Oh ya....really kicking it up on Saturday to go see the Nutmeg Ballet.....

thats pretty cool toaster. change is hard on us all and loss of city and a way of life is hard to get over. 

i just came back from trip to northern japan a few days back where cities that were dieing before the tsunami wiped them away and now are being replanned without really thinking about the reason they were all dieing to begin with nor what happens once the re-construction is all over.  i had the impression it was easier to manage the emergency lifestyle than the real future lifestyle that we are all working on.  i can sympathize and even imagine the way things used to be.  but where to go when that is not possible?  detroit is pretty cool for taking real steps.  

no christmas here still, but since moving to part of city where the foreigners settle down it feels more familiar than bizarre...we may even find a turkey instead of the now customary really big chicken.

hey TC!

Anyone seen Zero Dark Thirty? I am not interested in seeing it myself but find the controversy re: the morality/truthiness of the film interesting. Not having seen it, still seems as if they could have been more clear re: the effigacy (or lack thereof) of "enhanced interrogation"...

i'm gonna go see it, just to see men, with skill, shoot and kill people with style!

ruh roh.

nice to see the nytimes pick up what I've been saying for years now...

unless you're harvard and you're well endowed (unlike most of the male students there.. har har har) - better to attract students through academics than fancy shmancy facilities.

so, i am being accused of being overly critical. apparently, nothing is good enough for me and when i voice these considered criticisms i am hit with the you are over critical. you don't like anything.blah blah and my response is, look i was trained in design. trained to be critical, so get used to it or go live with an accountant.  any one else get this treatment?

vado, is your talking cat giving you shit? No liver treats for a week. That'll learn it. 

My turn for story time! I was coming home on thursday from some industry event (future of louvers is bright!). I had a few mandatory glasses of wine, and decided that an hour long bike ride would be more fun if I sang out loud. And it totally was. Except... About 20 minutes in, I saw a fender bender going the other way, and in my best Roy Orbison belched out "Oh No!". This did not go over well at all. One of the drivers started screaming at me. Calling me every name in the book. But now this was all in behind me as I pedaled on. Or so I though. About 10 blocks later I hear screaming behind me. The guy left the scene of the accident, made a U-turn, and was on a death mission to run me over. "Stay where you are you piece of shit so I can run you over, you fuck" direct quote as he got stuck behind some cabbies. A little guy in some big ass half SUV/half pickup-truck shitmobile. Geez. You act a little crazy, and you net the mother of crazy. I tucked onto bike-only lane over the bridge and that was it. but wowzers.

lesson of the story; don't sing and ride.

summary for toasteroven: blah blah blah la la honk

are you being that guy in the review who goes on about line-weights when the entire project's concept and/or premise of the studio is complete garbage?   you're supposed to be "critical" of shit that actually matters - like if someone doesn't do something they said they'd do, or someone is not being emotionally available.   if you're griping about someone's cooking or how someone arranged the bookshelf, you're just being a miserable asshole - don't be the line-weight guy in a relationship.

is rusty shackle-turd talking about a f-ing bicycle?  who the hell rides a bicycle anyway?  a f-ing canadianian, that's who.  I'd ride your moms but she's fatter than the robs fords and I'm afraid I'd suffocate in one of her deleuzian folds...

I ride a bicycle, blah blah blah, yo momma.

don't make fun of Rob Ford! Let him do it himself

nice photo.... night night all!

hey intern mean to ask, i assume you took that photo and is of you biking?

Hello TC! I'm still alive. 

vado you are an asshole and a jerk. just like me. latest incident happened 15 mnts. ago over something i don't remember. we're laughing at something else now...

@vado - didn't mean to come off as insensitive (only with rusty, he deserves it because he's one of those awful bearded canadian fixie hipsters that basically ruined all of brooklyn) -

we get paid to be critical - why are you going around offering that shit up for free?  you diminish the value of the criticism if you apply it to everything.

Nam, yes and yes. Thought for sure I'd drop my phone and then run over it, but CAD hasn't completely destroyed my hands yet and I was able to hang on long enough to snap a few pictures while riding.

I take offense on being called a hipster. I'm a fatster. It's how toast's momma prefers me. 

 trained to be critical, so get used to it or go live with an accountant.  any one else get this treatment?

As someone who does accounting, I believe my accounting side is far more critical than my design side.

You can smudge design criticism into something constructive.

If you smudge accounting, you go to prison.

@everydayintern - nice photo - although - you should have added that you were riding to pick up your weekly winter share at your local urban farm - or rusty's mom's (although I guess then it would be called a "ploughshare.")

@ toaster, that type of *load* would require a different bike.

yeah i'm talking aesthetics rather than numbers. 

@Rusty wouldn't a hipster also be a fatster?

that a nice cargo bike. i was looking at a lighter variant the other weekend but wasn't sure how i felt about the integrated basket/handle-bar...

also, intern, did i notice the cables on your bike were sleeved? I guess that makes sense with snow/salt but i never biked that much when i had to deal with winters.

i need to remember this forever:

we get paid to be critical - why are you going around offering that shit up for free?  you diminish the value of the criticism if you apply it to everything.

i love it. 

so much to criticize. so little time.

good morning everyone!

i just realized  i must have been too tired when typed above because looked at my bike today and it has the same sort of tubing. something about intern's picture though thew me off...

I was scratching my head a little at your earlier question Nam. Nothing fancy about the cable housing. To be honest I don't do much riding in the winter. They throw down so much junk on the roads that it destroys bike components. The only place I can really enjoy riding is the trail I was on when I took that photo and that's only if the snow isn't bad. 

