Photo by Vladimir Pirogov/Reuters via Unleashing Chiang.

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This seemed like a good opportunity to point out that while that video makes the damage look pretty bad and cause youtube commenters to call for the designers heads, this is an example of a building behaving well.  The concrete outside the wall rebar cage spalled [...]]]> Disaster porn for engineers:

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This seemed like a good opportunity to point out that while that video makes the damage look pretty bad and cause youtube commenters to call for the designers heads, this is an example of a building behaving well.  The concrete outside the wall rebar cage spalled off, which looks like failure, but is predictable and intentional – you need a layer of concrete outside the cage for corrosion protection that you plan on being sacrificed during an earthquake.  The rest of the wall remained confined and was able to cycle through major inelastic deformations to dissipate energy and prevent the rest of the building from collapsing.  They were so effective that the owners are planning on repairing the damaged shear walls and finishes and reopening, which is pretty impressive.

Update: The landscape architects got it right.

“Let me get this straight,” the liberals respond. “You want us to throw batting-practice fastballs, off a regulation mound, to batters holding rocket launchers while we’re in the field; but when we come to the plate, you expect us to hit doctored balls thrown off a spiked Little League mound with wooden bats, or you’re [...]]]> SEK:

“Let me get this straight,” the liberals respond. “You want us to throw batting-practice fastballs, off a regulation mound, to batters holding rocket launchers while we’re in the field; but when we come to the plate, you expect us to hit doctored balls thrown off a spiked Little League mound with wooden bats, or you’re gonna call us hypocrites?”

“Pretty much.

I enjoyed this metaphor tremendously, but it’s also important to note that what Obama did today is substantively different than Bush’s signing statements.  Obama’s order details how the existing anti-abortion provisions of the heath care legislation will be enforced, whereas Bush’s statements would typically indicate provisions that he planned on ignoring as unconstitutional per his administration’s warped view of their national security powers.

The former reflects a correct view of the executive’s roll in enforcing laws, while the latter is an immoral power grab.

Photo from Potency by Nina Maria Kleivan

Nina Maria Kleivan:

You need to be conscious that your actions have consequences that impact on your fellow human beings. The people I let my daughter portray didn’t give a damn about the human cost, the casualties, their thoughts caused.

The responsibility is yours alone. You can’t throw it away [...]]]>

Photo from Potency by Nina Maria Kleivan

Nina Maria Kleivan:

You need to be conscious that your actions have consequences that impact on your fellow human beings. The people I let my daughter portray didn’t give a damn about the human cost, the casualties, their thoughts caused.

The responsibility is yours alone. You can’t throw it away – as a parent, as human beings – and say that you just followed orders.

I’ve never heard someone defend their parenting with ‘I was just following orders,’ but I’ll grant the general moral thrust makes sense. However, a lot of the import is lost by focusing on larger than life supervillains. Very few people’s children (hopefully!) will grow up to be Stalin. By contrast many people’s children will grow up to be assistant manager of environmental safety at Corporation X who one day has to decide whether to overlook a potentially dangerous chemical dumping incident that will cost there company $$$ to clean up. Or whatever.

The point is most children grow up to be evil in a tremendously boring way that, in aggregate, is tremendously harmful to society. And our focus on ultimate personifications of evil undermines the severity of your child’s actual probable transgressions — “after all, it’s not like they’re Hitler!”

So I’d like to see Kleivan’s follow-up piece with her child dressed as a human resources consultant or a Army drone operator or a condo developer. And that would actually be a ‘potent’ and controversial piece, rather than just posing as one.

The rhetoric of escape velocity crosses cyberpunk science fiction with the Pentacostal belief in an apocalyptic Rapture, in which history ends and the faithful are gathered up into the heavens. Visions of a cyber-Rapture are a fatal seduction, distracting us from the devastation of [...]]]> Mark Dery in Escape Velocity: Cyberculture at the End of the Century:

The rhetoric of escape velocity crosses cyberpunk science fiction with the Pentacostal belief in an apocalyptic Rapture, in which history ends and the faithful are gathered up into the heavens. Visions of a cyber-Rapture are a fatal seduction, distracting us from the devastation of nature, the unraveling of the social fabric, and the widening chasm between the technocratic elite and the minimum-wage masses.

Shorter Dery: Go fuck yourself Ray Kurzweil.

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