From the previous page...thank you for the warm reception, TCers...I'll try to pop in more often.
And Phillip, thanks for the heads up on the Penn event. If I'm back in time tonight I'll try to make that. Alan Greenberger worked at Mitchell/Giurgola back in the day, then morphed it into MGA Partners when Giurgola went to Australia. He's now closely involved in Philadelphia's city planning. The few times I've seen him talk I've liked what he had to say, and he speaks without dense jargon and pretense.
Alan was a great boss and good mentor when I was at MGA. He really has Philly's best interest at heart. Philip, it's a great line up, so congrats! wish I could be there.
Few years back I worked on a large project that had Mitchell/Giurgola in the mix. Felt bad for them. They were clearly not used to that type of client. The project still sits half completed in Atlantic City.
Unrelated topic: after cutting funding to NPR the congress just cut almost all funding to poison control centers.
Any bets what's next? They can't cut mental health funding, for there's nothing to cut. It has to be something diabolical though.
Rusty I saw that! I'm curious if it will have implications for other compounded hormones. I think that might be the only way I will survive menopause, when that happens. I don't want it to be astronomically expensive.
I still blame Eisenhower for all this religious shit. Prior to communist witch hunts of the 50's God's name was nowhere to be found in America's politics.
rusty I stopped short of calling him a crappy parent, though it's thickly implied. I couldn't hold back. And if one college student decides *not* to have intercourse after their next good review because of it, I'm happy.
robert heinlein was always on about the imminent theocracy emerging in the united states. he wrote several books about it in the 1940's and later. I've been re-reading his books lately and it seems like the issues we deal with today are literally the same ones at least some folk were worrying about some 60 years ago. I'm not sure if that is comforting or not. one o f my favorites from him is a story that details the overthrow of the theocratic dictatorship. it's all 2nd amendment remedy type stuff except he is a liberal not freaky conservative ;-)
OK, I wish archinecters would slow down with the insults in that million $ thread. It's just not right.
That seems to happen a lot 'round these parts.
It's one thing to berate someone, be a troll (indirectly), harp on omissions/errors/technicalities, intentionally or unintentionally derail threads... but the name calling-- and not even good name calling at that-- is pretty low.
Especially when the name calling has no proceeding discussion after it-- e.g., "You're an idiot. Here's why..." versus "You're a penis."
And some people, more than others, seem premediatively malicious about it.
but squarehead, you ARE a penis. No shame in pointing that out. It does bug me if the whole site gangs up on a person that's clearly manic depressive. Be glad to have your mental health. It's underrated.
Donna, it's a hell of a disease. In this case someone combines his concern for taking care of a family that left him with a need to make money fast. Shake well with a bag of other confused thoughts and you have a complete disaster. I know a few people like that. They can be extremely creative, extremely productive workers, but there is always a horrible crash after riding the high.
jump, theocratic dictatorship can not happen at this poing because real religion hardly exists. What we are observing is pseudo voodoo belief in Jesus as advancer of personal agendas.
Phillip, I wish you had shamelessly plugged the event before. (that doesn't sound quite right) I probably would've attended.
Don't mean to revive the Barnes discussion, but I got to see Art of the Steal. Definitely not as biased as the trailer suggested. But also makes me think what passes as documentaries. Also makes me wonder what the true value of something is when you can never sell it. I'll have to set up a time to visit soon, looks like they're already closing down parts of the galleries in preparation for the move.
By the way, is it possible to delete an archinect account?
The thing is, it doesn't take a ton of money to be a good parent, it takes a ton of time and effort. And patience. Money's easy by comparison.
Unicorn, you missed the old days when the best serious insult was "You pee like a girl" and the best non-serious insult was "Look, do you want to piss in my mouth?".
Or maybe I have those mixed up. I'm not smart, but I finally, after god knows how many years here, understand the concept of "institutional memory".
Phillip, joining the others in congrats on a very fun-sounding and no doubt valuable symposium.
jump, I do sometimes take very slight comfort in the fact that these similar "culture wars" (abortion, gay rights, role of church) were taking place in the 80s under Reagan and we managed to eventually emerge and reverse some of them. Two steps forward one back, it always seems. The internet can seem to spawn the panic more easily, is the main difference, perhaps.
