All this freaking out about the extinction of Homo sapiens is turning me into a bore. Granted, I think it's freak out worthy but there are limits. So here is Giorgio Agamben discussing the end of modernity, Capitalism as a savage religion, and the death of art.
And here is a not-very-good article about the Canadian government's $1.2 B spy headquarters. I didn't think we had spies. Somewhat predictably, the feel-good Canadian style is to call them "watchdogs".
The second article is only really interesting when read immediately after the first. The Agamben interview is all over the place, which is to be expected in an interview with a philosopher that's going to be published on the internet. Agamben makes the point, "A city whose streets and squares are controlled by way of surveillance cameras cannot be a public place: it is a prison." This control by surveillance is precisely why Canada's new spy palace costs so much. Canada doesn't have much in the way of spies; not in the way most people think of them. No CIA, no MI6, certainly no James Bond types. We have nerds with weapons training hoovering up information and compiling it. Agamben's assertion Western governments view all their citizens as virtual terrorists here takes on its double meaning. We have the capacity to be terrorists (as defined by the government) and our crimes will be digital.
Friday, February 14, 2014
Thursday, February 13, 2014
Trying to live with NTE
So, I spent all day yesterday on Guy McPherson's Nature Bats Last, your one-stop shop for all things apocalyptic. It took about five hours but I read through all the links on his regularly updated "Climate Chaos" page - a more or less complete listing of all the ways our species is desperately fucked. I had a hard time digesting most of the material. Not because it is overly scientific (I didn't need to use a calculator at any point, there is no math on the exam) but because it is scientists who are screaming "The sky is falling!!!"
I've written about that before. The incredible weirdness of people dedicated to the continuous but incremental increase in human knowledge, the practical definition of "slow and steady", the most rational and level-headed among us being the one's who are crying doom instead of patiently destroying every claim of the Doomsday freaks. It's a very odd thing. Scientists are careerists, of course they are. But they are also just one part of a larger project that has been underway for the past 300 odd years - the patient displacement of human ignorance with human knowledge. It is a deeply optimistic world view to take. You have to believe you are engaged in a process that began long before you were born and will continue long after you are dead. It doesn't make any sense otherwise. This process might be slowed in certain places and certain times but, as a whole and on the level of our entire species, it will continue. Now large groups of them are saying it might not. We just might be fucked.
The crux of the whole thing boils down to two points: self-reinforcing feedback loops and locked-in change. Here is a good video about feedback loops. There are two essential things to know. First, each loop feeds back into all climate changing factors and second, the changes are exponential and not linear. The "albedo" effect is a really simple example. White reflects more heat energy than black. Anyone who has worn dark clothes on a sunny summer day knows this. The biggest reflectors on the planet are the polar ice caps. They reflect sunlight (heat) back out of the atmosphere. As the ice melts, less energy is reflected causing the temperature to increase causing more ice to melt and so on. Since melting ice caps also expose the enormous peat bogs that store billions of tonnes of methane, as they melt more methane is released, increasing the temperature, which causes more ice to melt exposing more peat bog, etc etc. People say methane is 25 times more potent as a green house gas than carbon but that's measured over a century and the whole argument about feedback loops is they occur in a much shorter time span so 100 times would be more accurate. There are a whole bunch of these systems and they're all connected.
Then there are locked in changes. The planetary record shows historically temperature changes have preceded changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide (rather than the other way around). Some people use this as an argument against climate change theory but it makes sense and the scientists' models are include it. Essentially, when the climate change is not anthropogenic, higher temperatures have started all the feedback loops. Now, dumping millions of tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere started them. But the net result is the same. Once the temperature change occurs, billions of tonnes more carbon will be released into the atmosphere by melting ice caps, increased ocean temperatures (warm water throws carbon stored by cooler water back into the atmosphere), etc etc. That means the effect of the carbon already released into the atmosphere won't be entirely measurable for another 50 years. Basically everyone agrees that a 4º increase in temperature would fuck our shit up. We are currently at around .8º higher and the estimate is the locked in change is 1.4º - but that doesn't include what the planet will do in response to those extra 2.2º. It might mean we are already locked into a 4º change. If that isn't scary enough, the difference between the survival of our species (with billions of death) and the complete extinction of our species is the difference between a 4º and a 6º increase. 6º over 1850 and bye bye.
