(yes)

This is not cognitive dissonance. It is a method. In a postmodern
condition where there are no principles, all that matters is power.
All they want to do it win and they will use language any way they
please. They will take any necessary positon. They will contradict
themselves. They will lie.  - Andres Duany

the day's woes...

it was day of problems with liquids. burning my mouth on tea, soup down the nice sweater, rain on the way home, a buttery but definitly dry pound cake.....

at least tom delay's finally been charged with something. what he did to texas's districts was abominable, but i hadn't heard about him running congress. someday texas' reputation for power hungry idiot republicans will be be a bad thing, even in america.

tomgara's link got me here...

Apocalypse There..."The standard television-entertainment formula for the meteorological catastrophe has been hopelessly disrupted, for in place of the Swift Government Reaction and the inevitable Inspirational Reconstruction and Recovery we have instead goodness knows what -- some kind of gruesome existential horror story in which a mighty empire is transformed in a single night into a Hobbesian jungle, with taxpayers turned into wraiths and zombies, and not only no order but no clear idea of who is responsible for restoring it. " Rolling Stone

hmmm...

Big Dreams for the Big Easy

What New Orleans could look like the second time around

By Timothy Lange

15 Sep 2005

I heard that George Bush told New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin the city could be remade into "a shining example for the whole world." If Bush did say that, it surely wasn't an environmentally sound renaissance he had in mind. But that is precisely what is needed.

Call it Eco New Orleans. It should encompass not just the city, but the other places blasted by Katrina and by FEMA's impressively incompetent response. The Eco New Orleans I'm talking about should extend scores of miles in every direction. It should be a place attuned to the definition of sustainable development put forth by the U.N.'s Brundtland Commission: "Meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."
Fully fund "Coast 2050."
Curtail oil and gas drilling in the Delta
Support renewable energy
Adopt "smart growth" concepts as regional policy.
Establish green building standards

going back to all this photographing...

most of the new development's i've visited in the past few days were shite. no inspiration, no good urbanism, no finely crafted homes built to last (not one but FOUR) lifetimes. everything fad, all design speaking to the practice of architecture, and not to the demands of a image-based, capital-driven, multi-facited society. it makes waves in the architectural press, which noone else reads, but fails to inspire or attract notice of other architectural, societal, or political forces. design speaking to designers. art, not craft. drawings on paper that relate not to the city, to history, or even to -nay - future users. this is architecture without purpose, without conversation. take my gorgeous art creations, or leave them, they say. i can't leave them, i say, they're fucking built in my backyard!!!

foster's city hall - the city hall part is fine, civicly inspiring and all, but the business towers, ugg. windy, glass, a shame to front the riverwalk with shoulder high walkways - even strada's having to cover up the gorgeous infrastructure to 'advertise' their presence. grey and steel so unfriendly the pedestrians choose the bus lanes instead of the river.
alsop's palestra is just another 'funny' office block, anonymous glass facades, albeit mushroom shaped. spec on shrooms. it will be old in 7 years.
the millenium village - a sustainable housing development 10 miles from london, 5 from canary wharf. green, and i'm sure it's well insulated, but it's still surrounded by parking and over-engineered roundabouts. where has the city gone? the pedestrian replaced by the car. and no damn bike racks. what's so sustainable about having to lock your bike to a 'disabled car parking space' sign?
thamesmead ecopark - so far from anything walkable you might as well live in birmingham and commute to london. one year on, the wood's fading, the pavement growing weeds, and fences now surround the car parking, blocking views. and the constant drone from london city airport. what's it like to live in a house that doesn't need heating but where you have to stop conversation every 10 minutes while the carbon-spewing plane descends directly above?

i'm no economist

but does anyone else worry about the future of the global economy? it's all right if the game we're playing is divorced from reality as long as the big boys set the rules an everyone has to play by them, but what happens if someone, well intrenched, stops playing?

through the lens

IMG_3379
Originally uploaded by wonderwomanyank.

I'm finding all sorts of excuses to use my SLR. "boss, i'm going to cycle an hour away and take photos of an ecologically sensitive development. on monday." "ok".

this is london's city hall.

calling all New Yorkers...

there will be a Nomadlife/Wonderwoman gathering in NYC on the 20th of October, starting at 7ish. location TBD
(thats on a thursday in a month from now, but i thought some forwarning would be a good idea in case anyone wanted to voyage in.)

