] ] DC1974 [ [

i am (virtually) moving :

2007-09-12T21:49:00.000-04:00

So I'm taking the plunge and moving to WordPress. I expect to have the personal blog continue, plus perhaps two other projects over there. It all depends on how ambitious I'm feeling. And whether I suddenly have a long lost rich uncle that has set up a trust in my name.

communists have the better designers :

2007-09-11T10:24:00.000-04:00

The only conclusion to draw from "terrorist organization logos" is that communists make the better designers. [Link via Kottke]

dilettante, excuse number 2345 :

2007-08-23T14:39:00.001-04:00

Maeda reminds us that being a dilettante is both rewarding and not easy.

When you're green you grow.

When you're ripe you rot.

(not) engaging trolls :

2007-08-15T16:19:00.000-04:00

Today, thanks to the many-to-many communications that are possible in this Web 2.0 world of blogs and social networking, it's very easy for schlock marketing — and as such, the products it pushes — to gain an air of legitimacy. How? Easy: Just start a discussion. By engaging in the debate on a particular subject, both sides in the debate implicitly acknowledge that the subject is worthy of debate; and when one side of a controversy is the side that might ordinarily live on the fringes, the debate works to the advantage of that side regardless of the outcome. That's because all of a sudden, the fringe side of the debate — the voices and positions that had once rightly been relegated to the periphery — gain mainstream recognition. (This particular condition has been observed in the case of the whole "Intelligent Design vs. Evolution" matter, where evolutionary scientists are concerned that engaging in scientific debate with creationists dignifies the creationist position as something worthy of being argued about.)

Further, it's very easy for the purveyors of schlock-marketed products to change the character of the discussion for the worse. Instead of a reasoned back-and-forth which brings out the best of what our socially networked world offers, there frequently results a shouting match, in which he who yells the loudest wins, and in which anyone with a viewpoint at odds with that most loudly expressed is branded a hater, or is labeled as having an agenda, or both.

This quote is about software marketing. But it might as well be about the entire pulbic debate at this point. Particularly politics, but any civic debate, really.

I've noticed that the comments, especially the comments at newspapers and other widely read sites, tend to devolve into the worst wing-nuttery. And I think there is a feeling by some that we need to engage these nuts in a debate. Even if these folks aren't either thank tank operatives or are just kool-aid drinking dittoheads. It doesn't matter. The purpose isn't to reason, it's to stear the debate off course so that people forget what the original topic is and a new meme is introduced into the discourse in general.

comment spam, immigration equality edition :

2007-07-18T21:42:00.000-04:00

To this post about ImEq’s Rachel Tiven on Bill O'Reilly, and the “killer answer” to the fraud question. I said:

The killer answer is that fraud is a problem with immigration, but that’s its much more likely to be a case with immigration between opposite sex couples — by the numbers (there’s more of them) and social stigma. But these types of killer arguments don’t work, because at the core, they don’t want arguments. They want to be right. How many times have you heard that gay people will ruin the institution of marriage? Despite the fact that straight couples have been doing a fine job of that on their own for centuries? Fraud is a red herring brought up people who do not see us as completely human but want to have an argument that sounds politically correct. If they could speak their minds, they would just tell us we don’t count. Is it time for the revolution yet? I’m ready.

And I meant it. The longer I’m in DC, the closer I come to overthrowing the government. Are you with me?

Awesome photostream of Aerial San Francisco :

2007-07-10T07:13:00.000-04:00

I don’t know what or who Telstar Logistics is, but its photostreams at Flickr are amazing. The above is from Low Altitude San Francisco.

And for those Washingtonians, you’ll notice SF doesn’t have a lot of trees. Nikita Khruschev wondered the same thing.

Universities and stable LGBT families :

2007-07-09T12:56:00.000-04:00

I often argue that Universities are the biggest losers in the same-sex civil marriage debate (aka gay marriage). If the creative and educated classes leave for other countries (over same-sex immigration) or other states (for benefits and marriage), the Universities which have a seemingly higher percentage of same-sex couples are particularly hurt in the already competitive marketplace for top-tier educators.

But do Universities also stand to loose from alumni?

Slate makes a case (however ever obliquely — I’m reading between the lines here) for stable, child-filled families:

Alumni with kids are 13 percentage points more likely than alumni without kids to give in any year. The tendency to give rises slowly—by three more percentage points total—through kids' early teens. At about age 14, as mom and dad see their kid's algebra and composition grades, they decide whether he or she will apply to the alma mater. If they decide against, then they need not give extra to grease his way in. But if the kid is legacy material, then the parents might feel a need to show some generosity to Anon U.

I didn’t say this was exact. But it’s a pretty, um, straight line from alumni with families (stability, kids!) are more generous donors. And yet too often, Universities (I’m looking at you dear old U.Va.), sit on the sidelines in this debate.

if raves happened in 1984 :

2007-06-13T08:31:00.000-04:00

New/Nu Rave started in England last year and seems to be spreading. As a former, um, raver I can say this doesn’t look at all like it did in 1994. The neon colors and haircuts are straight up 1984. Which is a fantastic mash-up in my opinion. [Via PingMag.]

this is how a city supports graf :

2007-06-12T06:52:00.000-04:00

DC (despite a long and storied history of important graf culture) has a group of gentrifiers that make their presence known at various local blogs about their hatred of graffiti. Not often do readers get so upset about a topic as much as this one.

SF (who also has a more relevant contemporary arts community, just FYI) often takes a different approach. Like the huge tag (not a mural, but a tag) by SF legend AMAZE that went up before the Haight-Ashbury Street Fair. It was commissioned by the buildings owners and covers the old Gap location. Some more at SF MetBlogs.

(Fun fact: the Gap started in the Haight as a blue jeans and record store, they thought about calling it PAD -- Pants And Discs.)

Sgt Pepper explained :

2007-06-03T20:45:00.000-04:00

Friday marked the fortieth anniversary of the Beattle’s Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. John Timpane of the Philly Inquirer does a very thorough job of explaining the albums importance. It reads quite scholarly. Shockingly at a daily newspaper.

Link via Social Media List and Conversation Agent, who connects the album back to the changes happening in the web sphere.

toward a definition of experience design :

2007-06-01T14:06:00.000-04:00

David Armano begins a conversation about the definition of experience design. Check out the presentation and his post about same.

Minority Report style computing, one step closer :

2007-05-30T16:48:00.000-04:00

MS released Surface (presented above as on what looks like 80s table-top-style video game). Apple has already previewed the iPhone with similar touch surface interaction. I recently presented a concept brief for an museum exhibition that made use of dialogue tables. (That I proposed would interact with RFID tags.)

People seemed to doubt this would work. But here it is all grown up with Surface.

