Benjamin L. Haas

I loved working on these wedding favors for Marci and Ben.



The couple shared an adorable story about a miscommunication about their favorite cookies early on in their relationship. She loves macarons, he loves macaroons. They had the brilliant idea to give every guest this gold box that had one macaron and one macaroon inside.


The box stickers I designed reflected the style of their invitations. And the favor inserts felt similar to the menu cards I illustrated for them.


All of the beautiful photographs are by Cassidy DuHon.

Holy shit, new Swans album coming soon!

They say that everything old is new again and that is certainly true in the world of “alternative” health. One of the axiomatic premises of contemporary “alternative” health puts its believers behind the times … by approximately 500 years.

A fundamental premise held by believers in “alternative” health is that we are swimming in a world of “toxins” and those “toxins” are causing disease. Like most premises in “alternative” health it has no basis in scientific fact; makes intuitive sense only if you are ignorant of medicine, science and statistics; and speaks to primitive fears and impulses.

The preoccupation with “toxins” is a direct lineal descendant of the obsession with evil humours and miasmas as causes of disease. It is hardly surprising that prior to the invention of the microscope the real causes of disease went undiscovered. The idea that disease is caused by tiny organisms that invade the body is not amenable to discovery in the absence of scientific instruments and scientific reasoning. And it goes without saying that the same people who were unaware that bacteria and viruses cause disease could not possibly imagine chromosomal defects, inborn errors of metabolism or genetic predispositions to disease.

Instead, people imagined that diseases were caused by excess evil humours, substances that were named, but never seen or identified in any way accessible to the senses. It was recognized that some diseases were contagious, and in that case, people invoked the idea of “miasmas” that somehow transmitted disease.

Even religion got into the act. Rather than attributing disease to evil humors of miasmas, religious authorities often claimed that disease was attributable to evil demons or to sin itself.

These theories shared several important features. The evil humours, miasmas, etc. were invisible, but all around us. They constantly threatened people, and those people had no way of fending off the threat. Indeed, they were often completely unaware of the threat that was actively harming them.

Evil humours, miasmas, demons, etc. were put to rest by the germ theory of disease. That was the first big breakthrough in our understanding that each disease was separate and has its own specific cause. The search for causes has taken us beyond bacteria and viruses, through errors of metabolism and chromosomal aberrations, right down to the level of the gene itself. We now understand that tiny defects in individual genes can cause disease or can increase the propensity to a specific disease.

But fear and superstition never die and the “alternative” health community has used that fear and superstition to resurrect primitive beliefs. It is axiomatic in the “alternative” health community that disease is caused by evil humours and miasmas. They just don’t call it that anymore; they call it “toxins.”

Toxins serve the same explanatory purpose as evil humours and miasmas. They are invisible, but all around us. They constantly threaten people, often people who unaware of their very existence. They are no longer viewed as evil in themselves, but it is axiomatic that they have be released into our environment by “evil” corporations.

There’s just one problem. “Toxins” are a figment of the imagination, in the exact same way that evil humours and miasmas were figments of the imagination.

Poisons exist, of course, but their existence is hardly a secret, and their actions are well known. Most poisons are naturally based, derived from plants or animals. Indeed, the chemicals responsible for more diseases than any others are nicotine (tobacco), alcohol (yeast) and opiates (poppies).

Nonetheless, “alternative” health advocates persist in subscribing to primitive theories of disease. For those who have limited understanding of science, primitive theories apparently make more sense.

Hence the obsession with “toxins” in foods, in vaccines, even “toxins” arising in the body itself. The height of inanity is the belief in “detoxifying” diets and colon cleansing. The human body does not produce “toxins.” That’s just a superstition of the “alternative” health community. The waste products produced by the human body are easily metabolized by organs such as the liver, and excreted by organs particularly designed for that purpose such as the kidneys.

“Alternative” health practitioners are nothing more than quacks and charlatans and their “remedies” are nothing more than snake oil. The fact that anyone in this day and age still believes in such crackpot theories is a tribute to the power of ignorance and superstition.

Evil humours and miasmas have not died, they’ve been reincarnated as “toxins.”

Here are wedding programs I designed for Marci and Ben's wedding ceremony. I wanted them to look similar to their accordion-fold wedding invitations.


I printed the design on three different-colored sheets of paper to match the color palette of their invitations.


