DANA TANAMACHI is a graphic designer and custom chalk letterer who hails from the Lone Star State, but currently resides in Brooklyn, New York. After graduating in 2007 with a BFA in Communication Design from The University of North Texas, Dana moved to New York City to design Broadway show posters at Spotco—a leader in arts and live entertainment branding. In early 2010, she took a job working under Louise Fili at Louise Fili Ltd, specializing in the design of restaurants and food packaging. Currently, Dana works full time as a custom chalk letterer.
http://www.danatanamachi.com/about/

Impeccably hand-drawn in a range of styles, Dana Tanamachi's old-timey and evocative chalk-only compositions have appeared on everything from wine bottles to in-store displays to the cover of O, the Oprah Magazine. It was just over two years ago when Ms. Tanamachi, 26, accidentally started her new career by attending a friend's housewarming party in Brooklyn. The hosts had created several chalk walls in their new apartment by using commercially bought "chalkboard" paint (a thick matte variety that can turn any wall into a chalkboard-like surface), and they asked Ms. Tanamachi to sketch something on one of them. The drawing was a hit, and photos of partygoers posing in front of it quickly surfaced on Facebook. Ms. Tanamachi made similar works for each of their subsequent parties and word spread among friends and friends of friends. In May 2010, Ms. Tanamachi received her first official commission: an in-store display for Desiron, a furniture showroom in SoHo. A friend of a friend led to a second commission, this time from Google—she wrote "Room to Breathe" in elegant block letters on a chalkboard wall in one of the Internet giant's new Chelsea offices. Jobs soon followed with New York's Ace Hotel, the British Columbia winery Nagging Doubt and Rugby Ralph Lauren, for which Ms. Tanamachi made a series of window displays in type reminiscent of 1940s-era signage. Chalk, she discovered, was the perfect medium for her work; it's cheap and easy to manipulate. For any given commission, her tools are a tape measure, a rag and a pack of dollar-store chalk—nothing else. "The cheaper the better," she said regarding the chalk. "It's more hollow so it goes on smooth. The more expensive stuff is denser, and that's what makes those bad noises." Rachel Wolff See picture of the artist's chalkboard wall in her bedroom at: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203458604577265453430025274.html

Words spelled with more letters on the right of the keyboard are associated with more positive emotions than words spelled with more letters on the left, according to new research by cognitive scientists Kyle Jasmin of University College London and Daniel Casasanto of The New School for Social Research, New York. Their work shows, for the first time, that there is a link between the meaning of words and the way they are typed - a relationship they call the QWERTY* effect. Their study is published online in Springer's journal Psychonomic Bulletin & Review Some words are spelled with more letters on the right side of the keyboard, others with more letters on the left. In a series of three experiments, the researchers investigated whether differences in the way words are typed correspond to differences in their meanings. They found that the meanings of words in English, Dutch and Spanish were related to the way people typed them on the QWERTY keyboard. Overall, words with more right-side letters were rated more positive in meaning than words with more left-side letters. This effect was visible in all three languages and was not affected by either word length, letter frequency or handedness. The QWERTY effect was also found when people judged the meanings of fictitious words like “pleek,” and was strongest in new words and abbreviations like “greenwash” and “LOL” coined after the invention of QWERTY. Why should the positions of the keys matter? The authors suggest that because there are more letters on the left of the keyboard midline than on the right, letters on the right might be easier to type, which could lead to positive feelings. *The most common modern-day keyboard layout. The name comes from the first six keys appearing in the top left letter row of the keyboard, read left to right: Q-W-E-R-T-Y. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120307112711.htm

The 14th International Congress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science (CLMPS), held last July in France, included a special symposium on the subject of "What is an algorithm?" This may seem to be a strange question to ask just before the Turing Centenary Year, which is now being celebrated by numerous events around the world (see http://www.turingcentenary.eu/ ). Didn't Turing answer this question decisively? Isn't the answer to the question "an algorithm is a Turing machine"? But conflating algorithms with Turing machines is a misreading of Turing's 1936 paper "On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem." Turing's aim was to define computability, not algorithms. His paper argued that every function on natural numbers that can be computed by a human computer (until the mid-1940s a computer was a person who computes) can also be computed by a Turing machine. There is no claim in the paper that Turing machines offer a general model for algorithms. So the question posed by the special CLMPS symposium is an excellent one. Incontrovertibly, algorithms constitute one of the central subjects of study in computer science. Should we not have by now a clear understanding of what an algorithm is? It is worth pointing out that mathematicians formalized the notion of proof only in the 20th century, even though they have been using proofs at that point for about 2,500 years. Read very different definitions of algorithm by two keynote speakers at the symposium:
http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2012/3/146261-what-is-an-algorithm/fulltext

