City Comforts, the blog

Mr. Keen has chutzpah

In a review of a book titled The Cult of the Amateur which seems to be about attacking the blogosphere and similar we find this droll and remarkably blind statement:

Mr. Keen says, “history has proven that the crowd is not often very wise,” embracing unwise ideas like “slavery, infanticide, George W. Bush’s war in Iraq, Britney Spears.” (italics added)

"Blind" in the sense that media had a very strong supporting role in creating that very "unwise idea." It did not come from the blogosphere (even the right blogosphere) spontaneously.

Handling coulter

Well first you have to wear gloves as she is so dirty.

But beyond that, as the comments here suggest, the rule is very simple: Politicians — elected officials — can't go after Coulter. It lacks dignity and they can't get sufficiently sharp to be effective. You need someone like Colbert — extraordinary verbal skills and able to tell the truth in the bluntest way possible — to engage Coulter.

Uh...how about fixing it?

Inspection finds Viaduct sinks another quarter-inch.

Very interesting post about Mexcico City

Lessons from Mexico: Cities and Social Trust

Where there is so no public safety there follows little public life. I was amazed how in a city as dense as Mexico City, there were relatively few pedestrians. It seemed that most people would take cabs directly to their destination and back with little interest in strolling beyond. Here, everything is point-to-point. At night the restaurants and clubs were full of people, but outside these pockets activity, there was no one walking on the street. I wouldn't blame them, either, since I would never would want to take my family for a walk along the sidewalks. (italics added)

I have never been to Mexico City so I cannot possibly attest to the accuracy of this post. But coincidentally I was talking to a friend a few days ago and she mentioned the experience of a friend of hers who had visited Mexico City on business some ten years ago. The friend  stayed at a  first-class business hotel in the CBD. Her Mexican host picked her up to take them out to dinner. They took a taxi from the hotel waiting line. And they were kidnapped. By a taxi from the hotel, which is supposed to be the safe way to do things. He warned her to be silent and not identify herself as an American as the experience would have been far worse. They were only freed when they paid a ransom. Do I have the facts? No. Is this one of those urban myths which should not inform our perception of immigration? I do not know.

A communications theory of anti-trust

The Supremes rule resale price maintenance can be OK:. And some economists think that is just dandy. I am not going to take a position on this particular case bcause I haven't studied it. But I believe that anti-trust took the wrong path when Bork et al brought the criterion of "consumer welfae to the fore and thus dramatically-narrowed the scope of anti-trust and eliminated ist political element. I suggest that preservation and enhancement of the market as a communications systems should be (at least) one of the criteria for judging compliance with anti-trust law. It might well be that consumers could benefit from a system of monopoly — at least in the short run — but such a benefit would be eroded by the concentration of economic (and hence political) power.

Here's what I wrote almost exactly two decades ago, while taking anti-trust in law school from a noted practitioner. I don't know if I still agree with it in every detail but the central idea — that anti-trust is about preserving & enhancing the market as a communications system, a far broader idea than "maximizing consumer welfare" — still sounds right to me. Download the PDF here.

•••

The Market as a Communications System

THE MARKET AS A COMMUNICATIONS SYSTEM

I believe that it was the economist Hayek who first pointed out (35 American
Economic Review 519) that a capitalist market achieves its greatest glory and utility if it is
seen as a communications system in which economic actors may signal to each other
their own perceptions of value. The market is not only a place where one can exchange
mere goods, i.e. tangible objects, though of course that happens there. The most
important thing about a market is that is a mechanism which allows/encourages the
exchange of information, i.e. of signals. (Cities are preeminently markets in the
broadest sense—see a paper from the sixties by Christopher entitled "The City as a
Mechanism for Sustaining Human Contact.") The market is a method by which a social
consensus on relative value may be reached. Our society attempts to allocate its
resources through the free-flow of a myriad of individual decisions.

