jump,
have you taken the g-cans tour???

[img=http://img.timeinc.net/time/daily/2007/0704/gwhertsgaard_0409.jpg width=418[/img]

opps

now this is a house fit for Wilt Chamberlain, one of the more picturesque homes in Los Angeles...

I read recently that they had to cordon off the hadid pavilions in millenium park because people were touching them.

not true, toasteroven. Although the UN studio pavilion was cordoned off last time I was there -- not sure why.

my bad - it was the UN studio pavilion that they had to close because people were climbing on it.

they're only thinking about putting a railing around the hadid pavilion.

one of my favorite videos of all time and guess who's in it? Crosby Stills Nash and Thats right...

mantaray, sorry for the late response but I did manage to return the email.

Hi all. Long day of critiques, but the conversation after seem particularly well longer. I was able to catch up with some friends over a scotch or two and plan out the upcoming long weekend. Should be fun despite having to read nearly 80 essays and prepare 3 lesson plans. I need a TA

techno, if you can pay pretty much anything at all, I'll TA long-distance. :) Have references, am awesome TA.

Nam, am so sorry about your sister's accident. I had to read back a little to get the story, but I'm glad that I did. Also glad to hear she is recovering.

I just got my bike in the mail (it was at my mom's house with most of my things while I got on my feet in LA), and it got shipped in this skinny box that entailed taking most, ok possibly all, of the parts off to fit it in and get a reasonable shipping rate. I managed to put it back together by myself, and am now slighly alarmed at how little holds one of those things together! Of course, I had to build it twice, because at the end of the first try there was one little piece left over, and I couldn't figure out where it went. Dur.

in the NYT about one of the sweetest cars ever made: the '68 jaguar E-type.

i passed one of these in downtown about a year ago and nearly killed a pedestrian. ahhh.

thats awesome nam.

nice song vado. i love neil's guitar-ing. him and frank zappa are my to favorite guitarists who no one remembers can play guitar...


treekiller, no i haven't gone, but now you show it i am thinking to go with my students for a course on "the city of tokyo". we are looking at edo right now and i been gushing over how they had amazing infrastructure. could be cool to show them the modern equivalent of super engineering feets. thanks! this city is so accessible i been wondering where i could take them that they couldn't/wouldn't think to go on their own...

i heard an interview on fresh air with neil awhile back. he was asked what he did differently than other guitarists. "well, i play out of tune, a lot." was his answer.

Good morning all,

Vado, Hilarious........ Was he referring to his voice as an instrument?

strangely - considering my ambivalence about neil young - i like CSN+Y a lot better than CSN.

thanks TK -- I've now forwarded that article to most of my family and friends. We are a clan of mechanics and car-lovers. That E-type happens to be my mom's fave.

We only owe $1,100 in taxes, yippee!!!

That's a serious load off. I was sure I'd owe over five grand again like last year. Whew.

hi guys

busy day for me, work in one office
and then more work in another, its
a shame i only get pay from one office
though

how bout you all?

it's oct 15 already? i need to put some serious thought into halloween costume

to avoid the barrage of nasty comments id be sure to recieve if i posted this on another thread... i thought id share this with you all...

A chart showing a state by state breakdown of gun related death rates

I intend to use this information a lot in the future, or at least the next time i get in a disagreement with an anti gun control person. Though i completely understand there are many many extenuating circumstances... i do find it more than interesting that this seems to be very red state heavy at the top of the list, and very blue state heavy at the bottom. Speaking in generalities... if guns dont kill people, why is it that the states with ideological aversions to gun control have the highest death rates?

just thought id share...

here is the article from fivethirtyeight.com that got me thinking about this

interesting chart.

another way too look at it: all those ‘liberal bastions’ of ‘murder,sex and godlessness’ like chicago, san francisco, nyc, boston, seattle – are all squarely in the lower half of that chart.

it gets even more interesting when you compare that chart w/ highest poverty rates by state…

1. mississipi
2. washington d.c.
3. louisiana
4. new mexico
5. arkansas
6. west virginia
7. kentucky
8. oklahoma
9. texas
10. alabama


rounding out the bottom of the poverty graph:
connecticut, delaware, hawaii, new hampshire, new jersey, utah, vermont, washington, minnesota, iowa…

Very interesting, lletdownl, but I'm afraid that to be truly relevant you will need to make an analysis that crosses the data in that graph with data from hunting accident deaths. At the moment your argument will be undermined quickly by the observation that many of the "red state" gun-accident deaths could be related to a possible higher use of firearms for hunting in those states. I know this is what my Arizona relatives would instantly say. It would be worth it to your argument to control for hunting accidents and then look at the data. I have a feeling you'll still have some useful data, and it will be all the more compelling for the control.