OK one more thing then on to my nightly drafting work: I have, fingers crossed, the possibility of being architect if record for a very, very, VERY cool project coming up soon!
i can't find any comfort in the current state of 'culture war' politics. it's so depressing, the only thing i can think to do is turn off news so it stops bugging me. it's not like regular people have any other way of defending our country against our elected looters. i'm relatively comfortable, so maybe i'll just go oblivious until the pretense that we're still a democracy gets dropped.
if we just hand the reins to the corporations now, they can stop anonymously funding campaigns, playing americans against each other using religion/discrimination/fear, and paying taxes (oh, no, scratch that one; already taken care of) and they can focus on the real business of business: tearing shit up, burning it, extracting the value, and dumping it. jobs, jobs, jobs!
I get lost with all the activities of architects week, contract admin (on the weekends no less) and some development drawings to get out that Thread Central hits the turbo boost (again). I pretty much had to skim passed the last page and the references to the Barnes Museum. It's funny how emotive it has become, especially amongst Philly locals - it leaves me both confused, curious and most humbled that the city's citizen's feel so strongly towards the arts.
thanks archi. all good but still scary out here. start of my uni has been set back a few weeks which is kind of a good thing in some ways, but the reason for setting back is not so good. it is difficult to teach when the power is off and public transportation is on long-term low volume. ie, no one can get to the campus and when they do get here the lights and heat are off. As a smart archinecter mentioned once in passing this could be a test case for the coming age of energy scarcity.
i'm with steven on corporate takeover of the usa. the world even. scary stuff.
thanks to donna for the bit of possibly good news to make all the above less shitty ! hurray.
I heard yesterday how GM is going to be shutting down some of its assembly lines because of lack of parts from Japan due to everything which is going on. My first thought, "Who is paying the head of this company, if he doesn't have a backup plan?" Like we didn't know there is a high risk of natural disasters if your doing business in Japan. Seems like these guys are completely out to lunch. Wouldn't you think they would have something in place where with a little effort they could be up and running in a short matter of time at a back up location.....ya the back up location could be Detroit....where we have tons of unemployed auto workers and empty assembly line buildings.
snook - they moved everything out of Detroit/Flint in the 70s and 80s. all those autoworkers who were laid off back then have moved on to other things and/or better places, and the buildings are in pretty bad shape (or gone) since they've been vacant for 30+ years...
Well, then it seems they could hire some out of work architects to fix the buildings, and then other out of work folks to do the construction, and then others to work the assembly line.
toast I'm thinking of the bigger picture. Industry has been idle in this country for the past ten years. We have seen this shift in an extreme here in New England. Industry first went South then it went to China. Interesting thing is all of the machines which were producing American product were broken down and loaded into containers, and shipped to China.
I would think some forward thinking guys in say the automobile industry would be sitting around a room and saying to one another.
We knew it was a matter of time before a big natural disaster would hit Japan and well we need a backup plan so we can keep in production. Anyhow if they haven't thought about it then they should be thinking about it. Let us say if California has the super shaker, will this fricking country shut down, just because we have so much invested in high tec California? Those folk should be also thinking about back up plans, just so we aren't stopping the rest of the country from moving forward.
you want to make a backup plan for a global industry? that makes sense and probably there are some plans to that effect but my guess is it is probably cheaper to slow down and fix the plants here in japan than to build the redundancy for everything.
japan no longer produces as much as it used to either. much is done in china now, except for more difficult technical work.
there are auto plants in usa. even plants built by japanese companies employing Americans in the usa. just not in detroit. weird eh?
i expect in a few weeks it will be normal again, as long as we avoid another earthquake. kind of scared on that point to be frank. another 9.0 but this time off the coast of tokyo would be an enormous challenge for japan.
