son lux remixes beirut

I mentioned how much I've been enjoying Son Lux a few weeks ago; Pitchfork is hosting his remix of Beirut's "A Sunday Smile", which is pretty great. Not as great as "throw", I don't think, but definitely worth the download.

mommy, there's a crack house in the our cul-de-sac

Those who have been gleefully awaiting the decline and fall of america's suburban empire received a delightful treat in the March issue of the Atlantic Monthly:

"At Windy Ridge, a recently built starter-home development seven miles northwest of Charlotte, North Carolina, 81 of the community’s 132 small, vinyl-sided houses were in foreclosure as of late last year. Vandals have kicked in doors and stripped the copper wire from vacant houses; drug users and homeless people have furtively moved in. In December, after a stray bullet blasted through her son’s bedroom and into her own, Laurie Talbot, who’d moved to Windy Ridge from New York in 2005, told The Charlotte Observer, “I thought I’d bought a home in Pleasantville. I never imagined in my wildest dreams that stuff like this would happen.”"

[the windy ridge subdivision, via google]

Towards the end of the article, Leinberger engages in a bit of interesting speculation about the future of these homes:

"As conventional suburban lifestyles fall out of fashion and walkable urban alternatives proliferate, what will happen to obsolete large-lot houses? One might imagine culs-de-sac being converted to faux Main Streets, or McMansion developments being bulldozed and reforested or turned into parks. But these sorts of transformations are likely to be rare. Suburbia’s many small parcels of land, held by different owners with different motivations, make the purchase of whole neighborhoods almost unheard-of. Condemnation of single-family housing for “higher and better use” is politically difficult, and in most states it has become almost legally impossible in recent years. In any case, the infrastructure supporting large-lot suburban residential areas—roads, sewer and water lines—cannot support the dense development that urbanization would require, and is not easy to upgrade. Once large-lot, suburban residential landscapes are built, they are hard to unbuild.

The experience of cities during the 1950s through the ’80s suggests that the fate of many single-family homes on the metropolitan fringes will be resale, at rock-bottom prices, to lower-income families—and in all likelihood, eventual conversion to apartments."

It would be nice if the article had spent a bit more time exploring these burgeoning dystopias (and the reactions of the shocked homeowners) and little less time developing the standard urban planner's argument about suburbs and density (suburbs are bad, density is good, zoning, tax incentives, and nimbyism distort market demand in favor of large lot development, etc.). [Charlotte's newspaper, the Charlotte Observer, has done exactly that here]. I say this not so much because I disagree with those standard arguments (though they're often pushed in an unseemly fashion by Kunstler-types, I think they're essentially correct), but because the process of decay is much more interesting (and at least as important -- people will be living in those rentals, after all). This flickr set of the Detroit public school's (abandoned) book depository provides an ample demonstration of the potential attractiveness of decay. You can read a follow post by the photographer here, in which the photographer notes some of the danger implicit in romanticizing decay.

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the avalanches, frontier psychiatrist

giant sea spiders and cuttlefish

What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.
- Gerald Manley Hopkins, Inversnaid

"Australian experts taking part in an international program to take a census of marine life in the ocean at the far south of the world filmed and captured specimens from up to 1,981 meters (6,500 feet) beneath the surface, and said many may never have been seen before.

"Some of the video footage we have collected is really stunning -- it's amazing to be able to navigate undersea mountains and valleys and actually see what the animals look like in their undisturbed state," Australian scientist Martin Riddle, voyage leader on the research ship Aurora Australis, said.

Among the bizarre-looking creatures the scientists spotted were tunicates, plankton-eating animals that resemble slender glass structures up to a yard tall "standing in fields like poppies," Riddle said.

"Gigantism is very common in Antarctic waters -- we have collected huge worms, giant crustaceans and sea spiders the size of dinner plates," Riddle added. "

giant sea spiders here (video here)

Meanwhile, off the coast of Australia, scientists study camouflaging cuttlefish:

To use disruptive patterning, cuttlefish need to make sure that their color blocks are on the same scale as the objects around them. Dr. Hanlon has yet to figure out how they measure that.

