2009/3/11 Gregg Reynolds :

On Wed, Mar 11, 2009 at 5:25 AM, Bulat Ziganshin wrote:

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Hello Gregg,

Wednesday, March 11, 2009, 1:17:41 PM, you wrote:

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are not O'Reilly. Of all the billions of images from all the cultures in the world available to us we can surely find something that is witty or charming without being cute.

it will not be fun :)

Perhaps not, but it also won't be torture. I can't take any more cuteness. ;)

Let's use the tool of TMR cover on the sloth; laziness hammered ! Thu

Benjamin L.Russell writes:

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Regarding logos/mascots: nothing personal folks, but I would like to cast a loud firm vote against all forms of cuteness, especially small furry animal

Sorry, but I cannot agree with you. I actually moved from New York to Tokyo partly because of the cuteness culture

Here, there are a lot of Japanese Haskell fans who love the beauty of Haskell, and you will risk losing a lot of them if you choose a mascot without any cuteness factor.

So it seems we'll either lose the cuteness-loving Japanese, or the slick and cool New Yorkers. A solution would be to find something that is interpreted as cute in Japan, and chiq in New York - but as we don't want everybody else to leave either, we probably want to avoid anything pornographic. Tricky.

You can still distinguish yourself from O'Reilly without losing the cuteness factor with a logo like one of the following:

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a three-dimensional lambda^2 logo stand, with the same logo in a transparent green upper portion an aluminum lower portion http://home.comcast.net/~flyingsquids/BlogStuff/HL2Logo2.jpg

Hmm...perhaps this is the solution we're looking for: shiny lambda handcuffs! Obsce^H^H^H^H^HSophisticated enough for the New Yorkers, cute enough for the Japanese, and avoiding the unfortunate laziness connotations by focusing on strictness and discipline instead. This definitely gets my vote. (If I still have one.) -k -- If I haven't seen further, it is by standing in the footprints of giants

On Thu, 12 Mar 2009 09:11:15 -0500, Gregg Reynolds wrote:

I don't think so. Bad design will lose them (and many others), but good design and cuteness are two different things.

It's also possible for a good design to be cute, too.

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You can still distinguish yourself from O'Reilly without losing the cuteness factor with a logo like one of the following:

We must have vastly different ideas of cute. I don't consider those examples cute. How about this as a criterion: if it makes 13-year old Japanese girls squeal "kawaiiii!" then it's too cute. Also if it involves the color pink.

What's wrong with the color pink (not that I prefer it personally, but just wondering)? You're also assuming that all 13-year old Japanese girls "squeal 'kawaiiii!'" in response to the same stimuli. I know for a fact that this isn't true (I recently saw a study asking Japanese girls to rate different mascots for cuteness, and the poll fell roughly 50-50, as a matter of fact). Which 13-year old Japanese girls are you referring to? -- Benjamin L. Russell -- Benjamin L. Russell / DekuDekuplex at Yahoo dot com http://dekudekuplex.wordpress.com/ Translator/Interpreter / Mobile: +011 81 80-3603-6725 "Furuike ya, kawazu tobikomu mizu no oto." -- Matsuo Basho^

On Fri, 13 Mar 2009 03:22:41 +0100, Deniz Dogan wrote:

2009/3/13 Benjamin L. Russell :

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On Thu, 12 Mar 2009 09:11:15 -0500, Gregg Reynolds wrote:

[snip]

Why even bother discussing whether a potential mascot should be cute or not? You guys should come up with new ideas instead of simply stating what you *don't* want. :)