What I didn't realize until late last night, after several hours of trying to write something intelligent about the possibility humans might do sufficient damage to our environment in the next ten years to ensure our own extinction sometime in this century, was some part of me hopes it is true. This is partly because the people doing the most significant damage are kind of hideous people -the coal lobby, the natural gas frackers, etc. Then there are the people like the Tea Party Republican Paul Broun, who also happens to be the Chairman of the Oversight Subcommittee for the House Committee on Science and Technology, who thinks evolution and the Big Bang are a "lies straight from the pit of Hell" intended to convince people they don't need a saviour, that there is "convincing scientific evidence" the Earth is 6000 years old, and who stated on the floor of the House "Scientists all over this world say the idea of human induced global climate change is one of the greatest hoaxes perpetrated out of the scientific community. It is a hoax." You can find all those quotes, and many others, in his Wikipedia entry. The irony of this guy being in charge of oversight for the US Government's science and technology initiatives is lost on no one (except possibly him). And to correct his bullshit, no climate scientists think global warming is a hoax. The massive money of the combined energy lobbies has convinced some people with PhD's to argue against anthropogenic climate change. The 9000 studies combined in the IPCC's 2013 Report on Climate Change contain precisely zero studies claiming it is either a hoax or a natural occurrence. This isn't a selection bias. The IPCC is famously conservative, including only the most conclusive and widely accepted results. Anything with even a little bit of doubt (and some things that are certain but frighten politicians) is cut.
It's unfair to pick on Broun. Not because he doesn't richly deserve it but because he is only one of many prominent people who are doing their best to preserve the myth there is some kind of debate about climate change. Or, more accurately, that the terms of the debate are "does it exist or not?" rather than "is it already too late or not?" Donald Trump thinks winter is conclusive proof "global warming is bullshit", Rush Limbaugh thinks climate change is a Trojan Horse for liberals to further their goals of higher taxes, bigger government, and less freedom. The (cartoonishly evil) Koch brothers have put up almost $70 million of their own money to fund climate change denial. It's hard not to want these people to lose and lose badly.
One of the places I spent a lot of time is Youtube. I generally avoid Youtube for anything other than incomprehensible Japanese gameshows because videos get ranked according to popularity. And a climate scientist telling us the world as we know it is fucking over is bound not to be popular. But I was (and am) stunned by the comments that climate change videos attract. There is a large group of extremely dedicated commentators who want everyone who thinks climate change is anthropogenic thrown in prison, executed, or subjected to some form of humiliation. The crux of these comments is the same as that of Rep. Broun - climate change is a conspiracy of devils and liberals (interchangeable in his mind). Fuck the IPCC - the most rigorously vetted scientific findings in the history of our species. Fuck the liberal ideologues (like the World Bank, NASA, and the NSA) who think climate change is man-made and dangerous as fuck. It's a big-government conspiracy. If you believe their lies everything is evidence of climate change.
I remain undecided re who is more absurd: me hoping for the worst so the deniers will get their comeuppance or the deniers who think it is a hoax perpetrated by malefactors and brainwashed liberals. I have at least the good grace to be ashamed of my own irrational and stupid bias. And, if I gauge the worth of my position by the quality of my opposition, I am more correct than the deniers. I would rather oppose the Koch brothers than David Suzuki any day of the week.
I've written about that before. The incredible weirdness of people dedicated to the continuous but incremental increase in human knowledge, the practical definition of "slow and steady", the most rational and level-headed among us being the one's who are crying doom instead of patiently destroying every claim of the Doomsday freaks. It's a very odd thing. Scientists are careerists, of course they are. But they are also just one part of a larger project that has been underway for the past 300 odd years - the patient displacement of human ignorance with human knowledge. It is a deeply optimistic world view to take. You have to believe you are engaged in a process that began long before you were born and will continue long after you are dead. It doesn't make any sense otherwise. This process might be slowed in certain places and certain times but, as a whole and on the level of our entire species, it will continue. Now large groups of them are saying it might not. We just might be fucked.
The crux of the whole thing boils down to two points: self-reinforcing feedback loops and locked-in change. Here is a good video about feedback loops. There are two essential things to know. First, each loop feeds back into all climate changing factors and second, the changes are exponential and not linear. The "albedo" effect is a really simple example. White reflects more heat energy than black. Anyone who has worn dark clothes on a sunny summer day knows this. The biggest reflectors on the planet are the polar ice caps. They reflect sunlight (heat) back out of the atmosphere. As the ice melts, less energy is reflected causing the temperature to increase causing more ice to melt and so on. Since melting ice caps also expose the enormous peat bogs that store billions of tonnes of methane, as they melt more methane is released, increasing the temperature, which causes more ice to melt exposing more peat bog, etc etc. People say methane is 25 times more potent as a green house gas than carbon but that's measured over a century and the whole argument about feedback loops is they occur in a much shorter time span so 100 times would be more accurate. There are a whole bunch of these systems and they're all connected.
Then there are locked in changes. The planetary record shows historically temperature changes have preceded changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide (rather than the other way around). Some people use this as an argument against climate change theory but it makes sense and the scientists' models are include it. Essentially, when the climate change is not anthropogenic, higher temperatures have started all the feedback loops. Now, dumping millions of tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere started them. But the net result is the same. Once the temperature change occurs, billions of tonnes more carbon will be released into the atmosphere by melting ice caps, increased ocean temperatures (warm water throws carbon stored by cooler water back into the atmosphere), etc etc. That means the effect of the carbon already released into the atmosphere won't be entirely measurable for another 50 years. Basically everyone agrees that a 4º increase in temperature would fuck our shit up. We are currently at around .8º higher and the estimate is the locked in change is 1.4º - but that doesn't include what the planet will do in response to those extra 2.2º. It might mean we are already locked into a 4º change. If that isn't scary enough, the difference between the survival of our species (with billions of death) and the complete extinction of our species is the difference between a 4º and a 6º increase. 6º over 1850 and bye bye.