I think we’ll see this a lot more in museum and exhibition presentation settings. More so than even hotels and restaurants as Core77 suggests.

irrelevancy watch :

2007-05-30T11:41:00.000-04:00

As I continue to miss on the ever evolving new media world, I’ve only just found out about lolcats and all the variations. As an amateur anthropologist (hey, I did major in it!), I found Anil Dash’s round up the best (in part because it gets into the structure of the lolcat pidgin). A new form of internet grammar? You decide.

experience design program, cancelled :

2007-05-29T12:03:00.000-04:00

Putting People First reports that a undergraduate program in experience design that was to start in the Netherlands has been cancelled. Apparently there was a lack of interest.

To which I would say, of course there is, no undergraduate has any idea what that major would even be. It’s such a new field (pulling together many existing fields) that it seems silly to start this as bachelors program. Build up a strong masters program and let that be the magnet that seeds the interest for an undergraduate program.

Let’s hope someone else sees this and creates the same program elsewhere or retools and relaunches at Utretcht.

a tale of two (East Tennessee) cities :

2007-05-25T22:43:00.000-04:00

What Chattanooga got right 23 years ago, Knoxville has only just figured out: Redevelopment happens when there is community buy-in from the start. Every get rich quick, redevelopment scheme (A World’s Fair!? A domed downtown!?) failed in Knoxville because of top down decision making.

Knoxville has less far to pull itself up (it was not a dirty, dyeing steel town like Chattanooga), but they are still behind and have made some irreparable planning decisions in the meantime. MetroPulse does the round up.

(Also, Chattanooga’s success pre-dates Web 2.0 by two decades. For you kids that think collaboration and distributed decision-making is some new idea.)

visualization :

2007-05-25T09:54:00.000-04:00

Kottke writes today about what he cynically (or snarkily?) calls “self-deception.” I think it’s more accurately called visualization. And how that leads to better living. I think there’s some rule self-help book out right now about something similar. I could Google it, but so could you. The science seems to support the theory though, according to Kottke.

Crime Fueled by, um, Ecstacy? :

2007-05-22T11:16:00.000-04:00

A crime wave has hit the once bucolic Lakeshore Avenue District fueled by the (formerly) peace-love-unity-respect, rave drug Ecstacy? Apparently so.

Police have also identified a troubling new trend: Some of the young suspects are users of the drug ecstasy.

Perhaps it’s the thirty dollar a tab designer price.

SF’s daytime ‘idle’ :

2007-05-21T16:54:00.000-04:00

I was always amazed by this to. I used to see all the fabulous people walking around in the middle of the day. When I first moved there and couldn't find work. I wanted to go up to them and ask “what do you do?”

Someone just did.

Best answer:

“If you ask 100 girls for $10, that&rduo;s $1,000, that's rent,” he explained logically.

Ahh, the California lifestyle.

canada’s missing gravity found! :

2007-05-16T11:23:00.000-04:00

Which has led (as science discovery often does) to other kinds of new data.

From HowStuffWorks:

While the mystery surrounding Canada's gravitational anomalies has been put to rest, the study has wider implications. Scientists involved in the Harvard-Smithsonian Center study were amazed that they were able to see how the Earth looked 20,000 years ago. And by isolating the influence of the ice sheet's rebound effect, researchers better understand how convection affects gravity and how continents change over time. Finally, the GRACE satellites have provided scientists with data on many ice sheets and glaciers. By examining climate change that took place thousands of years ago, scientists may gain a better understanding of how global warming and rising sea levels are affecting our planet today and what impact they will have on our future.

Read the whole thing for additional fun-facts to know and tell.

future cool :

2007-05-16T10:00:00.000-04:00

There is a simple, retro-future sensibility to Studio Kanna’s work. It mixes-up modernism with ornament and a and personalization. Cool. [Featured at PingMag]

Why I miss San Francisco :

2007-05-12T12:39:00.000-04:00

No other city would consider a transgender woman as president of the police commission. Oh and she‘s the CEO of a $12M women-centric sex toy company. Sigh.

Not Dead Yet :

2007-05-12T12:33:00.000-04:00

When I started this second blog I had visions of long-form essays, infused with humor and humility. Or something.

It’s clear that that is not working as I just avoid posting altogether if I can’t come up with at leas 150 words.

Beginning now, DC1974 is moving to a Kottke-style blog of links and short thoughts.

Please thank you for your patience during this adjustment.

comment spam, memory lane edition :

2006-11-06T12:28:00.000-05:00

I recently discovered Grant McCraken’s blog at the “intersection of anthropology and economics”.

In response to a post about memory in the digital photo era, I recalled that:

At my grandmother’s funeral recently, we had all the photo albums that my grandfather (who passed several years before) on hand. My grandfather was obsessively organized. Each photo album was broken down into 10 year spans, and each photo was labeled with “who” and “when” and “where.”

It was a fantastic process for all of us to look through those albums. My grandfather wasn’t particularly sentimental, though, so there was no cataloguing of "why." The photo captions had all the emotion of a booking photo. I found this fascinating.

I also found it fascinating about what my grandfather had thought to keep. He had spent his entire working life in sales for Pontiac Motors, so in addition to the family/holiday photos there were also photos of the things like the parts room in a Pontiac dealership in Duluth, MN.

If I ever go back and get my MA, I think I'd most like to study some form of visual anthropology. I think that not only the way that we frame our subjects, but also the subjects we choose to frame says enormous amounts about our individual and social cultures. Our photographic history is as important as an oral or written history for understanding our ways of seeing and thus who we are.

comment spam, patriarchy edition :

2006-10-17T11:39:00.000-04:00

Not this debate still. We haven’t moved beyond talking about gender, because we keep forgetting the problems still exist.

To Speak-Up I said:

How does this “just happen?”

I think it goes like this, men were planning this conference and have decided what is “cool.” Tokion is about as boy-design crazy as I can imagine a magazine to be: it's all b-boy and j-pop and boy indie rock and graffiti — an aesthetic of urban tastes that has been consistently defined by its male participants.

So the organizers (male) went looking for women that fit their aesthetic criteria (their male sense of cool) and the only came up with a handful. I can bet you know that those women have already adopted the swagger of the patriarchy in order to fit into the urban cool aesthetic. And that list apparently was small because the club of urban cool has men as its gatekeepers.

And they didn’t at any point decide that “hey, we don't have a broad enough perspective here lets talk to some of the people outside our bubble about recruiting more women — lets talk to Ellen Lupton or the Wooster Collective or Lorainne Wild or Louise Sandhaus or whomever about filling in the gabs in our boy-dominated perception of the world.”

So of course it was a circle jerk, you don’t invite chicks to one of those. It would defeat the purpose — creating a conference to reinforce our patriarchy.

That's how it “happens.”

international airport montello :

2006-09-26T17:05:00.000-04:00

Airports are small cities. (The parallels are endless and thanks to Tom Hanks, we know you can live in one should you be forced to because of international strife.)

