is the pentagon the world's largest building?

For whatever reason I had believed this. My understanding was that it had taken the title from Chicago's Merchandise Mart in terms of total square feet of space.

The Pentagon has a floor area of 610,000 square meters (m2), whereas the Merchandise Mart has 390,000 m2. So in that sense, the Pentagon is bigger than the Mart. However, there is a building in the Netherlands that holds the Guiness Book of World Records title as the largest: the Aalsmeer Flower Auction has a floor area of 990,000 m2. An interesting sidenote: Aalsmeer is also home to Endemol's global headquarters. You might be familiar with some of the TV shows they are responsible for.

All of these numbers are in 2-dimensions. Looking at volume, the Pentagon isn't even the biggest US Government building. The NASA Vehicle Assembly Building is larger than the Pentagon by about. 1.6 million m3. However Boeing's Everett Plant (where the 747, 767, 777, and 787 are all produced) dwarfs both of these structures at 13.3 million m3.

(Wikipedia article on world's largest buildings by footprint, size, and mass plus some special categories. There's also an intersting article about the PENREN.)

Arrakis, Iraq

Yesterday I spent my morning finishing Dune. Today I'm doing a little investigation into the toponymy of Arrakis. It sounds like it was derrived from Iraq, but I can't be sure yet. If you're unfamiliar with Dune, here's a synopsis I stole from a New York Times piece:

“Dune,” published in 1965, remains a perfect, self-contained work of science
fiction: an enormous 500-page novel of feudalistic families clashing in a
futuristic world for control of its precious few natural resources, and an
exiled boy-king learning the traditions of a foreign land in order to fight his
way back onto his throne. So what if its characters also happen to eat a
narcotic, mind-expanding spice and ride on the backs of giant sandworms while
speaking in oddly elevated Shakespearean tones? ... fanciful settings disguise the work’s larger philosophical intentions ... a powerful ecological message and a reminder to its readers that their actions will have profound consequences for generations yet unborn.

Okay, so onto Arrakis and Iraq. Did Frank Herbert get his inspiration for Arrakis from the name Iraq? As far as the pronunciation, it seems like a no-brainer. Arrakis sounds like "Iraq-is" it's only a hairsbreadth off. I can't find any direct evidence of this, but many other names in Dune were taken from Arabic. Herbert apparently did say "The scarce water of Dune is an exact analog of oil scarcity. CHOAM is OPEC." but that doesn't necessarily mean that he adapted Arrakis from Iraq. Other than idle speculation such as, "The most obvious influence on Spice is oil, the wealth under the deserts of our world (it's probably not a coincidence that Arrakis is pronounced Iraq-iss)." there is no evidence that the name Arrakis draws its inspiration from Iraq.

Icaro Doria

Amazing idea! If you do nothing else today, please look at this. Flags as diagrams. Icaro Doria depicts social, economic and political statistics about a nation through national flags.

Found on reddit.

Shout out to G-R

Calder Plaza at Vandenburg Center, originally uploaded by sparky05.

A few days ago I was talking to John Wallace about the Calder Plaza in Grand Rapids. This is a fascinating representation of the space. In a way this space is Michigan's reflection of the modernist vision set forth by Chicago's Daley Plaza and Picasso's Untitled sculpture.

A great resource

Stumbling through the meanders of the internet I found newScientist.com a few days ago. In particular, their Special Reports section. I strongly suggest checking these out to get your bearings on hot topics in technology, biology, astronymy, and natural sciences.

What was the hook, you ask? Fuel's Gold: Big Risks of the Biofuels revolution. It's a great examination of the debate on ethanol and biodiesel as replacements for gasoline. (The one drawback, they turn off access to the articles after a week or so; let me know if you can't read it anymore.)

the internets are eating themselves

In today's internet rumormill: the $1Bn purchase of facebook by yahoo!
Add in the mix the concept of visual searching and you might end up with more and more editorials that sound like this or this.

ps: If you've never seen Penn & Teller's Bullshit! I suggest you watch a few online (google video).

Parc Güell

12.29.05 02 Gaudí's Chocolate Factory, originally uploaded by Matilde B..

tetrachromat

Light comes in three basic flavors: red, green, and blue - or so I thought. The standard operating procedure for vision is that Humans (along with primates, and a few other critters) have visual color perception that allows us to distinguish approximately 100 different shades of each of the three colors of light. Mixing and blending these colors in combination allows us to see millions of distinct hues - we are natural trichromants.