What I didn't realize until late last night, after several hours of trying to write something intelligent about the possibility humans might do sufficient damage to our environment in the next ten years to ensure our own extinction sometime in this century, was some part of me hopes it is true. This is partly because the people doing the most significant damage are kind of hideous people -the coal lobby, the natural gas frackers, etc. Then there are the people like the Tea Party Republican Paul Broun, who also happens to be the Chairman of the Oversight Subcommittee for the House Committee on Science and Technology, who thinks evolution and the Big Bang are a "lies straight from the pit of Hell" intended to convince people they don't need a saviour, that there is "convincing scientific evidence" the Earth is 6000 years old, and who stated on the floor of the House "Scientists all over this world say the idea of human induced global climate change is one of the greatest hoaxes perpetrated out of the scientific community. It is a hoax." You can find all those quotes, and many others, in his Wikipedia entry. The irony of this guy being in charge of oversight for the US Government's science and technology initiatives is lost on no one (except possibly him). And to correct his bullshit, no climate scientists think global warming is a hoax. The massive money of the combined energy lobbies has convinced some people with PhD's to argue against anthropogenic climate change. The 9000 studies combined in the IPCC's 2013 Report on Climate Change contain precisely zero studies claiming it is either a hoax or a natural occurrence. This isn't a selection bias. The IPCC is famously conservative, including only the most conclusive and widely accepted results. Anything with even a little bit of doubt (and some things that are certain but frighten politicians) is cut.
It's unfair to pick on Broun. Not because he doesn't richly deserve it but because he is only one of many prominent people who are doing their best to preserve the myth there is some kind of debate about climate change. Or, more accurately, that the terms of the debate are "does it exist or not?" rather than "is it already too late or not?" Donald Trump thinks winter is conclusive proof "global warming is bullshit", Rush Limbaugh thinks climate change is a Trojan Horse for liberals to further their goals of higher taxes, bigger government, and less freedom. The (cartoonishly evil) Koch brothers have put up almost $70 million of their own money to fund climate change denial. It's hard not to want these people to lose and lose badly.
One of the places I spent a lot of time is Youtube. I generally avoid Youtube for anything other than incomprehensible Japanese gameshows because videos get ranked according to popularity. And a climate scientist telling us the world as we know it is fucking over is bound not to be popular. But I was (and am) stunned by the comments that climate change videos attract. There is a large group of extremely dedicated commentators who want everyone who thinks climate change is anthropogenic thrown in prison, executed, or subjected to some form of humiliation. The crux of these comments is the same as that of Rep. Broun - climate change is a conspiracy of devils and liberals (interchangeable in his mind). Fuck the IPCC - the most rigorously vetted scientific findings in the history of our species. Fuck the liberal ideologues (like the World Bank, NASA, and the NSA) who think climate change is man-made and dangerous as fuck. It's a big-government conspiracy. If you believe their lies everything is evidence of climate change.
I remain undecided re who is more absurd: me hoping for the worst so the deniers will get their comeuppance or the deniers who think it is a hoax perpetrated by malefactors and brainwashed liberals. I have at least the good grace to be ashamed of my own irrational and stupid bias. And, if I gauge the worth of my position by the quality of my opposition, I am more correct than the deniers. I would rather oppose the Koch brothers than David Suzuki any day of the week.
Monday, February 10, 2014
+4º
Read this: Guy McPherson
Don't just read the post, follow every link and read those too. It only takes about three hours.
Spoiler alert: We are all going to die.
Don't just read the post, follow every link and read those too. It only takes about three hours.
Spoiler alert: We are all going to die.
Wednesday, February 5, 2014
A (Very) Bad Idea
Here is a contest advertized on Archdaily. For those who don't want to check out the link, here it is in a nutshell - teams of students are given 5 days to solve a complex architectural problem, they make their submission, the best 3 get money, the winner gets money and a job (or jobs) after graduating. The problem statement is "redefine the meaning of sustainability in architecture". Or that might be last years problem. Presumably the winner's already solved it. Here's why that is a really bad idea (and potentially very cruel).
The average frosh in architecture school is either 17 or 18. By the time they're advanced enough to have a chance in a competition like this they will be 21 or 22. Older students will enter but I would guess the average age of the competitors will be around 23. Architecture students are famous for working all night. The longest I ever went without sleep (in architecture school) was about 70 hours. Other people have gone much, much longer. Lou Reed once said he stayed awake for 5 straight days when he was hanging around Andy Warhol's factory because he didn't want to miss anything interesting. But for that kind of stamina you need drugs.