FOOTNOTE 59 ALLUDES TO THIS VIEW

Would it not be helpful to view Anti-Trust Law as a means to ensure that this
exchange of information is not stunted? Without putting undue emphasis on what
may have been only the most casual wording, in his famous Footnote 59 of Socony-
Vacuum, Douglas alludes to an 'information theory' approach to anti-trust law. He
says: "Whatever economic justification particular price fixing agreements may be
thought to have, the law does not permit an inquiry into their reasonableness. They
are all banned because of their actual or potential threat to the central nervous system of
the economy." (emphasis added) The 'central nervous system' of an organism is that
part of it which handles communications between its disparate parts. What Douglas is
saying is that the market acts as a coordinator of economic activity—buyers and sellers
signal their perceptions about relative values of good and services through their offers
to buy and sell.

How easily we overlook reality

A noted urban designer writes about Redeeming the viaduct:

Instead of sacrificing the "Big Ugly" to the stylish environmentalism of the surface/transit proposal, officials should see that the viaduct's incremental retrofitting, initiated at the north and south sectors by the repair and strengthening of existing columns and footings, also provides the approach to the central sector's renewal.

Of course I agree entirely with the basic sentiment. What I find quaint is that anyone might still be seriously thinking that we will do anything except retrofit/repair the central sector.

Recreational shopping

A new Cabela's

Features of the Cabela's Lacey, Washington, store would include:

A towering mountain replica, the centerpiece of the store's open showroom, with running waterfalls and streams, a trout pond and trophy animals in re-creations of their distinct habitats. Similar mountains, each called Conservation Mountain, have been built in other Cabela's stores as monuments to wildlife and salutes to the sportsmen and women who support wildlife conservation.

A gigantic, walk-through, freshwater aquarium stocked with fish native to the area. Museum-quality representations of many wild-game species.

A deli-style restaurant will feature delicious wild-game sandwiches, as well as tamer fare.

World-class Gun Library, providing gun collectors and aficionados the opportunity to browse through a collection of examples of the gun-making art.

Shooting gallery providing fun along with the opportunity to learn basic shooting skills in a safe environment.

Indoor archery range where archers can test and fine-tune their equipment.

Bargain Cave, featuring discount prices on returned and discontinued merchandise.

A sun-drenched atrium interior featuring authentic fieldstone accents and wood furnishings.

Beautifully landscaped grounds featuring native trees and plants.

Preserving a Denny's. Really.

This guy wants to preserve a Denny's:
Another roadside attraction is about to be demolished.

(Photos Seattle Weekly)

Personally, I don't care about preserving this Denny's (and that is not because I don't like Denny's; I do — give me a Denny's any day as my venue of choice for first dates) And I think anyone arguing in favor of it is simply using it to try to stop development, not because they really, sincerely, in their deep-down hearts care a rip about it.

But if you are going to try to preserve then there are (at least) two realistic options (the City is not going to stop development at that corner to save a Denny's):
1. Move it somewhere else, though I doubt Knute would like that and would start muttering about "context" and "authenticity."
2. Build around it and incorporate it in a new structure.

You want personality and uniqueness, chose option #2.

John Edwards' house

What's the big deal? The guy made a lot of money. So he built a big house.

source.

Someone else sums up "Dream Home Diaries"

The Noisettes.

It’s a combination of faux-naivete, disingenuousness, and whining about property taxes. So far they’ve tried to keep a pennywise yankee tone while unveiling house plans for a structure that couldn’t be built for less than $750K and bellyaching over a $5000 tax bill… on their third home.

As a side note on this particular “blog,” I have to say that The New York Times has really frustrated a lot of readers by letting the authors continue on the way they have because the arc of the posts has gone past ridiculous and into ludicrous speed territory. The comments from blog readers have gone from light and helpful to acidic and sarcastic ever since the writers revealed that they haven’t even come close to breaking ground yet.

The very best argument against Robert Ludlum-type conspiracies

Too complicated, with too many moving parts and too many (inevitable) loose ends to remain secret forever.

If you have ever tried to actually get something done in the physical world, you know how complicated it is. A conspiracy by its very nature would not want to attract attention to itself and would try to do things in the most mundane and prosaic manner possible, lying and breaking the law only when necessary, following the old saw that one should only tell a lie when essential because they are just too damned difficult to remember.

At least that's why the breathless conspiracy theories — from Vince Foster to the Iraq War — don't make sense to me. And in the case of the Iraq War, the really troubling aspect is that there is in fact no good reason for it — even if you believe in vast right-wing conspiracies. It's not an "inevitable working out of the structural flaws of late-stage imperialism," (as I used to hear in the Vietnam War-era.)  Iraq is just a tragic blunder put in motion by fools and it doesn't even serve the interests of whatever conspiracy you prefer to think was behind it.

