Sep 29, 2007

42 vs. 43

Our current president could probably whip our most recent one's ass on a mtn. bike, but what do you suppose 42 is doing while 43 is riding moguls and driving around the ranch in his truck? Probably reading up on bottom of the pyramid economics, ethanol, and global politics. From a press attendee of this week's Clinton Global Initiative in New York:
OK, in the morning plenary session President Clinton is talking again about ethanol conversion ratios and how they differ between corn and sugar cane, dependent on different enzyme processes, and tying this to taco riots in Mexico... And he is relating all this to historical corn prices - actually quoting the different prices over time and today. I guess these are some of the things he checks in the morning while he has coffee.

Now, introducing the plenary panelists he is talking about the differences between political parties in Turkey...

And he makes it all interesting.
I too have always been impressed by his ability to tie together seemingly disparate topics to make a point, and to do so while accentuating the opportunities and positive aspects of the situations in which we find ourselves. Four more years?

twitter traffic

I'm old. I don't get it. Here are some of the latest updates to Twitter as I write this post (member names edited for formatting of this blog):

colt colt =^..^= アォン
nyabaihan nyabai... =^OO^=
yochihikor yochi... =^uu^= ギ
Family House Fami... Deck Door




Ech. Anime and kitties. Regardless, Twitter's huge, being used I'm sure in much more useful ways than taking narcissism to the nth degree. Like easing our commutes, maybe?

A quick search of people using it to help each other navigate traffic every day gave two results, a defunct group/community in Oregon, and a SanFran subway group that looks like it was updated by the org that runs them, but it hasn't been updated in months. Is it just me and the two people who started those failed groups? Doesn't Twitter seem like a great solution to the fundamental issue in traffic avoidance, which is communication? Of course, everyone twittering on their phones about bad traffic could make the problem worse...

UPDATE: I done did it - I'm now a twitterer, or whatever we people are called. Not that I'll actually use it day to day; it's narcissistic enough that I have an extremely low-traffic blog. However, I was already intrigued with how Twitter can be used for traffic dodging, but after reading this article at ParisLemon this morning I'm now intrigued about how it can help me deal with a situation I was wrestling with at work only three days ago (I love those little bursts of confluence).

Sep 26, 2007

Alex

Heard about this guy (video link) the other day on NPR. So we can add parrots to the growing list of animals that have actively communicated with us.



Lots more over at YouTube.

Sep 25, 2007

Dequindre greenway zeitgeist

A buddy who lives in the city looked at me askance when I mentioned how a I found on Google Maps a blighted stretch of abandoned sunken rail corridor through one of the seedier sections of Detroit could be mown down, paved, and turned into a path for bikes, pedestrians, etc. It stretched from an underdeveloped part of the waterfront into an area near Eastern Market. Since it would likely attract graffiti artists anyway, art installations could be set up as well I thought, funneling some of their creative efforts to give the place some personality. He laughed at me and suggested arming anyone who might want to venture into it.

A week or so later he said he'd been thinking about it and thought (after repeatedly passing over it) that the idea might have some merit. We decided something should be done to make it happen.

Saving us the trouble, someone else had the exact same thought, and already mustered forces to make it reality. Model D explains in this article how the Dequindre Cut, previously a commuter rail and more recently a hotbed of high-quality graffiti and homeless enclaves, is being transformed by a number of groups working together (Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan’s GreenWays Initiative, Michigan Natural Resources Trust Fund, the Michigan Department of Transportation, The Detroit Riverfront Conservancy, and the Downtown Detroit Partnership - I imagine there are others as well) into a link that will tie together the RiverWalk, Tri-Centennial State Park, and Eastern Market. Links to Midtown and Hamtramck currently on the drawing board.

From the Model D article:

• The path will stretch one mile in length, running north and south along half of the former rail corridor. The paved path will be 20 feet wide and will include separate lanes for bicycle and foot traffic.
• The other half will be left in natural grasses and reserved for potential future rail transit. The possibility still exists, Sutherland says, that in the future a light rail line could be developed in the cut.
• The pathway will include lighting and security cameras.
• Landscape modification includes selective clearing of underbrush, preservation of specimen trees and selective planting of appropriate native species.
• ADA compliant access ramps will be placed at Lafayette Street and Gratiot Avenue, at the southern end of Eastern Market. The ramps will be able to accommodate maintenance and emergency vehicles.
• Sutherland says because the Cut has already seen organic development by artists, the DDP supports keeping the area as an art park. “It makes sense to keep it going rather than try to develop a similar concept elsewhere,” he says.

There's another good post on the beginning stages of this project at DetroitBikeBlog (which is where this post's photos came from as well).


UPDATE: Some cool visual layouts can be found here - elevations, plan within the overall area, etc.


Sep 21, 2007

boxhouse

I live in a town like most post-war building-boom suburbs. We have street after street of solid, small-ish, comfortable brick ranches between pockets of both much older and much newer housing. In areas where smaller, lower-income homes sit on larger plots, people are razing the homes and replacing them with large ones; where there are mid-sized and larger homes on medium lots, they're being renovated, sometimes as far as gutting them and redoing everything but the shell.