The chair of the panel of judges is a partner in OMA. You've heard of them because they're Rem Koolhaas's firm and you've heard of him. So getting a gig with them is a huge career move. When I was in school, I knew people who were using their Epi pens as study aids, snorting coke in the washrooms, taking Ritalin by the handful, grinding up commercially available "Wakeness" aids and snorting that, all manner of very unhealthy behaviour. And there was no prize involved other than bragging rights. First prize for this is roughly $5K CAD plus a job plus international exposure. I don't even want to know what kids (if you consider people younger than 25 kids and I do) are willing to do for the kind of career boost this can give.
So, in terms of public safety it's not a great idea. It's a bad idea. What takes it from "bad" to "very bad" is the idea you can do something interesting in 5 days about a pervasive, multifaceted, multidisciplinary, and global problem like "sustainability in architecture". For those of you who don't speak architect, sustainability is how we describe our ongoing efforts to make buildings that aren't so blatantly and sometimes mind-bogglingly wasteful. It's a huge problem. I would argue it's the biggest problem in architecture, since it requires a rethinking of massing and form, structure, materials, building orientation, urban planning, life cycle costing, how to measure and reward efficiency, how we travel (and how much), etc etc. Everything about building (except design) requires enormous amounts of energy - in the sense of oil, gas, hydro, or nuclear.
The logic behind the 5 day limit is "in the real world" architects don't have months to contemplate various alternative solutions. Everything has to be fast and good. I don't have much sympathy for ITRW arguments. It allows too much bullshit through the filters. In the REAL WORLD... is what someone says when they are tired of thinking. And, since Universities were invented and have been preserved so that people will have places to do things that take time (like reading, thinking, teaching, etc) bringing this ITRW bullshit into the University is a very bad idea.
In the REAL WORLD you won't have 5 days to solve complicated problems, you will have a career that spans many years to slowly work towards complex positions to complex issues. You will have both your own experience and that of the professional community to draw on as you move at what must seem like an achingly slow pace towards an understanding that is continually eluding you (until you are at least 50 and, more probably, 70 years old). In the interim, you work and think and maybe even teach.
This is a competition that will be won by a mediocre idea that won't really be worth the trouble of tearing apart. But it will be accompanied by some beautiful images. So really, it's a five-day endurance version of a beauty pageant. My congratulations to the winners in the event they survive.
The average frosh in architecture school is either 17 or 18. By the time they're advanced enough to have a chance in a competition like this they will be 21 or 22. Older students will enter but I would guess the average age of the competitors will be around 23. Architecture students are famous for working all night. The longest I ever went without sleep (in architecture school) was about 70 hours. Other people have gone much, much longer. Lou Reed once said he stayed awake for 5 straight days when he was hanging around Andy Warhol's factory because he didn't want to miss anything interesting. But for that kind of stamina you need drugs.
The chair of the panel of judges is a partner in OMA. You've heard of them because they're Rem Koolhaas's firm and you've heard of him. So getting a gig with them is a huge career move. When I was in school, I knew people who were using their Epi pens as study aids, snorting coke in the washrooms, taking Ritalin by the handful, grinding up commercially available "Wakeness" aids and snorting that, all manner of very unhealthy behaviour. And there was no prize involved other than bragging rights. First prize for this is roughly $5K CAD plus a job plus international exposure. I don't even want to know what kids (if you consider people younger than 25 kids and I do) are willing to do for the kind of career boost this can give.
So, in terms of public safety it's not a great idea. It's a bad idea. What takes it from "bad" to "very bad" is the idea you can do something interesting in 5 days about a pervasive, multifaceted, multidisciplinary, and global problem like "sustainability in architecture". For those of you who don't speak architect, sustainability is how we describe our ongoing efforts to make buildings that aren't so blatantly and sometimes mind-bogglingly wasteful. It's a huge problem. I would argue it's the biggest problem in architecture, since it requires a rethinking of massing and form, structure, materials, building orientation, urban planning, life cycle costing, how to measure and reward efficiency, how we travel (and how much), etc etc. Everything about building (except design) requires enormous amounts of energy - in the sense of oil, gas, hydro, or nuclear.
The logic behind the 5 day limit is "in the real world" architects don't have months to contemplate various alternative solutions. Everything has to be fast and good. I don't have much sympathy for ITRW arguments. It allows too much bullshit through the filters. In the REAL WORLD... is what someone says when they are tired of thinking. And, since Universities were invented and have been preserved so that people will have places to do things that take time (like reading, thinking, teaching, etc) bringing this ITRW bullshit into the University is a very bad idea.
In the REAL WORLD you won't have 5 days to solve complicated problems, you will have a career that spans many years to slowly work towards complex positions to complex issues. You will have both your own experience and that of the professional community to draw on as you move at what must seem like an achingly slow pace towards an understanding that is continually eluding you (until you are at least 50 and, more probably, 70 years old). In the interim, you work and think and maybe even teach.
