Kieran Healy’s Weblog Sociology and other distractions

Fiveargh

Via John Gruber comes news that the already somewhat odd augmenting of U.S. currency with larger typefaces and random bits of color has taken a horrible turn. Behold the new five dollar bill.

The new additions to this bill, apparently intended to increase legibility and accessibility, were made by my daughter, who is four. Or possibly by Harold and His Purple Crayon. Actually, as the folks at Hoefler & Frere-Jones point out, this monstrosity is in fact “the work of a 147-year-old government agency called the United States Bureau of Engraving and Printing. It employs 2,500 people, and has an annual budget of $525,000,000.”

Meanwhile in Britain, the design for their new line of coins was selected after an open competition and is the work of a 26 year-old designer who hadn’t tried his hand at coin design before.

The Hobgoblin of Little Minds

John Gruber twittered the following:

Suggestion for Gallup: how many Americans both (a) are offended by sermons of Obama’s Christian pastor and (b) think Obama is a Muslim?

Which led me to check out this Pew Center Report:

The recent controversy surrounding sermons by Obama’s former pastor, Rev. Wright, and Obama’s March 18 speech on race and politics have attracted more public attention than other recent campaign events, according to Pew’s weekly News Interest Index. Nearly eight-in-ten (79%) say they heard at least something about Wright’s sermons (51% a lot, 28% a little) and about half (49%) have seen video of the sermons. … There is little evidence that the recent news about Obama’s affiliation with the United Church of Christ has dispelled the impression that he is Muslim. While voters who heard “a lot” about Reverend Wright’s controversial sermons are more likely than those who have not to correctly identify Obama as a Christian, they are not substantially less likely to still believe that he is Muslim. Nearly one-in-ten (9%) of those who heard a lot about Wright still believe that Obama is Muslim.

The Performativity of Networks

Paging Bearman, Moody & Stovel.

Gubbslem

Network theory is well-known for its evocative vocabulary, but sometimes what that language of structures and relations evokes can seem a little … antiseptic. Via Jacob Christiansen, however, comes the excellent Swedish term gubbslem:

Apperently gubbslem – which would translate into something like geezer phlegm – is the popular Swedish expression for what is otherwise known as old-boys networks. In the physical world gubbslem is a kind of algae.

Superb.

Motoparrot

This picture is presently on the reddit front page under the byline, “The Coolest Guy Ever.” Some people in the comments thread are skeptical that such a person (and his parrot) could really exist, but I see him and the macaw pretty regularly as they drive around Tucson.

Of course one can’t be certain, but …

A letter from the Notre Dame Observer in response to an Op-Ed in the paper.