: )

what kind of furniture would jesus pick?

by annie proulx. very good.

thought for the day

Oh beautiful for smoggy skies, insecticided grain,
For strip-mined mountain's majesty above the asphalt plain.
America, America, man sheds his waste on thee,
And hides the pines with billboard signs, from sea to oily sea.

~George Carlin

living among the english

as jen's gone, tibault and louis are heading out...camilla the windsurfer from sussex and neal the finance guru from london are moving in. i now live and work among english accents, although variously multicoloured skin.

its been two years...

somewhere in the past week marked the invisible spot where I landed in London in 2003. I can still remember that day perfectly - the sunny autumn weather as a perfect backdrop to my hurried rush of seeing the residence halls, quitting my dorm contract, and trying to find a new place. i remember how my room smelled and how i thought the floors were funny, the frustrations of trying to use a red phone booth (you want how much in change?) and the first packaged sandwhich.

tour of britain: london

tour of britain: london
Originally uploaded by wonderwomanyank.

a few weeks old in posting, but the races were fun to watch. westminister - trafalgar - embankment - and again.

MIT researchers map city by cellphone

Researchers at MIT may not be able to hear your cellphone call, but they have found a way to see it. They mapped a city in real time by tracking tens of thousands of people traveling about carrying cellphones.

Using anonymous cellphone data provided by the leading cellphone operator in Austria, A1/Mobilkom, the researchers developed the Mobile Landscapes project, creating electronic maps of cellphone use in the metropolitan area of Graz, Austria, the country's second-largest city.

The researchers used three types of data -- density of cellphone calls, origins and destinations of the calls, and position of users tracked at regular intervals -- to create computer-generated images that can be overlayed with one another and with geographic and street maps of a city to show the peaks and valleys of the landscape as well as peaks in cellphone use.

"For the first time ever we are able to visualize the full dynamics of a city in real time," said project leader Carlo Ratti, an architect/engineer and head of the SENSEable City Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "This opens up new possibilities for urban studies and planning. The real-time city is now real: a system that is able to continuously sense its condition and can quickly react to its criticalities," he added.

when the rain hurts,

you know it's cold.
but it's been a stellar, stellar week.
no internet, but monday began with last minute tickets to a work-related book launch, (followed by emails and new business), tuesday with pol roger, french-cooked lamb, and the l'etranger chocolate platter (only french desserts can make you delirously happy) ... wednesday went through a pint or two with david at my office local, and ended at a west end client bash, skirted, drinking vodka and chatting the rounds up. tonight, dinner with mandy's family in notting hill, endless looks from the local posh boys, and then back to marylebone, with cheap wine to accompany andrew's casting and sculputuring. i'm to borrow his digital SLR in exchange for an extra hand at the casting. this involves covering naked forms in plaster, and i'm not bothered.

urban-related things i really like

urban art that invovles the human: greyworld
just really, really relevant: harvard design review
cities and technology: planetizen techtalk
a uk guide to building for the future: sustainable construction

and to tolstoy...

the things that happen when your internet is out, and you're broke.
started anna karenina (second reading), got absorbed in the endless ashes cricket match, ate dinner and drank with flatmates, watched ronin - twice. slept 12 hours two nights in a row, stared out the window, and went running. looked at photos from beijing, tried on my entire wardrobe just to see, made rhubarb crumble. cleaned the room.

Hall of Shame..

I'm not a daily reader of the KOS, but this is not to be missed...."A cesspool of verbal ignorance and callousness that simply cannot be allowed to fade into obscurity"

"The federal government did not even know about the convention center people until today."
--FEMA director Michael Brown (9/1/05)

A young [black] man walks through chest deep floodwater after looting a grocery store in New Orleans...

Two [white] residents wade through chest-deep water after finding bread and soda from a local grocery store after Hurricane Katrina came through the area in New Orleans...

