City Comforts, the blog

The theory of City Comforts...

...is very much based on the idea that Visualisation works.

Abstract telling about making cities nicer places to live --- "new buildings should be pedestrian-oriented" --- is not nearly as effective as showing a street of such buildings...oh, ok...a few captions to clarify the photos is a good idea too.

"In need?" "Only available site?" "Happened to be...?"

Who is kidding whom?

Fukuoka, Japan, was in need of a new government office building and the only available site was a large two-block park that also happened to be the last remaining green space in the city center.

Emilio Ambasz and Associates, Inc. was awarded the commission for successfully achieving reconciliation between these two opposing aims: maintaining the green space of the existing park while providing the city of Fukuoka with a multi-use, symbolically decisive building. Under the building's fourteen one-story terraces lie more than one million square feet of space, containing an exhibition hall, museum, 2000-seat proscenium theater, conference facilities, 600,000 square feet of government and private offices, as well as large underground parking and retail spaces.

***

Thanks to disjointed.org.

Architecture manifests pathos

STICKS & STONES points out:

Cities often want to build the architectural bauble du jour in their unending search for the grail of world classness. There was a wave of convention centers, followed by sports stadiums, (add a zoo or aquarium here or there) then museums. Now, especially after the tumultuous reception that Disney Hall in Los Angeles received, everyone wants a concert hall.

Duh...

Whose Bright Idea Was This?

The exuberant curves and shimmering stainless steel of the Walt Disney Concert Hall have awed architectural aficionados. But the very features that make the $274-million building sparkle have been blasting some condominiums across the street with a near-blinding glare.

Terrific Essays on Architectural Guidebooks

Start with the List of Essays.

In 2000 Adam Sobolak wrote this primer to architectural guidebooks as a way of focusing enthusiasts on the project of a new Toronto guidebook. The idea was to author the book in time for the Society of Architectural Historians annual meeting which was to be held in Toronto in 2001. The project didn't happen but the primer itself is a good short history of guidebooks.

I used to amuse myself with the thought that one way to change Americans' perceptions of our landscape would be to insinuate a hard-core New Urbanist or Sierra Clubber as editor-in-chief of a major guidebook series...say Frommer's or Fodor's or Mobil. Then I wondered if we Americans even use very many guidebooks in our North American travels?

Another new "free-market" blog

Peter Gordon's Blog is about

"exploring the intersection of economics and urban planning/real estate development and related big-think themes."

Worthy issues, though this Blog seems -- and it may simply be that it is so young -- a tad doctrinaire, somewhat naive about the pressures on local government which produce these "top-down" urban plans, and with a lamentably predictable free-market (as opposed to "what works") thinking.

But it is sprightly and I wish it well.

Very useful aggregator

PLANETIZEN: Radar

Activist government and capitalism make natural bedfellows...

...but it is the public which is 'vexed to nightmare'.

PHILADELPHIA, Feb. 11 - Downtown landlords here are in an uproar over a measure that would allow a public subsidy for a proposed new 60-story headquarters building for Comcast, the giant cable company that wants to take over the Walt Disney Company.

The developer, Liberty Property Trust, is seeking to qualify the building site - in the heart of downtown, three blocks from Comcast's current offices - for a generous 1998 state tax abatement program.

Good question of the day.

In reference to the book Big Plans:The Allure and Folly of Urban Design, which is mentioned in the post immediately below, one Amazon reviewer asks:

Here's the question: Can a governmental unit, whether an emperor, city planner, zoning commission, or legislature, succeed in making a city more vibrant or livable? Here's a hint from the book -- in Reston, VA homeowners in a development pay $11,000 apiece to demolish a modernist plaza designed as public space for the community. From the forced imploding of public housing to the history of urban "renewal" in our large cities, the dismal track record of governmental actions in cities is in front of us every day.

This question relates back generally to matter of "creativity" and the sensible scope of governmental action. Just as my question about the Iraq war relates more to the possibility of successfully concluding it than to something so arguable as "morality," so too with the proper scope of governmental action in cities. (I am not saying that "morality" is irrelevant but you don't even have to reach a lot of issues if something is not feasible.) Government obviously must approve of many social frameworks --- for example, subdividing land into lots and blocks --- but once those frameworks are established --- and of course there is argument about the extent of its review power in establish such framework to begin with --- what is government's proper role?

I think that reviewer above (and I have no idea if he gets the gist of Kolson's book correctly) states the case far too broadly. It's obvious that fire & police departments, and water systems, for example make cities more "livable." So atthe very least city government can succeed that far. Zoning, too, as a basic structure of society, is clearly successful, if perhaps now at its limits and overused as a tool.

But "vibrancy" is another matter and leads us off into Floridian issues of "creativity" whichy I believe is beyond government's proper competence.