This is a competition that will be won by a mediocre idea that won't really be worth the trouble of tearing apart. But it will be accompanied by some beautiful images. So really, it's a five-day endurance version of a beauty pageant. My congratulations to the winners in the event they survive.
Tuesday, February 4, 2014
On (Good) Editors
That thing I wrote for OnSite came back with the editors comments. The email said, "My questions, comments, corrections are in red." I opened the attached file expecting to see a blood-bath and found two questions, one sentence each. As a result I have to re-write almost the whole thing. Not because the questions were general and / or mean. They were very specific and seemed very easy to answer. I sat down at 9 this morning thinking, "I can polish this off in about ten minutes." It's now 2:30 - five and a half hours of constant writing, looking things up, reading stuff, more writing, cutting things, re-writing, editing, changes, looking more stuff up...
I have a huge admiration for people who can do that - ask the perfect question. It is the one talent that separates great critics from mediocre ones. There are only a few people I know who can do it. And whenever I get a chance to work with them, I take it. It's something I have tried to cultivate in myself, with very little in the way of results. I'm still the person who thinks of the perfect thing to say three days later and is then tortured by the knowledge it was too fucking late.
By the way, when I say (write) I have been writing for five and a half hours, I don't mean in the super-fast, prayerful, non-productive way I described a few entries ago. I have been wringing individual words from my brain and weighing them carefully for since 9 this morning. It's fucking exhausting. Is 'notes' better or worse than 'identifies'? Did he 'collect' them or 'curate' them? Which is more correct - 'interpolate', 'calculate', or 'insert'?
The really great question makes you feel like a dunce two hours later. It humiliates you but it waits until you are alone to do it. Perhaps humiliate isn't the right word. It reveals to you the extent of your ignorance and, if the question is really really great, points you in the direction of the answer.
For some reason, possibly to do with spending a substantial amount of time at NASA's jet propulsion laboratory website recently and associating all things space with Neil deGrasse Tyson, I was thinking about Isaac Newton. Why was I on the jet propulsion lab's website? Because the latest terrain model used by Google Maps and Google Earth was produced by the space shuttle shooting microwaves at the surface of the Earth from two sources (60m apart) and is accurate to 0m (90% certainty) in altitude and generated a point on a 15m grid covering the entire planet from 60º N to 60º S. Everyone knows Sir Isaac was a intellectual badass. Optics, the orbits of the planets, gravity, calculus, the theory of money (he was in charge of the English mint), and a whole lot of stuff that was probably very intelligent about alchemy. But he was also a kick-ass question asker. When everyone else was wondering why snowflakes are all different, he was wondering why, given the all snowflakes are different, all the arms of any given snowflake are all the same. Which, when you think about it, is a much better question. Not only is it weirder, it also leads in the direction of the answer. Although, in fairness, that part about the answer might be either an accident or an illusion caused by my almost complete ignorance of how snowflakes work. I think it's similar to crystals and I know a bit about those from reading Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle.
So, what's the result re my (what I hoped ought be brief but turned out to be dramatic) rethink of my short essay? An actual idea that goes from beginning to end and makes sense. Which is good. Except that it was supposed to already have that when I submitted it at the end of last month and it didn't really (although I thought it did). Which is bad. I suspect that, as a result, I have about four or five more hours of re-writing to do. I am starting to feel very thankful I didn't choose a career in journalism. And even starting to feel a little bad about all the vicious insults I have tossed at the Star's architecture columnists over the last couple years. I don't think they are any more right than I did before. They aren't. They remain wrong in general and in detail. But I acknowledge the difficulty in finding someone who can meet deadlines, write intelligently, and produce architecture criticism worth reading.
As for editing, I wouldn't be very good at it. I have difficulty restraining myself from rewriting the thing myself. Poor diction drives me nuts. And I am too impatient to think of really good questions (even if I had the ability, which I probably don't). My questions are typically limited to: "Really?", "Are you sure you mean this?", and "What the fuck is this supposed to mean?"
I have a huge admiration for people who can do that - ask the perfect question. It is the one talent that separates great critics from mediocre ones. There are only a few people I know who can do it. And whenever I get a chance to work with them, I take it. It's something I have tried to cultivate in myself, with very little in the way of results. I'm still the person who thinks of the perfect thing to say three days later and is then tortured by the knowledge it was too fucking late.
By the way, when I say (write) I have been writing for five and a half hours, I don't mean in the super-fast, prayerful, non-productive way I described a few entries ago. I have been wringing individual words from my brain and weighing them carefully for since 9 this morning. It's fucking exhausting. Is 'notes' better or worse than 'identifies'? Did he 'collect' them or 'curate' them? Which is more correct - 'interpolate', 'calculate', or 'insert'?
The really great question makes you feel like a dunce two hours later. It humiliates you but it waits until you are alone to do it. Perhaps humiliate isn't the right word. It reveals to you the extent of your ignorance and, if the question is really really great, points you in the direction of the answer.