I don't know if I'm really talking about building another plant, it is more how to overcome the short term problems related with natural disasters. I would think GM, Ford, Toyota would have within their large industrial base a way to know where every part of a car is coming from and instood of producing it all in one place might look at producing it in two places. Where you have a single work shift which could be amped up to three work shifts if needed, being you had the work force. Instood of them just tossing their hands up in the air and saying, well we have some missing parts which should be coming from Japan in this instance so we have to shut down our assembly lines. Something tells me Mr. Ford would have been kicking butt and taking names.
Their manufacturing should be stream lined enough to be able to adapt to producing even at smaller scale by switching out machines or components of machines to produce the part that they need to keep things moving along the assembly line.
It is not just Japan it is the Ring of Fire...what would happen if we had the big shaker hit the West Coast of the US (from California to Alaska) Would North America be able to survive?
never mind the big earthquake, you got yosemite. last time that thing went off animals were dieing on other side of north america! mexico would be turning you all away at the border.
@ snook, i think production is all just-in-time now. probably the people in charge decided that instead of spending a few million to start a factory they didn't really need, just in case, they would instead absorb the costs that come from a break in the chain.
or maybe were just caught by a black swan...hard to say. somehow i don't see any big changes coming anytime soon either way.
in good news, my wife's co-worker stood in line for awhile and was able to grab a few cartons of milk for us. hurray! i can eat cereal for breakfast again. there is no milk, gasoline, natto, eggs, nor rice in my area. but we can get other shit. i think the world is going to change here pretty powerfully because a lot of this is not going away. hopefully japan will use this as an opportunity.
Sat through 3 brilliant lectures today on sustainability and the built environment by three brilliant architects. The first by Llewelyn Van Wyk former head of the Commonwealth Association of Architects who had everyone on the edge of their seat part due to his casual delivery style, moreso because of the message. He's taken the less favourable, or perhaps less marketable view that much of global warming is part of the planet's lifecycle but our effects are accelerating what is cycle that occurs over tens of thousands of years.
The second lecture was hostile and angry by a local architect that pointed fingers at the current and previous administration. His bitterness really offset the previous lecture, sadly not in the direction. The last lecture was conducted by Doug Pollard a man whose resume had me feeling unaccomplished if not totally depressed. He spoke about LEED, Passivhaus and the Living Building Institute with aspirations of tropical application. This last one really moved me - you've heard my arguments that much of the previous two has to be thrown out the closer and closer you get to the equator.
Anyway it's a really good architect's week. And it was good seeing the President of the association putting himself out in the public's eye.
archi, sounds like a stimulating couple of presentations. Although they were full up for this round and i wasn't selected to present i am looking forward to Gainesville's 4th Pecha Kucha tonight. I am still going but as audience.
Also, jump any worries/news about the Tokyo tap water? Was the high level of readiation readings i read about yesterday an anomoly?
@donna, shortages continue, though it seems the situation is improving.
its nothing compared to what we are hearing about up north. those folks are amazing and dealing with real harshness.
hi nam, water has iodine 131 isotope in it at levels almost at the legal limit (just under) for adults but above the level considered safe for children. it seems that the fact of the radiation in the water menas there was much more radiation released into the atmosphere than was reported.
today the news is that the numbers have fallen considerably, but not sure if we can believe tepco.
not as existentially threatening a disaster as the mega-quake/tsunami/nuclear meltdown triple play, but there are some historic floods getting underway up in the mid-west...
My cubicle mate and colleague, Pat Nunnally, who is the Coordinator of the River Life Partnership at UMN, just sent out this message:
Predictions across the Upper Midwest are calling for perhaps-record floods in all of our rivers. What impacts are the floods having, and what might be the long term effects of the rising waters? What do government agencies and river organizations think? What are the experiences of local citizens as well as policy makers?
The University of Minnesota’s River Life Partnership has put together a multi-platform digital flood forum, where we are gathering information, diverse perspectives, and considerations from across the state and region.
* Follow River Life on Facebook and Twitter, and share your thoughts, photographs, and links to more information.
* Read the River Talk blog http://blog.lib.umn.edu/ione/rivertalk for more analytical, thought-provoking commentaries.