I can't resist...though none of this will make sesne except for 'Sopranos' fans

One of the side-benefits of the opening of band-width by the internet via blogs is that even the kookiest ideas get play...such as the assertion that "any blogger will disagree with my assertion that, coming from Bill Clinton, the "O" of an onion ring is a vagina symbol."

That's "law professor" Ann Althouse (apparently she actually is a law professor and I assume she has tenure) on the new Hillary & Bill as Tony & Carmela video. While I agree with Althouse that the video is generally ill-advised, I think that her interpretation is so bizarre & wild that I had to make note of it here.

I already have (and read) two of his books

Tufte seminar review

And I really want to see this graphic:

Elegant

The Q Drum

Why rail?

David Brewster opines: The case for rail transit is hard to make politically, but here it is.

The third benefit is urban planning: Rail stations tend to concentrate growth and can create walkable, compact, fairly self-sufficient nodes of residential and office buildings. Theoretically, that is. In reality, the stations often go in existing urban nodes (like downtown Bellevue or the University District). Where they create stations in areas that are not dense, often the political price of that location is that you cannot upzone, build big parking lots for park-and-ride, or otherwise put a sleepy neighborhood on a crash course to high density. Sound Transit, as well as the dead Seattle Monorail Project, have both been very reluctant to talk about upzoning around their stations, for fear of touching off political rebellions. But still, over time, by being very fixed and therefore a predictable node for long-term real estate speculation, rail stations do create new concentrations to focus growth a little better.

The match-point for the argument that "rail does not foster walkable neighborhoods" is simple: look around Seattle (and elsewhere) and see how many wonderfully walkable neighborhoods exist without rail. Admittedly, they were built in the rail era (and in many cases prior to rail.)

But they continue to exist in a totally car-dominated world because they were built to be walkable. Consider Madison Park and the top of Queen Anne. Brewster's theory — that rail encourages walkable neighborhoods — can be joined with the empirical fact that rail can also encourage continued sprawl. Just look at the outer stations in San Francisco's BART. The station in Walnut Creek, California — (which ironically is a wonderful example of a pedestrian-oriented town filled with mass-market retailers) — is a pure isolated park-and-ride lot. (Or was when I saw it five years ago.)

As to creating great walkable neighborhoods, rail is neutral and not a decisive factor.

Which house has more "detail?"

Number 1:

or Number 2:

 

Remember the only issue is "detail." The answer is here.

Jolly well done!

Brit plans to open up whole of Britain's coastline.

The government yesterday vowed to press ahead with its plan for a "right to ring" the whole of Britain's 9,040 miles of coast with a footpath up to 10 metres wide.

The environment secretary, David Miliband, chose the white cliffs of Dover to launch the proposals, which would extend the right to roam established by the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000.

Thousands of property owners in England and Wales will be contacted by the countryside watchdog Natural England to negotiate details of the continuous coastal route, including the royal family, whose Sandringham estate in Norfolk still bars walkers from several miles of picturesque seashore.

Where have all the trees gone?

I've been following-up on the issue of tree cover in Seattle. The assertion (noted yesterday on this blog) that tree cover in Seattle has diminished from 40% in 1972 to 18% today intrigues me. To me it is intuitively incorrect i.e. it does not fit with my own personal memory nor some basic facts such as the fact that Seattle is about 50% right-of-way and has been for many many decades. So how Seattle was 40% covered by trees in 1972 is hard to grasp.

So I emailed the reporter who wrote the P-I story (Lisa Stiffler) to find the source. She directed me to an earlier story she had written which made the same assertion and again without sourcing it adequately. In fact the story from last September, 2006 uses 1996 as the latest reference date while the story from yesterday pegs the number to "today." Yes the numbersd appear to be virtually the same tjough Seattle has (one would think) has undergone tremendous development in the past 10 years.

Here are the images to which the reporter directed me and which supposedly justify the statement that

Since the early 1970s, Seattle has lost more than half of its tree canopy as more businesses and people have moved into the city and smaller homes have given way to apartments and megahouses.

