “adanï” as a new trademark. That extra dot above the letter i makes all the difference you know. It’s a completely different word now. It looks different. It sounds different. It means a completely different thing.

Note that the original adani ‘logo’ is actually a ‘wordmark’, i.e. based on a typeface. The typeface is Rubrik medium by the way, designed by Miles Newlyn. And simply put, adani does not own the sole rights to use that typeface. Anyone can use it. Anyone can use it with -30% tracking to get a very similar character spacing too…

Oh well. I guess that’s what happens when you’re a billion-dollar company and you cheapen out on typeface design. I think Mr. Gautam Adani is just going to have to suck it up…

Spread the word and support the real Adanï and their massive new coal mine!

That’s right, Adani is trying to greenwash everyone on the planet by claiming that they care about the environment.

Except that they’re already planning on building one of the world’s largest coal mines within a few hundred kilometres of the Great Barrier Reef in early in 2017.

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/en-gb/621/009/566/urgent-stop-the-construction-of-worlds-largest-new-coal-mine./

So maybe they’re not so nice after all?

Adani seems to be missing a tagline. Let’s help them out with some new branding!

#reefnotcoal

Take a look at this latest graph.

December 7, 2016 — leslie dean brown

Go on, have the balls to actually look at it:

nsidc_global_area_byyear_b-800x533

See where we are? We’re right at that point where we don’t want to be. That’s where we are. The appropriately red-coloured line that is beneath all the others (well beneath).

Look, I don’t claim to know much about climate science. I know about materials science. But if there’s one thing scientists know how to do, it’s to respect others’ areas of expertise. Especially the expertise of other scientists.

It’s a bit like the song:

“What you don’t know you can feel it somehow” — U2

We know that there are others who are cleverer than us. And we respect that knowledge.

So I admit that I don’t know how the Earth’s climate fully works. But this latest graph worries me. This graph worries me a lot.

Because its pretty darn obvious to anyone what is going on in this graph.

I don’t think the Earth is completely screwed just yet. But if we don’t change NOW, then it will be.

I think the Earth’s climate is remarkly resilient considering all we’ve thrown at it over the last century.

But all I know is, if man thinks he can change local environments —on a global scale mind you— without global consequences, well then he is sorely mistaken.

That is not the way this world works. That is not how any world works.

Because this is the graph of all graphs. This graph should be printed on the insides of all petrol tank lids.

Every time you wish to use your car, you should be thinking of this graph!

Every time you want to fly somewhere, you should be thinking of this graph!

Every time you eat meat, you should be thinking of this graph!

This is the “climate emergency” graph that James Hansen is referring to.

And what do I see? In reality? In reality, I look around today, and I see bugger all people talking about this problem. And yet it is a big problem. A very big problem.

People should be talking about this over their lunch break and their coffee break. And for some reason they’re not. They’re just not.

[Read more…]

Are computers infallible?

December 5, 2016 — leslie dean brown

We all know that computers can “crash”.

But can anyone provide a really good explanation of why memory corruption occurs? And are computer calculations infallible?

Allow me to share with you a little story. When I was studying thermodynamics at university, a very strange thing happened: a relatively old computer essentially made a mistake!

What happened was this. We were in the laboratory, measuring a quantity for an experiment and then tabulating the results in an excel spreadsheet with the aid of an old computer.

But one of those cells refused to play nicely. It didn’t produce the appropriate result. It was way off. Not just a little off. It was way, way off. It was so far off we couldn’t help but notice it.

The excel spreadsheet has failed. Either the software or the hardware had failed. Something had clearly failed. How can the same mathematical algorithm generate one inconsisent result among many rows of similar cells?

We investigated further. We looked at the individual cells but the equations in each one were all identical. We looked at the references to the other cells and they were all correct.

I remember looking at conditional formatting, number format and a load of other things. Nothing. Everything should have worked. And none of us were excel juniors. We were advanced users! [Read more…]

Aboriginal elder speaks out

December 1, 2016 — leslie dean brown

You know, just today [10/09/16], I overheard someone at Stanwell lookout say “Awww. You know, we live in the best country, don’t we?”. And looking around at this horrible new ‘development’ consisting of an ugly concrete non-functional ‘aesthetic’ wall including horribly kitch mosaic tiling, concrete car park & benches, stainless steel railings, stupidly symmetrical plantings (barely alive), I just had to bite my tongue and walk in the other direction. Because in that moment, I realised that we’d made that lookout way, way uglier than it did before. Seriously. Some people must be blind.

The veneration of crap.

November 27, 2016 — leslie dean brown

[it’s not actually me who said that]

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Design wise, there is nothing actually ‘wrong’ with this advertisement. I’m liking/sharing this post, because designers & creatives need to see how some of their ads are being perceived out there in the real world. There’s nothing actually ‘wrong’ with the design. It’s the content that is the problem.

What I would like to see is creatives grow some balls for once, stand up and say to these companies:

“you know, it’s getting harder for us to be able to sell these fossil fuel vehicles”.

People just don’t want them. Pretty soon, graphic design alone will not be enough.

“The veneration of crap.” — Cathal Rabbitte

 

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