52.5%

Time for a link dump.

It costs more to own/operate a car in Detroit than any other city in the nation. Another statistic to be proud of. B-side: appreciate art deco hood ornaments. http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif
http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif
That's it, time for a dedicated electric scooter lane.

Lego Instruction Books. Lots of them.

A timeline of Duckburg.

Posters for Spaghetti Westerns.

Cool Photography: Edward Burtynsky - check out Three Gorges and Urban Mines.

Making me hungry [you can order Ya-Ya's Chicken for CarryOut/Online].

Printer's Row

I got a visor from The Parlour. I need the visor to make milkshakes and sundaes. The visor helps me. [] I started today at The Parlour. The owner of the company came in for dinner. He is 28 years old. He is worth over 500 million dollars US. Smartmoney says he will cross the one Billion mark before he is 31 years old.

Watch out for Invaders from Space. They are all over the place. So far they haven't landed in the Midwest. [Invaders don't like rust, thus they're avoiding the rust belt. Rust makes Invaders sick.]

NYC rail system will turn 100 this year. Happy Birthday.

Furniture goes on Atkins Diet.

This robot eats flies for power. Guess how it attracts flies. [Hint: not Honey.]

Pictures
+ Circular Cities
+ Earth from Above
+ Crazy Korean Aerial Photos [some duplicates from above, large files]

10%

That is the amount of community service I have accomplished today. That means four hours. I should have another 10% by Friday.

532 Abbott got the hook-up on Dave Chappelle Tickets for this Friday.

It's been a while since I've posted anything worth reading here.

Summer has been over for one week, 2 days. This is how Summer Reading List vol. II turned out.

The Thorn Birds, McCullough
Watchmen, Moore and Gibbons
The Last Don, Puzo
Sanctuary, Faulkner
Fight Club, Palahniuk
Kim, Kipling
Crime and Punishment, Dostoyevsky
Batman: Year One and The Dark Knight Returns, Miller
Alias Grace, Atwood
The Gangs of Chicago, Asbury
Deliverance, Dickey
I, Robot, Asimov
The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway

I will refrain from comment until I have something insightful.

At Haven House I saw a Cozy Coop. Its front right wheel was cracked and its metal rod pried away the plactic body. Otherwise it was in good shape.

[By the way: Haven House smells like asparagus.]

If Tony is reading this - I registered a Gmail account for TonysCustoms. Call me for the password. Or better yet: take one wild guess. [Click here for Gmail.]

WASTE YOUR TIME: NOW.

FIASCO

I'll make this short because I'm going to watch a new [that's right bitchaz, N-E-W, new] Reno911.

If you play Internet games and spend a fair amount of time escaping from locked rooms try your hand at this.

Some of the textbooks I bought.

Gimcrack.

Rio. I think this is Rio. I have no way of checking that. It's Rio.

Quite possibly the greatest single webpage for Transformers fans ever. [Seriously, you can print off folding action figures of all these robots in disguise.]

A great article from Morning News I should've posted a while back. There's no time like the present.

Jazz-ersizing our way into September

Space: Why Not.

For the impatient and easily amused: observe 'UFO Art' by Jim Nichols.

For the patient: 99 slides with illustrations 'Manned Spaceflight in the 1980s' is an amazing find. I just browsed it. The end is slightly more interesting than the start.

I'm Back

with avengance.

More as week one of semester seven unfolds.

Will Blogger let me put Ø in my title?

Architecture in authoritarian and Eastern regimes. The 105 Builiding in Pyongyang, North Korea is damn-near spooky. If it's not torn out of Orwell's 1984 then it's definately Blade Runner -esque. [link]. Second, Social Design Notes has an informative post about Rem Koolhaas and the Chinese TV project [link].

It's nice to see the Washington Post deal with zoning [link].

Saw a story about Found on Fox News at 10 [at ten it's news at eleven it's history]. Interesting enough to merit a [link].