Why pick on Cleveland?

Here's the context for the question.

There appear to be a plethora of books on Cleveland alone. The book I am currently reading on the subject, Kenneth Kolson's Big Plans: The Allure and Folly of Urban Design, had three chapters on three community projects and how they failed. ...

Listen Live...or on archive

Should the National Park Service privatize more of its services?

Advocates say the Park Service has become inefficient because it has a monopoly. They believe some park services could improve if they were taken over by private businesses and in some cases by volunteers. Opponents of privatizing at the National Park Service don't believe private businesses can do a better job. They feel the Park Service is working just fine. In this hour of The Conversation we'll hear what the National Park Service has planned. We'll talk to an opponent who says the experience of privatization in other areas of the federal government shows it can end up costing more. And we'd like to hear what you think. Would you like to see the National Park Service take a new approach? Would privatization improve the parks?

America's National Parks are really treasures and their future is important. One of the reasons I moved to Seattle as a student was to be near Mount Rainier.

Problems in Denver...

...with public transport. I don't know the specifics and have absolutely no substantive opinion, but as to credibility, who do the opponents bring in? As an "expert?" Mr. Randal O'Toole. I've written about Mr. O'Toole before here and I am not impressed with the way he presents things. (I am still trying to be polite as he is probably a real nice guy, personally.) But I would not go to the bank on his facts. According to the Rocky Mountain Progressive Network:

The righties in the Independent Institute think everyone is as stupid as they are. So they periodically ship operatives in to publish rip-and-read bogus research to attack the government.

They've targetted RTD since it started because -- it's government. Public transporation -- less pollution, more development, healthier population -- what's to like?

This year they're very frightened of the polls showing how hugely popular FasTracks is (including among conservative developers) , so they imported a Horowitz-like transporation operative named Randal O'Toole (really) from Oregon to live in Caldara's basement (really) and publish really bogus attacks on RTD.

Informed discussion among people who disagree is one thing; but bogus fabrication of reality is not a good basis for that.

Why women and horses?

Well, why?

If for this image alone...

J. M. W. Turner, The Passage of the St. Gothard (1804). Watercolor. Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendal, Cumbria, U.K.

...take a look at this post at Junk for Code about Romanticism & the sublime.

Unwise? Perhaps; we will see.

But immoral?

Tutu tells Blair: Apologise for 'immoral' war

I don't think so. Not at all, in fact.

Interesting back and forth...

...on Why the Coronado Bridge is long and curved instead of short and straight.

There are plenty of legitimate targets for those who question waste, boondoggle and special subsidy in activist government of either left or right. But I have my doubts that this bridge

is one of them, unless one is into questioning the entire defense apparatus of the Cold War.

I promised...

I promised...that I would go on leave.
So here I am:
Horse Blog by Dave (with occasional references to skis, boats, & golf)

It's still rough but you'll get the idea. Or not.

What is a "public good?"

Tyler Cowen's post on the new Michelin winners suggests that Michelin Guides qualify:

The Red Guide does not make money on its own terms, but rather serves to advertise the parent company and burnish its image. It is a classic instance of the private production of public goods.(italics added -- DS)

I wonder if that is so. Or more to the point, whether such a definition of a public good confuses the matter between public benefits of a private action and a public good itself. It seems to my understanding that a public good is something which the public must buy in common because of some structural, physical or natural reason. The bargaining among neighbors to create and manage a park is so high that we have decided that it is more convenient to have a governmental entity do so; we also believe that even people who are travellers to our town (hard to bargain with them before they get here) should be able to use the park without an entry card etc etc.

But the Michelin Guide a public good? Last time I looked at a copy there was a price tag on the book, so clearly the Guides themselves cannot be a public good as they are not freely available and I believe that one of the elements of a public good must be the non-existence or extremely low barrier to its use i.e. no fee.

Perhaps it is the overall system of awards/ratings which of course can be used by the passerby to a restaurant who has never held a copy of a Red Guide. That is a public good? Interesting idea but I think just a bit of a push. No? It certainly is personally useful to me to have such a rating system; and I guess to the extent that the higher the individual's welfare, the higher the overall social welfare. But I do not think that it makes sense to identify increased social welfare with public goods. There seems to me to be a real and useful distinction between positive amorphous generalized benefits of a private action and a public good. Yes, having the Michelin system is a good thing for society; does that make it a public good? I say no.

It certainly is good -- I guess -- that someone made a movie of Master & Commader so that my friends and I could have a pleasant evening; and now that movie is a contribution to our larger psycho/social framework. It shows a bit of naval life in the Napoleonic era and hence increases the richness of our overall human consciousnessa and that is definitely a good thing for "the public." Even people who have not seen the movie can benefit by some slight increase in general understanding of the past, for instance. But does that make it -- the movie -- in any sense a "public good"? Iwould suspect that only under a strained definition would the answer even be remotely "yes."