Good point. Okay, here's a suggestion: Consider the following logo: Silver red monad.png http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Silver_red_monad.png This logo "[s]ignifies balance between consumption and production," and is the "Official Symbol of Technocracy - http://www.technocracy.org/." The above-mentioned logo is essentially a silver-red variation of the Yin-Yang symbol without the dots on both ends. Then consider the background of the following Yin-Yang symbol: Yin-Yang Symbol (on a swirling orange-gold background) http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/thumb_236/1202779093o0VB6w.jpg Given that the representation of the Pythagorean monad can already be considered as a portion of the Yin-Yang symbol (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monad_(Greek_philosophy)), why not take the background for the above-mentioned Yin-Yang symbol, superimpose the silver-red monad, and then simply superimpose representations of the Pythagorean monad as gradiated halos where there are dots in a traditional Yin-Yang symbol? We would then have a silver-red monad that closely resembles a Yin-Yang symbol, except that the dots would each be surrounded by a gradiated halo representing a monad, on a wavy orange-gold background: essentially, a pair of Pythagorean monads in a silver-red monad on a distinctive background. This symbol would represent the three-way balance between purity (symbolized by the red), laziness (symbolized by the silver), and monads (symbolized by the dots surrounded by halos). I don't have time to craft the image right now, but I may be able to come up with something after lunch. -- Benjamin L. Russell -- Benjamin L. Russell / DekuDekuplex at Yahoo dot com http://dekudekuplex.wordpress.com/ Translator/Interpreter / Mobile: +011 81 80-3603-6725 "Furuike ya, kawazu tobikomu mizu no oto." -- Matsuo Basho^

Benjamin L.Russell wrote:

balance

Stop right there. Any further word about what the Taiji means would only make you look even more clueless. Take a scale if you want a symbol for balance[1]. OTOH, laziness(yin) and strictness(yang) make a far better pair of unified opposites than the schemeish eval and apply (which's outer essences are both yang, changing to yin only by means of what they execute[2]). Still, you wouldn't represent the Maybe monad with >>=, now would you? Instantiating a symbol for a general principle to whatever you like constitutes pocketing. Anyway, I think it's too late for logo submissions. Personally, I just love the lambda-bind, it's truly haskellish, sleek, appropriately cryptic and lends itself well to ascii-art. What about a chicken holding a curry dispenser? In any case, I don't think a sloth is a bad choice as a mascot: It's most likely the most efficient animal on earth, and seeing it, you're bound to be mystified how it manages to get anything done. Water overcomes stone: Shapeless, it requires no opening: The benefit of taking no action. Yet benefit without action, And experience without abstraction, Are practiced by very few. [1] Or the vector equilibrium (note the word "libra" in there): http://www.angelfire.com/mt/marksomers/91.html It's also the reason why cutting a pizza into anything else but six pieces is an abomination to geometry.[2] [2] While I'm at it: The tips of the pinky, index finger, and thumb form a tetrahedron together with the center of mass in your palm while holding such a piece. What do you make of that? [3] And are therefore better explained in terms of hodge and podge -- (c) this sig last receiving data processing entity. Inspect headers for copyright history. All rights reserved. Copying, hiring, renting, performance and/or quoting of this signature prohibited.

Hallo, On Fri, Mar 13, 2009 at 1:23 PM, Benjamin L. Russell wrote:

On Fri, 13 Mar 2009 12:29:25 +0100, Achim Schneider

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Water overcomes stone: Shapeless, it requires no opening: The benefit of taking no action.

Yet benefit without action, And experience without abstraction, Are practiced by very few.

Nice poem. Did you write it yourself, or can you document the source?

If I remember correctly, this is from the Daodejing. Cheers, -- -alex http://www.ventonegro.org/

On Thu, Mar 12, 2009 at 9:17 PM, Benjamin L. Russell wrote:

On Thu, 12 Mar 2009 09:11:15 -0500, Gregg Reynolds wrote:

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I don't think so.  Bad design will lose them (and many others), but good design and cuteness are two different things.

It's also possible for a good design to be cute, too.

De cutibus non est disputandem. Personally I think something interesting could be done with Thoth (nice open svg image at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoth): God of reading/writing, math. When conflated with Hermes, also of boundaries, thieves and scoundrels, etc. Then there's Haskell B. Curry himself; notice the resemblance (http://www.haskell.org/bio.html) with J. R. "Bob" Dobbs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._R._%22Bob%22_Dobbs). An artist could "comicize" an image of Curry. Then it's only a short step to actual cultdom - why stop with a mere web community when you can legally establish a religious cult and actually ordain Ministers? (http://www.subgenius.com/scatalog/membership.htm). -g