After Corbu

This is the first of what I am sure will be many bad psuedo-puns, as I try to bring down the level of discourse at my new home.  The news: I have signed on with Where to blog about cities, urban activism, and the politics of space in general.  I’m excited to join a talented team of contributors there.  So if you’re one of my 3 RSS readers, good time to update the ol’ subscription!

Goodbye After Corbu!  We may yet meet again someday on the internets!

So, despite my general tendency to find all internet traditions lame, I think these wordles are pretty awesome and I made one for my Mars structural design project (and lo and behold, those are amongst the most common words).  Impressively, the script processed my 100+ page paper in a scant few seconds.  I am overwhelmed with coder envy. 

No joke: this is Joe living my life.

(h/t: Lewism)

So I’m still not really blogging, but I got directed to check out this website that purports to sell 9/11 greeting cards, and wanted to talk about it. Maybe I’m just beyond outrage at this point, but the whole concept strikes me as pretty benign.

“Oh, people find this day tragic, but we’re going to tell you to be happy! ‘Cus that’s how cool & irreverent we are!”

To which I roll my eyes and ask if you’ve heard where the band name for Joy Division came from — edgily referencing tragedy to stir up interest or gain credibility has a long history and isn’t particularly creative. It just takes a certain chutzpah, and in the age of Cheney (4th branch of government, what!?) it’s somewhat difficult to be competitive on the chutzpah front.

That said, there’s a legitimate critique to made of the mythology of 9/11 as a uniquely horrible tragedy that has never been seen before in the history of the world. I mean, it’s still only the second-worst terrorism to happen on that date! Looking just at the quantity of deaths, we should clearly be more concerned with heart disease (650k). Of course that means talking about things like diet (but…I like cow!) and exercise (but…American Idol!) which isn’t nearly as sexy as a WAR ON TERROR.

Anyway, if 9/11 can be acceptably appropriated for pointless wars, then why not for glorified stationary? And if conservatives get angry, well I guess that shows where the real obsession with political correctness lies…

In case it hasn’t been obvious for some time, I’ve all but shuttered this blog.  I just don’t have the time to post enough to make this project real to me, if that makes sense.  I would be interested in some kind of group-blogging situation in the future, so feel free to email me about that.

I am also working on this sort of leftist housing networking site — radical crib – but the site goals & functionality are still both a little broken.  If and when that project comes together a bit more I’m sure I’ll return to talk about it at length.  Anyway.

If you came here expecting something exciting to read, this may strike you as quite a bummer, so let me suggest you head on over to the ‘ol blogroll for some choice content.

So Long.  Thanks for all the fish.

Sadly, today my hopes that public transit would be a panacea for anti-social behavior were, once again, dashed. PT: not a sufficient condition for people to develop enough affinity for their fellow man to avoid being mean to beggers.

Today, as I left the metro a woman was asking for money for food. Not uncommon. Less common: she was accompanied by her 5 year old (? — I find it impossible to tell the age of children. My observations can’t get past: small, disproportionate), who had very large eyes. Then:

She asked, “Spare some money for food?” and the person behind me said, “No. But I will call Social Services to come pick up your child.”

“Fuck You.”

“I’m going to call Social Services since you can’t feed your child.”

The woman paused, then walked to the elevator where we all enjoy an awkward ride up out of the station.

Now, I’m willing to admit that there’s some moral complexity with regards to the children of extremely poor folk. At what point should one give up their child for a “better” life? At what point should the government step in and “take” children away? Certainly food, shelter, and safety form a bright line that there’s probably consensus about. And it’s possible that my subway woman had crossed those lines, and she probably should have access to a social worker for assistance if nothing else.

However: I don’t think begging in and of itself should be grounds to take a child away. Entirely possible that said child had been fed and a bed for the night at a local church was lined up, but woman had not eaten. Or needed money for job interview clothes (my strong case). Or for beer (my weak case, but not actually an illegitimate purchase!). Moreover, hanging out in the subway asking for money: not particularly dangerous. So cursory look at the situation suggests hard-luck case to sympathize with, not vile child abuser to scorn.

But no: must call child protective services. Of course, given that SS does not have a rapid response guerrilla division, and I would only be able to direct SS to “go check out the Hollywood Metro,” and on top of it all the chances of me actually calling are about one in a million, this is all just posturing.

You see, I’m so annoyed that you, a poor person, would have the gall to ask me, ‘innocent’ bystander in your poverty, for money and thus make me feel guilt at my own tightfistedness that I will threaten to break up your family. That’s just how I roll. Asshole.

I feel like I should end my story by saying how I gave the women money/food to make this recitation serve as some sort of behavioral model. Or I could say that I didn’t do anything to help, admitting my own complicity, and by extension that of everyone who reads, given that we all participate in this classist society. But neither feels right. I’m not comfortable with my character as either holy or fallen.

Instead: a plea. I don’t have a solid opinion on the quantity and frequency of direct small-sum charity you should engage in. But sure as hell, harshing on beggars is fucked up. So don’t do it or I may have to punch you in the face.

