Closing a time loop

Many, many years ago when I was a teenage geek, I was green with envy at the Coil Winding Calculator that an older friend had access to in his university lab. It was an extremely useful device – a cardboard slide chart that allowed you to compute the parameters for winding a coil of a … Read more

Writing in an unknown tongue

Writing in an unknown tongue 3

See the hilarious street sign. Why is it hilarious? Well, if you can read Hebrew you don’t have to ask. For the rest of you, here is the story. Palermo, where this sign hangs, was home to a large and lively Jewish community in the middle ages. Then, in 1492, the Catholic Monarchs (Ferdinand and … Read more

Duh!

Here is a street sign from Tel Aviv’s Ramat Hachayal area, a vibrant hi-tech hub. The sign hangs on a building at Hanechoshet st., as stated in English. The Hebrew is more detailed: it has the street name at the top, followed by the fine print, which explains the name. Nechoshet in Hebrew means copper, … Read more

Splash!

Splash! 6

Beauty can sometimes appear in the most unusual places. I snapped this photo on a sidewalk near my home: As I was watching, a passerby kicked the bottle, and it started spinning, giving me a good idea of what we’re seeing: someone had discarded and squashed the bottle, and someone else set it spinning and … Read more

Form follows dysfunction

Form follows dysfunction 9

So we had to ship some parcels overseas, and we were given these forms to fill at the post office. Not surprisingly, the form had four copies, and asked for a lot of shipping and customs information. what was surprising, however, was the incredibly poor functional design of the form’s layout. Most obviously silly was … Read more

The Lawyers’ Balloon

One can hardly imagine a more fun child’s plaything than a toy balloon. These have been around in various forms since the middle ages at least, and are as pleasing to today’s children as ever. And they generally look like the balloon in the illustration below, from the classic children’s book, beloved by generations of … Read more

Two primordial hunters

Two primordial hunters 16

One of the most famous sculptures made in Israel is “Nimrod”, created in 1939 by Itzhak Danziger. A powerful figure in red sandstone, it depicts a naked young man with a falcon on his shoulder and a sword held behind his back, looking intensely ahead. This is Nimrod, the biblical great-grandson of Noah, king of … Read more

An unusual business card design

An unusual business card design 20

Unusual business cards are not rare; many companies and individuals try to deviate from the traditional white rectangle design in the hope of standing out from the crowd. But today I was handed a card that goes far beyond this. Here it is: This card has a rotating wheel that allows different short phrases to … Read more

Sugar and Trees

Sugar and Trees 24

One seldom gives much thought to the humble sugar packet seen in coffee shops (unless one is a sucrologist, at any rate) but there’s an interesting observation related to its design. A few years ago the age-old form factor of these packets – a rectangle some 7 by 5 cm in size – was supplemented … Read more