I wasn’t terribly interested in the atheist bus campaign until I saw the photos – it’s a simple but rather nice design.
Also surprising, many of the photos and also this video are via sexblogger Zoe Margolis. Which reminds me I haven’t read Greta Christina for too long.
The New York Times article includes the following I-don’t-even-know-where-to-begin passage:
An interesting element of the bus slogan is the word “probably,” which would seem to be more suited to an Agnostic Bus Campaign than to an atheist one. Mr. Dawkins, for one, argued that the word should not be there at all. But the element of doubt was necessary to meet British advertising guidelines, said Tim Bleakley, managing director for sales and marketing at CBS Outdoor in London, which handles advertising for the bus system. For religious people, advertisements saying there is no God “would have been misleading,” Mr. Bleakley said.
An interesting element of the bus slogan is the word “probably,” which would seem to be more suited to an Agnostic Bus Campaign than to an atheist one. Mr. Dawkins, for one, argued that the word should not be there at all.
But the element of doubt was necessary to meet British advertising guidelines, said Tim Bleakley, managing director for sales and marketing at CBS Outdoor in London, which handles advertising for the bus system.
For religious people, advertisements saying there is no God “would have been misleading,” Mr. Bleakley said.
(Hi-res photo here. That’s creator Ariane Sherine on the left, and I believe Polly Toynbee of the British Humanist Association on the right.)
Update: A.C. Grayling connects:
It would be misleading, eh? Thus the metaphysical authority of advertisers. You have to take your hat off to this one. If one wished to cite a better example of insidiousness, pusillanimity, timidity and absurdity, you would be hard pressed. There is something delicious about the thought of a functionary in an advertising agency doing ontology by arbitrating on the question of which fictional characters need a grey area of uncertainty around discussion of their existence – Little Red Riding Hood? Rumpelstiltskin? Santa? Betty Boop? Saint Veronica (who allegedly started out as sweat on a cloth and became a person)? Aphrodite? Wotan? Batman?
Went to the Friday evening show at Mutek, an annual electronic music festival in Montreal. (continue reading…)
So on Easter Sunday I moved from Seedpod Co-op to a friend’s house in Cambridge near Central Square.
Pretty stoked.
Settling into the room for the first time tonight.* Although instead of unpacking, I’m mostly writing emails and blog posts.
To end on a positive note, first a few reasons I’m sad to have left Seedpod.
And a few random reasons I’m happy to live on Laurel St.:
(No, that’s not my house pictured, it’s just some random photo from St. Louis “Hotness Confirmed” Missouri.)
– *I haven’t unpacked since then because I’ve been doing a freelance book design project, which I think might be my last. I loooove me some typography, but I find it a bit unsatisfying as paid work. I need a lot of time to really suss out creative ideas, and that’s difficult with commercial projects that have, you know, deadlines. And it’s perhaps inherently frustrating as art because you can’t easily be creative without distracting the reader from the words themselves, which results in a constant battle to be normal without being boring. I’m happy I once got to set a book with Sauna however.
**Because Dorchester is so huge, it’s divided up into multiple other neighborhoods, so should the whole thing really be called a “neighborhood”? It’s more like a borough. Except we don’t have boroughs.
So he won Boston — about 70 percent in my neighborhood — and lost most of the rest of the state except the islands and the upper Valley area (aka Southern Vermont). Oh well.
I feel pretty good about the rest of Super Tuesday, and next few primaries, with the exception of Maine, which to be honest is a fairly xenophobic state.
I may organize an informal phone banking party later this month — anyone in Boston/Cambridge who’s interested, let me know…
Just poll-checked for the Obama campaign at a polling station in Boston — Fields Corner, Dorchester, 42 Charles St., precincts 1507 and 1508 I believe. All systems normal.
I was also there to put up signs, which was an interesting experience. When I first walked by last night, the trio of pristine Hillary posters on the fence seemed ominous, even menacing. But after I put up my Obama signs next to them, they seemed harmless. I almost felt bad for them.
(I suppose I shouldn’t, because momentum notwithstanding, Hillary’s more likely to win today.)
