Gehry’s Downtown L.A.
It isn’t easy to create a real downtown district, vibrant and intense, in a city as sprawling and diffuse as Los Angeles, Frank Gehry admits. But that’s what he has set out to do with his design for Grand Avenue, unveiled in preliminary form yesterday.
The $750 million project, which includes the first high-rises he has ever designed for his hometown, is the first phase of a $1.8 billion development plan by the Related Companies that will remake Grand Avenue as a pedestrian-based gathering point.
“When we talk about L.A. having a downtown, it’s a stretch, because L.A. is so spread out as a city,” Mr. Gehry said in a telephone interview. “Our downtown probably is a linear one — Wilshire Boulevard or Sunset Boulevard.”
He said his goal was “to develop the beginning of a community that has the body language of a community and has the scale of a community.”
“Constants” In Change
A truism of physics is that constants stay the same. But do they? Recent discoveries puts that truism and other things we felt we knew about the universe in doubt. Scientists are asking this question: “Is the proton losing weight, or has the fabric of the Universe changed?”
Webcomic Tattoos
Fast Girls
A new study of 8,000 people age 2 to 90 found females handle timed tasks more quickly than males.
The difference is most pronounced among pre-teens and teenagers.
“If you look at the ability of someone to perform well in a timed situation, females have a big advantage,” said Stephen Camarata of Vanderbilt University.
New Dance
I’ve got a new dance, it’s called the No Toilet Paper Waddle. You should try it sometime.
Flaubert
There are three things required for happiness: good health, selfishness, and stupidity, and without stupidity the others are useless.
Taste the Battlefield
By routing signals from helmet-mounted cameras, sonar and other equipment through the tongue to the brain, they hope to give elite soldiers superhuman senses similar to owls, snakes and fish.
Do you like to take a nap to recordings of recited alpha-numeric codes intended to orient spies?
Me too.
When the Conet Project discs were released years ago, they went out of print before I could put the money together to buy them. I just got the repressing in the mail as a belated birthday present to myself. I’m so happy surrounding myself with the weird and somehow soothing artifacts of analog espionage. In addition to putting together these recordings, Irdial is a pretty interesting label-type entity.
Lordi
They have eight-foot retractable latex Satan wings, sing hits like “Chainsaw Buffet” and blow up slabs of smoking meat on stage. So members of the band Lordi expected a reaction when they beat a crooner of love ballads to represent Finland at the Eurovision song contest in Athens, the competition that was the springboard for Abba and Celine Dion.
Cai Guo-Qiang
Razzle Dazzle
During World War I, the British and Americans faced a serious threat from German U-boats, which were sinking allied shipping at a dangerous rate. All attempts to camouflage ships at sea had failed, as the appearance of the sea and sky are always changing. Any color scheme that was concealing in one situation was conspicuous in others. A British artist and naval officer, Norman Wilkinson, promoted a new camouflage scheme that was derived from the artistic fashions of the time, particularly cubism. Instead of trying to conceal the ship, it simply broke up its lines and made it more difficult for the U-boat captain to determine the ship’s course. The British called this camouflage scheme “Dazzle Painting.” The Americans called it “Razzle Dazzle.”
The Temple of Iconoclasts
by J. Rodolfo Wilcock, as translated by Lawrence Venuti:
“The most striking aspect of this vision is the double nature attributed to the heavenly bodies. From the moment of condensation, they adopt their traditional names, nearly always in the Latin forms: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jove, Saturn, and Uranus. The Sun, however, is called Helios, the moon Artemis, and the earth — perhaps through some unknown Teutonic affinity — Oops.” (p. 36)
San Francisco: Mercury House, 2000
Weekly Picture 53
Badminton Net, Prospect Park, Brooklyn
One Ship
Ship of State, Aground
Oil on Wood Panel
8×10 inches
2006
Literary Lingerie
A book cover for a literary novel today is like a miniature version of the designer’s bed on Sunday morning, revealing in its exquisitely wrinkled satin sheets exactly how responsive and gentle and comprehensive a lover this cover designer can be (albeit working alone). Other than recognizing how hot the cover is and, by extension, how much enthusiasm was lavished upon the work beneath these rumpled sheets, most readers of literary novels are, presumably, not prepared to spend time interpreting cover designs. They expect to be called upon to break a sweat in the boudoir of interpretation, sure, but only between the covers. Most covers today look expensively elaborate enough so that a book buyer is not embarrassed to be seen carrying them to the counter (there are cringing exceptions). But beyond that, the reader expects the writing itself to carry the weight of meaning. The covers, in a sense, are as dispensable to the participants as lingerie balled up on the floor.
