Tuesday, August 9, 2011

A Problem at The Smithsonian's New "Department of Innovation" Blog

Lifted in toto from Harvard's own Improbable Research:

Too much in gear? (A tri-umph?)
Here’s a quiz for mechanical engineers, professional and budding: What’s the story on these gears?

David Brooks (the one known to science writers as “The good David Brooks”) writes in his Granite Geek blog:
If you’re going to draw gears, don’t draw 3 interlocking ones
Smithsonian.com has launched a new blog called Department of Innovation to track “all things innovative, not just in science and technology but how we live, how we learn, and how we entertain ourselves.”
The logo of this cool new enterprise is shown here. You don’t have to be a mechanical engineer to notice something a little wrong with the gear arrangement: In this configuration, none of them can move.

One poster to the blog suggested that they might stand for the president, Congress and the Senate.
Hey, at least they didn’t try to put any spin on it. Hahahahaha – get it???
The editors at DofI write:
Ed. note — Thank you to everyone for your comments about our logo. We have since shifted the gears and switched in a new logo.
Also at Improbable Research:
A load of vague non-numerical quantifiers
Happy 150th birthday, Henry Head!