Jersey Byes

Well, this is a bummer. Via the NY Times:

The Star-Ledger, New Jersey’s largest newspaper and the winner of several Pulitzer Prizes, will stop publishing its print edition early next year, ending a lengthy run as a dominant source of print news in the region, its owners announced on Wednesday.

The shuttering of The Star-Ledger’s printing plant will cause its sister publication, The Jersey Journal, a Jersey City-based newspaper with a storied, 157-year history, to cease publication altogether.

Hmmm…feature or bug?

Its demise will leave Hudson County, N.J., a densely populated region that is as well known for political corruption as it is for being the birthplace of Frank Sinatra, without a daily newspaper.

There is also a ripple effect.

In addition to The Star-Ledger, at least three other newspapers that are produced in Montville, The Times of Trenton, The South Jersey Times and The Hunterdon County Democrat, will also phase out their print editions in February. Advance Local, which owns NJ Advance Media and NJ.com, home to the publications’ news sites, said they would remain available online.

So It Goes

Listen:

Slaughterhouse-Five is one of Kurt Vonnegut’s most famous novels, and justifiably so. Now, via Printmagazine, Easton Press is releasing a limited deluxe edition featuring illustrations by Igor Karash. Seven Heller spoke with Karash.

My initial step was to formulate a few possible visual scenarios—concepts and mood boards consisting of sketches, previous work that could stylistically work for Kurt Vonnegut, and inspirational images, including war-time photography. One particular concept titled “SO IT GOES” was inspired by an event in the book when Billy Pilgrim watched a black-and-white newsreel backwards and how the Tralfamadorians viewed reality as a thousand images in one glance.

The publisher liked the idea and they were off. The book deals with World War II (specifically Vonnegut’s experience during the bombing of Dresden) and Karash started his project at the outset of the Russian-Ukraine War.

When I started developing the visuals, I was predominantly moved by the idea of examining the “horrors of war,” bouncing on the borderline between the darkest side of human nature and the paradoxical presence of good (this is the main message of the book for me). And then, the first war on the European continent since WWII turned everything upside down. Ukraine for me isn’t just another country—this is where I went to art school, where I met my wife, and where both of my children were born. 

On a general note, I always think my primary goal (when illustrating classic literature or modern classics) is to formulate a fairly independent and novel visual experience for the reader. But it is also important to me to find some balance between audience expectations regarding the theme, characters, time period, etc., and my artistic freedom. In the end, I hope the work has contemporary relevance and presents a balance of three worlds: “the world of the book,” “the world of the author” and “the world of the artist.”

The Sans of Time

Once called “the Voldemort of fonts,” last month, the much-reviled typeface Comic Sans celebrated its 30th anniversary. Print magazine spoke with Monotype Creative Type Director Terrence Weinzierl, the co-developer of the perhaps ironically named Comic Sans Pro:

Fresh out of school, Weinzierl was working at Ascender during the MS Office 2010 release, working on bringing OpenType features to the software’s core typefaces (Comic Sans, Impact, Trebuchet, etc.).

“Vincent Connaire drew the original typeface using only his mouse. It was a digital typeface from birth,” Weinzierl said. “To create Pro, I mimicked Connaire’s process. Using a Wacom tablet, I drew all the new characters, ligatures, dingbats, swash caps, everything.” Weinzierl also designed italic styles (Connaire’s original only offered regular and bold). 

“The irony was not lost on me—adding professional features to a cartoon typeface,” he said. “When we released the retail version as Comic Sans Pro, we did it on April Fools Day.”

The original typeface was designed specifically for comics, and the fact that people tended to use it for more serious applications speaks less about the aesthetics of the original face and more about the lack of design savvy amongst users. But perhaps it’s time for a reconsideration.

In a recent conversation with Brad Atkinson, creator of the Braille Institute’s Atkinson Hyperlegible, I learned that teachers love Comic Sans. Classrooms have tested it against workhorses like Arial and Helvetica). Whether down to “ugliness” or its spacious aperture, students retained more of what they learned when it was delivered in Comic Sans.

