Medved Joins Discovery

www.discovery.org

The Discovery Institute has generally stuck to its "intelligent design should be taught in schools" platform, eschewing other faith-based politics favorites like gay marriage and abortion. You can read our look at the evolution of the creationist group here.

But today they announced that conservative talk show host Michael Medved is joining their ranks. Medved goes full throttle for the right on the social issues.

"Michael Medved is an intellectual entrepreneur, a political and cultural polymath with great insights, judgment and wit. We are delighted to have this new relationship with him," Discovery Institute President Bruce Chapman writes on the blog.

Update:
I put in a call to the Discovery Institute to see if Medved's arrival in the fold signaled any kind of intention to begin exploring and commenting on issues outside the Intelligent Design agenda. An email arrived this afternoon with a statement from Chapman saying: "We are not responsible for all of the views of our fellows, and our fellows are not responsible for all of our views as an institution." Which of its fellows views the Institute considers itself responsible for was not clarified.

Topics: Design

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Does SAM Know What This Chinese Artifact Says?

In this week’s paper, I wrote about a little red porcelain dish at SAM. As you can see, the plate has eight lines of Chinese characters inscribed on it. SAM doesn’t provide museum visitors with a translation for the writing, however, so I sent a photo of it over to my dad, a physicist who, for fun, once spent a sabbatical summer doing conservation work at the Field Museum in Chicago. Needless to say, he’s sort of a nerd. But the kind of nerd who would take a crack at translating the dish.

According to my dad, the text is a poem penned by the owner of the plate, Emperor Qian Long, who ruled China around George Washington’s time. Qian Long was known for his military conquests and his art collection, and left his mark, in the form of calligraphy, stamps, and poems, on many precious pieces of art, which was a common practice among Chinese collectors. My dad, who gets crusty about the defilement of art, even if it’s by the objects’ contemporaries, likens the practice to a dog pissing on its territory. “From a modern point of view, he and others ruined art works,” my dad said. “Dogs’ pee doesn't damage trees, but it does accelerate corrosion of metal posts.”

Being an emperor allowed Qian Long to add his personal touches even more freely, my dad added. “His calligraphy is OK,” he said, “but he is not remembered as a poet.”

The inscription on the dish dates to 1774, though the dish is older than that. The text reads from top to bottom, right to left. The last line contains the name, date, and stamps. Here is the line by line translation:

1. The skill of the craftsmen of Wu region (in Southeast China—editor) is unmatched.

2. They followed the ancient process but the result is even better than the old ones.

3. The basic form [of this piece] uses no wood or tin.

4. And the finish is without laborious carving or polishing [unlike jade].

5. Undecipherable.

6. The red color is like the cheek of a drunken immortal.

7. This shows that we have to learn from the ancestors.

8. I now write [or admit] this with a feeling of embarrassment.

Qian-long 1774

Topics: Design

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Design Truly Within Reach

Seattle industrial design student Adam Weisgerber recently beat out more than 1,000 competitors to win the fourth annual Design Within Reach Champagne Chair Contest.

Competitors were allowed to use the materials from no more than two champagne bottles (wire, label, cork, and foil—everything but the glass), with glue being the only permitted adhesive, to create a chair no larger than 4-inches by 4-inches by 4-inches.

Weisgerber, a Western Washington University junior currently in Louisville, KY, interning as an industrial designer for General Electric, heard about the contest in December and remembered it on New Year's Eve when friends popped celebratory champagne bottles. "I told all my friends to hold on to all the bottle parts," he recalls. "They thought I was crazy, and I'm like, there's this really cool contest and the more pieces the better."

He decided to make the chair out of cork ("I felt like cork was such a beautiful nautral material," he says. "I liked the purity of the cork") but only a few of his friends drink, so he ended up with only three corks. Two were reserved as raw material for the chair, leaving him with a single cork on which to practice.

Continue reading "Design Truly Within Reach"

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