Interesting. I'll have to look into this whole issue more. But I think that there is a very definite difference between positive externalities and a public good.

Secular schools are secular

French Lawmakers OK Religious Apparel Ban

The issue has also proven to be sharply divisive among France's Muslims - at 5 million, Western Europe's largest Islamic community. Many believe that banning head scarves is a way to exclude Muslim girls from public schools and further ostracize their community.

Sociologist Farhad Khosrokhavar says the law will be ``the beginning of the problem.''

``Even those who do not wear the head scarf will feel offended,'' said Khosrokhavar, author of ``The Head Scarf and the Republic.''

``Instead of fighting against Islamic radicalism, it might encourage it,'' he told Associated Press Television News.

But other Muslims here believe the key to successful integration is to live the values of their adopted land.

``I arrived in France and adapted to this country,'' said 65-year-old Telly Naar, who came from Morocco 40 years ago. ``Each should be able to practice religion at home. If one wants to wear the headscarf outside, fine, but not inside a school that is secular.'' (italics added -- DS)

From Amrys O. Williams

Hey David,

We've been ranting about the new Gehry building here at MIT a bit. I
thought you might be interested to read what the
vision-scientist-turned-admissions-counselor,
the aeronautical engineer,
the physicist-turned-computational-geneticist, and
the computer-scientist-turned-media-scholar had to say.

Building 20.

Building 32

Looking Back, Looking Forward

Rodin hates Frank Gehry's mom!!

And a trend, in general, to be heartily endorsed

Melbourne

The city is redeveloping its river docklands for slick empty-nester in-city highrise housing --- a universal trend it would seem.

He's in trouble

Assuming that The Independent has got its facts right (and that is an assumption) my guy's in trouble:

Yesterday, the White House released records of a dental check up Mr Bush had in Alabama in January 1973.

When you have to dig that deeply to prove that you did your duty in the service, you have a got a problem indeed.

2blowhards does it again

Fascinating post on the Economic History of Shakespeare.

I took particular notice of this tid-bit:

Acting troupes started putting on so many plays (using converted inns as outdoor theaters) in London during the 1560s that the city authorities took notice, fearing riots or the plague (not without reason--the theaters were shut down every ten years or so during outbreaks.)

Doesn't appear as if regulation hurt creativity too much.

Seriously, I would like to find a book/article which goes into depth on the regulation of building prior to, say, 1900. Much criticism of regulation -- for example, Aaron Haspel's post here? -- makes it appears as if the principle (as opposed to the quantity) is a creation of some mad liberalism of the last hundred years. I believe that regulation goes back much, much further as a core agreement of social life. Any suggestions on readings?

Against volunteerism: avoiding the race to the bottom

Murph paid me a nice compliment a few days ago and it looks as though my own announcement of my retirement was just a bit premature. Do you remember that setpiece from the Sopranos in which one of "the boys" is imitating Al Pacino in one of the Godfather movies:

"I try to get out. But they keep dragging me back in."

Sometimes I feel that way too, as I see things in the blogosphere which absolutely demand my two cents. Like the issue of whether a business should do things voluntarily. Far be it from me to suggest that they should not.

But one of the advantages of having rules, regulations, is that it creates a minimum standard which has to be met by everyone. So the businessperson who would like to provide better working conditions can do without having to worry that competitors can undercut his costs by NOT providing such a benefit.

Don't miss...

...the comment (last one as of this date) by CJahnes. I can't say that I agree with it entirely but it is quite a thoughtful response.

Business is already complicated enough

Some people feel that it is not enough for a capitalist enterprise to simply make money by
1. producing things that people want and
2. following the law scrupulously.

For instance, Diego Doval explains why we do what we do.

A company shouldn't, can't, be an end in itself...A successful company (IMO) is not one that only makes money (although that's important of course) but also contributes to the life of its employees, its community and society, and does its part, to put it simply, in making things better.

Anne Galloway agrees and expands.

My own personal take is that having such expectations diverts attention from the core work of the enterprise, asks it to do things outside its expertise and actually gets in the way of achieving the very things which they urge:

...contribut[ing] to the life of its employees, its community and society, and does its part, to put it simply, in making things better

.

A business achieves those things by being a good business.

The most important thing about an economic enterprise -- capitalists or socialist or whatever -- is that it produce a product which people want and at a price that can be afforded and that allows the enterprise to continue in existence. That's not easy. To add extra responsibilities to the enterprise is, I suggest, a mistake. An auto-repair shop does not exist to increase social welfare per se but to repair cars. To ask the proprietor in any sort of formal way to do anything else but repair cars adds and additional burden.