For some reason, possibly to do with spending a substantial amount of time at NASA's jet propulsion laboratory website recently and associating all things space with Neil deGrasse Tyson, I was thinking about Isaac Newton. Why was I on the jet propulsion lab's website? Because the latest terrain model used by Google Maps and Google Earth was produced by the space shuttle shooting microwaves at the surface of the Earth from two sources (60m apart) and is accurate to 0m (90% certainty) in altitude and generated a point on a 15m grid covering the entire planet from 60º N to 60º S. Everyone knows Sir Isaac was a intellectual badass. Optics, the orbits of the planets, gravity, calculus, the theory of money (he was in charge of the English mint), and a whole lot of stuff that was probably very intelligent about alchemy. But he was also a kick-ass question asker. When everyone else was wondering why snowflakes are all different, he was wondering why, given the all snowflakes are different, all the arms of any given snowflake are all the same. Which, when you think about it, is a much better question. Not only is it weirder, it also leads in the direction of the answer. Although, in fairness, that part about the answer might be either an accident or an illusion caused by my almost complete ignorance of how snowflakes work. I think it's similar to crystals and I know a bit about those from reading Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle.
So, what's the result re my (what I hoped ought be brief but turned out to be dramatic) rethink of my short essay? An actual idea that goes from beginning to end and makes sense. Which is good. Except that it was supposed to already have that when I submitted it at the end of last month and it didn't really (although I thought it did). Which is bad. I suspect that, as a result, I have about four or five more hours of re-writing to do. I am starting to feel very thankful I didn't choose a career in journalism. And even starting to feel a little bad about all the vicious insults I have tossed at the Star's architecture columnists over the last couple years. I don't think they are any more right than I did before. They aren't. They remain wrong in general and in detail. But I acknowledge the difficulty in finding someone who can meet deadlines, write intelligently, and produce architecture criticism worth reading.
As for editing, I wouldn't be very good at it. I have difficulty restraining myself from rewriting the thing myself. Poor diction drives me nuts. And I am too impatient to think of really good questions (even if I had the ability, which I probably don't). My questions are typically limited to: "Really?", "Are you sure you mean this?", and "What the fuck is this supposed to mean?"
Sunday, February 2, 2014
On Hamlet and Lear
This morning I heard a host on the CBC call Lear "Shakespeare's greatest tragedy" and I thought, that guy has kids. It seems simple. Young people (those who read Shakespeare anyway) think Hamlet is Shakespeare's best tragedy because youth is betrayed by age. Adults, and particularly parents, think the same about Lear because age is betrayed by youth.
Personally, I prefer Hamlet. And no, I'm not a parent. I've never understood Lear. I mean, I know what it's about and I get the point of it but I've never felt the same admiration for it as I do for Hamlet. I have a certain admiration for the resourcefulness required to fix the tragedy (in the sense of making it dramatically and logically necessary) in the very first act. But I always thought if you want your children to treat you well in your old age, don't give them names that sound like venereal diseases. Lear didn't fuck himself when he decided to make his children compete for his kingdom with protestations of love; he fucked himself when he decided Goneril was a good name for a girl. Regan is okay as a name but not as a character (she's a fucking bitch). Maybe her middle name was Syphilis. But obviously Cordelia is going to be the one who doesn't harbour intense revenge fantasies. Lear could have died happily in his bed surrounded by loving children and grandkids if he thought, "Should I call her Goneril or Lily? Hmmm, I think Lily."
Since my brother had kids I started paying more attention to parenting advice columns and I noticed a couple things. First, very few people tell you not to give your kid some strange fucking name you thought of when you were high (like Goneril or Titus or Gustave). I suppose Gustave is okay if you speak French. Second, parents all seem to believe their kids are little human time-bombs. Everyone is terrified of messing their kids up.
I sometimes wonder how difficult it is to really fuck a kid up? It must be hard. The only way I can think of would be if you either viciously mistreat them or completely ignore them. I guess cruelly and publicly criticizing everything they do would probably work too. And if you do that, you are so seriously fucked yourself it's more like the kid's grandparents are fucking them up - grandparent fucks up parent fucks up kid, therefore grandparent fucks up kid. If you aren't seriously emotionally damaged, a irredeemably vile person, or labouring under a crippling addiction your kids should be fine.
I think about it this way. Two or three generations ago it was not only okay to beat the fuck out of your kids, it was kind of expected. I'm sure my grandparents were (by many reckonings) good people but they didn't raise their kids in a way anyone would consider acceptable today. And my parents are good people and good parents. My brother is an excellent parent and his wife is even better. That's not me being blind about the failings of my own family either. They have an adult kid who is one of the nicest, level headed, and well-adjusted people I know. On the whole, it seems to me like it's harder to completely fuck kids up than most parents fear.
Of course, if I'm being fair, I have to add I have no inclination to listen to people talk about the shit their parents did to them. Unless your parents either completely neglected you, savagely beat you, or left you to be raised by a wolf pack I think you have an obligation to settle your own shit by the age of 25. If you don't. That's fine but it's your problem - don't blame your parents and don't tell me about it.
