Chicago Practicum Group at Reception

Chicago Practicum
Originally uploaded by Helmers.

Minus Tim (who was pretty much a ghost the whole week) this was the Chi-Prac contigent of URPSA. Ken is way ahead of all of us, he's not even bothering to keep his eyes open for this shot.

THE METREON!

THE METREON!
Originally uploaded by Helmers.

The first really memorable thing we saw in SF was this behemouth movie/retail complex near Moscone. I wish I got a good picture at night so you could see how bright this thing was.

UNDERWATER

Some people say we're the unusual creatures at the bottom of a sea of air.

I didn't know people kept Octopuses as pets (scroll down to first comment) or that they might provide a model for robotic arms. They are undeniably the smartest invertebrates being able to solve difficult mazes and distinguish between various objects (they have very high degree of tactile inteligence).

This was also interesting: young dolphins make toy air rings and play with them.

Megastructures are measured in 1,000s of kilometers (1,000 KM = 1 Megameter). The only megastructure on earth (built by creatures) is the Great Barrier Reef which is around 2,000 kilometers long (1,200 miles). No single human settlement compares with its magnitude.

Angler fish are scary.

A little tidbit I learned from my ecology class: the oldest living being on earth is a creosote bush in Arizona. Carbon dating puts its inception around 18,000 years ago. This is around the end of the last ice age. (The bush has been there as long as the desert.)

cool car dude

These vehicles really must speak for themselves. So I'll let them.

Alexi
Camera Van
Sinclair C5
... and a list of automotive flops from the wikipedia.

A whole day of one-liners

Sundays are great for one liners.

If you have real player please, please watch this movie made by American Institute of Planners in 1939. File part one, part two. It documents the urban blight brought by industrialization, the rapid pace of '30s city life (I especially enjoied the shots of the mechanization of food), and the ideal community of the future. It was written by Lewis Mumford. The movie is about 30 minutes (15 a piece), it starts out slow and boring but it picks up.

In my ecology class a student asked how you could track the migration and habitat of Giant Squid. There are major technical difficulties such as the depth they live at and their oceanic range. So when I saw this I was interested.

The bug-eyed sea creatures, believed to be Humboldt squid, normally reside in deep water and only come to the surface at night. Why approximately 500 of them began washing up on the sands of Laguna Beach and Newport Beach on Tuesday isn't clear.

And this was strange. I tried it for myself and got the same result. It would be cool if MSN could get its act together.

Bad Places. Really Bad Places.

I really don't want to be pessimistic but I've got some articles about hellish cities.

The City of Dis is the term for the lower four layers of Dante's Inferno. Here is a handy cross section of Hell. Clicking the Down Arrow brings you to Dis.

Feral Cities

Imagine a great metropolis covering hundreds of square miles. Once a vital component in a national economy, this sprawling urban environment is now a vast collection of blighted buildings, an immense petri dish of both ancient and new diseases, a territory where the rule of law has long been replaced by near anarchy in which the only security available is that which is attained through brute power.

Its even got a handy graph to determine if your town is "goin' feral."

The idea of "rent seeking" was totally new to me. It's really pretty simple, but the economic definition is really opaque. Basically it means that a group (government or corporation) is trying to extract revenue without investing in improvements. An illegitimate, corrupt government is rent seeking by collecting taxes for pure profit (not invested in public services). A corporation is rent seeking if it lobbies to exclude outside competition. That would lead to higher prices for the corporation's product without any actual improvement in quality.

I found out about rent seeking when I was researching Kleptocracies.

digital camera

Posting here has been pretty light this semester. Next semester maybe I'll try to set up some service where I can blog from my phone. Don't hold your breath though. Until then I'll be putting up more and more pictures from my new digital camera [thanks mom and dad!]

I'm at work now so there's not much I can do.

The new addiction in my life: GEOsense, online geography quiz game with real opponents.

Kalkaskia, Illinois

Population: 9, the former capital of the state, the only part of the state West of the Mississippi. - Wikipedia

I found this en route to my discovery of the term micronation. This represents a geographical/political anomaly that has become progressively less important with the growth of the Internet.

... This doesn't mean micronations have gone away. Sealand, for instance, is somewhat relevant to the UK.

"Sealand occupies a structure that was created when a purpose-built World War II-era Royal Navy barge was towed to a position above Rough Sands sandbar in the North Sea and had its hold intentionally flooded. It is sited six miles (10 km) off the coast of Suffolk, England at 51°53'40"N, 1°28'57"E, and has been occupied since 1967 by family members of Paddy Roy Bates and their associates."

... More on micronations and "forgotten" nations at Footnotes to History.

post for the heck of it

Keep an eye out for him: Hopkin Green Frog.

I spent way too much time reading this: Exit Mundi - ways the world could end. The astrological ones are insane. [note peak oil is mentioned]

Go ahead, try to read it "front to back" : Implementation, it's a novel written in stickers placed all around the US and Western Europe.

SimCity article with some honest analysis of the game, its evolution, its reflection on planning, and GIS.

"Cities are crucial to the U.S. economy. In 2002 metro economies were responsible for 85.6 percent of gross domestic product, almost $9.1 trillion in goods and services."
Why can't exurban/suburban America take off their eyemasks and realize this: Our cities are the cores of our nation. Revenue generated from all urban areas in the US goes to subsidize all rural areas. Period. Why don't we treat our cities better?

Do we let the military plan our towns? - Fire that one off at your next ZBA meeting. Use this as ammo. [Okay, the first part was a little over dramatic.]

Mokita

- Truth that everybody knows but nobody speaks. (from the Kiriwina language, New Guinea).

Found this on a great MetaFilter thread. Mentioned in the thread was a book by Bill Bryson [Author of Out West], The Mother Tongue

Cool Stuff Dep't:

Interactive Wallpaper

Ultimate Coffee Mug

Boeing 737 Limo