If you want businesses to pay for their externalities e.g. use of toxic auto parts cleaning fluids, either regulate them or tax them.

If you desire certain minimal standards for its employees (so that the employees enjoy their work more) such as bathrooms, lighting standards, then simply require it.

A business, in my mind, totally and entirely fulfills its responsibilities to society by
1. producing a good product
2. following the law scrupulously.

More than that -- say donations to United Way or the Arts Museum or the Anti-Abortion League -- are fine but should be seen as purely discretionary spending by the business owners. Focus on the task at hand -- the business itself --- and do it meticulously. Put aside vague 'do-good' generalities. If you are an auto repair shop, then simply repair cars as well as humanly possible and follow the laws. That's how I think a business best contributes to society: by being a business.

I'm in "Arts & Entertainment," huh?

Periodic Table of Blogs.
And to the left of Brian's Culture Blog. Whaddyaknow.

"Nominally" is better than not at all

The Seattle Times: The how and why of happiness

As with money, being good-looking, intelligent or healthy contribute only nominally to greater happiness.

And I can speak from first-hand experience.

The barking service buddy

I don't care so much about the paper trail (or lack of one).

The big tip-off for me that there might be something truly amiss is that there are no service buddies. Remember, GW was a good-looking wild-partying frat boy from a big-deal family whose dad was a Congressman or something --- you tend to notice guys like that and when they become a Governor and then President your casual acquaintance with them starts to grow into being best buddies. While GW is not a charismatic leader, he is an amiable meeter-and-greeter and there is no possible way that he was hidden away in the base library on Saturday nights curled up with his grad school books. He would be the first to laugh at that one.

That NO ONE comes forward and can even tell about some drunken party where they saw him is pretty strange...did he not even show up at all!? Wow.

But I wonder if the story may be peaking too soon.

Btw, whatever happened to...

General System Theory?

Haven't heard much about it lately. It was all the rage in the '60s. Has it gone the way of the hula hoop? (Ok I have my decades combined.) Or is it so big that it's invisible? I am not an academic so I don't keep up with these things.

I am lost

I cannot grasp how God of the Machine connects a
1. belief in the regrettable necessity of building codes
to a
2. belief in the perfectability of the state.

Analagous, perhaps, would be connecting "the regrettable necessity to have penal codes to a belief in the perfectability of the state." No? But no one of either left or right make such a connection. I don't think anyone does, anyway. It is not that we think that The State (always in caps) is so wonderful but that criminals are so bad and we want protection from them.

Lovely

STICKS & STONES visits Sydney:

....Contemporary Australian architects do a good job of harnessing the ever-present breezes to cool and ventilate. This works at the medium scale at which most designers seem comfortable here. Tilted overhanging roofs vent built-up heat and cast welcome shade. Louvers are the subject of intense design attention: inside or out? Metal or wood? Thick and meaty or light and ephemeral? Louvers cover the entire surface of one apartment block I saw. The building comes alive as residents tilt, swivel, fold up, and retract their slotted walls. Suiting their own preferences, they create an architectural anemone, its tendrils waving in the passing breeze.

There’s no rocket science in this, but this architecture of sun protection makes buildings wonderfully habitable. There is frequently a rich range of thresholds between outdoors, fully open to the sun, and the innermost realms of a house, where you are completely enfolded by walls and, perhaps, air conditioning. You use these spaces differently at different seasons and times of day. It dispirits me to think that in far wealthier America it is a radical notion not to build a box in the sun clad in stucco and tinted glass, with a box on top pumping in air-conditioning tonnage.

I like lists

Art (and life) lesson #1

1. Buy what you love--- listen to your gut.

Then nine more sensible tips which might well be applied to any passion, such as boats or horses.

Counterfeit emotion

I left the following comment on a blog I enjoy very much.

In general, based on what specific facts do folks pour such vitriol on Kerry? I hold no great brief for him; I am certain I will vote for him -- in fact I already did at my neighborhood's primary. But I am sure that like any person who climbs so high that there are some skeletons lurking about. (Hey! Even those of us who are nobodies have skeletons! No? You don't?) And do people think that the key reason to vote for someone is that they find him to be "nice?"

But what provokes the spleen? It seems such contrivance, so out of proportion to the man, the sort of thing I detest among my Democratic brethren when they speak of Bush.

A stated preference is fair; the sort of immoderation one hears about seems like the lady protests too much. Are people simply trying to "pump" themselves up for the coming race? Is it some sort of play-acting to convince people that one is involved in politics? The nation needs thoughtful discussion, not bombastic speechifying.

(And this doesn't apply to present company, of course, but is a more general question.)