* Follow the links to sites maintained by government agencies, reliable news organizations, and academic/educational institutions as they have all initiated their own flood coverage.
* Check the River Atlas at www.environment.umn.edu/atlas to see historic photographs, documents, and other interesting stuff.
We intend for these platforms to be as interactive as possible, so email us at [email protected] to make suggestions, add comments, and recommend additional sources and leads.
If you would, please do forward this message to others who would be interested as well. And of course, join the discussions through the River Life Facebook and Twitter connections.
there are tonnes of chocolate bars and potatoe chips and somehow production of cup-a-noodle is keeping up with the demand. but milk eggs bread rice, and now water, simply cannot be found. it all gets sold out in 30 minutes or less. from what i understand it isn't actually a shortage as much as the effect of hoarding...
masks are common here. people wear them when they are sick so they won't spread germs. 33 million people in tight quarters requires some attention to such things i suppose, but i still find it strange. anyway, yeah i guess they would filter some of the radioactive particulates from the air. not sure if that is why people are wearing them though. probably just a small boost from normal really.
Nam, or anyone else for that matter - the next Pecha Kucha Night Kingston is on the 11th June if you are interested. Sadly I'm still yet to stitch the audio & slides for some of the presentatons
Design is hard! Or rather, design is pretty easy, but execution is a bitch. I'm watching my little bus shelter just turn to a mess. hopefully can reign it back in and clean it up before all is done. <sigh> I'm afraid excellent execution is what separates the boys from the men in this profession, and I'm still a boy.
I am sure it will all work out in your excellent hands.
Archi, you still organizing the show? Two of my favs from the one here last night featured a 20 year cave diver explorer and an architec building Gainesville's 1st shipping container house.
The cave diver is working on being able to swim/map the spring systems/aquifer from north-central fl all the way to the gulf of mexico. he said sometimes the expeditions take 25 hours.
I wondered how do they stay up that long? obviously can't take a break half way through since you are underwater. is the adrenaline of the experience enough to keep you going?
Oh, lordy, nam the idea of swimming through a cave is almost my worst nightmare - enormous sinkhole swallowing me up being the worst. Being swallowed by a giant sinkhole would probably result in swimming in a cave, so there's obvs a common theme here.
i thought you didn't want to hear about people's vacations, only their existential well-being?!
no, i haven't left yet. and it's a conference, so only kind of a vacation.
and my existential well-being is still being buffeted around by stupid politicians, big shiny floating spheres, disorganized project managers, and weather-teases.
1(tie) stupid politicians - when you come from the state represented by mitch and rand, well...
1 (tie) disorganized project managers - why do i have to make every decision? don't you guys know what i'm going to say by now? can't you keep things moving on your own?
3 weather-teases - it's freaking cold here again, after reaching 80 earlier in the week. and where i'm traveling, it's going to be 85....
and thunderstorms.
Thread Central
From the previous page...thank you for the warm reception, TCers...I'll try to pop in more often.
And Phillip, thanks for the heads up on the Penn event. If I'm back in time tonight I'll try to make that. Alan Greenberger worked at Mitchell/Giurgola back in the day, then morphed it into MGA Partners when Giurgola went to Australia. He's now closely involved in Philadelphia's city planning. The few times I've seen him talk I've liked what he had to say, and he speaks without dense jargon and pretense.
Alan was a great boss and good mentor when I was at MGA. He really has Philly's best interest at heart. Philip, it's a great line up, so congrats! wish I could be there.
Few years back I worked on a large project that had Mitchell/Giurgola in the mix. Felt bad for them. They were clearly not used to that type of client. The project still sits half completed in Atlantic City.
Unrelated topic: after cutting funding to NPR the congress just cut almost all funding to poison control centers.
Any bets what's next? They can't cut mental health funding, for there's nothing to cut. It has to be something diabolical though.
And in the meantime FDA and private pharma conspire to fuck over... (spins wheel) ... pregnant women at risk of premature birth!
Good job everyone.
Rusty I saw that! I'm curious if it will have implications for other compounded hormones. I think that might be the only way I will survive menopause, when that happens. I don't want it to be astronomically expensive.