“They’re doing it in some magical way we don’t yet understand,” he said.

Dr. Hanlon and his colleagues are also puzzled by the many camouflage colors of the cuttlefish, which have a single type of pigment in their eyes. Humans have three.

Experiments in Dr. Hanlon’s lab have shown that they are color blind. They see a world without color, but their skin changes rapidly to any hue in the rainbow. How is that possible?

“That’s a vexing question,” he said. “We don’t know how it works.”

dinner in the sky

inhabitation of the sky seems to be a popular topic at the moment (and why shouldn't it be?); this european company ("dinner in the sky") is certainly capitalizing on the architectural potential of construction equipment in an unusual fashion. one wonders what else might be hung from cranes, temporary or permanent -- residences? gardens? bat-houses? moreover, what happens when the cranes begin to move? or even the trucks that the cranes ascend from? does the city rearrange itself, consciously or unconsciously. perhaps at the whim of the truck operators.

[images from dinner in the sky; see more here]

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magnolia electric co, a little at a time

on torture

I suppose there are three primary reasons to be opposed to the practice of torture:

1. It doesn't work very well (whether by producing false information or by producing adverse effects exterior to the actual act of torture)
2. It debases the society that permits it because it violates some sort of moral law
3. The practice of torturing the guilty inevitably devolves into the practice of torturing the innocent

Since advocates of torture tend not to present a mirrored version of 2 often (that would be, because it is a moral good -- for reasons other than utilitarian reasons, which would be covered by mirrors of 1 and 3), I suppose that 1 and 3 are probably the most useful arguments against torture (though I believe that 2 is the most persuasive, I suspect that most people who strongly agree with 2 are already opposed to the practice).

Kristof's recent NYT article hits both 1 and 3 handily:

"If the Bush administration appointed an Under Secretary of State for Antagonizing the Islamic World, with advice from a Blue Ribbon Commission for Sullying America’s Image, it couldn’t have done a more systematic job of discrediting our reputation around the globe. Instead of using American political capital to push for peace in the Middle East or Darfur, it is using it to force-feed Mr. Hajj.

...

Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pushed last year to close Guantánamo because of its wretched impact on American foreign policy. But they lost the argument to Alberto Gonzales and Dick Cheney. So America spends millions of dollars bolstering public diplomacy and sponsoring chipper radio and television broadcasts to the Islamic world — and then undoes it all with Guantánamo."

and

"After Mr. Hajj was arrested in Afghanistan in December 2001, he was beaten, starved, frozen and subjected to anal searches in public to humiliate him, his lawyers say. The U.S. government initially seems to have confused him with another cameraman, and then offered vague accusations that he had been a financial courier and otherwise assisted extremist groups.

“There is a significant amount of information, both unclassified and classified, which supports continued detention of Sami al-Hajj by U.S. forces,” said Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman, adding that the detainees are humanely treated and “receive exceptional medical care.”

Military officials did acknowledge that Mr. Hajj was not considered a potential suicide bomber and probably would have been released long ago if he had just “come clean” by responding in greater detail to the allegations and showing remorse.

Mr. Hajj’s lawyers contend that he has already responded in great detail to every allegation. One indication that the government doesn’t take its own charges seriously, the lawyers say, is that the U.S. offered Mr. Hajj a deal: immediate freedom if he would spy on Al Jazeera. Mr. Hajj refused."

As a parting (low) blow, I'll note that I suspect that most people who support the practice of torture support it not so much for pragmatic reasons, but out of a desire for revenge against those who have wronged us (a very human desire, but also a very bad desire).

titan descent diagram

those who find the practice of diagramming invigorating will likely be interested in nasa's titan descent data movie (with bells and whistles, as nasa helpfully notes).

what makes this diagram so interesting is that its not merely an exercise in tracking geometric data through visual cues and literally transmitted datapoints, but it also assigns audible translations:

Sounds from a left speaker trace Huygens' motion, with tones changing with rotational speed and the tilt of the parachute. There also are clicks that clock the rotational counter, as well as sounds for the probe's heat shield hitting Titan's atmosphere, parachute deployments, heat shield release, jettison of the camera cover and touchdown.