I love that they walked in to a Smiths song played by a string duo.




On the back side of the program, Marci and Ben lovingly crafted very short descriptions for each member of their wedding party. For the maid of honor: "Hair tugger, Jamaican chicken-jerker, wound-healer, sister, friend." I love this. The time and thoughtfulness that went into the language is what made this program meaningful and special.

View more photos of the programs and invitations here.

It's been pretty busy the past couple months. And I realize I never got to post Marci and Ben's wedding invitations here!


Marci and Ben wanted something with a vintage modern feel, and in the course of our conversations, they mentioned their love for vintage ephemera and secret notes and hidden letters to each other. This invitation design is inspired by those things.

This is the main invitation card. You open the mini envelope...



...and pull out this accordion-folded strip of paper with the main invitation wording.


Some guests also found in their envelopes this small insert for the rehearsal dinner.


The 2nd part of the invitation was this perforated card. Map on the top. RSVP postcard on the bottom to tear off and mail back.



All bundled together and sent in these envelopes with custom mailing labels.


I hired Studio on Fire to take care of the letterpress, and they are so wonderful to work with. Everything they print turns out beautifully. See more of their amazing letterpress work here.

More photos here. And their wedding programs and adorable favors coming up soon...

Here's a menu card I designed and illustrated for Marci and Ben's wedding reception. The couple loves good food, so their menu did not disappoint. Charred eggplant caviar with harissa on a papadam chip. Beet, green bean and toasted pecan salad. Heirloom tomatoes with basil and olive oil. Grilled wild striped bass. Braised collard greens with bacon and mashed potatoes and macaroni and cheese. You get the idea. I really had a hard time focusing while working on this menu because everything sounded so amazingly delicious...


A couple weeks ago I saw that Lisa Rupp featured these on her site. (Thanks, Lisa!) Check out her blog, it is full of lovely inspiration; I'm so happy to have discovered a new read.

Shared by sadotter


One of the best interviews I've ever seen. My admiration for Philip Petit has gone up to eleven.

Phillipe Petit (aka "Man on Wire") stopped into The Colbert Report last night and seemed to get off as easy as any Frenchman could expect facing down the man who has a "Freedom Sundae" named after him. Since Petit does not like to answer interviewer's queries as to why he participated in his death-defying feats, Colbert bucked the question by asking him why he didn't not do it.

Any language barrier between the two quickly seemed inconsequential when Petit matched Colbert's ironic bravado by cutting the host off and correcting him when he suggested that Petit's Twin Towers walk was only "perhaps" the most amazing stunt of its kind. But Petit may have taken some of the sheen off of his accomplishments by spilling the beans on his origins: he's not originally from the planet Earth!

Man on Wire might be the best chance the Big Apple has to getting in on any Oscar action this year (it's nominated for Best Documentary Feature). The video of Petit and Colbert is below. And for more of Petit detailing his relationship with the NYPD, check out when he talked with us last summer.

This is the most wonderful kitchen tool ever. It measures liquids or solids in terms of grams and ounces, sure, but also in terms of the volume of a T-Rex’s brain, or the number of grains of flour that there are people on the planet.

Bonus: It is actually purchaseable.

From A Hamburger Today

Or, 'Adam Kuban Is Trying to Kill Us, Part 2'

A little more than a week ago, A Hamburger Today introduced the world to the Hamburger Fatty Melt, a burger with grilled cheese sandwiches as its bun.

And what did the world do?

It spit in our face. Here on this site, and on other sites where it was blogged about, all we heard was, "Where's the bacon?"

Posted by Jon Perlow, Gmail engineer

Sometimes I send messages I shouldn't send. Like the time I told that girl I had a crush on her over text message. Or the time I sent that late night email to my ex-girlfriend that we should get back together. Gmail can't always prevent you from sending messages you might later regret, but today we're launching a new Labs feature I wrote called Mail Goggles which may help.

When you enable Mail Goggles, it will check that you're really sure you want to send that late night Friday email. And what better way to check than by making you solve a few simple math problems after you click send to verify you're in the right state of mind?


By default, Mail Goggles is only active late night on the weekend as that is the time you're most likely to need it. Once enabled, you can adjust when it's active in the General settings.


Hopefully Mail Goggles will prevent many of you out there from sending messages you wish you hadn't. Like that late night memo -- I mean mission statement -- to the entire firm.