It seems we’re less about font-shaming these days, which is probably a good thing. At any rate, happy birthday, Comic Sans.

The Write Stuff

The invention of writing was undeniably the greatest development in human history. (Texting, not so much.) And whilst historians know roughly where and when writing began, questions have remained as to why the practice started. But now, a new paper in Ancestry—via Smithsonian—posits that the earliest uses of writing were to keep track of goods and transactions—accounting, basically. (So would the “world’s oldest profession” be…CPA?)

As you may recall from high school history, the earliest known writing system was the Mesopotamian cuneiform, invented around 3100 B.C.E. Before that, people used a simpler “proto-cuneiform” that dates from around 3350 to 3000 B.C.E. Both systems utilized symbols etched into wet clay.

But where did those symbols come from? The team behind the new paper argues they have roots in cylinder seals, which were used for thousands of years to track the production, storage, transportation and sale of textiles and farm products.

Cylinder seals were engraved with patterns and images, then rolled across wet clay to leave indentations. Some were used before the invention of writing.

The cylinder seals they analyzed date from 400 to 3400 B.C.E., and when they compared the seals to proto-cuneiform symbols, they found several matches.

For example, on both preliterate cylinder seals and proto-cuneiform, they found images of a fringed cloth, as well as a vessel in a net. In both instances, those symbols refer to the transport of goods. These findings suggest the preliterate cylinder seals helped give rise to proto-cuneiform and, later, cuneiform.

Of course, not everyone is convinced, such as Gordon Whittaker, an anthropologist at Germany’s University of Göttingen who was not involved with the research, and seems pretty snarky about it.

“In the few instances in which the same item appears to be depicted in both a seal and a proto-cuneiform sign, there is no obvious causal relationship that would link the one with the other,” he adds. “Furthermore, several of the shapes—such as a narrow oblong without internal detail—are simply too general or vague to be helpful to the authors’ argument.”

Dream Vacation?

Looking to embark on a Central American holiday or extended journey? Why not try to country of Poyais, 8 million acres located between present-day Nicaragua and Honduras. A detailed map exists of Poyais which indicates that most of the country abuts the Caribbean and the nation’s major ports offer access to luxurious turquoise waters and lush forests. Sounds great! Only one catch: Poyais is made up, and indeed was an elaborate scam perpetrated by notorious and improbably named con man Gregor McGregor. Says Atlas Obscura:

MacGregor’s map was part of one of the most successful con jobs in human history. By the time it was over, this rakish Scottish swindler would trick hundreds of poor souls into investing in the fictional Scottish colony. In 1822 alone, MacGregor sold a £200,000 in Poyaisian government bonds, supposedly with 6 percent return. What’s more, from 1822 to 1823, he convinced seven ships worth of aspiring settlers to purchase land in the nation and uproot their lives.

Daniel Crouch Rare Books, via Atlas Obscura

McGregor’s map is part of the collection of Daniel Crouch, a dealer of rare books, maps, and atlases in the world.

Crouch, who runs a rare book shop in London, has been obsessed with maps as a tool for imaginary world-building for some time. His private collection features dozens of other places that never existed. In 2,700 Years of Fictional Cartography, an exhibit which ran at this year’s Frieze Masters in London, he included a 1665 map of Atlantis by Athanasius Kircher, a map of Hell from Dante’s Divine Comedy, and original maps from C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia and J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. The collection is in the process of transitioning to a permanent venue, tentatively slated to open next year.

Where No Graphene Has Gone Before

Was it a good week for graphene news? It’s always a good week for graphene news! A laser-induced graphene smart textile that could improve space gear. From (who else?) Graphene-Info:

Researchers from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Korea Institute of Machinery & Materials and Seoul National University of Science and Technology (SEOULTECH) have shown that laser-induced graphene (LIG), patterned with femtosecond laser pulses, can serve as a versatile material for temperature/strain sensing, stray light absorption, and heat management for smart spacesuits and telescopes. 