An evaluation
Rolling Stone has Sean Wilentz conduct a historical, comparative evaluation of the current presidency.
I used to love a Creamsicle
Now, I think I’ll have to lay off of them for a bit. I can’t post a picture because clusterflock seems like a much more classy site. But here’s a link to a fake ad that will either make you love creamsicles or hate the thought of them until the “ad” has lost it’s impact.
The Last Hurrah (4.18.06)
It’s 10:30 at night. I’m at 814 A 5th street in South Philly because Al and I are staying with his college friend Gabe, who happens to be an industrial designer who now designs children’s museums. After wrestling with his dog (horse was more like it, the thing was a freak missing link between the dog world and the horse world) Gabe offered me some loose tobacco he had in a zip lock bag.
Step Pyramid
The very first days of archaeological work on Europe’s only pyramid reveal that it is indeed not only a pyramid, but a step pyramid.
Researchers said on Wednesday they have found geometrically cut stone blocks covering a central Bosnian hill that a hobby archaeologist claims is a pyramid.
Mediterranean Diet
New research links a Mediterranean diet rich in fruits, vegetables, fish, legumes, cereals, and olive oil to a lower risk of Alzheimer’s disease and a healthier mind.
So the question is, what is the Mediterranean diet? The countries and cultures with their exquisite cuisines that surround the Mediterranean basin provide a rich source of delicious, healthy food from which to choose. Spain and its tradition of Tappas and country faire have so much to contribute. Southern provincial France is another rich source as is the whole of Italy. Greek, Turkish, Arab, and North African foods complete the feast. Any good cookbook on each of these countries and their ordinary faire and daily cuisines will help you find a pathway to a healthier diet.
The key to all of these is the use of fruits, vegetables, cereals and legumes as the center of the diet, and meat as a condiment. Meat is not lacking, and certainly not flavor, but the variety of dishes (and often “small dishes”), using many flavors, eaten with good home baked and easy to make breads, is at the heart of a diet based upon the genius of Mediterranean cuisines. Learning to make these dishes is not difficult. In fact most of them are easy. You may need to search for a few ingredients from specialty markets (Italian, Greek, and Arab), and buy a good food processor to speed up the work, but the results will astound you.
Here’s an example:
6 points down in Texas?
Dinosaur Comics
It might be because it’s past 1am and I’m still up, but I find these comics hilarious right now.
These Shoes Were Made for Perching
THIS was going to be great, I told myself. I was going to march into Michael’s on West 55th Street, wearing the highest heels to come out of Paris, Lanvin’s peep-toe stilettos with five-and-a-half-inch cone heels and a two-inch platform, and they were all going to look up from their Cobb salads with demiportions of Roquefort and — well, it was going to be great.
Simon Yorke and His Turntable
One thing’s for sure: if the development of audio continues on its current path, unchecked, hi-fi as such will disappear. The very concept of ‘high fidelity’ will obsolesce. Those of us left behind in the stampede for technological solutions to our collective apathy will be dismissed as mere ‘cranks’ or ‘nostalgia buffs’. The sheep will continue to graze, unaware that the grass they are eating no longer tastes of grass and gives them neither nourishment nor pleasure. But they will continue to graze – as the addict continues to drink. Blindly. Stupidly.
Underscore Records
Underscore Records is driven by the belief that a major part of music making in India remains unheard, untapped, unrecorded and unpublished. Several streams of music that coexist in the musically vibrant Indian society are not sufficiently represented in prevailing forms of dissemination, and many musicians continue to work silently despite the severe lack of proper and sustained patronage and recognition. Underscore Records believes that there is an urgent need for creating space for all forms of music, and for musicians to empower themselves in order to find a voice of sanity in an irksome market situation.