International Airport Montello takes a small city and turns it into an airport in an on-going installation project. The desert is amazing setting and the quirkiness of desert dwellers works in tandem with this project. The “let’s put on a show” - slash - elementary school make-believe aesthetic bring humor to something that would otherwise be over analyzed for all types of conceptual-art meaning.

Link via w-m-m-n-a.

new urbanism’s state of flux :

2006-08-07T20:45:00.000-04:00

DC has changed considerably in 6 years I spent on the West Coast (1998-2004). And not always for the better. Some of that can be blamed on the rise of big government Republicanism — add thousands of Texas lobbyists and the 20 y.o. interns that ~~blow~~ work for them and see what your city turns into.

But there is something else at play here: the quaintness of new urbanism. See StrangeHarvest.com.

Or read the money quote:

This lightweight urbanism is driven by private money on a mission to create an individual dream. Curiously, these individual dreams add up to a collective vision. It undoubtedly harnesses the most powerful force in urbanism – desire, aspiration, identity, community all bound together. This period has had an ironic effect as the qualities once associated with metropolitan living have vanished: diversity, opportunity. Instead, the centre has becomes a wickerbasket wielding village fantasy full of specialty cheese shops.

this is how you fight crime :

2006-08-04T20:26:00.000-04:00

DC’s mayor Anthony Williams sees ugly crime happening in good neighborhoods and declares a mockable “crime emergency.” And ushers in a hole boatload of get tough police state programs and proposals: curfews, CCTV in residential neighborhoods and thousands of extra cops.

Oakland, California, has also seen an upsurge in crime this summer. Their response?

Police and city officials Thursday unveiled their latest plan to get a handle on Oakland's surging crime rate, one that would offer the city's 100 worst criminals a chance to turn their lives around — or else.

“Every cop in Oakland will know who these guys are,” Mayor Jerry Brown said. “These are the people who have been wreaking havoc on our neighborhoods.”

Police Chief Wayne Tucker acknowledged it seems contradictory to crack down on crime by giving people who cause trouble another chance, with offers of job training, substance abuse treatment and other help.

“But it works,” he said, citing the success of similar programs in Chicago and Boston.

Instead of fronting like some right-wing thug, Oakland’s Jerry Brown takes the responsible compassionate way out. And this from a guy who is running for statewide office as Attorney General.

If ever there was a time to suck up to California’s right wing, it would be now.

What’s Anthony Williams’ excuse? He’s not running for anything.

Man, I miss California.

copywriting gone wrong :

2006-07-25T10:32:00.000-04:00

From a new development in DC:

It is a fortunate contradiction that a building so stately and sophisticated can offer its residents an undeniably warm and inviting ambiance.

Fortunate? Maybe you mean unfortunate. Or not. I’m not actually sure at all what you mean. But that’s definitely no way to begin.

Oh but wait. It gets worse:

Much like the grand southern mansions of bygone days, The Columbia is both majestic and wonderfully welcoming.

Those “grand southern mansions” by which you don’t mean plantations? Of the “bygone days” of slavery?

Welcoming indeed.

comment spam, smart and dcx edition :

2006-07-21T20:20:00.000-04:00

If this vanity project here at DC1974 is at some level about collecting my thoughts. I need to save my comment made at Jalopnik about DCX and Smart:

The only way that Smart is going to work is if DCX pulls a Saturn. Only with a twist. They are going to have to be a network of heavily branded urban dealerships where the shopping experience mirrors the name. And there is pretty much no association with other manufacturers in DCX family. The dealerships should sort of be like Starbucks but with cars -- small, hip, located within major upscale shopping districts: think North Michigan in Chicago or Friendship Heights/Chevy Chase in DC. Smart is going to have to bring on someone like Crispin Porter or Modernista to do some viral marketing and branding away from traditional auto sales. Jerry-rigging these into Dodge dealerships in suburban auto malls is not the right way to position this brand. In my not so humble opinion.

It actually sounds like I know what I’m talking about. Kinda.

what michael said to bruce, or spec work smackdown :

2006-06-24T15:26:00.000-04:00

I’ve been sitting on this post (which basically means that I write about it in my head) for a little bit too long, but it keeps coming up.

Bruce Nussbaum detailed the development of the Business Weeks’ innovation quarterly, INside Innovation. Among other things, he detailed a concepting process that involved design firms helping with the brainstorming process.

This has been met with strong reactions.

Of the blogs that I read regularly, Michael Beirut gave this process the firmest tongue lashing. Labelling the process, “spec work”, he suggested in no uncertain terms that this was the beginning of the end (or “the road to hell”).

There also have been some angry words about the imagined horror that is “spec work” at Be A Design group. In a response to a post on gig posters no less.

I think everyone on the graphic design side of this is wrong.

Graphic designers have a very quaint notion of their work as the product only. That their intellectual property is only the printed piece, the programmed web site, the package, logo or what have you.

And if we, as designers, start churning that out gratis before we even have a signed contract that we have basically become whores. (Or sluts, I suppose, as the saying goes: you’re not a whore if you do it for free.)

Industrial designers, and architects before them realized, that their intellectual property goes beyond the final mechanicals, or starts before it, with the process.

Any chance to engage the audience in the design and development process —fast prototyping (as IDEO calls it) or an architectural charette —is a chance to refine theat process, develop collaboration skills and put on a little bit of a promotional show.

In the end, whatever is produced is just a result of the process. And the process is what you own. And what, should a client decide to go forward, you own and for which you charge. The pieces developed in a public brainstorm are merely byproducts. In fact, the pieces you develop with a client are also byproducts. Your intellectual capital, your process, your way of seeing that’s what people will pay for. Dangling preposition and all.

No one would claim that industrial designers or architects have less status now then they did several years ago. And yet, increasingly they have moved more and more of their development into the public realm. And each and every time they do this: they refine that which they actually own and for which they make money — their process.

Graphic designers increasingly struggle with irrelevance and I think this is part do to trying to hide the mechanics of the process. And to focus on the product as the thing that we are actually selling. (Or the only thing.)

the trouble with Washington via Anna Wintour :

2006-05-31T12:35:00.000-04:00

She’s talking about England. But she might as well be saying DC:

‘Washington is frightened of fashion. I think the British government has the same ... People in political office tend to get extremely nervous about fashion because they feel it's frivolous. And they don't want to look too elitist or too silly or whatever it may be. And, frankly, it makes me extremely angry, because it's such a huge industry for Britain and for every country, and I feel that politicians should embrace it, rather than step away from it. And I wish the British government would get more involved in fashion and turn up at some of the shows or have people to Downing Street. I know that Blair did that at the beginning and, I think, got criticised for having some people there who weren't considered serious, and I feel that is so insulting to the industry, because it does so much for Britain. There are all these huge talents coming out of the country; they ought to be celebrating it.’

