Periodical Archaeology

Published in 1989, Emigre magazine’s eleventh issue, Ambition/Fear: Graphic Designers and the Macintosh Computer, contains vivid artifacts of a discipline’s first encounter with digital tools. From the aesthetics of bitmaps to the expressive interventions made possible by new access to typesetting controls, not to mention the self-publishing venture of the magazine itself, this issue combines modernist and postmodern agendas in a model construction of text-based community. Looking closely at Emigre #11 and more passingly at later issues, this article analyses the technical, critical, and cultural production that would shape Emigre as a medium for typographic demonstration and discussion among peers.

Papers for iPhone released ??? time for more poetry

Papers is a great Macintosh program to manage the PDF files of scientific papers on your (Macintosh) computer. I've mentioned several times that I like the program and I interviewed the author Alex Griekspoor back in October. ...

155 Farmer's Bookshelf: Evolution of an Information System for Crops in Hawaii

In 1988, the Farmer's Bookshelf started out as a computerized information system of crops grown in Hawaii. The first version was created on an Apple Macintosh computer using a hypermedia program called HyperCard. Because HyperCard came with each Macintosh computer, only the crop files needed to be sent to clientele. As the demand for an IBM-compatible version of the Farmer's Bookshelf increased, the Windows version was created using a hypermedia program called Plus. In addition to the crop files, the runtime version of Plus was also distributed to clientele. Later, other files were added to the Farmer's Bookshelf, including files to diagnose problems of macadamia in the field, select ground covers, select landscape trees, recommend fertilization, calculate nut loss for macadamia growers, and calculate turfgrass irrigation. Cost of analysis spread-sheets for several crops were also added. Recently, the Farmer's Bookshelf was moved to the World Wide Web, which has the advantages of reaching a world-wide clientele, easier updating and modifications, and linking to sites of related information. We have added links to newspaper articles on agriculture in Hawaii, to related sites on a particular crop, to on-line agricultural magazines and newsletters, to agricultural software, to upcoming agricultural events, and to Y2K sites. Because of the benefits of the Web version, the diskette versions (Macintosh and Windows) are no longer supported. Putting the Farmer's Bookshelf on the Web has allowed us to better meet the needs of our clientele for up-to-date information.

Pleasure as a Sign of Efficacy of Mental Activity

Previous work has shown that sensory pleasure is both the motor and the sign of optimal behaviors aimed at physiological ends. From an evolutionary psychology point of view it may be postulated that mental pleasure evolved from sensory pleasure. Accordingly, the present work tested empirically the hypothesis that pleasure signals efficacious mental activity. In Experiment 1, ten subjects played video-golf on a Macintosh computer. After each hole they were invited to rate their pleasure or displeasure on a magnitude estimation scale. Their ratings of pleasure correlated negatively with the difference par minus performance, i.e., the better the performance the greater the pleasure reported. In Experiments 2 and 3, the pleasure of reading poems was correlated with comprehension, both rated by two groups of subjects, science students and arts students. In the majority of science students pleasure was significantly correlated with comprehension. Only one arts student showed this relationship; this result suggests that the proposed relationship between pleasure and cognitive efficiency is not tautological. Globally, the results support the hypothesis that pleasure is aroused by the same mechanisms, and follows the same laws, in physiological and cognitive mental tasks and also leads to the optimization of performance.

Penguin, A Macintosh Application for Entry and Presentation of Radiocarbon-Dated Samples

Penguin is a Macintosh computer application that facilitates the use of CALIB 3.03, the 14C age calibration program by Stuiver and Reimer (1993). Penguin offers an easy user interface based on the well-known Macintosh standard multiwindow environment to create and edit the CALIB 3.03 calibration files and to export data in text format. Penguin and CALIB interact at the file level, i.e., Penguin is capable of reading and writing files in CALIB formats. Files containing the data are created in the Penguin environment and then saved on disk in the Penguin format. Penguin allows multiple editing of the calibration parameters and recalibration of the list of samples without the need to insert any modifications manually throughout the list. Penguin can also be used to read already calibrated files in order to extract the “cal” ages and display them in a spreadsheet-like window.