Do you think if I named my charter school this, there’s enough diehard Simpsons fans out there to populate it with hilarious children?  Second question, could we still get the money if we fake-added the Fountainhead to our curriculuum?

Update: Someone is already doing this in The City.  Clever Hippies.

While doing ‘research’ into computer gaming lore, I stumbled onto this map of Quake’s children:

Mostly, I don’t understand how there could possibly be so much variation  in the first-person shooter genre.  I mean, you’re basically (only?) holding a gun and shooting things; how different can electroquake be from ezquake?

All this to say, why not a lefty SimCity that has mixed use and biking?  Is that a tax on the coder strategic reserve?

See Ezra try to take food out of my (hypothetical) child’s mouth by downplaying the very real danger of the earthquake menace with his “Robots!  Robots!” flimflam.  In reality these things are not competitive, as the worst robots are brought by quake.

But really: setting most of the snark aside, unless you live or work in an unreinforced masonry building, you don’t have much to fear from earthquakes.  Codes now require buildings to be able to dissipate a lot of kinetic energy (read: break) in the event of the Big One, and they definately probably won’t fall on your head most of the time.  Of course seismic engineering is largely empirical so it suffers from all the usual problems of trying to extrapolate from a curve set to a small historical data set, meaning it’s predicitive value is something less than awesome.

There’s a reason they write a new building code after every major earthquake…

More evidence of the delusional nature of Clinton supporters:

…and the youtube primary continues to go to Obama in a landslide.

If I were to spend $500 and the next two weeks of my life on this:

Would that be just awesome?

Or,

Would it be the most brilliantly awesome thing in the history of humanity?

I really just can’t decide…

Light posting of late, as I’m working on a different online project that I’m quite excited about. When it’s of at least beta quality you’ll hear me chattering about it endlessly, but until then…your moment of zen phallacy:

La Live by Gensler

It’s not often you see a building get larger as it goes up. Something to do with physics…

I should never have poked fun at the new Thom Mayne building and the poor engineers that have to design it; today I was put on a new project team for one of the starchitect’s towers.  It has a crumpled facade.  The steel is kinked at every level.  The diaphragms are discontinuous.  Almost every one of it’s 50+ floors are different.  I want to stab myself in the eye.

On the plus side, this is my first project by a popularly known architect (the blank stares that come with saying you’re consulting for DMJM just aren’t as fun).  And I would rather work on interesting projects than, say, parking garages.  Still, when the office joke is that you must have done something to piss of your boss, you have to be a little wary.

When he runs through the numbers and facts, rather than make proclamations based on his gut, Chris Bowers is the best election analyst on the web.  So, when he makes a convincing case, I feel comfortable believing him.  Therefore: barring an act of god, the underdog doesn’t just beat the spread, but wins outright.

The great American electorate continues to befuddle me, so I have no idea what happens in the matchup against McCain (and Nader!), but I’m cautiously optimistic…just like I was in 2004.  Shit.

Reminiscent of a Norman Foster building broken and twisted by a kinetic event and then frozen in place, Phare Tower:

I’ve had my share of vitriol for Thom Mayne in the past over the hostility and anxiety that his buildings exude, so I was excited to see that he had taken my criticism to heart for this Parisian office block.

I think it’s beautiful, but let’s look at the structure: steel emerges from the ground as bundled roots or muscle fibers (definitely organic, but I wonder what the intended metaphor is?), then distributes itself, forming a structural skin that envelops the building in a kind of distended exoskeleton, providing an impressively redundant lateral system.

Unfortunately, that system appears to have many members that are weakened by kinks and inefficient placement or are just completely extraneous. Those negatives, combined with the modeling nightmare that is the tower’s shape, may mean that the designers choose to treat the triangulated exterior structure as cladding; mere dead load along the building perimeter.

Note that the interior structure of the tower quickly becomes linear, which also suggests that Phare Tower’s radical engineering is really only skin deep. Compare this building to Foster’s Gherkin, which relies almost entirely on the exterior skin for structural support, and the Mayne building becomes less impressive — the equivalent in honesty and utility of throwing a brick face on a 2×4 house.

But that’s par for the course in this kind of pomo architecture, where paying homage to the base structure is paid without regard to the actual physics of materials — symbolically only (which is to say, not at all). Thankfully (sadly? my inner masochist asks.), I’m not the one that has to deal with this system — which is either extremely complicated, or extremely dishonest — and can just enjoy the aesthetics. which are wonderful!

But somewhere out there is a young engineer building a Revit model and cursing the name of Thom Mayne long into the night.

Apparently all the cool kids are running for President (Despite being an academic, nonhuman, and British respectively — not exactly a group that screams electable, or even “legally electable”), but I’m going to take a different tack and declare for National Zoning Czar. True, it doesn’t have the same aura of “President” — or exist (yet) — but if that Chicago anarchist gets elected, you can bet we’ll be on the express lane to becoming the United Soviet States and the position will open up, and then…

Suffice to say, you’d be surprised how many old scores the power of eminent domain can settle.  So I graciously leave the white house to my fellow bloggers — I was going to zone it heavy industrial in any case.