David Stairs
Title wall of the exhibition 5°F
Gordon Lightfoot had a song on Summer Side of Life entitled “10 Degrees and Getting Colder.” That record is now over 50 years old, and things have changed dramatically since it was released…. Continue Reading →
David Stairs
The only guns this cowboy ever owned
What could be more dimwitted, un-insightful, or self-serving than a strict interpretation of the Second Amendment?… Continue Reading →
David Stairs
Load your Potato Guns boys ’n girls!
Yogi Berra once said, “It’s like déjà vu all over again.”
Back in the days when Trump was the undisputed Twitter Queen, I never thought we’d be free of his unhinged rantings…. Continue Reading →
David Stairs
Courtesy of Lucien Stairs
You don’t have to look very far these days to see designers talking about the brave new world of Design AI. Helen Armstrong is out stumping her AI monograph, Big Data,… Continue Reading →
David Stairs
There are two treats I remember from childhood, and they were both manufactured by Sunshine Bakers: Cheez-Its, and Hydrox. Cheez-Its are still around in many updated variations, now a Kellogg’s brand. Hydrox dropped from sight for awhile,… Continue Reading →
David Stairs
Thomas Carlyle called economics the “dismal science” in response to Malthus’s writings about exponential population growth. Carlyle was a Victorian and did not live in an era dominated by design. It would’ve been interesting to see what he would have made of our times…. Continue Reading →
David Stairs
Quannah Chasinghorse by Nathaniel Goldberg; Emily Ratajkowski from Instagram
A recent article in Elle Magazine online by Terese Marie Mailhot (Photographed by Nathaniel Goldberg and Styled By Alex White) introduces us to Quannah Chasinghorse, a nineteen-year-old native American runway model of Ha?n Gwich’in and Sicangu Oglala Lakota descent…. Continue Reading →
David Stairs
The only good use I’ve ever found for disposable diapers, a 1976 poster. (Note the pins I added. Talk about double-entendre!)
I know I’m supposed to say that prize-winning financially successful ideas are examples of great design,… Continue Reading →
David Stairs
Dick Clark at the Moulin Rouge by David Stairs
In a land governed by capital, it comes as no surprise that so much value is attached to celebrity. One of the first great modern personalities,… Continue Reading →
David Stairs
Every three years I am tasked with guiding a group of senior design students through their capstone year. Once upon a time it was enough to mount a student’s portfolio for public exhibition, and this process can still be seen at end-of-year design exhibitions across the country…. Continue Reading →
David Stairs
As the AIGA gears up for its annual conference, I find myself pondering. In a year of magical thinking, like everyone else the AIGA has reinvented its conference schedule for online delivery. If this is just a matter of the new normal,… Continue Reading →
David Stairs
There are a lot of people criticizing techno-capitalism these days, those so-called social pariahs demonstrating for economic “justice” and “equity.” But surely, these things are not givens in a free enterprise economy. They have generally needed the assistance of government regulation…. Continue Reading →
David Stairs
While China installs a nationwide video surveillance system, people in the West fret about the potential damage to their privacy by CTV cameras. But, apart from high profile failures, like Toronto’s “smart city” project, we’ve actually been normalizing surveillance for decades…. Continue Reading →
David Stairs
UPDATE:
As of July 23rd, 2021, following Anthony Fauci’s recent congressional testimony, this story is now being reported by the BBC.
A double arginine codon inserted at the S1/S2 furan cleavage site of the SARS CoV-2 virus’s genome
It was once the best of times………. Continue Reading →
David Stairs
When Thomas McNeill was made pastor of St. Margaret’s parish in 1948, he inherited little more than a twenty-year-old mission church in a growing suburb north of Syracuse, New York. McNeill had been a Navy chaplain in the Pacific during the war,… Continue Reading →
David Stairs
Another day, another mass shooting. We’re led to believe by television that Mayhem is a guy in a suit, played by actor Dean Winters, who causes mass upheaval wherever he goes. If only it were that simple…. Continue Reading →
David Stairs
Tom Tierney’s Rita Hayworth paper doll published by Dover
As I sit by my Thermopane picture window reflecting on the wintry scene outdoors, I am distracted by the arrival of a mated pair of songbirds. A male cardinal hops onto my bird-feeder while his subtle mate shelters in a nearby bush…. Continue Reading →
David Stairs
Deep fake of the Queen’s Christmas address; courtesy Channel 4
A man walks into a pizza parlor in Washington, D.C. armed with an automatic rifle determined to free children he believes are victims of a peadophilic sex trafficking “deep state.” People interviewed at a Stop the Steal rally in Atlanta tell interviewers a commission is needed to investigate the Democrat’s efforts to corrupt a widely certified election…. Continue Reading →
David Stairs
Steve Zdep is dead, that much is certain. He passed away on November 6th, 2020 from causes not revealed in his obituary.
The author in more innocent times… Continue Reading →
David Stairs
With states reporting record numbers of infections, there is no doubt that this Christmas season will be one many will find hard to forget. The malls and retail centers we so precipitously abandoned way back in March do not have the same attraction of earlier years…. Continue Reading →
David Stairs
Max is over, thank God.
And by Max I mean Adobe Max, that brightshiny overripe bells-and-whistles software tradeshow masquerading as an allconsuming excuse to be pretentiously jejeune…. Continue Reading →
David Stairs
A wild back yard
Except for a couple of thunderstorms, it hasn’t rained much in central Michigan this summer. It has been quite hot, and as usual, very humid. After aggressively mowing the grass in late May and June,… Continue Reading →
David Stairs
America has finally caught mask fever, fifteen years later than Asian people. There are still many who refuse to “suit up” including Covid deniers, those suffering from claustrophobia, and some who claim medical excuses. But the possible reasons for not wearing a mask are narrowing,… Continue Reading →
David Stairs
I thought I was speaking truth, but now I’m not sure that it wasn’t simply “my truth” rather than something absolute. Maybe absolute truth doesn’t exist, no matter how much we’d like to believe in it. But,… Continue Reading →
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