The ubiquitous ranches and their neighborhoods, though, have remained almost unchanged in the sixty years since they were built. I often wonder how the town is going to look in fifty or a hundred years, given the seeming permanence and static nature of the ranches: there isn't room to expand the m side to side because of uniform and efficient lot sizes, and they're just valuable enough that it would be too expensive given the neighborhood to buy two lots and build one house, either by leaving one alone and expanding it, or by tearing down both and replacing with one. So that has me thinking: even if tastes in home sizes do continue to trend downward so that people continue to want these sturdy little houses, how can that 40s brick and mortar technology be updated to modern efficiency and living standards, and what will it look like?

Turns out someone much more creative than I was thinking about the same thing, and he came up with the Boxhouse (thanks to Jetson Green). Adaptive reuse of this kind is where the greatest opportunity for positive impact lies in architecture and design; the vast majority of buildings in use are, and will remain, already built. Choosing and adapting some of the elements of his (and others') designs throughout our otherwise slow-to-change suburbia is an essential step toward energy self-sufficiency.

Sep 20, 2007

He's here. Look busy.

A couple of weeks ago, M and I caught a little TV - some 'news' show where the point is really just to outrage with taboo breakers and otherwise harmless crackpots (evidently no one offered their kitchen to be used as a pedophile trap this week, so they went with Plan B).

Anyway, it seems the second incarnation/manifestation/enfleshment/tour of Jesus is on earth, and this time he took the form of a 60-year-old Puerto Rican guy who lives in Houston (or Dallas - definitely Texas, though - where else?) and loves to drink, smoke, and party with hot Latinas. I enjoyed that the reporter repeated ad nauseum that he 'drinks, smokes, and parties,' *wink wink, nudge nudge* though last time I checked those things weren't against the law, Christian or otherwise. He preaches that there is no sin, only crime, and that you reap what you sow in this world so be careful, even though once you're with god the slate is wiped clean. Guess what else: by preaching happiness and saying he's Jesus Christ he's making millions. This guy's worth it if for no other reason than the sheer entertainment of watching people waiting with bated breath for the second coming exhale in shock and sputter about his heresy. I would actually tune in again to that show if they turned the camera on those folks.

My question regarding him is similar to my overarching question for George W: does he truly believe everything he says, or is there a voice in his head telling him, 'hey, they need to hear this, and they believe in you, so sure whatever it is I'm saying right now is true in a way.'

Tour de Troit 2007

Another belated post, but last Saturday a couple friends and I did the Tour de Troit for the first time, and MAN am I glad we did!

Perfect weather, good route with more scenery than could safely be taken in, motorcycle escort closing major intersections, and outstanding food and beer at the finish (Update: provided by Slows, Piezano's, and New Holland Brewing Company (I think I had the Sundog - outstanding)- and where did that incredible mac and cheese come from? I don't know, but it was hands down the best I've ever had.). Cool t-shirt design. Even the plastic ware was recyclable. All in all a great day.

The only thing that was not enjoyable about it was waiting at every intersection we crossed for the mile or so of bicycles to pass, and since I was on one of those bikes, it wasn't actually my concern (one lady at an intersection was yelling at the top of her lungs, over and over, "I just want to go home, I just want to go home!"). The tour's going to become a victim of its own success if they don't do some sort of crowd control. The organizers may want to either have a couple of different tours that take into account the speeds people want to maintain, or start two groups that can better stay together.

Oooh - another idea - how about a podcast of the historical or interesting locations being passed, given at the recommended speed of the Tour? I've never been one to wear headphones while riding, but a lot of people do...

Probably a ton of pix over at flickr - some good ones at Detroit Bike Blog's site, too.

lost opportunity

I read a short article this morning about Mahmoud Ahmedinijad being denied the opportunity to go to the World Trade Center site and leave a wreath. Evidently once the 'presidential candidates' (that's all the article said, not which ones, or which party) heard about his request, they roundly shouted it down as a 'photo op.' This is a short-sighted mistake that undermines our credibility, robs us of any opportunity to improve our standing in the debate, and makes me realize that no matter who is elected, they will likely fumble the Middle East ball as soon as it's handed to them, exacerbating our standing in that part of the world just as we try to withdraw from Iraq.

I understand the need to deal firmly with Iran and much of the Middle East. Most of the regimes are corrupt, militant, religiously-motivated, dictatorial, and borderline incestuous with their succession of power. But how exactly could his laying of a wreath be co-opted against us? A friend at work made the solid point that people could say he laid the wreath for the 19 hijackers, not their victims, which sure, might be stretched out of it, but a) the hijcakers were Saudi, no friends of the Iranians, and b) couldn't we provide him with a wreath wrapped in a ribbon that plainly says 'For the fallen victims of September 11th'? It's not as if he was just going to stroll into the wreath store and buy himself one.