OK, I wish archinecters would slow down with the insults in that million $ thread. It's just not right.
rusty maybe this?
I still blame Eisenhower for all this religious shit. Prior to communist witch hunts of the 50's God's name was nowhere to be found in America's politics.
from henderson's link, other GOP pending highlights:
-After drastically reducing IRS funding, debated putting the IRS in charge of investigating abortions — a measure that has 221 co-sponsors
-Killed the U.S. Capitol’s composting program
-supporters said (of God plaques) it acknowledges what they consider God’s role in the success of the United States.
Looks like (as of immediately) we are recession/abortion/communist free ?
Yay?
rusty I stopped short of calling him a crappy parent, though it's thickly implied. I couldn't hold back. And if one college student decides *not* to have intercourse after their next good review because of it, I'm happy.
thats hilarious.
robert heinlein was always on about the imminent theocracy emerging in the united states. he wrote several books about it in the 1940's and later. I've been re-reading his books lately and it seems like the issues we deal with today are literally the same ones at least some folk were worrying about some 60 years ago. I'm not sure if that is comforting or not. one o f my favorites from him is a story that details the overthrow of the theocratic dictatorship. it's all 2nd amendment remedy type stuff except he is a liberal not freaky conservative ;-)
@ philip, very cool! well done.
That seems to happen a lot 'round these parts.
It's one thing to berate someone, be a troll (indirectly), harp on omissions/errors/technicalities, intentionally or unintentionally derail threads... but the name calling-- and not even good name calling at that-- is pretty low.
Especially when the name calling has no proceeding discussion after it-- e.g., "You're an idiot. Here's why..." versus "You're a penis."
And some people, more than others, seem premediatively malicious about it.
but squarehead, you ARE a penis. No shame in pointing that out. It does bug me if the whole site gangs up on a person that's clearly manic depressive. Be glad to have your mental health. It's underrated.
Donna, it's a hell of a disease. In this case someone combines his concern for taking care of a family that left him with a need to make money fast. Shake well with a bag of other confused thoughts and you have a complete disaster. I know a few people like that. They can be extremely creative, extremely productive workers, but there is always a horrible crash after riding the high.
jump, theocratic dictatorship can not happen at this poing because real religion hardly exists. What we are observing is pseudo voodoo belief in Jesus as advancer of personal agendas.
I'm more concerned of incoming corporate fascism.
Phillip, I wish you had shamelessly plugged the event before. (that doesn't sound quite right) I probably would've attended.
Don't mean to revive the Barnes discussion, but I got to see Art of the Steal. Definitely not as biased as the trailer suggested. But also makes me think what passes as documentaries. Also makes me wonder what the true value of something is when you can never sell it. I'll have to set up a time to visit soon, looks like they're already closing down parts of the galleries in preparation for the move.
By the way, is it possible to delete an archinect account?
The thing is, it doesn't take a ton of money to be a good parent, it takes a ton of time and effort. And patience. Money's easy by comparison.
Unicorn, you missed the old days when the best serious insult was "You pee like a girl" and the best non-serious insult was "Look, do you want to piss in my mouth?".
Or maybe I have those mixed up. I'm not smart, but I finally, after god knows how many years here, understand the concept of "institutional memory".
Phillip, joining the others in congrats on a very fun-sounding and no doubt valuable symposium.
jump, I do sometimes take very slight comfort in the fact that these similar "culture wars" (abortion, gay rights, role of church) were taking place in the 80s under Reagan and we managed to eventually emerge and reverse some of them. Two steps forward one back, it always seems. The internet can seem to spawn the panic more easily, is the main difference, perhaps.
OK one more thing then on to my nightly drafting work: I have, fingers crossed, the possibility of being architect if record for a very, very, VERY cool project coming up soon!
Congrats Donna!
Is the project waiting on a million dollar investment? I can do a spec for a rooftop pool sundial when you need one.
"architect if record"
I know that's a typo and I'm not being a grammar nazi...