The problem with the satellite photos (if that is what they are — which seems questionable based on the uniformity of the water color) is that

1. The images show far more than Seattle proper. In fact it shows an area from Tacoma to nearly Everett and from Issaquah to west of Bremertton. Yet the story is explicitly about the city of Seattle.

2. No source is provided for the images except "City of Seattle" and I don't believe that the City has its own satellite nor the expertise to analyze such aerial images with authority.

3. Most importantly it is impossible to tell from these images what is happening on the ground especially when the assertion is so precise: "40% to 18%." The images purport to show "evidence" — "pictures don't lie" — but as presented these two images do nothing.

It's important to determine the truth or falsity of the assertion because public policy is being based upon it.

But hey! "What importance are facts," to paraphrase GW Bush, "when the intentions are good?"

•••

The City of Seattle's own web site repeats the fact and again with no apparent source:

...in 1972 trees covered about 40% of the city, where now tree cover is only about 18%.

•••

Btw, let me make it clear that I neither believe nor disbelieve inthis fact. Yes it doesn't comport with my own perception of how Seattle has changed over the past 40 years. But I don't deny the possibility; I would just like to see some clear documentation.

 

A book, a movie, maybe a how-to TV show?

I assume that that is what the Dream Home Diarists have in mind. Terrific idea except their discussion is not very enlightening or educational. Yes, I read it regularly so there must be something there. For me it is simply that this is the only place on the web where there is conversation about the process of development. So they win by default. They seem like nice-enough people but as I have said, they have adopted what must be a faux naif pose, so there is not a lot of sophisticated posting by the authors. (The commenters are a different matter — many are quite knoweldgeable.) Now if they changed the focus to getting along with one's spouse in the trying home-building/major remodel process, then there might be something there for book, a movie, or maybe a how-to TV show.

Show us some facts please.

In a story this morning on tree protection, the Seattle P-I makes a huge claim but offers no source:

The amount of tree cover in Seattle has withered from 40 percent in 1972 to about 18 percent today, city officials said.

The numbers are so poorly formed that it is not clear what it means. Is it a count of trees? Of acreage? 40 percent of what? 18% of what?

The story does seem to suggest that the 18% is of the actual land area of the city: "citywide goals for increasing the amount of land covered by trees from 18 percent to 30 percent." If that is indeed so then I am even more flabbergasted, unless you count my 6000 SF lot with ten trees on it (all planted when I bought the house) part of Seattle's "tree cover."

Moreover it doesn't fit with my own memory of Seattle. The vast part of the city was just about completely developed when I moved here in 1967. I don't believe that Seattle has lost half its trees or that the amount of area covered by trees has gone from 40% to 18%.

Additionally, the story doesn't take into account that 50% of Seattle is in public right-of-way. So if we are losing trees on private property (that's the implication, of course) we have only ourselves to blame for not planting them in the street-side planting strips.

 

Real Time TV

From a story dated WEDNESDAY JUNE 13, 2007 08:40 AM EDT:

Journey's Steve Perry Thinks Sopranos Finale Hit Right Note

PEOPLE: When did you get the request to use the song for the finale?

Steve Perry: A few weeks [ago]. I needed to know how this song was going to be used. I didn't want the song to be part of a blood-bath, if that was going to be the closing moment. In order for me to feel good about approving the song use, they had to tell me what happened. And they made me swear that I would not tell anybody. The song use actually just got approved last Thursday.

"last Thursday" would have been June 7.
The Sopranos' finale was June 10.

More lukewarm praise for Tufte's course

ERCB: Kim on Tufte.

In some ways, Tufte used sleight of hand to make the course seem more substantial than it really was, in some cases violating his own fifth principle. Most of his talk and examples were derived from his three books, although he did add value to most of them by pointing out important details and offering interesting background and anecdotes not found in the book.

And while some of his examples demonstrated a principle perfectly, like the Minard map, others seemed more impressive than they really were. For example, at the beginning of the talk, Tufte raised the basic question of how to display three dimensional objects on a two-dimensional book page. To demonstrate one solution, Tufte showed a 427-year old English translation of Euclid's Geometry. The publisher of this rare old tome had pasted a large triangle onto the page, which could be folded up into a three-sided pyramid.

The awe of seeing such an old book in remarkably good condition made the example seem better than it was. This solution, after all, was to physically add the physical third dimension, not to actually express the third dimension on a two dimensional medium.

