Obama's Inauguration Speech: A Typographic Interpretation

From Typography Served; check out the full post here.

Smile If You Love Your Future Relationships

From The Situationist: http://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2009/04/25/smile-if-you-love-your-future-relationships/


From Live Science, here’s an interesting summary by Clara Moskowitz of recent research suggesting that “Smiles Predict Marriage Success.” Here are some excerpts.

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If you want to know whether your marriage will survive, look at your spouse’s yearbook photos.

Psychologists have found that how much people smile in old photographs can predict their later success in marriage.

In one test, the researchers looked at people’s college yearbook photos, and rated their smile intensity from 1 to 10. None of the people who fell within the top 10 percent of smile strength had divorced, while within the bottom 10 percent of smilers, almost one in four had had a marriage that ended, the researchers say. (Scoring was based on the stretch in two muscles: one that pulls up on the mouth, and one that creates wrinkles around the eyes.)

In a second trial, the research team asked people over age 65 to provide photos from their childhood (the average age in the pictures was 10 years old). The researchers scored each person’s smile, and found that only 11 percent of the biggest smilers had been divorced, while 31 percent of the frowners had experienced a broken marriage.

Overall, the results indicate that people who frown in photos are five times more likely to get a divorce than people who smile.

While the connection is striking, the researchers stress that they can’t conclude anything about the cause of the correlation.

“Maybe smiling represents a positive disposition towards life,” said study leader Matthew Hertenstein, a psychologist at DePauw University in Indiana. “Or maybe smiling people attract other happier people, and the combination may lead to a greater likelihood of a long-lasting marriage. We don’t really know for sure what’s causing it.”

Hertenstein said he has considered other explanations, such as the possibility that people who smile more often tend to attract more friends, and a larger support network makes it easier to keep a marriage healthy. Or it could be that people who smile when a photographer tells them to are more likely to have obedient personalities, which could make marriage easier.

The results of the study fit into a larger pattern of research that has found many personality characteristics can be determined from very thin slices of behavior. Basically, we often reveal ourselves in the most subtle, simple ways.

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The study is detailed in the April 5 issue of the journal Motivation and Emotion.

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Pillow set for sale here! haha too bad they're $60.


"Reboot your livingroom with this three pillow set. Light gray pillows look as if they've jumped right off your keyboard."

Procrastinate:

http://www.youshouldhaveseenthis.com/

In honor of April Fool's Day:

#5 on the Top 100 April Fool's Day Hoaxes is a stunt pulled in 1977 by the British newspaper The Guardian.

The newspaper published a special seven-page supplement devoted to San Serriffe, a small republic said to consist of several semi-colon-shaped islands located in the Indian Ocean. A series of articles affectionately described the geography and culture of this obscure nation. Its two main islands were named Upper Caisse and Lower Caisse. Its capital was Bodoni, and its leader was General Pica. The Guardian's phones rang all day as readers sought more information about the idyllic holiday spot. Only a few noticed that everything about the island was named after printer's terminology. The success of this hoax is widely credited with launching the enthusiasm for April Foolery that gripped the British tabloids in subsequent decades.


"General Pica" is my favorite... ahahahaa. And Bodoni is the capital!

See San Seriffe (full-length article) for more.