It's the counterfeit emotion that interests me, the sort of stuff one hears at some sports events, or even at an art gallery: the thoughful stance -- "Ah! Such genius!" -- people play-acting at what they think is expected. Brian Micklethwait posted on this "art gallery emoting" some time ago and maybe it's part of politics as well.

Now I don't like GW Bush as President and think that we can do better; but I find it sufficient to say that "I don't like GW Bush as President and think that we can do better."

Get a grip, folks, on both sides.

Some people really have chutzpah

French MPs back headscarf ban

Saudi Arabia's top cleric has accused the proposed French law of violating the human rights it claims to be defending.

(If you not aware, non-Moslems in Saudi Arabia are not allowed to conduct their services publicly and have to do so in secret and I believe that there are severe penalties if caught by the religious police. If anyone has substantially different information about freedom of private worship in Sauidi Arabia, I am ready to be corrected)

(Link thanks to excellent Butterflies and Wheels.)

Striking photo

This NYT slide show on the Year of the Horse offers this very striking photo:

The best lack all conviction, while the worstAre full of passionate intensity.

I was just reading one of my favoprite blogs and the host was just so furious at a famous politician that the only thing I could think of was this line from Yeats' Second Coming:

The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.

I am just so curious about why people so dislike not so much the ideas of our politicians but their personnae. It startles me. By and large I find myself indifferent to them and I discount their words. The few I have met personally have almost been extremely shrewd and it was no accident that they had climbed fairly high up the greasy pole.

I know how easily one bends one's tone and phrasing to the listener; I wish I had greater skill or caring to do so as it is one of life's most essential skills. Odysseus -- the guileful leader, the man of "many twists and turns" -- was especially practiced at this sort of politics. It is a skill at once admired and disliked. We would not have a leader who did not bend his words to us and yet if he does we call him a hypocrite.

At any rate, it doesn't really which blog or which candidate.

Stirrups

Stirrups were one of those pivotal yet invisble-to-us-now inventions which remind us that tradition may have much to offer but also much to learn. Humans had been riding horses for some 4-5 thousands of years when the stirrup was invented around the year 1000 AD. It seems amazing that no one had realized before that that a thong or vine slung over the horse's withers could support the rider and better connect him to the horse and utilize its power. But that seems to be the case.

So it's always a good idea to hold up traditions to the strong light of today and ask if it can be improved. Often, it cannot. But today's tradition was often yesterday's innovation.

Dunne & Krumm (and no doubt many places) sell something called Double "S" Safety Stirrups.

What interests me is that the stirrup doesn't lie flat along the length of the horse but transverse to it, making it a whole lot easier to place your foot.

Because of the way it is attached to the stirrup leather, the stirrup sticks out at a 90 degree angle from the horse, with the opening in the same direction as your foot. That should make it easier & quicker to place (or replace) the foot in the stirrups. The rapidity with which one can re-place one's foot in the stirrup seems like a major safety factor, especially for beginners like me who are wont to do something dumb like lose balance and lose a stirrup.

UPDATE: And the theory works. The tack I used yesterday on the Icelandic included these stirrups and from the perspective of a novice rider, it is a cleary superior device. I had no trouble whatever picking up the stirrup. I believe that had I lost one, I could have retrieved it with far greater ease than with the traditional ones. I am somewhat shocked that such stirrups are not used more widely as I believe that they are safer.

So even in the most minute details of practices to which humans have paid attention for literally thousands of years, there appears to be room for improvement. It still astonishes me that the vast, vast majority of stirrups lie flat along the horse. But as a skeptical respecter of "tradition," I wonder what I am missing. Why is this seeming innovation not universal?

•••

Btw, I just ran across another example of what strikes me as an ergonomic stirrup. In fact this one is adjustable.

I'd forgotten...

...how totally loony the left has become; it marches step-by-step in byzantine mirror-image lock-step with the right in terms of fundamental idiocy and of warped understanding of the complexities of the world.

I'd forgotten. I rarely read its journals.

But I was just reminded of how totally useless it is by a self-satisfied and smug exposition from Arundhati Roy on the The New American Century. (Of course I should consider the source, The Nation; whenever I see its editor Katrina vanden Heuvel I know that I am in for the expected.)

Ms. Roy suggests:

So if we are against imperialism, shall we agree that we are against the US occupation and that we believe the United States must withdraw from Iraq and pay reparations to the Iraqi people for the damage that the war has inflicted?

However misguided as to purpose the Iraq war was at its inception, no matter how inept George W. Bush has been in conducting American security affairs generally, I think it totally undeniable that the Iraqi people are better off now than they were under that monster Saddam Hussein. For Roy to suggest that the USA owes anything by way of reparation is so strikingly unbalanced that I felt I had to post it here as an example of how the left has lost its way. I think that one can simultaneously hold the view -- and yes, holding simultaneous views is OK, Ms. Roy -- that GW Bush is a foolish President and that American foreign policy is mis-guided and also acknowledge that we may have stumbled into doing something good and beneficial.