Personally, I prefer Hamlet. And no, I'm not a parent. I've never understood Lear. I mean, I know what it's about and I get the point of it but I've never felt the same admiration for it as I do for Hamlet. I have a certain admiration for the resourcefulness required to fix the tragedy (in the sense of making it dramatically and logically necessary) in the very first act. But I always thought if you want your children to treat you well in your old age, don't give them names that sound like venereal diseases. Lear didn't fuck himself when he decided to make his children compete for his kingdom with protestations of love; he fucked himself when he decided Goneril was a good name for a girl. Regan is okay as a name but not as a character (she's a fucking bitch). Maybe her middle name was Syphilis. But obviously Cordelia is going to be the one who doesn't harbour intense revenge fantasies. Lear could have died happily in his bed surrounded by loving children and grandkids if he thought, "Should I call her Goneril or Lily? Hmmm, I think Lily."
Since my brother had kids I started paying more attention to parenting advice columns and I noticed a couple things. First, very few people tell you not to give your kid some strange fucking name you thought of when you were high (like Goneril or Titus or Gustave). I suppose Gustave is okay if you speak French. Second, parents all seem to believe their kids are little human time-bombs. Everyone is terrified of messing their kids up.
I sometimes wonder how difficult it is to really fuck a kid up? It must be hard. The only way I can think of would be if you either viciously mistreat them or completely ignore them. I guess cruelly and publicly criticizing everything they do would probably work too. And if you do that, you are so seriously fucked yourself it's more like the kid's grandparents are fucking them up - grandparent fucks up parent fucks up kid, therefore grandparent fucks up kid. If you aren't seriously emotionally damaged, a irredeemably vile person, or labouring under a crippling addiction your kids should be fine.
I think about it this way. Two or three generations ago it was not only okay to beat the fuck out of your kids, it was kind of expected. I'm sure my grandparents were (by many reckonings) good people but they didn't raise their kids in a way anyone would consider acceptable today. And my parents are good people and good parents. My brother is an excellent parent and his wife is even better. That's not me being blind about the failings of my own family either. They have an adult kid who is one of the nicest, level headed, and well-adjusted people I know. On the whole, it seems to me like it's harder to completely fuck kids up than most parents fear.
Of course, if I'm being fair, I have to add I have no inclination to listen to people talk about the shit their parents did to them. Unless your parents either completely neglected you, savagely beat you, or left you to be raised by a wolf pack I think you have an obligation to settle your own shit by the age of 25. If you don't. That's fine but it's your problem - don't blame your parents and don't tell me about it.
Saturday, February 1, 2014
On Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry (and Frank Gehry)
I started reading the Harry Potter books in my mid-thirties. Most people who did that were reading them to their kids. I did it for my own enjoyment. I'm a big fan of dumb books. I don't think I could stand to read any of them again but I do like to watch the movies occasionally. Mostly to hear Alan Rickman draw his sentences...
...out.
Part of the fun of the Harry Potter films is trying to figure out how the fuck Hogwarts itself is put together. The people who designed it for the films did a really great job. My favourite parts are the bathrooms - which have a pretty big role in the films. Bigger than I remembered until I looked at them again. The entrance to the Chamber of Secrets is through a bathroom; Hermione turns herself into a cat in one trying to use the Polyjuice Potion; Mertle tells Harry the secret of the egg in the big tub in the prefect's bathroom; Harry fights Draco in the bathroom, using the Sectumsepra spell; that's all I can think of off the top of my head.
The bathrooms in the early movies are more Hogwarts-ish than in the later ones. The entrance to the Chamber of Secrets is a nice piece of set design but it doesn't look like it belongs in any bathroom outside a school for witchcraft and wizardry. The one where the fight occurs between Draco and Harry is fantastically strange. It looks like the designers decided to stick all the fixtures one might have found in a boarding school circa 1950 into a gothic cathedral. Really odd and great. I think they might have changed set designers around the fourth movie. The interiors for the first three are mostly borrowed from actual buildings. I guess once the producers realized every movie was going to make about a billion dollars they started spending more on them. The twin spiral staircase (which, if you think about it rationally makes no sense at all) that gets you to the prophecy class in the 5th movie or to the offices of Horace Slughorn in the 6th is a bizarre and wonderful treat. NOTE: I tried to find a picture of this one on the internet but all I got was a bunch of images of the hall with the moving staircases.
I'm sure someone has published a complete book of Hogwarts with technical drawings of all the sets. They have one for the Millenium Falcon so there must be one for Hogwarts. Let me search Google...
Unbelievably, there is no book for Hogwarts itself. You can get a complete Lego set and a bunch of other shit but no book of technical drawings. The free market fails again. Fuck you Milton Friedman! I guess the invisible hand of the market has some drawing to do!?!