The team has developed a manufacturing technique that addresses the challenges posed by the harsh conditions that space equipment must function in. The scientists' new process uses precisely controlled laser pulses to transform a Kevlar's surface into a porous graphene structure, effectively converting ordinary Kevlar fabric into a multifunctional material. 

Prime Day

Back in grade school, you likely learned about prime numbers, or a whole number that can only be divided by 1 and itself—like 2, 3, 5, and 7. And that was probably the last time you ever thought about prime numbers. But mathematicians love them some primes, and are obsessively trying to find the world’s largest. Such a mathematical Captain Ahab in search of his great white prime, via CNN, is Luke Durant, a 36-year-old former Nvidia programmer, who “devoted nearly one year and invested a considerable sum of his own money to uncover the world’s largest known prime number.” Which he did. It’s officially called M136279841 and consists of 41,024,320 digits.

The historic finding is classified as a Mersenne prime, which is named after the French monk Marin Mersenne, who studied these numbers more than 350 years ago. Mersenne primes are a rare kind of number, making Durant’s finding of the 52nd known Mersenne prime even more impressive. A number is only considered a Mersenne prime if it can be written in the form 2?-1.

Is there any practical use of a Mersenne prime? It’d be pretty silly if Durant used his discovery as a password, although he’d really have to keep track of the dots.

“The historical record of the world’s largest prime tells us something about the historical capability of computers, and in particular it tells us something about the progress of humanity in this area,” said Dr. Kevin Buzzard, professor of pure mathematics at Imperial College London who was not involved in Durant’s efforts.

So, no.

“Pour Me…”

Sure, prime numbers are cool, but what is even cooler—in several senses of the word—is a mathematical model that determines the optimal shape of a beer glass that keeps beer cool. One scientist who has taken on this vitally important research is Claudio Pellegrini at the Federal University of São João del-Rei in Brazil.

The problem, of course, is that as soon as beer is poured into a glass, it starts to get warm, and the drinker’s hand clutching the glass only exacerbates the problem. Yeah, sure, you can use those foam sleeves (annoyingly called koozies) or some other insulating layer, but they just look dorky. Pellegrini’s concept involves redesigning the shape of the glass itself. Via Discover magazine:

The key challenge is to find a shape that minimizes the heat transfer while keeping the design practical for ordinary use. So part of the problem is to understand the rate at which heat transfers into a glass of a given geometry.

But Pellegrini’s challenge is significantly harder: to find the geometry that minimizes the heat transfer rate. In other words, an inverse optimization problem.

So what did he come up with?

Using this approach, Pellegrini found, perhaps unsurprisingly, that the optimal beer glass has a narrow base and gradually widens towards the top, allowing the user to drink comfortably. Indeed, he says most traditional beer glasses already feature these characteristics — such as the Brazilian tulip, the imperial pint and the Weizenbeer glass, which have wide mouths and narrower bases

QED. Or not…

Of course, there are other factors that determine the shape of a beer glass. For example, the size and shape of the top of the glass determine the amount of foam that forms when it is poured. And since the foam traps flavor molecules, this influences the drinker’s experience. Many Belgian beers, for example, are served in their glasses of specific shape that helps produce a unique experience.

For optimal temperature maintenance, we recommend drinking beer out of a Thermos, although this could be why we are not invited to many parties.

Packing It In

The name Murray McCrory may not mean much to you, but the name JanSport might. Today we take JanSport backpacks for granted, but when McCrory founded JanSport, they were completely revolutionary and changed the way high school and college students toted textbooks around. McCrory passed away this week at the age of 80 and the NY Times has an obit.

JanSport backpacks were a product of the 1960s and ’70s Pacific Northwest counterculture. McCory (né Pletz) was a student at the University of Washington at the time and he entered a competition, sponsored by Alcoa, to design a new product using aluminum.

