The King of Pointland

Modernism

Those of you who spent the 1980's in my family's New Jersey home will recognize this as the style of chair found haphazardly arranged around our kitchen table, and purchased at Sears, or perhaps Montgomery Ward. The great thing about these chairs was that if you absentmindedly picked at the woven cane with your finger, or perhaps a butter knife, you could ruin the seat in no time.

Would it blow your mind to learn that the chair you see in the picture was designed and manufactured not in 1982, but in 1928? In fact, this was the first of its kind, and Sandra and I were privileged to see it at the Corcoran Gallery's Modernism: Designing a New World 1914-1939, which closed yesterday. The chair, designed by Marcel Breuer, was revolutionary for its time. One of the lessons I drew from the exhibit was that a run-of-the-mill tea kettle purchased at Target, or an ordinary table lamp from Ikea, is essentially cloned from once groundbreaking Modernist designs. No longer avant-garde, these related styles now dictate the way we unconsciously expect an object to appear. According to this, versions of the Breuer chair are still in production today.

Another treat was an original 1933 London Underground map and sketch. Designed by Harry Beck in 1933, this was the first subway map freed from strict adherence to a scaled-down representation of the relative location of each stop. Beck felt that what mattered more was how the stations and lines were connected to each other. Our 21st Century Metro map uses a remarkably similar design:

Has there been as comprehensive and transformative a design movement in the time since the Modernist movement (really a set of related movements) ended? Clearly design did not stop evolving in 1939, but in 2075, when robot masters take their human pets to the hover-museum, what design movement from our time will be seen to have been as fundamental? This isn't entirely rhetorical. I'm woefully ignorant about these matters, so a little enlightenment would go a long way.

Here, There, and Everywhere

Thanks to those of you who expressed concern about my mom. As I mentioned in the comments, the surgery went well. I'm not sure how my mom would feel about my publishing her detailed medical information on the Nets of Inter, so I'll just say we're waiting to see how the treatment works out.

Did you know that there is an island named Borkum? There is. "That's total borkum!" you say, but I tell you, it's true! As you can see, Borkum has its own Wikipedia entry, which I assure you is not an elaborate hoax. Borkum is part of Germany. In December 1934, Borkum was the launch site of Wernher von Braun's two A-2 rockets, Max and Moritz, prototypes of the V-2.

Max and Moritz were popular German cartoon characters. David and Sandra are popular American residents (non-alien and alien, respectively). They will be going to Borkum (and Cologne) in mid-August. They may take photographs and post them here.

Dispassionate Rationalism

My mom is having surgery today. It may be over already.

It just occurred to me that today is Friday the Thirteenth.

A Pleasant Surprise

Chuck Bell was pretty clear about today's weather forecast (and so was Weather 4 Plus Meteorologist whoever on Morning Edition): No rain today. We would experience hot, humid, unbearable, heat, and the weather system causing this misery would hold its ground until tomorrow, when a cold front could be expected to move into the region and bring with it storms and lower temperatures.

So it was with great confidence that I set my antique sculpted-sugar-and-tissue-paper figurine collection outside on the lawn before leaving for work today. I didn't need to, but I knew I could, and so I did.

Then noontime came around and holy moley, the heavens opened and a powerful strong storm tore through the area, bringing wind, rain, and pleasantly cool temperatures:

That's a nearly twenty degree temperature drop over the course of three hours. I'm not complaining. Except about the tissue-paper-and-sugar figurines. There is a small chance that the rain may have damaged them. We shall see.

Coffee for Desert

If you are like me, you constantly wonder whether, when literally dying of thirst, it is wise to drink coffee.

Coffee is a diuretic: It contains caffeine, which promotes urination. So, when it comes to re-hydration, coffee is not the best choice. What to do, then, if you are stranded in the desert, without water, and all you have to drink is a cuppa joe? This could happen, for example, if you were a research scientist driving through the desert in your Land Rover, only to discover that your colleagues had prankishly siphoned off half of your gas, and, as a further joke, replaced the water in your Camelbak with coffee (or camel piss, but that's another story).

Would drinking the coffee cause you to dehydrate sooner than you would if you drank nothing at all?

I can now tell you with some confidence that you should indeed drink the coffee. According to a story on NPR this morning:

Researcher Doug Casa of the University of Connecticut has found that caffeinated drinks, long assumed to have a strong diuretic effect, don't actually stand in the way of hydration. "If you drank one liter of water, your body might retain say 800 ml of that water, and you might lose the remaining 200 as urine. When you have something that has caffeine in it, say a liter of something that has caffeine, you might retain say 700 ml of it and maybe lose 300 to your urine." Casa says the net effect is that you're still getting most of the extra fluid you need, even with the caffeine.

I hope this information never comes in handy.