My friend continued: allowing Ahmedinijad to lay a wreath wouldn't change anything right now - he'd still be a scurrilous jackass trying to build questionable nuclear plants and too willing to shoot off his mouth to please the religious fundamentalists running most of his country, and we'd still be headed by a moronic jackass too quick to see everything in black and white and too ready to manipulate intelligence to please the religious fundamentalists who want to run this country. But it would change our course, just a little. We'd still be traveling down a perilous path, but the possibility that its destination could be a positive one would become a little more likely. That, combined with the affirmation that America stands for the right of even our enemies to speak freely, is worth the possibility that someone will create propaganda for people who hate us anyway.

Jena

I'm not really up on the latest headlines. Some people were talking about this situation in Jena, Louisiana this morning, though, and it reminded me of an outstanding report I heard on NPR in July. It had me sitting in my driveway, waiting for it to finish, fuming with indignation.
"I think it's safe to say some punishment has not been passed out fairly and evenly," Fowler says. "I think probably blacks may have gotten a little tougher discipline through the years. " ... "Our town is not a bunch of bigots. They're Christian, law-abiding citizens that wouldn't mistreat anybody."
Calling Bull Connor.

Sep 11, 2007

yay for me.

Evidently the average commute for people in the US is somewhere between 100 and 140 hours, which works out to between 24 and 27 minutes each way. In Michigan, which ranked 25th in the 2003 Census measurement, the average is about 23 minutes.

My commute, which I would have figured was average (don't we often tend to believe we're in the big happy majority for the more mundane aspects of our lives?), is a solid 30 minutes - much more with summer construction, but I'm not counting that. That works out to 220 hours of wishing people would just get the hell out of my way every year. *sigh* That's a week more than I get for vacation.

The treehugger article that got me thinking about this is about greening your workplace, which is happily part of my job now. One of their tips is to work four, ten-hour days per week, as it reduces your commuting time by 20%. My organization calls this the 'alternative work schedule' and though we can only skip every other Friday, even a 10% reduction in 220 hours would be nice.

BTW, I fully expect to see a comment taunting me about the 10-minute walking commutes to be had in Monroe.

Sep 6, 2007

Gotta start somewhere

In the 'more power to them' category, this video discusses the importance of conservation and ecotourism in southeast Michigan's revival.

-- Yech - after embedding the code for the video, I realized it would automatically play every time this site was accessed. Here's the link instead. --

I'm all for this, but we have to recognize that the challenge can only be met if tackled by coalitions of nonprofits and entreprenuers; the cash-strapped state won't be able to address the issue in the coming years, except by offering environmental expertise and by legislatively greasing the skids for business and conservation.

Sep 2, 2007

fingers crossed

It's easy to slip into bland and static insularity, especially living in the suburbs of southeast Michigan. One temporary antidote... this article about home-grown design from metromode:
The whole local environment is changing. Projects are picking up, cool places like Royal Oak are changing the way people think about their community. There 's a lot of talent and creativity here and in 10 years this part of Michigan is going to be unrecognizable.

are you going to eat that?

One of the odd things that have become commonplace with ubiquitous photography and sharing digital photos is the picture of a recent meal. Doug does it. Chad does it. Even David Byrne does it (mmm... huaraches...).

It used to be that there were basically two places one saw photos of prepared dishes: restaurants where orders were placed at counters (and of those, I seem to remember most of them being Asian or Middle Eastern), and food or travel magazines. If you rifle through your old boxes or albums, how many bird's-eye-views of meals will you find?

This makes sense. Photos are cheap now, and eminently shareable. Eating is the most enjoyable communal thing we still do, and, for most people, conveying how good a meal was is pretty hard; not as hard as trying to convey the feeling of a musical performance, but close. But at least you can say it was great, take a picture, and hold it up to support your assertion. What's interesting is the after-the-fact nature of this new development - these pictures aren't made to entice, or even to translate. They exist, I believe for the better, only to share something passed past, in our ever-thickening gumbo of experience sharing and self-projection.

Sep 1, 2007

fotD15


Bench with a view !, originally uploaded by pmarella.

but will there be enough legroom for the kneelers?

In a surprisingly creative and modern approach to augmenting its business model, the Vatican is going to start offering high-speed pilgrimages - jet service to holy places to tap into the 'religious tourism' market.
Some of the cabin crew will be "specialised in the voyages of a sacred nature", according Italy's Ansa news agency.
buWAHhahaha... Insert punchline here.

My only questions revolve around the practical: can't tourists just be divinely transported? Will the wine in first class be the blood of Christ? What will the headlines say after their first mishap?

old habits

I didn't think we'd be seeing these scramble-and-smile-for-the-camera, Cold-War-esque opportunities any time soon, but the RAF recently scrambled two of their brand new Typhoons (from standing still to take-off in seven seconds!!) to intercept a Russian Bear creeping across the North Atlantic toward Britain. Evidently Putin has resumed sending bombers out on sightseeing missions, whether they're to test radar installations or interception capabilities or both...