October 31, 2001
HERBERT MUSCHAMP
Power, Imagination and New York's Future
October 28, 2001
| ...it was possible to defend retrogressive architecture by asserting that the public found it pleasing. Architects should try harder to accommodate popular taste, it was believed. People were bored with International-style glass boxes. This line of thinking was exhausted some time ago. There is a growing public appetite for work with the energy to lead popular taste, not meekly follow it. Last summer, people were not breaking down doors to get into the Congress for the New Urbanism's weekend gathering in New York. They were lining up to see the show on Frank Gehry's work at the Guggenheim Museum. They were aroused by work that, like Wright's, or Brunelleschi's, found a way out of the box. |
-- HERBERT MUSCHAMP
Posted by dc at 09:37 PM | Comments (2)
design defense ministry
Underemployed webheads make
purposeless propaganda.
But is sure looks nice.
Posted by dc at 09:14 PM | Comments (0)
circle around the square
Geometry as cited in architecture criticsm:
Some residents object to allowing buses to circle around the square
instead of using the north side of the station as a turnaround, Hunt
said.
Posted by dc at 05:49 PM | Comments (0)
October 28, 2001
news of the day
America's Southerners aren't the only regional-ethnic groups seeking
independence from the cosmopolitan internationalism of the nations'
elite. Rural New Englanders have launched a "blood and soil"
separatist movement of their own.
AntiGlobalist Protestor or Militiaman:
"Behind all those urban killings are people created by the Great
Progressive Society. These people are not revolting against the Great
Progressive Society. They are raw imitations of the Great Progressive
Society. We are led to believe that the professional middle class are
the winners, the working class are the losers. \212 As I see it, class
is about values, dependence and ways of communicating. The working
class person values place, interdependence, cooperation, the
tribe. Rural working class especially values land. Many of us would
kill to keep our land, our home, which for thousands of years was not
considered a crazy thing to do. Middle-class professionals are into
"success" and they are a dependent people, happily dependent on the
consumer system for everything. You call it independence. But if you
lost your electricity, your service people, your access to stores,
you'd see how independent you are! Working-class people have become
dependent on these things, too, but working-class values resent this
dependency."
Posted by dc at 11:47 PM | Comments (3)
October 27, 2001
trainspotting
the railways have always been
more or less cash-strapped since the 1920's, and often selling off
property was the only way to raise cash (it was not until recently
that the railways won the right to DEVELOP their own property, so they
could use the income on capital to subsidize rail operations--this was
actually written into the legislation authorizing rail privatization
in 1993 and it has since been heavily criticized since Railtrack has
shown more interest in developing its property than in maintaining the
rail network);
From: argatlam@my-deja.com
Subject: Re: OT: US Propaganda
Newsgroups: misc.transport.road
Date: 24 Oct 2001 07:43:07 -0700
I saw that in the print edition of the 'Guardian' yesterday and,
frankly, anything Mr. Monbiot says has to be taken with MANY grains of
salt. He gets most of his facts straight, but has an unsettling habit
of spinning paranoid conjectures out of them. For example, earlier
this year he observed that most of the British railways which were
decommissioned in the 1960's (when the Beeching report, 'Reshaping
British Railways', was implemented) were put beyond use by permitting
housing development to take place across the decommissioned lines,
tearing down railway bridges, etc. He surmised, on the basis of this,
that there must have been some kind of a sinister scheme to tear down
the railways and replace them with motorways.
The reality was more like this: (1) the railways have always been
more or less cash-strapped since the 1920's, and often selling off
property was the only way to raise cash (it was not until recently
that the railways won the right to DEVELOP their own property, so they
could use the income on capital to subsidize rail operations--this was
actually written into the legislation authorizing rail privatization
in 1993 and it has since been heavily criticized since Railtrack has
shown more interest in developing its property than in maintaining the
rail network); (2) in Britain it is extremely difficult to obtain
planning consent to build on green fields--railway land counts as
"brownfield" land, for which it is much easier to get permission to
develop, and as much of it passes through countryside, dismantled
railway lines are very attractive nuclei for country-town
developments; and (3) local councils have the option to control
development and to create subsidized rail service through
partnerships, so in spite of the political and economic disincentives,
many have exercised it to keep dismantled lines clear in anticipation
of future restoration of service--for example, the line between Oxford
and Cambridge via Bletchley is being restored essentially on its old
alignment, since Oxfordshire C.C. and its partners were wise enough to
keep it free.
Monbiot has positioned himself as a spokesman and intellectual
luminary for a loose coalition of environmentalists, pacifists, and
protesters of corporatization, globalization, and new roads, who have
shown (at the Newbury Bypass protest, May Day riots, Manchester
airport third runway dig-in, Twyford Down reconstruction, etc.) that
they are prepared to resort to disinformation, street theatre, and
sometimes even outright terrorism to achieve their political aims. I
don't reject their ideologies out of hand or spend my time attempting
to devise factual and rational rebuttals to them, but they are
fundamentally ideologues rather than pragmatists, and in my experience
their concern for human welfare is weak and hypocritical at best.
So, in general, I would counsel readers of Mr. Monbiot not to believe
anything he says unless they are personally satisfied the facts he
quotes are correct and that his interpretations of them are
reasonable. In my experience, the former is true but the latter most
definitely is not.
Posted by dc at 05:11 PM | Comments (4)
October 26, 2001
UnPlanned Obsolescence
Search for info, find lot's of Q&A on work arounds for problems since solved.
Posted by dc at 11:45 AM | Comments (4)
the end is near
When bands, after being gloriously successful, become cover bands
eg Oasis covering the Beatles, or Guns and Roses covering punk.
Posted by dc at 11:17 AM | Comments (4)
vicious circle of ia
credits:
Louis Rosenfeld at
http://www.louisrosenfeld.com/images/bloug/011014model.gif
Posted by dc at 10:25 AM | Comments (3)
vicious circle
loopy
[Explanatory text to be supplied by vendor]
Posted by dc at 10:18 AM | Comments (0)
October 25, 2001
TV adverts
If you watch TV, are all the adverts are for painkillers, laxatives, denture adhesives,
cholesterol medications, weedkiller and Chevrolets ? If marketers really understood
my demographic segment, they would push STOLICHNAYAĆ, Bang & Olufson,
and BMW ///M.
Posted by dc at 09:55 PM | Comments (3)
October 24, 2001
Mayor Brown, unstuck.
The -strike theatre reaches an anti-climax.
Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown, who stopped by the negotiation
headquarters Tuesday, said the climate was right for a settlement,
even though negotiators packed up and left earlier Tuesday night.
Brown offered little support for AFSCME, saying that has made
a "generous offer" and questioning "what the big hang-up is."
"People get stuck on things and I am just hoping there is a way to
unstick things so they don't stick it to the public," he said.
-dc
Posted by dc at 09:57 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
greymatter::messages::archive::categories
I need to find a way to organize and make browsable the archives by category.
Sequential by date is rarely the optimal grouping form. -dc
Posted by dc at 09:14 PM | Comments (16)
Welcome, dc.
Greymatter needs a pervasive 'You are logged in as dc2000' indicator
for those of us who use several accounts. For example, here dc2000 is the
admin account and dc is the user account.
- dc (or dc2000 ?)
Posted by dc at 09:12 PM | Comments (3)