"Labor and Materials is Iraq's answer to "Extreme Home Makeover" and the country's first reality TV show." Forget prisoner abuse, this is torture on a far larger scale. "On the way back to the station, the crew stops to look at a house whose roof was ripped off. As they film it, a blast rips through the air, and smoke billows from a nearby mosque. The next day, "Labor and Materials" shows footage of the blast, which killed a young boy, as well as of Kadhim's house." Oh, wait. No, I suppose the killing and such is still going on [link].

Spyros Capralos [and so much more]

is about to become either synomous with a development catastrophe of world-scale proportions or coming a hairsbreadth away from said catastrophe. [link].

"Tackled by Face the Facts presenter John Waite, the general secretary for the Olympic Games, Spyros Capralos, admitted he had no idea how many workers have died constructing the games."

Now for today's news. [a whole lotta links from all over the place]

More from the B. Blogging the DNC is hot now [link]. Revenge of the Sith [link] has been chosen as the title for the next Star Wars film.

Silly Duke, giving iPods to freshman isn't going to make them better students. Oh, wait. Did you say iPods? Really! Well, where do I apply. [link]

I've been half-heartedly tracking the stories about the marshes in Iraq. Well, here's some news, apparently the UN is going to get involved [link].

"The wetlands were drained as punishment after the Marsh Arabs gave sanctuary to rebels fighting the Saddam regime. About 250,000 Marsh Arabs now live in refugee camps and Iraqi cities. It is estimated that during the Saddam period, around 95% of the marshes dried out, largely due to the deliberate diversion of water."

At a loss for words: [link]

"At least 46 children in Peru have died during one of the coldest spells in the Andes Mountains in 30 years."

I saw this on CBS this morning [link]. A little historic preservation, a little peacekeeping, a little religous tolerance. Voila.

How can you read this and not laugh. [link] below.

"INDIA'S railways minister has absolved himself of blame for accidents plaguing the world's largest train network, saying the fate of its 13 million daily passengers rested with the Hindu god of machines, Vishwakarma."

Holy Cow [no pun intended], India has over 100,000 kilometers of rail lines [nearly 60,000 miles based on the rough 100km/h = 60 mph conversion I do in Canada]. They better get on their knees cause apparently it's all in Vish's hands now.

On the topic of leadership: What President Bush is Not. [You can google search any of these quotes and find where they came from.] Here are my picks, but you really have to read the whole list [link]. via Harpers.

"The President of the United States is not a fact-checker... I’m not a very good novelist... I’m not an emailer... I’m not an Iraqi citizen."

It doesn't get any easier than this. Censorship doesn't always come from the government: List of songs deemed inappropriate by Clear Channel following the September 11, 2001 attacks [link].

Quite possibly the most interesting single post I've read from Defective Yeti. The Pioneer 10 Plaque [link].

Fuel Cell Breakthrough in Houston [link]. 60+mph jet powered go-kart for sale [link].

Look Below You

Actually, scroll below you. Just use the damn wheel. Next to my obligitory I Power Blogger icon is a new link. It says ATOM Syndication. If you use a syndication reader or news-feed service odds are you can use this link [you all know who you are].

Beyond that mundane addition to Toponymy: some exciting news, Frank Ghery will be a guest voice on the Simpsons next season [link]. So will Warren Sapp, Yao Ming, LeBron James, Michelle Kwan, Ray Romano, Kim Catrall, James Caan, Joe Mantegna, 50 Cent, andThomas Pynchon.

I'm considering a side-blog. It would be a short term project highlighting photos of strange cities [not all necessarily real cities or current cities].

In case you haven't been keeping up on Chicago's new "Steel Bean" this is a good place to start [link]. Plus, Soldier Field will likely lose its National Historic Landmark status because of the recent rennovations [link].

The Shish Kebab [link].

The secret lives of ______.

It's an iPod. No, it's a walkman. No, it's ... RetroPod [link]. Only $100.00, or D-I-Y for approx. $20.00

My continuing collection of Chicago articles. Millennium Park is open [link] and it sounds excellent. Here is the full special secion from the Sun-Times with more articles than you can shake a blogger at [link].

Toronto. Bike vs. Auto vs. Subway. Who wins? [link]

"10 Stories the world needs to know more about." from the United Nations [link]. AIDS orphans and Indigenous peoples living in voluntary isolation were the most interesting to me.