Does anyone remember the online rant after Bush was re-elected that basically started "No, fuck you" and then ranted on and on about how the so-called moral majority, no taxes red states were all the Southern states that had the highest divorce rates and took the most Federal tax dollars? It was hilarious. The rant basically ended with why the hell didn't Lincoln just let you secede when you wanted to? It was funny.

puddles, I wanted to ask what your Halloween costume was going to be when I read this brilliant idea: Find someone named Will. Write WAY on your own t-shirt and stand near him all night.

Get it?

Another good costume idea: glue a chip on your shoulder. These came from jezebel and there was a whole great list of them.

LB, i don't get it. And i feel dumb...:o

so holz, what we're saying here is that AZ and NM really have no excuse and should stop acting like they're part of the wild west...?

hmmm. I was just trying to draw the correlation between poverty and crime.

maybe AZ can be less maverick-y...

there is no correlation behind poverty in crime. rich people commit plenty of crimes...they just tend not to end up in jail. personally, i'd like to see alot more guns & a lot more deaths. this planet could easily stand to lose one or two billion people. maybe time to use some of those nuclear weapons we've been hearing about since forever but not actually seen.

those costumes are too intellectual. i'm thinking more traditional, like a spooky vampire or evil witch...

the puddles parody of conservative ideology gets funnier on a daily basis.

nam: Where there's a will, there's a way.

And I know puddles knows someone named Will, so he could do it. Of course he'd have to leave paradise to come to the Midwest then, which might cause him to snap and off a billion or two people, but one must take risks for humor. ;-)

manta, yeah hunting accidents would probably be a helpful stat... but i have to imagine they are pretty miniscule compared to shooting deaths from other situations...

the other interesting piece to this is that if you look at gun ownership rates... you'll see that the same generalization holds true...the states with the most guns, have the most gun related deaths...

Gun Ownership by State

obviously this is no major revelation to anyone with common sense, but it does show just how amazingly effective gun rights advocates have become at distracting us from fact

Did anyone else notice that DC has supposedly the lowest gun ownership but the highest gun related deaths?

Interesting.

yeah DC is just a mess i guess... they have that handgun ban which i believe was just overturned... and yet they still have insane gun death rates... its outliers like that which show us that the issue is obviously more complex than who has guns and who doesnt... but even after that... there does definitely seem to be a correlation between how much you love the 2nd amendment and how many people get shot in your state...

ha, tuna, that IS interesting.

I agree, lletdownl, that hunting accidents wouldn't account for the difference -- but I can tell that immediately that's what everyone in Louisiana is going to say to me. If I criticize hunting, they'll say it's safe; if I criticize the amount of gun deaths, they'll say it's all those drunk coonasses out there hunting. Oh well, perhaps you can't win...

I'm not at all surprised at these statistics, but they are indeed interesting. Arizona likes to think of itself as the wild west, right rationalist and lb?

well, we are a maverick-y bunch that's for sure. I'd actually say that most Arizonans don't like to think of themselves as being part of the wild west, want to think it's grown into a modern place and all that. However, I definitely know a lot more Arizonans who own guns than I do Californians or Washingtonians, despite the fact that I know more Washingtonians who hunt. It's just more accepted there, and yes you still see the occasional rifle in the cab of the pickup truck. We don't like to think of it that way, but there's definitely some leftover wild-west-iness going on.

Personally, I've never heard a gunshot in DC.

Please keep in mind that there isn't any wilderness in which to hunt in DC. Aside from Rock Creek Park (which I'm pretty sure does not allow hunting), DC is pretty urban.

nothing else matters.

RIP Captain, RIP.

just why, you can go hunting in urban conditions...

Wow I'm gone for more than two weeks, and only Melt misses me? Thanks Melt, I knew you were a friend. That said, you guys did only leave
me five pages to catch up on, so I'll let you slide this once.

Honstly, I've just been busy. Or my kid has been a pain. He's going throughthis screaming tantrum phase. It sucks. I may buy some earplugs.

Also, I've been designing and building my mother a new office. It's all ikea furniture, but I picked it out with her. Think hgtv episode, that's been my life. My guestroom is coming together slowly as well. And I've been working on my portfolio and that teaching certificcation.

Comments I can remember, I like Neil young. I like teachers, I like the wild west and I like guns. Well not like 'yeehaw bang bang bang' but shot guns.