... but I think I love that typo!
i can't find any comfort in the current state of 'culture war' politics. it's so depressing, the only thing i can think to do is turn off news so it stops bugging me. it's not like regular people have any other way of defending our country against our elected looters. i'm relatively comfortable, so maybe i'll just go oblivious until the pretense that we're still a democracy gets dropped.
if we just hand the reins to the corporations now, they can stop anonymously funding campaigns, playing americans against each other using religion/discrimination/fear, and paying taxes (oh, no, scratch that one; already taken care of) and they can focus on the real business of business: tearing shit up, burning it, extracting the value, and dumping it. jobs, jobs, jobs!
Sarah,
The company that "won" the rights to distribute the medication for pregnant women justified it as follows:
they indicated that the cost of taking care of a premature birth is about $51,000. Their treatment would only cost a woman $25,000.*
So there!
*from wiki . a company that in 2008 was convicted of felony charges for the "making, marketing, and distribution of adulterated and unapproved drugs"
I get lost with all the activities of architects week, contract admin (on the weekends no less) and some development drawings to get out that Thread Central hits the turbo boost (again). I pretty much had to skim passed the last page and the references to the Barnes Museum. It's funny how emotive it has become, especially amongst Philly locals - it leaves me both confused, curious and most humbled that the city's citizen's feel so strongly towards the arts.
I'm heading to bed. I hope you are all well especially jump - my thoughts and prayers are with you and your family. Keep save.
thanks archi. all good but still scary out here. start of my uni has been set back a few weeks which is kind of a good thing in some ways, but the reason for setting back is not so good. it is difficult to teach when the power is off and public transportation is on long-term low volume. ie, no one can get to the campus and when they do get here the lights and heat are off. As a smart archinecter mentioned once in passing this could be a test case for the coming age of energy scarcity.
i'm with steven on corporate takeover of the usa. the world even. scary stuff.
thanks to donna for the bit of possibly good news to make all the above less shitty ! hurray.
I heard yesterday how GM is going to be shutting down some of its assembly lines because of lack of parts from Japan due to everything which is going on. My first thought, "Who is paying the head of this company, if he doesn't have a backup plan?" Like we didn't know there is a high risk of natural disasters if your doing business in Japan. Seems like these guys are completely out to lunch. Wouldn't you think they would have something in place where with a little effort they could be up and running in a short matter of time at a back up location.....ya the back up location could be Detroit....where we have tons of unemployed auto workers and empty assembly line buildings.
snook - they moved everything out of Detroit/Flint in the 70s and 80s. all those autoworkers who were laid off back then have moved on to other things and/or better places, and the buildings are in pretty bad shape (or gone) since they've been vacant for 30+ years...
Well, then it seems they could hire some out of work architects to fix the buildings, and then other out of work folks to do the construction, and then others to work the assembly line.
With Gov't money of course!
toast I'm thinking of the bigger picture. Industry has been idle in this country for the past ten years. We have seen this shift in an extreme here in New England. Industry first went South then it went to China. Interesting thing is all of the machines which were producing American product were broken down and loaded into containers, and shipped to China.
I would think some forward thinking guys in say the automobile industry would be sitting around a room and saying to one another.
We knew it was a matter of time before a big natural disaster would hit Japan and well we need a backup plan so we can keep in production. Anyhow if they haven't thought about it then they should be thinking about it. Let us say if California has the super shaker, will this fricking country shut down, just because we have so much invested in high tec California? Those folk should be also thinking about back up plans, just so we aren't stopping the rest of the country from moving forward.
you want to make a backup plan for a global industry? that makes sense and probably there are some plans to that effect but my guess is it is probably cheaper to slow down and fix the plants here in japan than to build the redundancy for everything.
japan no longer produces as much as it used to either. much is done in china now, except for more difficult technical work.
there are auto plants in usa. even plants built by japanese companies employing Americans in the usa. just not in detroit. weird eh?
i expect in a few weeks it will be normal again, as long as we avoid another earthquake. kind of scared on that point to be frank. another 9.0 but this time off the coast of tokyo would be an enormous challenge for japan.