Perhaps there is some law of history which says that sometimes good things can come out of foolish and impetuous actions and perhaps GW's Iraq Adventure will prove to be such an event. Let us all pray.

Horse Breeds

Cities are cleaner -- if perhaps less interesting (?) -- since horses are no longer the predominant or even common or even permitted(?) means of transport. This site -- Breeds of Livestock -- is useful if you want to get some perspective on urban transportation. (Imagination required.)

Today -- thanks to Lone Cedar Icelandics -- I had the opportunity to ride an Icelandic. They are an interesting horse. For one thing, while there are some 250 thousand human Icelanders, there are about 80,000 Icelandic horses. That seems like a rather high ratio. Imagine if the same ratio applied to the USA or to Britain. (As the human population of Iceland is thus about half that of Seattle, it's also interesting to realize that Iceland has one vote in the UN General Assembly.)

Moreover, while horses seem to be a totally female deal here in the USA -- attend a horse event, as I did last weekend, and feel totally in a minority: horses are a girl/woman thing -- I am told that in Iceland it is the men who ride. Interesting.

For another, the Icelandic breed is extremely pure. Because of some problems in the twelfth!!! century, Icelanders have prohibited import of horses to their country for the last 800 hundred years. So the stock has been frozen. What's interesting, however, is that rather than collapsing to a single predominant color, Icelandics come in every possible color except appaloosa marking.

The Breeds of Livestock site mentioned above makes this interesting observation:

Because Iceland has no predators, but instead is a country with tremendous environmental danger, such as quicksand, rock slides, rivers with changing currents, the ability to assess a situation rather than the instinct to flee, have been central in the survival of the horse. Therefore, these horses lack the “spookiness” that characterizes most horses. Due perhaps to their lack of fear of living things, they seek strong attachments to people and are quite nurturing and affectionate.

UPDATE: Cowboy.com offers More Links to Horse Breeds.

One general observation, and it applies to human consciousness in general: once we notice something, it is omnipresent.

The web gives full force and opportunity for every human interest. Until six months or so ago (I think I posted on riding back around July 4, 2003), horses were outside my consciousness. Apparently I had rideden as a little boy of ten but I do not think that I had been on a horse (oh, I am not counting a "trail ride" where the horses plod along at a slow walk nore-to-tail) for let's say many decades. Now that I am re-interested in horses, of courses, there are horses everywhere. I notice horse trailers on the freeways, the agent at the airline counter who volunteers to mail my letter (the nearest post box is the other side of "Security") has ridden since childhood, etc etc. And the web is chuck fuill of horsesy stuff. Just no end. Of course it has always been there (always for the past 24 months) but now I notice them and they enrich my life.

Isn't the web great!

From the front -- & all clothed to make a fleece salesperson smile

There were perhaps 500 people attending, well in excess of what the Democratic Party had expected; the organizer had to send out to Kinkos (an American quick-copy chain) for more sign-in sheets. It will be a tussle. GW may yet follow his father as a one-term President. While I can sympathize with him personally, he might keep in mind that it will be for the best interests of the nation.

My precinct went decisively for Kerry: 20 votes out of 36. The balance was "uncommitted" & Kucinich (!) It's not a winner-take-all system at this level so our precinct will send 3 delegates for Kerry and 2 for Kucinich. The few Kucinich people I talked to were sanguine that in the final analysis it will be Kerry and I do not think that they will put up a huge fight at the district level. I hope. I have heard similar from other legislative districts.

As I said, Vote Democrat (rational, sensible, compassionate) but Organize Republican (orderly, disciplined, on message). I think that the Dems are doing it; I heard rants only from the young voters who opined at great and passionate length about integrity and change. Made me think that maybe the voting age should be raised to thirty.

UPDATE: The Seattle Times: Kerry's lead strong in Washington caucuses

Why call it a campus?

Gates Foundation eyes huge new campus in Seattle.

The term "campus" concerns me --- when it comes to building one within a city. It seems to be inappropriate imagery if one is in the process of city-building. And initial imagery influences ultimate design.

Several years ago I wrote about this subject in the specific context of the University of Washington and I think the ideas I set forth there might apply to the Gates Foundation as well. Read this article from The Seattle Times about "Urban" or "Campus". Here is an excerpt:

Campuses are inward-looking, as pastoral as possible and remote from the hustle-bustle of the market. Nonprofit institutions such as colleges, universities and hospitals are inner-directed and prefer to control their own space.

The campus approach calls for buildings set back from the surrounding streets; there is usually limited access, often through a guarded gate. A city's streets have usually been vacated within the campus proper and there is little sense of being in a city, which of course is the whole point. (The word campus derives from a Latin word meaning field.)