Now imagine, if unlike London, the city’s raison d’etre was ONLY politics. And that, my friends, is DC. And pretty much why it sucks to be interested in or work in the arts and design and live in Washington.

homoerotic image of the day :

2006-05-19T10:34:00.000-04:00

Naval Academy freshmen grapple with a 21-foot obelisk greased with lard. The first to the top will be the first class member to become an admiral, tradition holds.

A Slippery Climb From Freshman to 1st Admiral.

a moment of silence :

2006-04-25T14:24:00.000-04:00

1974 has been quiet lately, I’ve been working on my portfolio site and updating both my resume and my CV. I have been sitting on a post about making art museums more accessible. And will have that up before too long.

In the meantime, I just read at Kottke that Jane Jacobs has passed to that great city in the sky.

Death and Life of Great American Cities is one of the most dog-eared books I own. It took me months to read it, just because each paragraph was revelatory. Although she spent her final years in Canada, she was as American as can be: a self taught sage.

May she rest in peace.

hiding :

2006-04-05T22:23:00.000-04:00

Um. So I’m not dead. Yet.

Amongst other things: grandma died (eulogy post TK), crazy busy at work and updates to my personal site.

Check it out. Per an earlier suggestion the CMYK values link to various (TK) portions of the website. Right now that includes one video. Plus, the copy is cheekier. Since, if I stay in advertising I’t want to be in B2B and B2G forever. The consumer side likes cheeky, right? Right!? One video up, too, from a gerund piece (this one is Counting) perhaps I can at least do some art again.

More updates soon, I promise.

now this is a speaker line-up :

2006-03-20T18:14:00.000-05:00

Jonathan Ive, Jeff Goodby, Claudia Kotchka, Isaac Mizrahi? If you are near Pasadena, go to this conference.

UPDATE: Jesus, somehow I missed the other bold faced names: Dan Neil, Stefan Sagmeister, Jimmy Wales, Dave Eggers. It’s like the guest list for the dinner party of my dreams.

Dammit. Perhaps Davey G. is right, I do need to be in L.A.

stock photos, looking classy :

2006-03-15T13:39:00.000-05:00

Thanks to Core77 for pointing me in the direction of these stock photos of the latest in technology circa the Bay of Pigs.

Having spent the last few weeks doing in this order: 1.) looking at stock photos of people with servers for an AT&T campaign and 2.) spending a weekend looking through my family's bountiful collection of photo albums including my grandfather at auto shows in the 1960s — its nice to see these two worlds come crashing together in the best way possible.

(The worst way possible would have been a bountiful collection of stock photos of auto parts. Or something.)

comment spam, america is art edition :

2006-03-09T14:29:00.000-05:00

Almost did it again. Got. To. Remember. To. Post. Comments. On. My. Blog. (Note to self.)

DCist writes about the America is Art project by “two graduate students from an art school in San Francisco”. Thinking perhaps it was my alma mater or the other equally well thought of school. I followed the link. Turns out it’s two graduate students at the Academy of Art University.

So what say me?

Let’s be clear. The Academy of Art is a for-profit insitution that is more than a little hacky. Its full of a lot of foreign kids who don’t understand the American system of higher education. And who saw “San Francisco” and “art” in the back of a magazine and thought “hey that would be cool”. It’s got as much cred as business school at Devry. Don’t expect to walk your way into that creative director job at a Fallon or Pentagram from their.

Just sayin’.

forget kids, this is a great idea for adult filmmakers :

2006-03-09T12:10:00.000-05:00

I’ve always struggled with the virtual world of organizing information, especially when working with sound or digital video. My (admittedly inelegant) solutions have always, thusly, left something to be desired. I’ve taken to cutting up audio transcripts and moving them around. Attempted to use PowerPoint slides. And of course, writing scene descriptions on Post-Its or index cards.

All in the hopes of creating something more 3D. Something that I could hold in my hand and move around and not worry about waiting for my computer to save something. Or creating several different versions of a file all with different version numbers. Sketching works nice, but then you get involved with dealing with how detailed the sketches should be and other roadblocks.

The best named blog ever, we make money not art, has found a simpler solution from two Japanese media artists (of course).

It’s for kids. Allegedly. But since when does toy-and-cartoon-obsessed Japan worry about what is age-appropriate?

comment spam, moco county edition :

2006-03-09T08:45:00.000-05:00

So instead of, you know, updating this site regularly, I’m always leaving comments out there at other people’s sites. Like, all the time.

Well, no more.

Today, starts a new “feature” wherein I take what would have been a comment somewhere else and leave it here. It’s not like I was going to engage in the lengthy discussions at Washington Monthly or DCist anyway.

In today’s Morning Roundup DCist links to a story about how Montgomery County (MoCo) is banning MySpace access from school.

In the Comments someone called “Reid” says this:

It's funny that MoCo is getting accused of invading someone's privacy for BLOCKING MySpace. That generation is growing up without a clue what privacy even means ("Like, OMG, check out how boring my social security number is..."). If anything MoCo is trying to teach them something about privacy.

Couldn't they ban it just on the good old fashion "ban any trend" trick they used to pull when I was a kid with flash in the pan trends like yo-yos or those snap bracelet things.

What say me? How about:

What if losing our fixation on privacy might be a good thing.

Right now there is a lot of money to be made in keeping things private and revealing the private things that people don’t want made public. I’m looking at you gossip rags and newspaper columns. And at you data security firms and political advocates that use ’right to privacy’ as nothing more than a fundraising tool. Scaring the base about everything from Universal Healthcare to the Right to Abortion. Perhaps, we spend a little bit too much effort and time on separating the personal and the public.

Just sayin’.

and the bonus is he’s cute :

2006-03-08T14:35:00.000-05:00

Nussbaum tipped me (and his readers, I am not as of yet, in his address book) to the fact that Malcolm Gladwell (of The Tipping Point, Blink fame) is blogging.

The bonus is he’s cute. In that geeky New Yorker way. (Jew ‘fro and all!)

Yum.

whiter whites, brighter brights :

2006-03-06T19:03:00.000-05:00

So Partner of 1974 has a thing for the phrase “bleached out” to mean, basically, bourgeois. Being the aryan one of the duo, this has previously bothered me. It seemed, well, a little prejudiced against us of the fairer skin. Like all us honkey’s were all bleached out mofo’s or something. (And yes, that is possibly the most bleached out string of words I could come up with. You should have heard me actually say it.)

Then this morning I saw this in the Post. And I began to understand why bleached out is the only phrase that will do.

some blogs have a theme :

2006-02-27T12:14:00.000-05:00

Themes are so focused.

again, Dan Savage hero-worship :

2006-02-24T12:18:00.000-05:00

I love this man.

And if I were his type, I’d totally move to Seattle and throw myself at his feet. (Sorry, Partner of 1974.)