One of America's most enduring poems was written by Robert Degen, who died in 2009 on his 104th birthday. His creation, "The Hokey Pokey," seems timeless. Though the tune and lyrics are often credited to the Ram Trio, who popularized it in the late 1940s in Sun Valley, the "Hokey Pokey Dance" was copyrighted in 1944 by Degen, who maintained the Rams stole it. However, American and British servicemen sang a similar song, "The Hokey Cokey" written by someone else, even earlier in the war. And according to Degen's NY Times obituary, some Catholic clergy and the Oxford English Dictionary contend that "hokey pokey" is derived from "hocus pocus," and the song was written by Puritans in the 1700s to satirize the Catholic mass. Degen's words figured into the winning entry in the 2003 Washington Post Style Invitational Contest, wherein readers could enter instructions to anything as long as it was composed in the manner of a famous person. Jeff Brechlin submitted "The Hokey-Poke" as written by Shakespeare. "O proud left foot, that ventures quick, within/ Then soon upon a backward journey./ Anon, once more the gesture, then begin:/ Command sinistral pedestal to writhe./ Commence thou then the fervid Hokey-Poke,/ A mad gyration, hips in wanton swirl./ To spin! A wilde release from heaven's yoke./ Blessed dervish! Surely canst go, girl./ The Hoke, the poke - - banish now thy doubt/ Verily, I say, 'tis what it's all about." http://www.openwriting.com/archives/2011/04/hokey_pokey_1.php

See a list of recent Washington Post Style Invitational weekly contests at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/style-invitationa l-weekly-contest-archives/2010/07/06/AB15r7D_linkset.html

January 21, 2012 The Tucson Unified School District has dismantled its Mexican-American studies program, packed away its offending books, shuttled its students into other classes. It was blackmailed into doing so: keeping the program would have meant losing more than $14 million in state funding. It was a blunt-force victory for the Arizona school superintendent, John Huppenthal, who has spent years crusading against ethnic-studies programs he claims are “brainwashing” children into thinking that Latinos have been victims of white oppression. As a state legislator, he co-wrote a law cracking down on ethnic studies, and as superintendent he decided that Tucson’s district was violating it. Mr. Huppenthal's law prohibits programs that “promote the overthrow of the United States government,” “promote resentment toward a race or class of people” and “advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals.” Unless two students win a federal lawsuit arguing that the loss of the program violates their First Amendment rights, Tucson school officials and students are going to have to enrich their curriculum another way. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/opinion/sunday/rejected-in-tucson.html

March 14, 2012 The Librotraficante Caravan is scheduled to arrive in Tucson March 16 carrying copies of books banned by TUSD. March 17 highlights: All Day: The Libros Libres Taco Truck will hand out free books around Tucson. 1-4pm: The Ultimate Lit Workshop 1-4pm: John Valenzuela Youth Center, 1550 S. 6th Ave. 7pm: Literary Showcase: Leading authors will present their literary works: UA Social Sciences Building, Room 100, 1145 E. South Campus. http://tucsoncitizen.com/in-the-aggregate/2012/03/14/librotraficante-wet-books-events-in-tucson-saturday/

Internal Komen documents reviewed by Reuters reveal the complicated relationship between the Komen Foundation and the Catholic church, which simultaneously contributes to the breast cancer charity and receives grants from it. In recent years, Komen has allocated at least $17.6 million of the donations it receives to U.S. Catholic universities, hospitals and charities. Church opposition reached dramatic new proportions in 2011, when the 11 bishops who represent Ohio's 2.6 million Catholics announced a statewide policy banning church and parochial school donations to Komen. Such pressure helped sway Komen's leadership to cut funding to Planned Parenthood, according to current and former Komen officials. The earliest signs of discord came in 2005, when South Carolina's Catholic diocese pulled out of the local Komen fundraiser. I t was followed over the next four years by individual dioceses in Arizona, Indiana, Florida, Missouri and other states, where bishops either spoke out against Komen or took steps to stem donations to the charity, mainly because of its Planned Parenthood link. The momentum picked up in 2011 when top Ohio clerics met in Columbus. High on their agenda was the question of whether the state's nine dioceses should participate in Komen fundraisers. No Planned Parenthood clinics in Ohio receive Komen money. But the bishops decided that diocese funds should no longer benefit the charity, for fear that money sent from local Komen affiliates to the Dallas headquarters could wind up in Planned Parenthood's coffers or help fund research on stem cells collected from human fetuses, according to church officials. But even as opposition to Komen continues, some Catholic recipients of Komen money have promoted their ties with the breast cancer charity to the media. Other institutions carry hypertext links to Komen on their Web sites and some display the Susan G. Komen for the Cure logo, including a pink ribbon. Catholic institutions overall collected $7.4 million from the charity in 2011 alone, while Planned Parenthood's receipts totaled $684,000 during the same year. http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/15/us-usa-komen-catholic-idUSBRE82E12Q20120315