Likewise, when an institution seeks to expand, it typically does so by carrying this approach further: spreading out its campus and creating an area of broad lawns, paths and limited auto traffic.

Read the whole thing; I offer some specific advice on how to do it right i.e. how an institution can contribute to a pedestrian-oriented neighborhood. Obviously this is an important project. The Gates is huge and a bell-weather (I suspect) for other foundations so how it presents itself physically will be extremely influential. More personally, I live in Seattle, and I would like to see Seattle continue to evolve as an urban place; The Gates can have an enormous beneficial impact if it does it right. If it does a suburban office park — your typical campus — plunked down in the middle of a city it will be negative.

Mumbo jumbo to you but widom to your neighbor --- what else is new?

I am skeptical of attacks on fools, though I love these round sounds:

Crooked Timber's Mumbo jumbo; The Guardian's Twaddle unswaddled.

The gist of the book upon which these posts revolve is that there are a lot of quacks out there and many who base whatever it is that they are peddling on some non-rational or even anti-rational theory. So be careful.

My comment at CT:

Yes there are a lot of fools roaming the world and opining; some even have their own blogs where they pretend to expertise.

But the medium aside, was it ever any different? Judging from the calamities and stupidities of the past it appears that the foolishness of our own age has a long pedigree.

Let's be skeptical of our current roster of weirdos but let's be skeptical that something brand new is afoot.

While there is always room for one more "call to reason,"  it seems to me that the necessity for such should be no more now than in the past, hence a book which seeks to spotlight the problem of quacks may lead us to a misunderstanding of our age. I do not think that there is any rational, plausible method to prove the truth or falsity of a statement such as "There is more/less cant & stupidity now than there was in _________." (pick-your-year) The data (historical/sociological or whatever) is simply not available. So generalized attacks from left or right (they both take delight in attacking our era) on "the stupidity and cupidity of our age" are mere anecdotal opinion. There is simply no rational basis to make a judgment about the superiority of one era over another. I happen to think that there was never such an enlightened and mentally evolved era as that which we now enjoy. But there is no way to prove it one way or another.

Or is there?

UPDATE: Well perhaps I am too sanguine about the impact of the anti-rationalists of left and right. Read Ian Buruma on The Origins of Occidentalism.

Someone else also likes...

funny signs.

Bring it on.

I'm going to go help my country tomorrow. The first step is to go to a caucus to see if the Democrats can unite around someone who can beat Bush. My rap will be simple: you don't elect the person so much as the party and what we need to do is find the most electable Democrat -- while acknowledging to all of you that Democratic Party is not without its serious flaws. Unfortunately, I have the sinking feeling that enough of my neighbors are Nader/Dean supporters --- who would rather be right than victorious --- so that we may once again hand the Presidency to a minority President. At least that's my fear going in. UPDATE: See, for example, this article from today's daily titled Greens split on whether to support a Democrat to get a sense of Seattle.

Anyway, I needed to know where my precinct meets. Through the magic of the web I Googled Washington State Democrats but they indicated that I had to know my precinct (which is why I went to their site in the first place) but at least they told me that I could go to the Precinct Finder to find it where my precinct meets. So in a matter of perhaps 60 seconds at most, I was able to track down a very obscure bit of information... (it meets in an elemenrary school about two blocks away)...information of course which the ward-heeler of 1900 would have brought to my door along with a nice bottle of wine. But hey! It's a different world. Get used to it.

So I am. And I am energized to go and help as I can to nominate a candidate who can replace the amiable but inept fellow who is now in charge. As faithful readers of this blog will acknowledge, I think I'd like GW Bush -- but as a companion on the links or in a dory floating down the Grand Canyon -- and not as President of The Unisted State of America.

Inspired in part by this post.

The NYT...

...should hire him, if it can.

What Is District Energy?

A colleague enthused to me yesterday about something -- of which I have been aware but only very dimly -- called District Energy.

District energy systems produce steam, hot water or chilled water at a central plant and then pipe that energy out to buildings in the district for space heating, domestic hot water heating and air conditioning. Individual buildings don't need their own boilers or furnaces, chillers or air conditioners. A district energy system does that work for them.

The beauty of a district energy system is that since it serves so many customers from one location, it can accomplish things individual buildings usually cannot. For instance, district energy systems can use a variety of conventional fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas, whichever fuel is most competitive at the time. And because of a district energy system’s size, the district energy plant can also transition to use renewable fuels such as biomass, geothermal, and combined heat and power.

Anyone have any informed opinion?