Tufte's book offers many examples of fine graphic explanation. My question is not about their worth but about the value which Tufte adds. As a curator, he is excellent; but is there more?

Here's an analogy. I just read an article about Philip Johnson's famous house (Behind the Glass Wall)  and one visitor's assessment was priceless: "To be there in the snow! I was there one winter afternoon. That was simply stunning — the whiteness. I advise people to see it more than once. Go in winter, autumn and spring."

Uh...the landscape is not the architecture and there is no clear connection between the beauty of the acreage surrounding Johnson's house and the house itself i.e. the view of a lovely landscape from a trailer can be as marvelous as from a mansion. Similarly a friend was telling me about the new deYoung Museum in San Francisco: "Oh it's great! There is the most marvelous view from the top floor!" Well even the most banal 1950's blah office building can give you a great view from its roof deck.

So with Tufte. Yes he has a good eye and offers fine views; but I am not clear on what he himself adds. And yes, that is a question and not a statement disguised as one.

Good work if you can get it

Coincidentally (I assume) I just received an invitation (a fetching direct-mail piece) to Edward Tufte's one-day course in Seattle. Luckily, I will be out of town, so I can't be tempted to attend to see for myself whether there is a there, there.

But as I was looking around the web to see if anyone else has some misgivings about Tufte's importance, I found this article on A day with Edward Tufte in which I found this remarkable passage:

Four friendly young men and women are bustling behind the table of the registration area, crossing names off the attendee lists and distributing heavy boxes with handles. Each package contains the complete works of Edward Tufte...The piles are stacked high. 500 attendees are expected at today’s session. (italics added)

Wow! Do the math. The course is $380 per person. Multiply by 500 and you have a gross of $190 thousand.

OK. knock off the cost of the books. They retail for $185 and using the industry standard that the manufacturing cost (actual paper, ink & labor at the printer/bindery) should be about 10% of a book's retail sales price, then those 500 books cost Tufte about $9,250. Take away the cost of the meeting room, his own expenses of hotel and airfare etc, a half-dozen helpers for the day and maybe you carve out another $10,000. (Maybe.)

Wow indeed! He's grossing $190 thousand for a day's work and his costs are $20,000 for a net of $170,000 per lecture.

Don't get me wrong. It's a free market and if people want to pay (in aggregate) that kind of money for Tufte's time, good on him. I am simply impressed. Very. With Tufte's business acumen. (I am still dubious about his message.)

•••

Btw, do read the article linked above (A day with Edward Tufte) and tell me if you can find Tufte's punch-line/sound-bite i.e. "What does Tufte stand for?" I can't find any ideas of significance except for the idea that clear thinking is a good thing and is a prerequisite to clear communication.

Non sequitur of the day?

The Dream Home Diarists answer readers' questions:

Q. Can you raise the ground level in your front yard and have a path to get you to the first floor?

A. It’s an intriguing idea, but it’s not permitted in our neighborhood. Although hurricanes are obviously the biggest issue, zoning laws also take into account the intense rains that fall on Anna Maria, especially in the summer months. Building up most of the lot would impede drainage.

Without some elaboration, that makes no sense. Why are hurricanes an issue? And how do the intense rains figure? How would "Building up most of the lot" — no one suggests "most' of the lot, btw — "impede drainage?"

And even if they are factors, why are do they kill the concept? They are simply factors with which the designers must contend

Buying off the surface-transit supporters with a study

Viaduct-free plan on the table.

The Seattle City Council directed transportation officials Tuesday to come up with a highway-free plan for replacing the earthquake-damaged Alaskan Way Viaduct. The council also provided $8.1 million for developing the proposal to absorb viaduct traffic with enhanced mass transit, improvements to bicycle and pedestrian corridors and improvements to existing streets.

Meanwhile the Viaduct is being Repaired.

What's the big deal about Edward Tufte?

Arts & Letters Daily is featuring articles about Tufte today. For example:  'Beautiful Evidence' Author Edward Tufte and the Triumph of Good Design -- New York Magazine. I hear people swoon about his books.