Sounds from a right speaker go with the Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer activity. There's a continuous tone that represents the strength of Huygens' signal to Cassini. Then there are 13 different chimes - one for each of instrument's 13 different science parts - that keep time with flashing-white-dot exposure counters. During its descent, the Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer took 3,500 exposures.

perhaps tufte's next book will be entitled "the auditory transmission of quantitative data"?

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living legends, play it cool

azuma house

[this is not a particularly coherent collection of thoughts; there's one in here about incrementality and urbanism, and one about courtyards. the only thing that seems to tie them together is the azuma house.]

the impact of a building, can, i think, be roughly divided into the architectural and the urban (this presumes that one accepts the older, less common understanding of 'urbanism' as the study of the summed effects of human settlement). both of these categories can be subdivided (the architectural impacts, in particular, rapidly break down into beauty, meaning, and function).

within a city, scale is one of the most important urban properties of a building. while i would not say that smaller is always better, i do think that a general principle of incrementality can be extracted from the histories of beautiful cities. that is, the quality of a place within a city is improved if growth and building occurs incrementally, and decreased when rapid demolition and construction erase the traces of time, ownership, and decay.

at some point, hopefully i'll explain that a bit better; however, i wanted to say something about incrementality while looking at tadao ando's azuma house, because i think that the azuma house is a great example of an incremental addition in a style of architecture (nearly brutalist) not exactly known for its sensitive urbanism.

[azuma house from street]

the interior courtyard is an architectural pattern that anglos aren't typically likely to construct (admittedly, in part due to climate), but i think this is a great misfortune. ando employs the courtyard to great effect as a light well in the azuma house, but there is something to be said for the inconvenience of passing through the courtyard from room to room of the house, as well (i'm suspicious of the inflated value convenience is assigned in american culture).

[azuma house courtyard]

all pictures are from this website. this entry triggered by archidose's literary dose on ando and azuma. ando makes an excellent point as he explains why he considers the interior courtyard a burden worth bearing:

From a functional viewpoint, the courtyard of the Rowhouse in Sumiyoshi forces the inhabitant to endure the occasional hardships. At the same time, however, the open courtyard is capable of becoming the house's vital organ, introducing the everyday life and assimilating precious stimuli such as changes in nature.

[azuma house courtyard after rain]

this proposal (in flash) for adding lighting to the azuma house also incidentally helps in understanding the house's spatial relationships.

by that point, about forty percent of americans would have lived their entire lives under a president from one of these two families

Ah, democracy inaction.

1When Samuel became old, he made his sons judges over Israel. 2The name of his firstborn son was Joel, and the name of his second, Abijah; they were judges in Beersheba. 3Yet his sons did not walk in his ways but turned aside after gain. They took bribes and perverted justice.

4Then all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah 5and said to him, "Behold, you are old and your sons do not walk in your ways. Now appoint for us a king to judge us like all the nations." 6But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, "Give us a king to judge us."

10So Samuel told all the words of the LORD to the people who were asking for a king from him. 11He said, "These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen and to run before his chariots. 12And he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. 13He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. 14 He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his servants. 15He will take the tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and to his servants. 16He will take your male servants and female servants and the best of your young men and your donkeys, and put them to his work. 17He will take the tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. 18And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the LORD will not answer you in that day."

19But the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel. And they said, "No! But there shall be a king over us, 20 that we also may be like all the nations, and that our king may judge us and go out before us and fight our battles." 21And when Samuel had heard all the words of the people, he repeated them in the ears of the LORD. 22And the LORD said to Samuel, "Obey their voice and make them a king." Samuel then said to the men of Israel, "Go every man to his city."

http://bushclintonforever.googlepages.com/

i promise to stop talking about politics now.