Jump,
I don't know if I'm really talking about building another plant, it is more how to overcome the short term problems related with natural disasters. I would think GM, Ford, Toyota would have within their large industrial base a way to know where every part of a car is coming from and instood of producing it all in one place might look at producing it in two places. Where you have a single work shift which could be amped up to three work shifts if needed, being you had the work force. Instood of them just tossing their hands up in the air and saying, well we have some missing parts which should be coming from Japan in this instance so we have to shut down our assembly lines. Something tells me Mr. Ford would have been kicking butt and taking names.
Their manufacturing should be stream lined enough to be able to adapt to producing even at smaller scale by switching out machines or components of machines to produce the part that they need to keep things moving along the assembly line.
It is not just Japan it is the Ring of Fire...what would happen if we had the big shaker hit the West Coast of the US (from California to Alaska) Would North America be able to survive?
Probably not. Barack Obama doesn't care about pasty white people.
never mind the big earthquake, you got yosemite. last time that thing went off animals were dieing on other side of north america! mexico would be turning you all away at the border.
@ snook, i think production is all just-in-time now. probably the people in charge decided that instead of spending a few million to start a factory they didn't really need, just in case, they would instead absorb the costs that come from a break in the chain.
or maybe were just caught by a black swan...hard to say. somehow i don't see any big changes coming anytime soon either way.
in good news, my wife's co-worker stood in line for awhile and was able to grab a few cartons of milk for us. hurray! i can eat cereal for breakfast again. there is no milk, gasoline, natto, eggs, nor rice in my area. but we can get other shit. i think the world is going to change here pretty powerfully because a lot of this is not going away. hopefully japan will use this as an opportunity.
Sat through 3 brilliant lectures today on sustainability and the built environment by three brilliant architects. The first by Llewelyn Van Wyk former head of the Commonwealth Association of Architects who had everyone on the edge of their seat part due to his casual delivery style, moreso because of the message. He's taken the less favourable, or perhaps less marketable view that much of global warming is part of the planet's lifecycle but our effects are accelerating what is cycle that occurs over tens of thousands of years.
The second lecture was hostile and angry by a local architect that pointed fingers at the current and previous administration. His bitterness really offset the previous lecture, sadly not in the direction. The last lecture was conducted by Doug Pollard a man whose resume had me feeling unaccomplished if not totally depressed. He spoke about LEED, Passivhaus and the Living Building Institute with aspirations of tropical application. This last one really moved me - you've heard my arguments that much of the previous two has to be thrown out the closer and closer you get to the equator.
Anyway it's a really good architect's week. And it was good seeing the President of the association putting himself out in the public's eye.
okay... now back to these drawings.
there are still some around the metro Detroit area, but only a small fraction of what it used to be. (GM has plants all over the place).
GM only has two facilities in the city proper... and one of those I think is in Hamtramck, not actually Detroit...
and Detroit lost 275,000 people in the past decade??? I know was one of them, but holy crap.
morning all,
archi, sounds like a stimulating couple of presentations. Although they were full up for this round and i wasn't selected to present i am looking forward to Gainesville's 4th Pecha Kucha tonight. I am still going but as audience.
Also, jump any worries/news about the Tokyo tap water? Was the high level of readiation readings i read about yesterday an anomoly?
jump, I didn't realize there were still shortages in Tokyo. Hope you all are hanging in there.
@donna, shortages continue, though it seems the situation is improving.
its nothing compared to what we are hearing about up north. those folks are amazing and dealing with real harshness.
hi nam, water has iodine 131 isotope in it at levels almost at the legal limit (just under) for adults but above the level considered safe for children. it seems that the fact of the radiation in the water menas there was much more radiation released into the atmosphere than was reported.
today the news is that the numbers have fallen considerably, but not sure if we can believe tepco.
jump - saw pics in the paper this morning of empty shelves in grocery stores - plus pics of people wearing masks - do the masks actually do anything?
not as existentially threatening a disaster as the mega-quake/tsunami/nuclear meltdown triple play, but there are some historic floods getting underway up in the mid-west...