But I have two of them and while the books are attractive in themselves as objects and contain many interesting images, they don't strike me as particularly significant in terms of lessons, rubrics and so forth, much less any underlying theory of communication. What am I missing? I am extremely sensitive to how things look and I think I even have a bit of interest in graphic design (e.g see my Urban_Loop_"movie" but be patient as it takes some time to load).

But Tufte's significance just goes right by me.

So enlighten me, please.

•••

I wrote about Tufte a few years ago: Is PowerPoint also a moral issue?

How short their memories

Someone seems to have forgotten why we have so much process here in Seattle.

If RTID Encounters Ballot-Box Gridlock, Don't Blame Voters

There are certain decisions that government officials need to ram down their constituents' throats—the old "take your medicine; trust me, it's good for you; now shut up" philosophy that politicians in just about any other area would see the wisdom in. But here, it's "when in doubt, punt it to the voters." If this approach fails, it's the voters' fault that Sound Transit stops dead in its tracks, 520 is a parking lot, and the viaduct crumbles to the ground in an earthquake, right? Wrong. This is why we elect people: to make tough decisions regarding complex matters on which the average voter can't be expected to be fully educated.

The problem is that we have an awfully long history — and I am talking very local politics, too — of  short-sighted and even corrupt decision-making. And it is precisely those decisions (e.g tear down the Pike Market and Pioneer Square, run a freeway through the Arboretum, let developers build without regard to neighbors etc etc) which have led to the convoluted and balky decision-making structure that we have now i.e. the old one wasn't working so we added some brakes on governmental power.

Our current local government decision-making structure exists because the one we had before wasn't working. We added Shoreline Management and SEPA and Growth Management and dozens of other laws because we didn't like where we were going. Now you can argue that what we have now is deeply-flawed; and I might even agree with you. But going back to mommy-and-daddy government which gives us "the medicine you need" is not going to happen.

Plus there is another little matter called the power of the purse. When government wants to do something and it doesn't have the money, it has to ask us to raise taxes. I like that. Considering the ineptitude of government, it's not a bad idea.

Maybe too many people vote anyway.

What can one learn from David Chase?

The danger of expectations: Some people didn't like the last episode because they expected more.

...but failing to resolve the whole hit scenario (complete with the obvious Godfather reference of having the hitman enter the bathroom) seemed like a cop-out. I didn't expect every loose end to be tied up, but I expected more than this.

Tonight's Dinner

One Can't Refuse

BAKED ZITI WITH FENNEL SAUSAGE, SOPRANO-STYLE INGREDIENTS

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 pound Italian fennel sausage, or other Italian sausage
1 large white onion, finely chopped
1 garlic clove, finely chopped Kosher salt and freshly cracked black pepper, to taste
1/3 cup dry red wine
1 (35-ounce) can organic tomatoes, chopped with their juices
1/4 cup fresh oregano leaves, or 2 tablespoons dried oregano
1 cup fresh ricotta
1 cup freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano
1/3 cup chopped Italian parsley
1 pound ziti or penne
1/2 pound mozzarella, preferably fresh, torn into small pieces

INSTRUCTIONS: Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil over high heat. Grease a 9 x 13-inch baking dish with about 1 tablespoon of the olive oil.

Remove the sausage from its casing and crumble. Set aside.

Heat the remaining 3 tablespoons olive oil in a large heavy skillet over medium heat. Add the onion and saute until it becomes translucent. Add the sausage and saute for about 6 minutes, or until it begins to brown. Add the garlic and cook for a few more minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Pour off and discard most of the fat in the pan. Add the wine and let it reduce for about 6 minutes, or until it is almost gone.

Add the tomatoes and their juices and cook over medium heat for about 10 minutes. When the sauce begins to thicken, add the oregano and stir well. Season to taste again.

Combine the ricotta, half of the Parmigano and the parsley in a large bowl; season with salt and pepper.

Cook the pasta in the pot of boiling water until al dente. Drain well, reserving about 1/4 cup of the pasta-cooking water. Toss the pasta with the ricotta mixture and coat well. Toss again with the tomato and sausage mixture. If the mixture appears dry, add a splash of the reserved pasta-cooking water.

Pour it all into the prepared baking dish, sprinkle the remaining Parmigano on top and dot with the mozzarella.

Bake for 15 to 20 minutes, or until the top is nicely browned.

Serves 4 to 6.