Captions at Yahoo News (8/30/05)

HALLIBURTON GETS KATRINA CONTRACT
--Headline (9/1/05)

from the Dictionary of Urbanism..

budgie-box. A perjorative term for a small house built as the standard product of a volume house builder.

flaneur (french/english). One who strolls in the crowd observing life without being seen.

hing (glasgow). To hang out of window having a leisurelyconvesration with someone in an adjacent window or the street below. See also windae-hinger.

leonia. A fictional city in Asia that is re-made every day. Nothing that can be thrown out is re-used. As Italo Calvino explians in invisible cities (1972), the mountians of rubbish it expels threaten to engulf it.

neckdown. A kerb extension at the corner of intersections designed to slow vehicles and give pedestrians a shorter distance to cross. A bulbout is similar.

sex. The wireter Angela Carter suggested that 'cities have sexes: London is a man, Paris a woman and New York a wel-adjusted transsexual'. See also dress sense and the fountainhead.

american media

hurricane katrina - more than iraq, or 911, has made CNN look like the US government's federal mouthpiece. besides the big american flags flying, the feel good stories about regular people helping regular people, it's what they don't reprot.

no questions about ?why this even happened in the first place?, or ?what should change in the future? - questions raised by the other two american papers i bother to read at the moment - NYT, NOLA. no mention of the generally scathing public response to slow federal action; bbc is the first to report bush's plea for 50 BILLION from congress (when 2 or 3 billion of federal money would have fixed the levees 6 years ago). and whose taxes are going to pay that kind of bill? or will bush depend on china's irrational belief in american debt yet again?

the levees and infrastructure investment
?greatest challenge to politics as usual?

flirting with death is good for the soul

we have mastered time, space and meaning. let us now master purpose.

we have mastered time with change.
we have mastered space with electronics.
we have mastered meaning with image.
now let us aim for purpose.



(with the pannier rack off, she (my cycle) is light and free again), and together we fly down park lane past the edged and shined lux sales cars, circling the hyde park grandiose roundabout, pleading for lane space with an audi. Past the powers that be in pinstripe suits at the lanesborough, and out West down kensington to palatial homes. Only to double back East along the embankment in the dusk, and arrive at the dirty haphazard City in true gas-lit dark. Follow the twists and turns the bus lanes only! to Shoreditch's hip 20somethings bars, then north straight through Hackney's shadowy corners. Exhiliaration in the brake;twist;frantic start; of traffic, in defiance of red lights, in the breathless dodging of death.

still glued to the NO news...

"Environmental Justice:
A condition of environmental justice exists when environmental risks and hazards and investments and benefits are equally distributed without direct or indirect discrimination at all jurisdictional levels and when access to environmental investments, benefits, and natural resources are equally distributed; and when access to information, participation in decision making, and access to justice in environment-related matters are enjoyed by all."

"Environmental Injustice:
An environmental injustice exists when members of disadvantaged, ethnic, minority or other groups suffer disproportionately at the local, regional (sub-national), or national levels from environmental risks or hazards, and/or suffer disproportionately from violations of fundamental human rights as a result of environmental factors, and/or denied access to environmental investments, benefits, and/or natural resources, and/or are denied access to information; and/or participation in decision making; and/or access to justice in environment-related matters."

paneer & sag dosas

ran from work to meet josi for fruitless shoe shopping, and then with jen and nermeen to the ucl theater for a book reading and discussion by salman rushdie, on his new novel, shalimar the clown.

great to hear the man in person, as women-despising as he is. amazingly well spoken, quoting forrester, calvino and ecco while bragging about how much he loves his name. he reads his own works aloud perfectly, and is open about his writing process. elaborating on the difference between repentance and forgiveness, his passion for kashmir, and his need to write about village india. his books have become more mainstream and less mystical history over the years, but when i get around to shalimar i'll hold my breath. (i'm in a palahniuk and short story rut).

the tall shoulder muscles rippling under bronze thin skin model girlfriend appeared as well, in a white halter dress and matching heels. it's september, and cold, but one's got to respect crowd silencing beauty.

josi's in town...

and after 24 hours of whisky, jazz cafe, shopping (delicious brown jackets) and yoga, we're off to celebrate Jen's dissertation into the wee hours clubbing.

the bbc has a great article on the impact of Katrina on the US psyche...

"But what the devastating consequences of Katrina have shown - along with the response to it - is that for too long now, the fabric of this complex and overstretched country, especially in states like Louisiana and Mississippi, has been neglected and ignored."

the horror of it....

an entire city destroyed, submerged.
thousands trapped, stranded, without water or food.
hospitals under sniper fire, men ambusing men for gallons of water.
police officers scavaging for fuel and ammunition

worse, the frustration of it all, the inability to take action.
the water, the disease, the looting, the being millions of miles away.

Turning and turning in a widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

the last day

the last day
Originally uploaded by wonderwomanyank.