From a recent column:

“This is not really a question about sex, but I couldn't think of any other gay person who could give me a reasonable answer: Am I a homophobe if I make certain jokes regarding gayness? For instance, if I say, "The Olympics are gay," or ask, "Why are you so gay?" I don't feel as though I'm a homophobe. I know and like gay people, and I'm for gay civil rights and gay marriage. Also, if I hear somebody call a homosexual person names in an angry or blatantly derogatory manner, I get upset. So can I call my buddy gay if he tells me he uploaded a Phil Collins CD onto his computer, or should I just call him a dumbshit instead? —Fine With Fags, Really

“Officially, FWFR? It's so not okay to use "gay" as a synonym for lame. When you use "gay" like that, you're reinforcing a cultural prejudice against gay people—I mean duh, right? You may not be a homophobe, but using that expression is homophobic, and when you use it, you're helping to sustain the prejudice that deprives your gay friends of their civil rights and marriage rights.

“Unofficially, FWFR? I don't care what you do. Most of the gay people I know use "that's so gay" the same way you do, and the few times I've overheard strangers using the expression, people who may or may not have been gay, I had to concede the point: The thing they were tagging as so gay was, in fact, so gay.

“Finally, FWFR, a buddy who uploads a Phil Collins CD onto his computer isn't a dumbshit, he's a douchebag. Please make a note of it.”

Previously: Dan Savage is my hero

embiggening

2006-02-22T13:22:00.000-05:00

What is often derisively referred to as the “Super-sizing of America” (because we Americans are also stupid and can’t remember our cultural references or how to pronounce fancy words) should actually be derisively referred to as the “embiggening of America”.

Since as an American, I am stupid and can’t remember how to spell, I had to look this word up. Which led me to possibly the best Google find I’ve made since at least yesterday: The List of neologisms on the The Simpsons at Wikipedia.

Check it out yourself. And revel in car holes and 40 rods to the hogshead.

he’s so best :

2006-02-05T15:37:00.000-05:00

The septuagenarian Edgar S. Woolard Jr., a former board-member at Apple, explains how Steve Jobs works and how he won’t change much at Disney.

And sounds a little like a 14-year-old valley girl.

The best example from the “old-money, patrician” and former CEO of DuPont:

So the comparison is so nonvalid.

Oh my god, Steve Jobs is the best CEO ever!!! Ah, how the patrician have fallen.

portfolio updates :

2006-02-05T15:23:00.000-05:00

I’ve been working on updating my online portfolio (and generally thinking about what I want from a career and how I want my work to be presented).

The first round of changes ~~are~~ is viewable here. I haven’t yet added some of my most recent work, yet, nor have I figured out if I want to include some of my writing and video pieces.

UPDATE: Verb agreement. Who knew.

separated at birth :

2006-01-27T12:54:00.000-05:00

This post at Jalopnik got me thinking that I haven’t done a separated at birth, well, since I started getting plagiarized by Autoblog.

As for the Chevy Malibu Maxx, well inspiration comes from odd places, but an Austin Ambassador? No wonder GM is in trouble.

the SUV, officially over :

2006-01-24T15:00:00.000-05:00

Forget high gas prices and rollover rates. Or even crossovers.

The new release of Hoover’s new Sport Utility Vacuum marks the official end of the of the SUV.

From the official PR statement:

“This new addition answers the call of consumers looking for seamless cleaning without interruption,” said Dave Baker, vice president and general manager, Hoover. “The Hoover Z bagless upright allows users to move from cleaning hard floors to carpet, and then vacuum draperies and extend to the top of a flight of stairs, all without the need to switch to different vacuums or stop the cleaning process . . .”

Wow, that's more off-roading than the Hoover owner gets in his/her Jeep Commander.

happy pills indeed :

2006-01-19T06:12:00.000-05:00

Bristol-Myers Squibb and Gilead Sciences today announced that a once-a-day pill could be ready soon. They have been working to combine the most popular AIDS (or Aids, if your British) drugs into a single pill. These are the very drugs that I am on. I recently switched to Gilead’s Viread and Emtriva combination pill (which cut my co-pay by $30 a month). The other drug in combination therapy was Brisol-Myers’ Sustiva (oh, you of the fabulous dreams). That will be ready soon. This will cut my co-payments to $240 a year total from $480. SInce I’m scrounging around now to pay for this months’ pills, the thought of saving $20 a month is very happy one indeed.

safari feeds :

2006-01-03T13:53:00.000-05:00

I haven’t yet explored combining my two blogs and looking at a different host. I don’t even feel like I’ve even finished my Christmas holiday.

As a space holder: my thoughts on RSS feed integration in Apple’s Safari web browser.

At home, I use NetNewsWire Lite to aggregate the sites with RSS feeds that I regularly check for updates. For something different, and to keep from installing unauthorized software at work, I thought I’d give the feed integration in Safari a spin.

(I’m not all that honest an employee. Afterall, I’m writing this quote on work time. Oh, and I recently embezzled $3M. j/k.)

So far, I’m impressed.

I especially like the ability to expand views in multiple ways: just a headline or a whole paragraph; one day, one week or one month; etc. And to sort by title, source, or new.

My one quibble is bookmarking. I have to either have a separate folder for all my RSS feeds, or keep the RSS feeds in the same folders as the main sites.

This means that, for instance, in the toolbar folder entitled “Mac/Design News” I have a list that includes two listings for Core77.com, two for Design Observer, two for NussbaumOnDesign, two for Kottke, etc.

If I don’t want to look at the RSS feed I now I have to sort through a menu that is almost twice as long.

Since Safari automatically detects a syndicate feed when visiting an HTML site. It seems like Safari should be able to do the same from the bookmarks. Or otherwise combine them.

This would allow both the web browser to be truly integrated with RSS reader.

As it stands right now, it just makes a mess.

thinking about making some changes :

2005-12-22T11:12:00.000-05:00

So, we here at oneninesevenfour are thinking about making some changes.

I’ve become enamored with the Open-Source WordPress project.

Plus I've been reading over my posts from my original blog and thinking that I want this latest endeavor to be continue that train of thought. Or thoughts.

I suspect that part of my holiday vacation will be spent trying out WordPress and then merging the two blogs.

Look for more news as it happens.

mac apps for the little things :

2005-12-22T11:02:00.000-05:00

Any of us who spend anytime at VersionTracker know there are about 5 gazillion apps for by small developers for OSX. About three-fifths of these are pure shite.

Separating the wheat from the chaff is daunting. I keep an eye on the blogosphere to do it for me.

Rob Griffiths writes today at MacCentral about a little app to improve the not-as-great-as-it-should-be Services menu: Service Scrubber.

Turns out that app’s writer, Peter Maurer, has some other useful tools.

Check his site out here.

de Tocqueville reminds us :

2005-12-19T22:26:00.000-05:00

The Religious Right Watch (whose logo leaves something to be desired) reminds us that de Tocqueville never stops giving (200 years after his seminal look at America).

save us from the malls :

2005-12-16T10:59:00.000-05:00

Through the DCist links section, I discovered Richard Layman's blog about planning.