This is way off topic but thinking about the spiral staircase made me think of Frank Gehry's addition and renovation of the AGO in Toronto. And that illustrates the essential lameness of Gehry's post-Bilbao work. Instead of sitting down and coming up with some real architecture he just said, "Find me some places I can do something sculptural and not have to think about proportions or the hierarchy of elements or any off that bullshit". That's probably not a direct quote. The Guggenheim in Bilbao is a masterpiece. In 80 years or so, when architectural historians start writing "Architecture in the 21st Century" Bilbao will be the second chapter. The first will be important shit that happened in the 20th - like Corb and so on. But since Bilbao, which has all the same characteristics, defects, and essential fucked-upness of all Gehry's projects but was the first time we'd seen anything like that so it gets a pass, Gehry has traded on his reputation and made it work because sycophants (and sycophantic critics) don't bother to wonder whether all architecture ought not be judged by the same criteria. I think it should. So architecture today (whether or not you are Frank Gehry) remains subject to, and the product of, the same considerations as the Doric temple and the Gothic Cathedral. Shape, proportion, hierarchy. Those of you who disagree with the inclusion of hierarchy in that list might remember Vitruvius (who is dubious in other ways but dead on in this) made it one of his main elements of architecture - only he called it by a different name. And by these criteria, the correct criteria, Gehry is an ambitious, self-centered, egotistical failure.
Even more unfortunate than the fact Gehry's name has enough magic in it to get shit projects realized around the world is that his is the kind of failure many young architects aspire to.
That turned into a downer. I should have stopped at making fun of Milton Friedman.
...out.
Part of the fun of the Harry Potter films is trying to figure out how the fuck Hogwarts itself is put together. The people who designed it for the films did a really great job. My favourite parts are the bathrooms - which have a pretty big role in the films. Bigger than I remembered until I looked at them again. The entrance to the Chamber of Secrets is through a bathroom; Hermione turns herself into a cat in one trying to use the Polyjuice Potion; Mertle tells Harry the secret of the egg in the big tub in the prefect's bathroom; Harry fights Draco in the bathroom, using the Sectumsepra spell; that's all I can think of off the top of my head.
The bathrooms in the early movies are more Hogwarts-ish than in the later ones. The entrance to the Chamber of Secrets is a nice piece of set design but it doesn't look like it belongs in any bathroom outside a school for witchcraft and wizardry. The one where the fight occurs between Draco and Harry is fantastically strange. It looks like the designers decided to stick all the fixtures one might have found in a boarding school circa 1950 into a gothic cathedral. Really odd and great. I think they might have changed set designers around the fourth movie. The interiors for the first three are mostly borrowed from actual buildings. I guess once the producers realized every movie was going to make about a billion dollars they started spending more on them. The twin spiral staircase (which, if you think about it rationally makes no sense at all) that gets you to the prophecy class in the 5th movie or to the offices of Horace Slughorn in the 6th is a bizarre and wonderful treat. NOTE: I tried to find a picture of this one on the internet but all I got was a bunch of images of the hall with the moving staircases.
I'm sure someone has published a complete book of Hogwarts with technical drawings of all the sets. They have one for the Millenium Falcon so there must be one for Hogwarts. Let me search Google...
Unbelievably, there is no book for Hogwarts itself. You can get a complete Lego set and a bunch of other shit but no book of technical drawings. The free market fails again. Fuck you Milton Friedman! I guess the invisible hand of the market has some drawing to do!?!
This is way off topic but thinking about the spiral staircase made me think of Frank Gehry's addition and renovation of the AGO in Toronto. And that illustrates the essential lameness of Gehry's post-Bilbao work. Instead of sitting down and coming up with some real architecture he just said, "Find me some places I can do something sculptural and not have to think about proportions or the hierarchy of elements or any off that bullshit". That's probably not a direct quote. The Guggenheim in Bilbao is a masterpiece. In 80 years or so, when architectural historians start writing "Architecture in the 21st Century" Bilbao will be the second chapter. The first will be important shit that happened in the 20th - like Corb and so on. But since Bilbao, which has all the same characteristics, defects, and essential fucked-upness of all Gehry's projects but was the first time we'd seen anything like that so it gets a pass, Gehry has traded on his reputation and made it work because sycophants (and sycophantic critics) don't bother to wonder whether all architecture ought not be judged by the same criteria. I think it should. So architecture today (whether or not you are Frank Gehry) remains subject to, and the product of, the same considerations as the Doric temple and the Gothic Cathedral. Shape, proportion, hierarchy. Those of you who disagree with the inclusion of hierarchy in that list might remember Vitruvius (who is dubious in other ways but dead on in this) made it one of his main elements of architecture - only he called it by a different name. And by these criteria, the correct criteria, Gehry is an ambitious, self-centered, egotistical failure.
Even more unfortunate than the fact Gehry's name has enough magic in it to get shit projects realized around the world is that his is the kind of failure many young architects aspire to.
That turned into a downer. I should have stopped at making fun of Milton Friedman.
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