An unusual voice

I am still reading Dream Home Diaries, a NYT blog. And I have finally figured out what is so unusual about it.

Most blogs -- the vast majority with few exceptions -- are written by people with some real or claimed expertise. The blogger makes a statement about something which he has read, seen or done. The blogger may praise or condemn it. But in any case the blogger speaks with some sense of authority and expertise, even when he is raising a question and indicating that he may not have a firm opinion. Even in asking a question the blogger evinces a sense of expertise and authority.

Dream Home Diaries is very different. Whether true or not, the authors present themselves as innocents, ignorants, naifs. Some other reader on Dream Homes commented on this 'faux naiveté' and I think they called it right.  It's a strange voice and unusual in the blogosphere. It's also a bit frustrating, sometimes even annoying, for the reader because there is little with which to grapple.

And after 9-11 we thought that irony was dead

Pierre Tristam tell us about Peter Arnett’s Prophesies and in passing notes:

What’s inexplicable and in the end deliciously ironic is that Arnett’s Daughter is married to none other than John Yoo, the former Bush administration lawyer whose perversely imaginative legalisms invented the concepts of “enemy combatants” to get around Geneva Convention rules, who justified torture, who developed the president’s beloved “unitary executive” theory that has Bush acting like a little dictator (the theory posits that the executive is the paramount branch of the federal government, and what the president says, ultimately, goes). Then again, Yoo could be a wonderful man in person, even if in some cases it’s difficult to imagine such a brazenly (if mildly) fascistic theorizer as a tender loving husband and son-in-law. Elsa, the daughter, must have a rebellious streak in her.

The end of Tony Soprano?

(Read no further if you are bored by The Godfather or The Sopranos or if you don't like plot spoilers.)

Sure looks that way. The Soprano "family" — a "glorified crew" in the words of Carmine senior — is being killed-off — Chris two weeks ago, Sil and Bobby last night; money is getting short: Uncle Junior is going to be moved to a state hospital because he is out of cash. Tony and his few remaining men has "gone to the mattresses." The last we see of Tony is him lying on a bed with the barrel of his shotgun roughly pointed to his head.

What I found unconvincing was Dr, Melfi's turnabout. Knowing her well — as we all do — her response was to the idea that sociopaths may actually gain skill and guile through "talk therapy" was  impetuous and extremely unprofessional. Faced with the problem she would have been far more likely to coolly discuss it directly with Tony rather to end the therapy unilaterally and abruptly. Even Tony could see that what she was doing was unprofessional. Aside from that dramatic mis-step, it looks bad for Tony. And what an emotionally unsatisfactory (though realistic) ending looms: our hero rat — albeit one with appealing human traits — appears to slouch toward his end at the hands of an even bigger sociopath, Phil Leotardo.

For those who want/need more Sopranos' "criticism":  SF Gate, Slate Magazine, and AOL.

Yeah, what about the parking?

Michael Blowhard compares Critics and Bloggers and uses Nicolai Ouroussoff as an example of what not to do — no matter your title — when it comes to discussing buildings:

Nicolai, dude: How about a description of the neighborhood where the building's located? How about a few sentences about how the designers handled the parking question? Why not tell us whether the glass shed works as a museum? And what the rooms are like to spend time in? And finally: How about discussing these questions in terms of how they affect you personally rather than in terms of eternalities and art-historical rankings.

Read the whole thing.

Learning from George Bush and Kos

British Academics’ Union Endorses Israel Boycott.

The main union representing 120,000 British college teachers voted Wednesday to endorse a Palestinian trades’ union call for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions. The boycott resolution, approved at the inaugural congress of the University and College Union, called on British college lecturers to “consider the moral implications of existing and proposed links with Israeli academic institutions.”

Very smart. (Not.) A feel-good resolution — notice the emphasis on what British college lecturers should do — which will only further isolate those Israeli academics who might be rationally called "doves."

Remember what Don Corleone said: "Keep your friends close and your enemies closer."

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To make sure there is no confusion, I am NOT suggesting that either Bush or Kos are anti-Israel (though Bush's policies are hardly in Israel's long-term interest and I have no idea about Kos) but simply to deride the idea that not communicating with people — even adversaries or enemies — is an effective element in dealing with or even defeating them.