This is Frank Grießhammer’s personal collection of adapters. See more at his Adapter Museum online.

Frank Grießhammer was born in 1983, and has studied in Saarbrücken, Florence and The Hague. He graduated in 2008 in communications design from HBKsaar, with the thesis project Kiosk Fonts, a platform for student writing projects. (Linotype.com)

First spotted via Stüff Stuff.

Every fall, I explain to a fresh batch of Ph.D. students what a Ph.D. is. It’s hard to describe it in words. So, I use pictures. Read below for the illustrated guide to a Ph.D. (read on)

Matt Might is assistant professor at the University of Utah’s School of Computing.

First spotted via Stüff Stuff

Since we’re talking about photography and typology, Chrisin has many other collections such as this one : emergency only buttons, doorlocks, doors gates and entrances, etc.

First spotted via This Isn’t Happiness

“This image, Chip Clark’s most requested photo, shows Roxie Laybourne, Smithsonian research associate, in front, with Birds Division collections staff members Beth Ann Sabo, James Dean, Bonnie Farmer, and Dawn Arculus, in 1992. The Museum holds the largest collection of vertebrate specimens in the world, with over 5.8 million specimens representing fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals. Photo by Chip Clark, Smithsonian Institution” (more)

About Chip Clark:

“Chip Clark came to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in 1973, with a degree in biology and an interest in photography. He has been a photographer on staff ever since, documenting thousands of specimens and exhibits, and accompanying scientists on research trips around the world. He has photographed everything from dinosaurs and mummies to diamonds, butterflies, and, of course, his fellow staff members. In the field he has photographed in caves in Jamaica, the rainforest in Peru, the coral reefs in Belize, and on the ocean floor in a deep-sea submersible off the Bahamas. He thrives on the challenges of photographing the natural world in its environment, no matter what the conditions.” (“Chip Clark: Museum Photographer for More Than Thirty-Five Years”)

Lady, That’s My Skull: New Universities Dictionary Illustrated, 1922

The book is all but disintegrated from age and weathering but I managed to save the artwork. No artist information can be found in the book though there seems to be a signature on the Plumage page. I can’t determine if that is the artist name or the previous owner of the book.

“OK, if iPad is innovating meaning even more than it is technology, what meaning might that be? Here’s my best guess:

iPad is tapping into an emerging dynamic of a more interactive, tactile experience with digital technology and information. These interactions make technology less of an interface, and more of an extension of ourselves and our environment.

The tweets above are a couple that show the natural way children engage with technology. Given the iPhone experience, they turn around and want to apply it to other devices. Buttons on devices, our traditional form of interaction, are divorced from the screen. They provide a measure of distance from the digital experience.

Touch, however, represents a new level of intimacy in the digital experience. In technology terms, it’s just an alternative form of interface. Touch, mouse, tab, whatever. But touch is a vital human sense, and a core part of experience. It’s how we interact with others, how we shop, experience textures and so much more.”

About Hutch Carpenter:

“I am the VP of Product for Spigit. Spigit helps companies manage innovation, providing idea management and prediction market software for enterprises. The goal is enable easy capture of ideas by employees, customers and partners, and convert the most promising to innovative initiatives. Spigit recently received a $10 million equity investment from Warburg Pincus.” (more)

Sweet irony. This table presents postmodernism as a movement pretending to avoid (or to be critical of) form, hierarchy, centering etc. Yet, it defines this very same postmodernism using binary oppositions.

In 1983, when asked about the postmodern movement, here’s what Michel Foucault answered:

“I must say that I have trouble answering this. First, because I’ve never clearly understood what was meant in France by the word “modernity”. In the case of Baudelaire, yes, but thereafter I think the sense begins to get lost. I do not know what Germans mean by modernity. The Americans were planning a kind of seminar with Habermas and myself. Habermas had suggested the theme of “modernity” for the seminar. I feel trouble here because I do not grasp clearly what that might mean, though the word itself is unimportant; we can always use any arbitrary label. But neither do I grasp the kind of problems intended by this term ― or how they would be common to people thought of as being “post-modern.” While I see clearly that behind what was known as structuralism, there was a certain problem ― broadly speaking, that of the subject and the recasting of the subject ― I do not understand what kind of problem is common to the people we call post-modern or post-structuralist.”

(“Structuralism and Post-Structuralism: An Interview with Michel Foucault”, interview by Gérard Raulet, translated by Jeremy Harding, Telos, vol. 55, Spring 1983, pp. 195-211; reproduced in Politics, philosophy, culture: interviews and other writings, 1977-1984 edited by Lawrence D. Kritzman and Alan Sheridan, London: Routledge, [1988]1990, p. 34; Amazon, Google Books)

About the Wikipedia Knowledge Dump:

“From the bold to the beautiful, from the wicked to the wise, every day the Wikipedia team relegates possibly “inappropriate” submissions to the garbage dump of time. Here, we make selected “potential” rejects immortal and preserve them for posterity. (All of these entries have been nominated for deletion at the time of posting.)”

The site is edited by Cliff Pickover. According to himself, he’s “a prolific author and futurist, having published more than 40 books, translated into over a dozen languages. Exploring topics ranging from computers and creativity to art, mathematics, parallel universes, Einstein, time travel, alien life, religion, dimethyltryptamine elves, and the nature of human genius” (Official website). He’s the author of such books as Sex, Drugs, Einstein, and Elves (2005) and Jews in Hyperspace.

Here’s what you may find while browsing this knowledge dumpster:

• A list of Celebrity Laser Eye Patients
• An article on drunk blogging
• A list of songs about hair
• A list of fictional worms
• An article about the difficulty of having sexual intercourse with a mermaid
• A list of bands beginning with the word “lemon”
• An article about The Chickenology Encyclopedia : a compilation of answers to the question “Why did the chicken cross the road?”
• A list of notable moustaches in art and fiction
• An article about the sexuality of Abraham Lincoln
• An article about human cheese
• A list of Homer Simpson’s lifelong dreams
• Last but not least, let’s not forget the list of people who died in the bathroom.

Discovered via Doctorak, GO!

Learn more about cabinet of curiousities. Think of them as antique tumblelogs.