Richard is a DC-based community activist and planner, who I know from name only.

He is a frequent contributor to the Columbia Heights Yahoo! Group. (A group who's underlying banter is so full of bile, that I actually had to unsubscribe, it was angering me so much. But that's a topic for later, or a Washington City Paper Article [$].)

Richard weighs in on the loss of locally-owned businesses in Ferndale (a Detroit suburb) and Dupont Circle.

As someone who grew up in a far Western suburb of Chicago that had and continues to have a thriving downtown of almost exclusively locally-owned businesses, my interest in planning issues has often surrounded this very topic: how do you beat the Wal-Marts of the world at their own game? Geneva’: marketing.

I also lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for many years. San Francisco politics, such as they are, offers another option: ban everything.

San Francisco has banned coffee shops in certain neighborhoods, attempted to keep out Home Depot and continued to ban chain stores from specific neighborhoods.

This works well, in some twisted way, in San Francisco, which has a distinct distaste for all things chained (while at the same time being the home of The Gap, Levi Strauss, Williams Sonoma and their spawn).

This course approach doesn't mean that people don't shop at chain stores. Heck you can head down 680 or take BART to Colma and find all the chain stores you're missing in SF. And people do, Colma would be just the city of the dead, if it weren't for the exodus of San Francisco shoppers and their tax dollars.

The marketing option, as mentioned by Richard. Geneva, IL, which now sports such chain stores at Home Depot, Old Navy and Applebee’s, is also considered the granddaddy of all Illinois summer festivals, Swedish Days.

The annual “Midsommer” festival (now more upscale with the addition of foreign words!) which draws hundreds of thousands to the city of only about 20,000 has led to the creation of seasonal festivals for fall (Festival of the Vine) and the Winter (Christmas Walk and House Tour).

Festivals are common draw in the Illinois to get people out of their homes and cars, but Geneva is unique for being one of the first (Swedish Days is over 50 years old) and for the size of the city (Geneva until the mid-90s had less than 10,000 residents).

Many of the same stores that I worked in as high schooler are still downtown. In fact, sometimes I feel like I grew up in the 1950s (and not the equally banal 1980s) as my childhood was spent riding my bike downtown to shop in the toy section of the five and dime. Or get ice cream at the local ice cream parlor.

Other ideas that have only killed the small downtowns of the America — pedestrian malls, covered sidewalks, out-of-scale malls — forget the basic tenant of marketing: play to your strengths.

In Geneva’s case that was unique stores, a unique experience and the open air environment that is ideal for festivals. The Chamber and Third Street Merchants associations were smart enough early on to realize that people weren’t going to the mall for the air-conditing. The were going because of marketing, common store hours and free parking.

Saving the independent businesses doesn’t require crazy redevelopment schemes. Just old fashioned chutzpah.

from the WDITOT files :

2005-12-16T09:07:00.000-05:00

WDITOT (Why didn't I think of that?)

A previous version of my blogging prowess (uh-hum), I looked at information mapping.

Mapping was a theme that ran through my senior BFA work. (The blog as a map of my thinking was one project. Get it?)

Three years later in the midst of the blogger revolution, information aesthetics put a name on it and blogs on it regularly.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Edward Tufte’s website. He doesn’t update it enough to feed my hunger. And oddly, I find it kind of hard to navigate. Especially in terms of finding new content.

in an alternative lifetime :

2005-12-08T11:10:00.000-05:00

In one of my many alternate universes, I studied fashion design.

Project Runway began last night on Bravo! There is an interesting profile of all the contestants over at Fashion Wire Daily. (Is this post gay enough yet?)

Of particular interest is contestant Diana Eng’s web-based DIY fashion program I Heart Switch.

The other alternate universe of mine is in love with strange technology and interactive environments.

Check it out. It’s like ReadyMade + web TV.

really? :

2005-12-01T22:33:00.000-05:00

I like still pretending I’m an artist. Although, I haven’t figured out what that means in this city/arts community that I don’t really understand nor have any artist friends. To keep up the ruse, I read DC Art News, though.

He's got the list for ‘06 Whitney Biennial up. How can it be that he doesn’t know who Jim O’Rourke is? And he’s the pulse of DC art?

Jane Jacob’s is right, unfortunately :

2005-11-04T19:20:00.000-05:00

I’m a fan of Jacob’s. I devoured Life and Death of Great American Cities.

(Okay, not devoured, it took me like two years, but I was taking lots of notes, dog-earing pages and writing in the margins!)

Writing about the U.S., she predicted that the suburbs immediately outside of the center cities would fall into disfavor with a buying public that was continually looking for more land and bigger houses. These suburbs were ill-equipped to handle the influx of poor people that would eventually occupy them. They (the suburbs not the people) lacked pocket parks, low-rise apartments that oversaw the street, walkable streets and other marks of well-designed urban places that become, in effect, self-policing by design. She was worried that the isolated design of these suburbs would work poorly in conjunction with social ills of less-well-off communities. Thus, they require a heavy police state to protect the towns from the sorts of ills from which the town should naturally protect itself.

The riots outside of Paris this week have, unfortunately, underscored her thinking.

Paris has a ring of suburbs built after the war using the prevailing “wisdom” of modernism of the time: large apartment buildings isolated from each other in park-like settings and dependent on the car for transportation.

The talking-heads are going on about the lack of assimilation of France’s poor minorities as to blame for the violence?

But how are you to assimilate if you are stuck in a housing block isolated from the country around you? New York’s immigrants didn’t assimilate by moving to suburban housing estates. They lived in crowded conditions, near stores and transit and the cultural life of the major cities.

The immigrant gang problems in suburban Los Angeles and Washington, DC, only seem like Jacob’s thinking is coming to U.S. as our increasingly gentrifying cities can no longer find room for the poor.

The call of urban gentrification of the ’90s was “look at Paris.”

Yes look.

sigh :

2005-10-26T21:44:00.000-04:00

I can’t tell whether I’m attracted to these hot young real estate moguls.

Or perhaps I’m just annoyed/jealous at another MSM-alleged “trend” that I’m not apart of.

Like I even know how I’m going to pay to replace my blown car tire.

Damn them and their commercial real estate money.

fall reading list :

2005-10-26T17:50:00.000-04:00

I like to think that I can get through the stack of nonfiction books near my bed — the 9/11 Commission Report, On Holiday, a swedish anthropologist’s look at the history of vacationing in the U.S. and Europe.

But since I’m convinced that no one else actually read the Report, despite all those weeks on the best seller list, I needed to read something fiction for creativity’s and sanity’ sakes.

Browsing through N.O.’s bookshelf I found No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai. Confused as I am sometimes about his mind and the Japanese condition, I started reading.

As a side note, N.O. reads older Japanese books in English as the language is more contemporary than the original Japanese text. Japanese of only a half-century ago is as foreign to him as English from four centuries ago is to English speakers.