Changing the subject, I'd love some input over here if any of the TC crowd have any insight.

so my 8 year old was explained by her teacher what happened in usa with the kids being murdered by a crazyman (its all over the news here too) and she has decided america is unsafe and is worried about her friend who went to usa because of dad's business.  i explained not all of usa is like that but i got the feeling she doesn't believe me. 

then she asked if canada was the same and is her gramma safe.  jeezus, what a world we are making for ourselves lately.

Ahh, holidays, that wonderful time of year when relatives ask your opinion on everything and hate the answer. My dad's cousin will ask about an addition on his cabin, my sister-in-law will ask me what I think about her kitchen layout, and so on. I've learned to not be critical during these moments, and to just slide out of them without really saying anything and hit the cookie tray instead. I learned that by making fun of my aunt's fake columns in her dining room and made her cry. Is that what you mean, vado?

Will, that is rough.  My four year old asked what we would do if a man tried to come into our house.  I told him the doors were locked, so we were safe.  He said "What if he has an ax, and breaks down the window?"  I set up a plan right then for him to escape to the back yard, and then run as fast as he could to the his best friend's house behind ours.  I told him not to look back, and that I'd be there as soon as I could.

Scary.

TINT, you made your aunt cry?!  Sounds like something I would do, without even realizing it.  I would think that everyone thought the it was funny that the columns weren't real, or not even notice that she had fake columns, and start a discussion on how cheesy fake columns are.  Then said aunt would just leave, and never speak with me again, and I'd have no idea why.

3 more days until Christmas break!!

sometimes you have to make an aunt cry because of her fake columns.  it's sort of like our architect version of the hippocratic oath.  they should include that on the ARE.

only 2 more days until the end of the world.  does everyone know what they're wearing?

my birthday suit?

im running a symposium on climate change adaptation this weekend and conpletely forgot to organize a session on the end of the world.  did the mayans include time difference in their efforts?  maybe only half the world will end and we're all cool over here but america is fkucked.  these are important questions.  no idea why i didn't invite the experts to answer such things.  shit.  is it too late? 

@ sarah, that bites having to explain what to do when crazy dude with axe comes to the door.  cool that son is ready.

about fake columns, i kind of enjoy the weirdness of those things.  horrible but also kind of fun.  over years have learned to not ever talk about architecture with my family. never goes anywhere good.  they even think a conservative dude like peter zumthor is too radical...fogetaboudit.

@will you have a link to a program, livestream etc>?

climate change and the end of the world are two sides of the same coin.  the end of the world seems to be the prevailing strategy for addressing global warming.  aren't you guys in japan planning on expanding your nuclear power program again, just with a new independent watchdog agency?  from what i read, your recent election was seen as somewhat pro-nuclear rather than pro-quit-using-so-much-electricity.

in the unlikely event the world doesn't end, we need to start forming plan 'b.'  i assume what you've been working on is the plan 'b,' with the assumption we'll still be here on saturday.  personally, i haven't made any plans for the 22nd.

i think it would be helpful to explain in your symposium that you're the guys who think the world isn't going to end, and that's why your trying to develop a strategy that doesn't hasten the planet's destruction.  the latest theory i've heard is that time zones are not relevant.  it all goes boom at the same time, probably based on some sort of planetary alignment type thing.

in related news: http://www.theonion.com/articles/man-who-will-die-in-great-eastern-seaboard-flood-o,30726/ 

fogetaboudit.

@will - i think you've been in japan too long - you're starting to say things you'd only find at a t-shirt store in shibuya.

who do you think writes all that stuff?  here i went and sent it out the ethernet for free ;-)

election was not good.  we totally got the romney side here.  however, it was more a vote against the other side(s) than a vote for anything positive.  not sure what happens with the nuclear power.  power companies have most definitely lost their monopoly with recent FIT laws and such, and nobody sane is pro nuclear anymore.  energy costs are going up as well, so i definitely see a future with less consumption than before. which may not be enough...so yeah some folks are thinking its better to flip the nuclear switch just as a practical response for now.  don't know if that will happen though.

@ nam, no live streaming, but we will publish work next year. mostly climate science and disaster management stuff rather than architecture, although we did manage to invite some cool architects as well.

either way would be very interested in reading up on it...

re: fake columns:

so - it's the relative with the biggest house - they are allowed to have fake columns.  once you get the big house and you're the one hosting holiday parties, then you have to endure uncle Hank's commentary about your dining room decor and color palette while you're not sure if he's getting more canape in his toothless mouth, his beard, his (non-ironic) 3 wolf moon sweatshirt, or your rug.

The California Hamster Association made this statement in reference to Justin Bieber giving his pet hamster to a fan: "The moment that hamster was handed off to a screaming girl in a harsh, frenzied environment was likely the moment it gazed at the short path to its doom."

Well, world ends tomorrow anyway, so I guess we're all facing the same the short path to doom about now, am I right?

curtkram, I agree.  We should all pledge to make at least one non-architect cry before becoming registered.

I'm still alive.  Been in millwork detail land for the past several days.  

Carry on, carry on.  See you on the flip side.

regarding fake columns... let's not forget that the four columns at the entrance to adolf loos's goldman & salatsch department store were, in fact, fake, serving no structural purpose whatsoever...

Wait, Phillip, what do you mean? They support the cornice, no?

nope... there is a steel member that spans across the entrance... there are construction photos of a big, wide-mouthed opening... the columns were actually one of the last things installed during construction... plus, that green marble is very brittle and can't carry much load at all... i can't find the construction photos or structural drawings online, but the link below is to a caricature from the vienna newspaper ridiculing the un-ornamented facade... http://www.aadip9.net/hannah/13.jpg

here in kentucky it appears to have ended. just the internet and the cockroaches still going. 

It is 8:21 and Raining Like Summer Time...so maybe we have gone to the Filp Side!

Signed   Snook_dude Flipper.  Guess I will go have a Beer!