An avid outdoorsman, he had long chafed under the stiff, one-size-fits-all wooden frames of traditional hiking backpacks. He developed a new frame using adjustable, lightweight aluminum, along with a nylon pack complete with a pocket for a water bottle. He took first place.

With seed money from his father, Mr. McCory and his girlfriend, Jan Lewis, decided to bring his creation to market. He handled the designs and metal fabrication; she planned patterns and did all the sewing. They founded JanSport, named for Ms. Lewis, in 1967 and married two years later.

The real success, though, would be thanks to what they called “the University Bookstore Rucksack.”

Mr. McCory and Ms. Lewis had met as students at the University of Washington, and, like many of their classmates, they grew frustrated lugging a loose stack of books from class to class, sometimes tied together with straps.

Mr. McCory took an existing product, a lightweight, frameless pack used for short hikes, and added a reinforced bottom, nylon zippers and other tweaks to make it campus-friendly. He decided to leave the leather swatch, originally used for lashing poles to the bag, on its back panel — someone might want to attach an umbrella, he figured. Today, the patch, though rarely used, is a signature element of the JanSport look.

It was a hit at the University of Washington’s campus bookstore and soon could be found. at colleges around the country. It was the precursor to what would become JanSport’s iconic SuperBreak backpack which, by the mid-1980s, were ubiquitous on college campuses and in high school halls.

The other advantage was that it made “book dumping” a thing of the past. 

Wooden It Be Nice

Here’s a phrase one doesn’t come across very often: “artisanal satellite.” Yes, a satellite made of wood has just been launched. Says Boing Boing:

Japanese scientists blended traditional woodworking techniques with state-of-the-art electronics to fashion the world's first wooden satellite. On Monday, a SpaceX rocket carried the “CubeSat”—just four inches by four inches on each side—to the International Space Station for launch into orbit next month.

We can’t wait for the cardboard rocket that will take astronauts to Mars. Seriously, though, there are a number of benefits to using wood for satellites and other space-faring craft:

The project could also help address a growing problem in space exploration: environmental impact. When metal satellites burn up in the atmosphere, they release pollutants like aluminum oxide that damage the ozone layer. But burning wood simply produces water vapor and carbon dioxide, a cleaner byproduct, Mr. Murata said.

Fried

Here’s a headline that doesn’t really surprise us: “Your air fryer may be spying on you.” In this age of Internet of Things, we have no expectation that it wouldn’t. But, Boing Boing, tell us more.

Which?, the magazine of the UK Consumers’ Association, reports that its test of air fryers revealed that the gadgets were sharing user data with third parties for marketing purposes. The apps for the new “smart” models in its roundup all wanted permission to record audio through users’ phones during setup.

Why would anyone agree to this?

As summarized by The Register's Dan Robinson, “One wanted to know gender and date of birth when setting up an owner account, while the Xiaomi app linked to its air fryer was found to be connected with trackers from Facebook, Pangle (the ad network of TikTok for Business), and Chinese tech giant Tencent.”

So if you’re in the market for an air fryer, you may want to avoid Xiaomi.

Do You Have You Any Cheese at All?

Neal’s Yard Dairy, a UK artisanal cheese shop, recently admitted that it had been the victim of a (checks notes) massive cheese theft. Indeed, more than 22 tons of cheddar was stolen. How does one walk out of a cheese shop with 22 concealed tons of cheese? Well, actually, it was a bit more complex than that. Says (who else?) Food & Wine:

the theft was carried out by a fraudulent buyer who posed as a “legitimate wholesale distributor for a major French retailer.” 

The shop delivered more than 950 wheels of Hafod, Westcombe, and Pitchfork Cheddar before they discovered it was all a ruse. However, it added that “despite the significant financial blow, we have honored our commitment to our small-scale suppliers and paid all three artisan cheesemakers in full.”