As often happens, though, I’m finding the Kafka-esque book is telling me more about myself than about him.

It’'s be a quick if depressing read. A needed break from consumerist holidays and terroism. More tk as I discover it.

I don't write the stuff :

2005-10-20T12:31:00.000-04:00

What have I been working on? Laying out things that include lines like this:

Increasingly, large organizations are requiring real-time or zero-latency integration solutions that utilize mainframe-based events, data, and transaction resources to solve business challenges.

Oh... increasingly.

Huh?

three-way on a pumpkin :

2005-10-20T09:58:00.000-04:00

I've been A.W.O.L. -- nasty awful cold followed by a swamped week at work.
So to tide you, my fair readers, over and in honor of this month's holiday. I give you a ghost gang-bang.

[UPDATE: Jesus, you link to a Halloween store and they change all their inflatables to Christmas the minute the clock the clock says November. So, I’ve uploaded a more different ghost gang-bang. Apparently, group sex is quite popular in the ghost community.]

instamatic :

2005-10-12T16:46:00.000-04:00

Yeah, it’s totally a geeky art school fascination of mine, but I have no less than four Polaroid camera's at home. (And yes, I realize that the Instamatic is a Kodak product.)

I'm particularly fond of my iZone, whose less than complete automation allows for fun with double exposures.

The kids over at Polanoid are out to create the:

We are building the biggest Polaroid-picture-collection of the planet to celebrate the magic of instant photography.

Now I know have something to do with those boxes of Polaroids in my office. (Now if I could only think of something to do with all the medicine bottles I’ve saved.)

the ikea matrix :

2005-10-07T10:25:00.000-04:00

IKEA goes Matrix style with it’s native Swedish site to hawk kitchen cabinets. Click here. Link via Speak-Up.

10,000 sitcom plots in the back of my head :

2005-10-04T19:03:00.000-04:00

My (original) hometown newspaper, the Chicago Tribune, has an interesting piece on developing video content for mobile devices.

In short, the “plots” have to be short and funny. How do the writers and content creators do this?

By tapping into the ADD-generations’ shared repository of situational comedy subtext, i.e. “10,000 sitcom plots in the back of [our] heads.”

My interest in visual anthropology starts with the belief that a culture’s visual story-telling language can offer the same sort of anthropological information (meaning, truth, etc.) in the similar way that studying language or kinship will.

As to what the truth and meaning in mobile media content might be, oh shit... I'm going to miss According to Jim.

housewares fetish :

2005-10-03T14:22:00.000-04:00

I worked at a store in high school that has given me an incurable case of housewares fetishism.

I particularly have a thing for garbage cans. You know? Those $200+ brushed steel beauties from Europe? I'm faint just thinking of them. (Perhaps this is why, all I can afford is a $700-a-month basement apartment.)

Anyway, my Saturday walk around DC led me (shockingly!) to my favorite DC housewares store. It's all gay with cutie indie chicks who work the floor and the best assortment of wares in town.

Including the oh-so cool, and seemingly useless, Groovetube.

Although, as the folks over at Core77 pointed out about panels for your oversized HDTV, perhaps it's best used to prevent houseparty guests from plopping down for reruns on the WB.

Unless of course, the party includes psychedelics and/or some choice reefer.

separated at birth :

2005-09-28T10:35:00.000-04:00

So according to my numbers (and my accounting department in Omaha) people are dropping by, but not staying to read very long.

So I'm thinking you dolts need purty pictures to take your minds of all these hard words. (Who knew that my readership would skew so heavily toward the average Red-stater?)

So with the introduction of pictures. I thought I'd revive that most widely known Spy magazine feature: Separated at Birth.

With a twist (and Grey Goose), of course.

Designers have never been the most original bunch. (And that's okay, I'm jus' sayin'.) But with all the recent attention to creating branding cues across product lines in automotive designs, why do you see so many similar design flourishes on different cars from different companies?

I suppose, with the relative differences in target audience of these models, it's not like they are both going to end up in the parking lot at the same country club. (Or hell, even in the same gated community. Unless the Ford and the Honda come in through the service entrance.)

media whore ISO NYC media mogul/sugar daddy :

2005-09-23T14:12:00.000-04:00

My ~~recently hatched~~ rehatched plan for a sugar daddy has set its goal at Nick Denton. British (check), New York media mogul (check, check), with a fabulous ~~Hell's Kitchen~~ SoHo loft (check, check, check).

I already knew that I was three degrees (or is that two, where do you start counting the degrees?) from Denton through my friend at Jalopnik.

But pictures of a Denton soiree indicate that I'm also connected to him through Carl Swanson. Who might not mean a thing to you (as he writes for New York), but we are fraternity brothers (!) from U.Va. where he edited the late great Yellow Journal.

I also slept on his couch in Brooklyn (before Brooklyn was cool for white people) while he worked at the late great Spy magazine (see a pattern here?) and I was interning at Paper.

That's all got to count for something.

will draw for food :

2005-09-22T18:50:00.000-04:00

KChau--one of my best former coconspirators and inspiration to at least one PMBF's (pervy male breeder friends) Asian fantasies--has a piece in the Philly CityPaper. Check it out online.

I'm on a friggin' bender here :

2005-09-22T14:27:00.000-04:00

First the DCist crew and then Wonkette. Damn, I'm on fire.

First DCist finally answered my burning question: why can't you buy wine at Trader Joe's in Maryland?

Then Wonkette, always on the lookout for alcohol-related news for metro-DC, picked it up.

Ana Marie, you've never written about any of my tips, but I'll take the (very) indirect praise anyway I can.

would you like some cake?

2005-09-19T13:04:00.000-04:00

Apparently, that year and half whining to a now-Jalopniker about getting his ads done during production week at has come to bite me in the ass.

Figures. He always was a biter.

Anyway, to tied you plebes over while I work on a post about revitalizing urban shopping districts and another one about post-disaster housing: just a reminder that it's not too late to call the California Governor's office and remind him why he's being an ass.

Oh and some damn, cake.

engadget's wayback machine :

2005-09-01T12:43:00.000-04:00

A fan of all things Gawker media, I prefer Gizmodo over Engadget.

But Engadget.com's "translation" into 1985 is damn amusing.

And a little startling.

In 1985, I used to read Popular Science and Car and Driver and would read about things like GPS navigation systems and coaxial delivery of information to homes and think that the future seemed so far away.

And really unlikely.

Not so much now, does it?

star tipsters unite :

2005-08-30T11:38:00.000-04:00

. . . or star tipsters unit as I initially typed.

A tip to my friends over at Jalopnik.com has me dubbed a "[s]tar tipster and all ‘round badass. . ."

