We live in an exciting and interesting time — one when some of our most commonly accepted ideas, traditions and principals are being challenged. This past week featured a fascinating read in the Wall Street Journal asking “Are Playgrounds Too Safe?”, making the case that “decades of dumbed-down playgrounds, fueled by fears of litigation, concerns about injury and worrywart helicopter parents, have led to cookie-cutter equipment that offers little thrill.” The result being children less compelled to play outside, potentially stunting emotional and physical development and exacerbating a nationwide epidemic of childhood obesity.

Recently Forbes featured an article smartly challenging things many of us grew up being taught and often adhere to still. But in today’s world, the rules of our parents’ past are ones we have to ask in all earnest and respect — do these rules still apply?

1. The people in charge have all the answers.
That’s why they are so wealthy and happy and healthy and powerful—ask any teacher. 

2. Learning ends when you leave the classroom. 
Your fort building, trail forging, frog catching, friend making, game playing, and drawing won’t earn you any extra credit. Just watch TV. 

3. The best and brightest follow all the rules.
You will be rewarded for your subordination, just not as much as your superiors, who, of course, have their own rules.

Yes, this is a real headline. 

If the idea of running an independent bookstore, in picturesque rural Virginia, during the peak of Fall is appealing at all, then this is your lucky day.

The owners of Tales of the Lonesome Pine used bookstore in Big Stone Gap (pop. 5,400) have put out a call for a bookstore-sitter. They will provide lodging and provisions in exchange for the bookstore-sitter keeping the store’s doors open for two months.

For full article and to inquire, visit the LA Time article here.

Of all the instances in which graphic communication is necessary to transcend language barriers, the Olympic Games are, if not the most important, probably the most visible. We take the little icons of swimmers and sprinters as a given aspect of Olympic design, but the pictograms were a mid-20th Century invention—first employed, in fact, the last time London hosted the games, in 1948 (some pictographic gestures were made at the 1936 Berlin games, though their mark on international memory has been permitted to fade because of their association with Third Reich ideology).

The 1948 London pictograms were not a system of communication so much as a series of illustrations depicting each of the competitive sports, as well as the arts competition, which existed from 1912 to 1952 and included architecture, literature, music, painting and sculpture. In 1964, the Tokyo games took pictogram design to the next level by creating a complete system of typography, colors and symbols that would be applied across Olympic communications platforms.

Read full article here at Smithsonian Magazine.