I can see some advantages, certainly. But I can also some issues such as the need to capitalize a plant for an entire district (including its potential buildout) when its development may stretch over several decades, thus front-loading the costs on the early builders or requiring someone to come in and subsidize the plant in the absence of demand. Conversely, I'd also ask why if there are so many advantages, are we not doing more of it now? (And of course in a sense we are: the power plants which provide electricity to energize resistance heating (i.e. electric baseboards) act as "district energy providers" but of course in a very low-grade and high-cost context.) We have legal structures in place to allow utilities to dig and restore city streets -- my local gas company is doing it all the time, it seems --- so why are not there more installations?

Perhaps "district energy" works reasonably when a major institution establishes a power plant for its own internal needs and then realize that the excess capacity (perhaps installed at very low marginal cost) can be sold to adjacent private property-owners?

Turnabout is fair play

Very interesting post and comments at City of God and city of man, take II.

Speaking of Frank Lloyd Wright...

...you should not miss John Massengale's new blog Veritas et Venustas.

He's got one on Separated At Birth? and also announcement of a course he's teaching on Urban Designs for Ground Zero. I wish he would do it as some sort of extension course using the web because I would like to take part but I cannot fly to NYC mid-week for a month.

Useful fictions

I read Jim Kunstler's commentary in which he says:

...My sense of things is that we are nearing the end of the hyper-turbo industrial cycle. We're going to look back on all the wonders and horrors of the last century and shake our heads in amazement. I was born right in the middle of it: 1948. My generation has lived under conditions of fantastic luxury and ease our whole lives. We have no capacity to imagine things being any other way. An era of tremendous discontinuity lies ahead in which all ideas of normality have to be redefined. The 20th century in retrospect will seem like an epic magic show. Or more properly (as one correspondent reminds me) a movie.

Jim's post prompts me to respond to Brian Micklethwait's polemic on something I had said. At first I was taken aback by Brian's interpretation of my words. Here he is:

Second, doesn't Sucher's argument boil down to saying that might is right? "People get the kind of government they ask for." David Sucher says he believes this. Does he really believe it? I was going to put: Only in America. But the truth is more like: Not even in America. The fact that something hasn't yet happened maybe opens up the possibility that it is impossible, but it doesn't prove it.

We now live in the Age of Democracy, as surely as people in earlier times lived in the Age of Kings, and earlier than that in the Age of Caesars. And democratic assemblies and electorates all of them seize control of "infrastructure", and by the ubiquity of their thieving they suggest that such theft is necessary, and impossible not to have. And their apologists certainly say so, endlessly. (They say similar things about education and healthcare.) I daresay in earlier times people felt much the same about military conscription, capital punishment, interrogating prisoners with torture, and the upper classes raping the women of the lower classes with impunity, all of which are things which still happen a lot but which are not any longer considered inevitable or necessary if civilisation is to keep advancing.

But we shouldn't be diverted from the outrageousness of the claim that, in general, governmentally speaking, people get what they ask for to divert us from the particular debate about whether linear and connected infrastructure of all kinds can or cannot be supplied in a purely free market.

Suppose a democratic assembly existed which had been persuaded that, although it could steal all the infrastructure it wanted to, it nevertheless ought not to. And suppose it further defcided that nothing infrastructural could be done without the consent (purchased freely) of all the property owners in the path of such plans. How would matters then develop? Would the assembly really be obliged to intervene, in order for us to have any running water at all, or any roads or footpaths? Would the concept of "right of way" lead necessarily and inexorably to the democratic equivalent of the King's Highway, which the King (democracy, with taxation money) would then be obliged to look after, because if he didn't no one would.

Well Brian writes so well that by the end of it I was thinking "Yes! What is that guy Sucher talking about!? What nonsense! A free people who --- in the long-run over the course of decades if not centuries --- get the kind of government and society which they themselves create? No way! We are all prisoners of fate, tossed about by a great ocean."

Well yes, that may be true. Who knows? There is no way to know. So to my mind the only question is "What is the most effective stance?" Is it best to assume that we have no power? That there are forces so large and encompassing that we are but pawns? Or --- fiction or not --- is it more useful to assume that within some large parameters we have significant power to form our lives. Fiction or not, which is more useful?

So I come full circle and suggest that Brian has totally misinterpreted my post as a fatalistic acceptance of "what is" as "what must be." No I don't say that at all. Why else would I be blogging if I thought it impossible to sway even a few minds?

But I do say that it is essential and wise, if painful, to accept present and past societies as a fairly accurate reflection --- write large --- of the people who lived inside them. But if you turn it around, that's a very empowering thought. Yes, for example, American slavery reflected the consciousness of the people; it was not forced upon the majority white population; but people did change and did change their society.

So to Jim Kunstler, I would say something similar: if we don't have enough oil, we'll figure it out. And maybe thanks to the rants of guys like him.

Whether it is true or not, it is a useful fiction to believe that we can move the world, if only a few millimeters.