Predictions across the Upper Midwest are calling for perhaps-record floods in all of our rivers. What impacts are the floods having, and what might be the long term effects of the rising waters? What do government agencies and river organizations think? What are the experiences of local citizens as well as policy makers?My cubicle mate and colleague, Pat Nunnally, who is the Coordinator of the River Life Partnership at UMN, just sent out this message:
The University of Minnesota’s River Life Partnership has put together a multi-platform digital flood forum, where we are gathering information, diverse perspectives, and considerations from across the state and region.
Go to http://environment.umn.edu/riverlife/river_floods.html for our main page and an overview of our programs:
* Follow River Life on Facebook and Twitter, and share your thoughts, photographs, and links to more information.
* Read the River Talk blog http://blog.lib.umn.edu/ione/rivertalk for more analytical, thought-provoking commentaries.
* Follow the links to sites maintained by government agencies, reliable news organizations, and academic/educational institutions as they have all initiated their own flood coverage.
* Check the River Atlas at www.environment.umn.edu/atlas to see historic photographs, documents, and other interesting stuff.
We intend for these platforms to be as interactive as possible, so email us at [email protected] to make suggestions, add comments, and recommend additional sources and leads.
If you would, please do forward this message to others who would be interested as well. And of course, join the discussions through the River Life Facebook and Twitter connections.
there are tonnes of chocolate bars and potatoe chips and somehow production of cup-a-noodle is keeping up with the demand. but milk eggs bread rice, and now water, simply cannot be found. it all gets sold out in 30 minutes or less. from what i understand it isn't actually a shortage as much as the effect of hoarding...
masks are common here. people wear them when they are sick so they won't spread germs. 33 million people in tight quarters requires some attention to such things i suppose, but i still find it strange. anyway, yeah i guess they would filter some of the radioactive particulates from the air. not sure if that is why people are wearing them though. probably just a small boost from normal really.
Nam, or anyone else for that matter - the next Pecha Kucha Night Kingston is on the 11th June if you are interested. Sadly I'm still yet to stitch the audio & slides for some of the presentatons
Design is hard! Or rather, design is pretty easy, but execution is a bitch. I'm watching my little bus shelter just turn to a mess. hopefully can reign it back in and clean it up before all is done. <sigh> I'm afraid excellent execution is what separates the boys from the men in this profession, and I'm still a boy.
Donna,
I am sure it will all work out in your excellent hands.
Archi, you still organizing the show? Two of my favs from the one here last night featured a 20 year cave diver explorer and an architec building Gainesville's 1st shipping container house.
The cave diver is working on being able to swim/map the spring systems/aquifer from north-central fl all the way to the gulf of mexico. he said sometimes the expeditions take 25 hours.
I wondered how do they stay up that long? obviously can't take a break half way through since you are underwater. is the adrenaline of the experience enough to keep you going?
Oh, lordy, nam the idea of swimming through a cave is almost my worst nightmare - enormous sinkhole swallowing me up being the worst. Being swallowed by a giant sinkhole would probably result in swimming in a cave, so there's obvs a common theme here.
Steven have you gone on vacation yet?!?
i thought you didn't want to hear about people's vacations, only their existential well-being?!
no, i haven't left yet. and it's a conference, so only kind of a vacation.
and my existential well-being is still being buffeted around by stupid politicians, big shiny floating spheres, disorganized project managers, and weather-teases.
Can you rank those from 1-4 in terms of greatest irritation factor?!
BTW I'm headed to see our buddy SP shortly - he just celebrated a birthday, don't you have one coming up?!
lessee...
1(tie) stupid politicians - when you come from the state represented by mitch and rand, well...
1 (tie) disorganized project managers - why do i have to make every decision? don't you guys know what i'm going to say by now? can't you keep things moving on your own?
3 weather-teases - it's freaking cold here again, after reaching 80 earlier in the week. and where i'm traveling, it's going to be 85....
and thunderstorms.
52 big shiny floating sphere...
happy birthday to mr blackline!
Donna, you're not a boy! You're a kick-ass architectural superwoman in stiletto boots!
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