The Bureau of Labor Statistics releases the results of two major surveys on the first Friday of every month (the Current Employment Statistics or CES and the Current Population Statistics or CPS). Although…
Category: Design
Six Degrees of Joy Division
My local record store used to have this great poster on the back wall that explained how several dozen British indie bands from the 80s were all linked together through their various group members. The title…
Time-Distance Diagrams
After I was in a car accident a few years ago, I contacted the city Traffic Control Engineer to see if I could get a copy of the signal timing sequence for…
Fighting Insidious Business Jargon with Design
One of the biggest barriers to introducing new concepts to people is that they often have old, preconceived notions about those concepts that are just close enough to the truth to cause confusion. For example,…
Great TV Remote Mods
Electronics manufacturers still don’t seem understand how to design easy-to-use controls for their devices. This is particularly true for the thousands of TV/cable box combinations that exist in our homes. While we…
A Switch in Time (How Daylight Saving Time Works)
Daylight Saving Time (DST) officially ends tomorrow and everyone in my little corner of the world will set their clocks back and get a well-deserved extra hour of sleep. We all know that this odd…
Signs of Sanity
I dragged my family to the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear in Washington, D.C. yesterday and we saw a lot of great signs. Some of my favorites also managed to bring…