I’m sure you’ve heard Benjamin Franklin’s quote a million times: “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” But have you ever really listened to it? Because it seems almost unthinkably arrogant for you to tell us that after 200 years of living under the American constitution Ben helped write, you have a better way, which is to make us “safe” with fear and personal invasion. It seems like you are pissing on the graves of the millions of Americans who died defending our constitution in world wars and other struggles, who were willing to trade their lives for not their liberty but ours, for you to tell us that now we must give up our constitutional protections in order to be safe in our lives.
Third and last personal logo for GD1.
The last logo had to show the meaning of my name. I went with my middle name, Olivier, which is the original french version of Oliver. Originally from the nordic name, Áleifr, meaning “elf-host” or “elf-army,” the spelling was later changed to associate it with the latin word oliva, meaning “olive tree.”
Second out of three personal logos for a GD1 project.
For this one, we had to create a monogram using our initials. I went with a bitmap-y lowercase “kb.”
First out of three personal logos for a GD1 project.
The assignment for this one was to create an “idiosyncratic” logo. In other words, something that reflects an aspect of my personality. Those of you who know me know that I like to drink and go out a lot. I’m particularly fond of cocktails—represented here by the martini glass—and of electronic music—the sound waves.
A whole typeface designed on a minimalistic 3x5 grid for my Type 1 class. Some of the letters were quite hard to resolve, but I think I managed to come up with a pretty good solution considering the constraints imposed.
Categorical Imperative
In response to an annoying philosophy assignment, I go all meta on them and write about whether to write the essay…
At this very moment, I am faced with the dilemma of whether to write this paper. The brief clearly states to use a personal dilemma and relate it to Immanuel Kant’s Categorical Imperative, walking through one’s reasoning and eventual solution. However, a college student’s life does not make a good resource for interesting dilemmas.
More importantly, though, I am morally opposed to assignments that require an essay based on personal experience for several reasons. A personal dilemma is by definition personal, ie. something that one might not necessarily want to share with one’s instructors and peers. If the aim of this paper is to demonstrate one’s understanding of Kant’s Categorical Imperative, why force students to use a personal but dubiously related dilemma, instead of using a hypothetical example that would better illustrate the concepts taught? Lastly, it puts students who have had different life experiences and have been faced with various kinds of dilemmas on unequal ground. Thus a student with a better understanding of the concept at hand but a less interesting personal history is at a disadvantage.
Kant’s Imperative states that “I should never act except in such a way that I can also will that my maxim should become a universal law.” This means that one ought to act in a way one would find reasonable, were it applied as a rule to anybody else in the same situation. Kant has a concept of goodwill, which he explains as meaning that goodness comes from the intention. Acting to fulfills one’s duty is to do good, and one’s duty is to act in act in such a manner that one would want anybody else to act, in the same circumstances. Kant emphasizes reason over emotion, when faced with an ethically difficult situation.
Faced with the dilemma which puts my will to complete the assignment as best I can against my moral objection with the form of the assignment, I need to reason objectively about which is the morally optimal solution. According to Kant, I need to act in the same way I would want any fellow student to act. Considering how I would feel if one of my fellow student were to get off easily without doing the assignment (that he is lazy, and deserving when he fails the assignment), that option is out of the question. On the other hand, I would not look up to a student who gives in and either makes up a fake dilemma, thus not following the assignment’s requirements, or uses a uncreative and boring situation from his past.
What I need is a creative solution. One that will still follow the requirements and show that I understand the concepts taught, while minimizing my moral objections. In terms of absolutes, I chose to side with the assignment against my emotional distaste for essays based on personal experience. Hopefully, though, this is a creative and witty solution to a petty dilemma.
Design is a Drug
Kyle Meyer:
You’re riding a high, you just put together a design that you couldn’t be more proud of. […] You’re on top of the world and no one can stop you. At least in your head—and that’s all that matters.
Flash forward a month later. You’re struggling to come up with new ideas, fresh thinking, sound logic. […] You wonder if it is all pointless. Your parents wanted you to be an engineer and you let them down for that fancy-pants art school. You envy the mundane: the mindlessness of it all. Screw it—you’ll be happier flipping burgers. Maybe you’ll come up with a fancy way to swirl the ketchup and mustard into the restaurant’s logo.
Repeat.
Brilliant. Also, very true. I’ve only pasted snippets. Read the whole thing.
One of my favorite features in Google Chrome, and something that I discovered by accident one day, is how the address bar lets you search any site in which it detects a search field.
If, for example, you type “wiki” and press tab, based on your browsing history, it will determine that you most likely meant to search en.wikipedia.org. It will show a blue “Search Wikipedia (en):” element, and you can type in your search term and press enter. You’ll be taken right to the article on Wikipedia.
This works with most popular sites out there. I’ve used it with Netflix, Google Image Search, Wikipedia, Facebook, Stack Overflow, php.net, and of course, YouTube.
I recently went on a small trip to San Diego. After completing my summer internship with Tapulous, I decided to take some vacation and go explore some of the other great American cities. So I flew down to the port city for a long weekend.
I visited the USS Midway, an impressive retired aircraft carrier turned museum. San Diego being one of America’s greatest Navy ports, it was host to three massive aircraft carrier when I visited, which you could see from across the bay.
Like any self-respecting tourist in San Diego, I made it to Seaworld.
Seaworld had some great shows. I especially enjoyed the funny sea lion show. They’ve got to be my favorite marine creatures, and they were very impressively trained.
They couldn’t quote Bart without quoting Andrew. It wouldn’t be fair.
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