Another day of shopping tomorrow. I'm kinda tired really. Oh and Abe has music class tomorrow. I'll tell you all about later.

I missed you, SH. I guess I shoulda written about it. But, know that your absence was felt!

What kind of music class? My best friend teaches infant music classes and is going to be opening a studio of her own soon. I've gone with her a couple times... it's pretty cool, except that a lot of the moms there were really nannies.

Aww, that's better.

The music class is part of a meetup group. I joined an online group for local moms with babies born in 08 and 09. Abram needs to socialize, and the mothers day out program was full, and husband is too concerned about swine flu to place him in sunday school. So I found another ecconomical option. This class is taught by another group member who happens to have a degree in child music pedegodgy or something like that. I like her. We sing songs and play with parachutes. I feel a bitlikethose moms I've seen on tv that are too wrapped up in the kid's life to have one of their own, but I know it's good for him and me. He's shy still, but he's the best in the class musically. He's also the oldest by a few months and there are only 2 others. I'm glad were doing it.

Sarah, regarding your comment about being a mom without a life outside her kids, I very much encourage you to go read this post on Sweet Juniper about how finite our time with our kids is.

I've been strapped to my computer for practically the last four weeks and feel it pretty strongly that I've not had any quality time with Angus. He's getting so independent already (at age 6); I see those teen years when he won't have anything to do with me looming already.

You'll have so much more time to pursue your own things later, really. And the whole parenting thing gets so much easier, promise. Don't despair. Enjoy this time with Abram now (and make sure your husband takes over frequently so you get a little alone time, too).

no, i know a william...so obviously there's just no way.

for whatever it's worth, every household in switzerland has a gun. gun rights & murder/death don't necessarily go hand-in-hand. america has got its share of problems but guns are not one of them

and i hardly parody conservative ideology...i just speak my mind. admittedly, as i've gotten older, my contempt for people has grown but it applies to nearly everyone equally (however you want to label them, conservative/iberal, yound/old, foreign/native, etc). i don't mind seeing people die except, of course, my family. and by my family, i am not including any bastards (not that i'm admitting to any but if i had any then i probably wouldn't mind seeing them die too.)

i need a drink...

Happy thursday everyone!


Who wants a piece of steampunk wedding cake?






I like it when the page numbers make a nice pretty square at the bottom.
mmmm. polytopes..

false. foreign households don't get guns.

swiss males get automatic rifles til they're something like 30. if they decide to keep them, the rifles are drawn back to semi automatic. many decide not to keep them. le bullets are also administered and checked to verify it's not being used for 'extracurriculars'

also, switzerland enjoys one of the highest GDPs, lowest unemployment rates and some of the lowest poverty rates.

they also provide drugs to addicts, education, health care, etc etc.

they also pump out better architects on average as well.

so if you want the u.s. to be like le suisse...

Sarah I missed you too.

Sounds like you have been having fun. Or at least I enjoy a) spending other peoples money b) doing home renovations/decorating...

I am late to work and Archinect today because i was waiting for a plumber to show up at my house so he could install a shower riser and associated hardware in my clawfoot tub, which has for as long as i have lived there only had a antique hardware that had a 3 foot hose. Which meant no standing-luxurious showers. Something i was willing to overlook until now because of the awesomeness of a full soak in the tub.

nam - that's funny - we also recently had a shower head installed in our place because the tub only had one of those hand-held things mounted about 2 feet above the tub (and it wouldn't stay in the holder if you turned it on). "showers" were very interesting for a while.

glad to hear your sister's doing better, btw...

toast,

Yes me and family are as well, thanks..

Also, yes showers were very interesting for a while.

LB, that was a sweet article. Abram is sweet like that sometimes, it's the tyrant phases I don't like. Or how if I'm not activly playing with him, he deliberatly gets into things he's not supposed to. Those times I wish he would just play quietly and let me watch. I wish iwere more like Jump. Crazy and cooky enough to have fun all the time, and not care that I'm listening to some mousy voice singing "the itsy bitsy spider" for the millionth time. No, I don't mean Abe. He can sing all he wants, that makes me laugh. I don't mind doing things with him. I made him some building blocks a few weeks ago and he loves them. Maybe I'm looking for higher quality activities? I don't know. Maybe I'm looking for excuses.

welcome back SH, I was wondering where you were.

Got woken up at 5:30 by my son humming to himself. Much nicer way to wake up then crying (which had been every day until now). Hope this starts a new phase in his development.

I apologize ahead of time for the random tangent, but is getting an architectural contract with the government (local, state, or federal) as big of a Catch-22 as it appears to be?