Monthly Archives: July 2010

Putting Paul the Octopus to the Test: New Questions

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_Click on the image to enlarge_.
_Pollux writes_:
You have to admire “Paul the Octopus'”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_the_Octopus bravery: predicting Germany’s loss in the World Cup game against Spain while residing in a German aquarium? Gutsy move (do octopuses have guts?).
The Germans and the Argentines (Paul also predicted Argentina’s loss against England) are up in arms, but the eight-armed Paul blithely continues to do his work.
To defer to animals as oracular messengers is as old as civilization itself. Ancient Egyptians consulted divine animals such as “The Bull Who is in Hermonthis, Lord of Medamud, Who is in Tod.”
Octopuses are said to be highly intelligent, and Paul’s prognostication proved correct against the face of popular opinion, namely that the Germans would handily beat Spain and advance to the World Cup Final against the Netherlands.
I’m impressed, and Paul’s predictions make me want to ask _Das Krakenorakel_ questions unrelated to World Cup soccer.
Paul, is the war in Afghanistan a big mistake?
CHOICE #1: Yes
CHOICE #2: Define “mistake.”
Paul, is there life in other parts of the universe?
CHOICE #1: Yes, but you’ll only find it in octopus form.
CHOICE #2: We’re all alone, so exceedingly, extremely alone.
Paul, what is your opinion on Ayn Rand’s criticisms of altruism and her overall philosophy regarding selfishness and its place within a larger societal framework founded on capitalism?
CHOICE #1: Netherlands.
CHOICE #2: Spain.

‘The September Issue’: Ice Queen Reported Missing

Martin Schneider writes:
I just watched The September Issue, the documentary about Vogue and Anna Wintour. I must say it surprised me a lot. It’s very, very enjoyable, and anyone who likes fashion or magazines really ought to see it. (On the subject of magazines, I think I glimpsed an Ivan Brunetti cover from The New Yorker at one point, in the clutches of contributing editor André Leon Talley.)
I hope the movie serves as a corrective to The Devil Wears Prada (the movie anyway, can’t speak for the book). The portrait of imperious “Miranda Priestly” in that movie, ably embodied by Meryl Streep, did much to convince me that Wintour must be (while highly able herself) impossibly demanding, rude, and so on.
If that is true, I didn’t see any evidence of it in The September Issue. In the documentary she seemed extremely busy and capable, certain in her views, decisive (she calls this her most important trait), more than passably considerate. She didn’t seem demanding in petty ways; cheerful enough when engaging with people, quiet and composed when in observation mode (peering at the many catwalks, for instance).
Indeed, “grace under pressure” seems an apter slogan for Wintour than “ice queen.” It really makes you wonder about the way we view successful, nay powerful, women in our culture. I’ll take her over Jack Welch any day.
As far as I can tell, the movie is really about competence. Virtually everyone in the movie is a highly competent professional immersed in his or her work, thoroughly knowledgeable and fulfilled and accustomed to pressure and therefore calm and cheerful.
I appreciate this because it’s important to have on display arenas where excellence and talent and standards are valued—it’s so often not the case. Elsewhere we must put up with compromise and backsliding and shortcuts and limited budgets and on and on. It’s inspiring to see a place where excellence is valued as a matter of course, there’s no doubt that an imperfect photo shoot will be redone.
In the Wikipedia writeup for the movie it says that creative director Grace Coddington (who is awesome and steals the movie) is “the only person who dares to stand up to Anna Wintour.” What nonsense! Wintour is shown dealing with a lot of people, and I didn’t see too many frightened individuals in any of those meetings.
Wintour does make life difficult for Coddington by disagreeing about a couple of Coddington’s photo shoots, but if Wintour made any errors of judgment at any point during the movie, I must have missed them.
Finally, if you want to know what I think of the fashion industry, listen carefully to what Wintour’s daughter Bee Shaffer says about it. I’m with her.

The BP Logo, Redesigned With Attitude

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Emily Gordon writes:
Remember the contest Greenpeace UK announced to redesign the BP logo? Our own cartoonist Pollux beat them to it, of course, but now that the official contest is closed, you’ll want to go look at the entries. From the Greenpeace UK Flickr page:

BP claim that they are ‘beyond petroleum’. But this is a company that is up to its neck in the dirtiest oil going – poised to invest in the Canadian tar sands, and causing environmental catastrophe through deepwater drilling.

Their nice green logo doesn’t really seem to fit them too well, so we ran a competition to find a logo that we could use to rebrand BP.

The results are displayed here.

Some of the entries are pretty good, especially the ones that depart from the green-and-yellow starburst motif and try something more conceptually daring, like the droplet surrounding an oil-covered hand (“not waving but drowning,” as the Stevie Smith poem goes) and the tagline “be patient.”

Or this designer’s clever and poignant approach–a repetition of BP’s logo and the text, “I still love your logo,” then a note in small type below: “I wish your oil rigs were designed as well as your brand identity.”

Fevered: Emily Flake’s World Cup Cartoon

_Pollux writes_:
As you know, I’ve been doing cartoon coverage for _The Wavy Rule World Cup_. The very funny cartoonist “Emily Flake”:http://www.eflakeagogo.com/ has drawn her own “cartoon”:http://www.citypaper.com/comics/story.asp?id=20344 on World Cup Fever.
I knew there were consequences to blowing on vuvuzelas besides serious ear damage!