This Week in Printing, Publishing, and Media History

November 4

1922: British archaeologist Howard Carter and his men find the entrance to Tutankhamun’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings.

November 5

1499: Publication of the Catholicon, written in 1464 by Jehan Lagadeuc in Tréguier, the first Breton dictionary and the first French dictionary.

1857: American journalist, author, reformer, and educator Ida Tarbell born.

1885: American historian and philosopher Will Durant (The Story of Civilization) born. 

1959: Canadian singer-songwriter and guitarist Bryan Adams and, 1974, American singer-songwriter and guitarist Ryan Adams born. The coincidence cuts like a knife.

1979: American cartoonist Al Capp dies (b. 1909).

2007: Android mobile operating system is unveiled by Google.

November 6

1814: Belgian-French instrument designer and inventor of the saxophone Adolphe Sax born.

1869: In New Brunswick, New Jersey, Rutgers College defeats Princeton University (then known as the College of New Jersey), 6–4, in the first official intercollegiate American football game.

1935:  Edwin Armstrong presents his paper “A Method of Reducing Disturbances in Radio Signaling by a System of Frequency Modulation” to the New York section of the Institute of Radio Engineers—basically inventing FM radio.

1947: Meet the Press, the longest running television program in history, debuts.

1958: American actor, puppeteer, producer, comic, and screenwriter Trace Beaulieu (Mystery Science Theater 3000) born.

November 7

1665: The London Gazette, the oldest surviving journal, is first published.

1837: In Alton, Ill., abolitionist printer Elijah P. Lovejoy is shot dead by a mob while attempting to protect his printing shop from being destroyed a third time.

1874: A cartoon by Thomas Nast in Harper’s Weekly is considered the first important use of an elephant as a symbol for the United States Republican Party.

1897: American director, producer, and screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz (Citizen Kane) born.

1913: French novelist, philosopher, journalist, and Nobel Prize laureate Albert Camus born.

1914: The first issue of The New Republic is published.

1929: The Museum of Modern Art opens to the public in New York City.

1943: Canadian singer-songwriter and guitarist Joni Mitchell born.

1967: U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, establishing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

1981: American historian and philosopher Will Durant (The Story of Civilization) dies (b. 1885).

1994: WXYC, the student radio station of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, provides the world’s first internet radio broadcast.

2016: Canadian singer-songwriter and poet Leonard Cohen dies (b. 1934).

November 8

1602: The Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford is opened to the public.

1674: English poet and philosopher John Milton dies (b. 1608).

1847: Irish novelist Bram Stoker (Dracula) became undead born.

1898: Canadian-American actress and singer Marie Prevost born. (Despite the story in Kenneth Anger’s Hollywood Babylon (and a song by Nick Lowe) Prevost was not eaten by her dog.)

1918: German typographer and calligrapher Hermann Zapf born.

1972: HBO launches its programming, with the broadcast of the 1971 movie Sometimes a Great Notion, starring Paul Newman and Henry Fonda.

1973: The right ear of John Paul Getty III is delivered to a newspaper together with a ransom note, convincing his father to pay US$2.9 million

November 9

1818: Russian author and playwright Ivan Turgenev born.

1914: Austrian-American actress and inventor Hedy Lamarr (not Hedley) born. (During World War II, Lamarr and composer George Antheil developed a radio guidance system for Allied torpedoes, unused at the time, but the principles of which were incorporated into Bluetooth technology and are similar to methods used in legacy versions of CDMA and Wi-Fi.)

1934: American astronomer, astrophysicist, and author Carl Sagan born.

1953: Welsh poet and author Dylan Thomas dies (b. 1914).

1967: The first issue of Rolling Stone magazine is published.

November 10

1728: Irish novelist, playwright and poet Oliver Goldsmith born.

1947: English singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer Greg Lake born.

1969: National Educational Television (the predecessor to the Public Broadcasting Service) in the United States debuts Sesame Street.

1983: Microsoft introduces Windows 1.0.