However, there are some women who can see four basic wavelengths of light. From Damn Interesting: "In an odd twist of fate, the same genetic glitch that creates color-blind males may create females with better-than-usual color vision." A small percentage of women are capable of detecting a range of color that exists between in a "orange-ish" spectrum. It may be impossible for trichromats to imagine what the world looks like to a tetrachromant.

Genecists have been aware of this acute visual perception for years. According to the Wikipedia, "some birds, fish, amphibians, reptiles, arachnids and insects" are known tetras, and a butterflies might be able to see 5 full wavelengths of color, although their 4th wavelength is in the ultraviolet range, beyond the human eye's capabilities.

Detecting the necessary genes for an enhanced color perception is one thing, to actually demonstrate that tetrachromants can see a range of colors that is an order of magnitude greater than the majority is another issue. Mothers of color blind sons have been tested on their visual perception and speed in color-differentiation. Researchers believe that while many women might have the genetic coding to be tetrachromatic, only a few can detect the "colossal range ... 100s of millions of colors" (approx. 2-3% of women).

develop.metrolansing

Lansing's urban development weblog. I don't know who's running this but they've got up-to-date information on several of Lansing's newest buildings. The photo below is the proposal for the "Stadium District," $12 million of apartments, condos, and retail space directly across from Lugnut's Olds Park.
Lansing is truly a city of neighborhoods. Old Town led the urban reclamation of Michigan's capital city. The small but elegant district is populated by art galleries, music venues and the like. This was in stark contrast to Lansint's "downtown," a place notorious for closing down at the same time as nearby offices. While the Washington Avenue strip of restaurants has not remained static, it has forfieted its status as the city's flagship of culture.

Other districts are turning into hotspots. Among them is the Eastside, 1-block containing, a blues bar, the City Pulse, and some of Lansing's best dining (Thai and Italian, mmm). Recent additions of Gone Wired Cafe and Everybody Reads Bookshop have attracted many to this nascent urban island.

Something in my Urban Planning nose tells me that the Stadium District (above) amounts to something of a sea change in Lansing's development trends. The powers-that-be are seeing the potential for an archipeligo of districts along the capital's central Michigan Avenue corridor. At one end there is the old core of restaurants and shops that serve downtown workers (and a handful of law students at Cooley). Along the way there is an assortment of ecclectic activity centers such as this new development, the Eastside, Frandor, and Michigan State University. The terminus could be in East Lansing (which is getting it's own big-name project, the East Village), or the Meridian Mall, or maybe Williamston.

[Note: That last part is pure speculation. There is a lot of activity near R.E.O. Town and in the MotorWheel/Prudden Place area, too. These will probably get posts later on.]

Make Magazine. I found Make at a bookstore a few weeks ago (barnes & noble, I believe). It's small and expensive but worth it if you are up to the projects described on its pages.

• Make a Rubik's Cube
• Make a Volumetric Projector from JUNK. [A Volumetric Projector is ... what R2-D2 used to show Princess Leia in Star Wars.]
• Make a Home Mycology Lab [mushrooms]

Make is like ReadyMade but a few orders of magnitude up the intensity scale. As Marcus Chan of the San Francisco Chronicle said, "[make is] The kind of magazine that would impress MacGyver”

Dropping Knowledge.

This promises to be an interesting event.

Creemore is Canada

CIMG1739, originally uploaded by Helmers.

Stormy Lansing Sunset

CIMG1766, originally uploaded by Helmers.

Transition

Some things have changed around here since I last saw you.

In some senses, this website will be a clearinghouse for all things Nick. It is a distribution point for information, opinion, images, and news. Integrating toponymy with del.icio.us and flickr is a critical part of this.

Here's a breakdown of the transition.

(old way) posts don't tie into other online services.
[NEW WAY] things link into my del.icio.us and flickr accounts making it easy for users.

(old way) all updates were wordy, textual posts.
[NEW WAY] updates might be single pictures, links added to the sidebar, text, or a combination.

(old way) cluttered style impaired content.
[NEW WAY] content defines style.

begin toponymy 2.0