Frankly, we're touched. They like us. They really like us!

conceptual art piece waiting to happen :

2005-08-29T16:58:00.000-04:00

As an aspiring architect slash developer slash dictator, I had a huge collection of LEGO blocks. (It was so huge, partly, because I had a severe issue with destroying things. I could never take apart what I had created. I'll leave that and my anal sorting of all the blocks by specific color and keeping them in separate shoe boxes to my psychologist.)

Thanks to Core77.com for introducing me to the LEGO Factory where you can design anything you dream up with the LEGO Digital Designer app and then order the blocks to actually build the thing.

There is a conceptual installation piece in this. A master-planned town rendered in LEGO blocks?! A pile of coke?!

The mind boggles.

Dan Savage is my hero :

2005-08-12T15:22:00.000-04:00

I've never been able to get enough of Dan Savage. His sex column is brilliant. He edits one of the best alternative weeklies in the country, with some of the best art direction, The Stranger.

This week he's subbing for Andrew Sullivan. Read it. He's analyzing his support for the war in Iraq. It's something that many of us lefties have had to do over and over again. Opinions change. This doesn't mean we should stop having them.

really? my fridge?

2005-08-08T15:55:00.000-04:00

Although the title is a bit big brotherish, Photos of Your Fridge, is just the the sort of random documentation project that I love. (Link via core77.com)

the message :

2005-08-08T14:00:00.000-04:00

Chad Upham, like others in the gay male community, has struggled with meth addiction.

He's also a Washington, DC-based graphic designer.

Graphic design is first and foremost about solving problems. Meth is his (and our) problem. So he's found a way to discuss this and get others to discuss this. Chad's site is here.

Be sure to also look at his design and photography work, as well. All of it is stunning. For different reasons, of course.

It's hard to make personal and political art. Very often all is lost. It becomes didatic and/or just bad art. It's something that I've been working on and struggling with in my own work since seroconverting in 1999 while an undergraduate art student.

More will come from me. When I reach a critical mass of information. And have to have a meaningful way to say it again. I still have all my old notebooks from profiles left at gay phone sites. Plus, every single bottle of pills that I've ever taken.

Chad's project is simple and clean. A dialogue starter. Like the best conceptual art. And like the best conceptuatl art, this is a conversation that needs to be started. Or continued.

The project only hints some of the underlying problems like sex addiction or the trouble gay men have with caring for each other. As the discussion unfolds, I suspect and hope these topics come up.

Enrique Norten :

2005-07-29T13:42:00.000-04:00

An interesting piece over at Slate about Mexico-based architect Enrique Norten. I'm not sure I buy Rybczynski's dichotomy of modernism — rationalists versus anti-rationalists. Anytime you start with absolutes as theorist/pundit, you have to spend a lot of time shoe-horningg people into your framework. It's a ugly slope that begins all sorts, "yeah, but what about..." moments. Discussion is good. But shouldn't the discussion be built into the framework? Instead of always posing the next grand theory of the universe? Perhaps my anthropology education makes me a little too squeamishh about universals.

Anyway, Norten's work is really beautiful. Although, I'd really like more architecture critics to discuss how buildings relate to the streetscape. Not necessarily that a building shouldn't stand out, but "is it a good neighbor?" Or, "how is it scaled?" The gradual embiggening of America, I suppose. Good modernism from the post-WWII era was also so well scaled at the street level, doors and overhangs, don't loom. Unless on purpose.

For an interesting review that does talk about how the experience of a new buildign, read this Mercury News article about the new Richard Meier-designed San Jose Civic Center. A building that seems to have gone largely unnoticed outside of the Santa Clara Valley.

Richard Meier is an architect that stands at one end of Rybczynski's dichotomyy, but this building seems to be his most visually expressive yet. Perhaps it was an attempt to embody the city hall with symbolism. The dome is the most obviously symbolic and also looks the most contrived, at least from the photos. The beautifully curving sunshade is expressive but practical. The more perfect, and "rational", modernist expression of materials.

welcome back :

2005-07-28T16:07:00.000-04:00

Aaand... we're back...

So before our extended break, we were blogging our last semester in art school, some sort of mixed sketch pad and idea generator with a dollup of performance built in.

Blogging was a novel concept. Blogger was an independent company and no one had ever heard of a Wonkette.

So now that "having a blog" is a cliche even for middle schoolers, we thought we'd get back into this. Start collecting our thoughts and writings about art, design, politics, whatever.

People-who-know would love to have these things themed. No luck here. I'm in a committed relationship and am just looking.

Call me a blog lurker, holding on to this blogspot address like it was my last connection to sanity. Or something.

I propose nothing. I'll just have to see where things go.

As we say in the midwest, where I developed all my major insecurities, and home of the dangling participle, "wanna come with?"

] ] DC1974 [ [

i am (virtually) moving :

communists have the better designers :

dilettante, excuse number 2345 :

(not) engaging trolls :

comment spam, immigration equality edition :

Awesome photostream of Aerial San Francisco :

Universities and stable LGBT families :

if raves happened in 1984 :

this is how a city supports graf :

Sgt Pepper explained :

recommended reading: conversations about the end of time :

toward a definition of experience design :

Minority Report style computing, one step closer :

irrelevancy watch :

experience design program, cancelled :

a tale of two (East Tennessee) cities :

visualization :

Crime Fueled by, um, Ecstacy? :

SF’s daytime ‘idle’ :

canada’s missing gravity found! :

future cool :

Why I miss San Francisco :

Not Dead Yet :

comment spam, memory lane edition :

comment spam, patriarchy edition :

international airport montello :

new urbanism’s state of flux :

this is how you fight crime :

copywriting gone wrong :

comment spam, smart and dcx edition :

what michael said to bruce, or spec work smackdown :

the trouble with Washington via Anna Wintour :

homoerotic image of the day :

a moment of silence :

hiding :

now this is a speaker line-up :

stock photos, looking classy :

comment spam, america is art edition :

forget kids, this is a great idea for adult filmmakers :

comment spam, moco county edition :

and the bonus is he’s cute :

whiter whites, brighter brights :

some blogs have a theme :

again, Dan Savage hero-worship :

embiggening

he’s so best :

portfolio updates :

separated at birth :

the SUV, officially over :

happy pills indeed :

safari feeds :

thinking about making some changes :

mac apps for the little things :

de Tocqueville reminds us :

save us from the malls :

from the WDITOT files :

in an alternative lifetime :

really? :

Jane Jacob’s is right, unfortunately :

sigh :

fall reading list :

I don't write the stuff :

three-way on a pumpkin :

instamatic :

the ikea matrix :

10,000 sitcom plots in the back of my head :

housewares fetish :

separated at birth :

media whore ISO NYC media mogul/sugar daddy :

will draw for food :

I'm on a friggin' bender here :

would you like some cake?

engadget's wayback machine :

star tipsters unite :

conceptual art piece waiting to happen :

Dan Savage is my hero :

really? my fridge?

the message :

Enrique Norten :