short notes:<br> will brady's ruminations: 2005/01/23

short notes:
will brady's ruminations

2005-01-29

COMMUNITY PLANNING | RESOURCES

Good tools are always needed to get any project off the ground and started | With community planning, good tools are all the more important ~ only the "tools" aren't all fresh from the woodshop but from the studio of the mind |

With this in mind, here's a few I came across recently:
• Sustainable Communities I'm not certain when this was most recently updated, but resources listed still seem active | The focus? "..a starter kit for a community member, city official, planner, or design professional to identify currently available planning tools and to assess their applicability and appropriateness to specific projects or issues... "
• Urbanicity The site blur reads "...electronic publisher for all aspects of urban and sustainable development. The Urbanicity website [is] a portal for educational resources, conferences, internet resources and more, including a unique library of urban articles... | Funding for operations comes from the UN Habitat Best Practices and the World Bank |
• Urban Resources A book and links list covering subjects such as photography, architecture, industrial archaeology and urban exploration | Reference to things on paper and not necessarily online |
• Land Tenure Center Site blurb: "... to study diverse land and natural resource problems in the United States, Canada, and northern Mexico. The North American Program will work with the poor, community organizations, and government agencies to analyze problems and try to find solutions..." | Affiliated with University of Wisconsin at Madison |
• Sustainable Building Resources | To make sustainable communities, you need green construction | This site promotes the development of "...Green buildings ~ structures that are cost-effectively designed, built, and operated in a manner that achieves the greatest possible energy efficiency, indoor air quality, occupant health, resource efficiency, and environmental compatibility. "

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PRISON LIFE
Photo credits: © 2003 Carl DeKeyser/Magnum
Carl DeKeyser, a seasoned Magnum Studios photographer, produced a visually lavish but not very believable photo book of Siberian Prison camps entitled Zona - Siberian Prison Camps | The photographer, who took a visit by invitation of the Russian government, stated that he was impressed by what he saw, not questioning where the "hidden stuff" rested | While

I'm not one to judge his credulity, and while I certainly recognize his concerns that about if he spoke up, he would not have seen as much as he had, it's disenheartening that ~ after a point ~ he didn't even seem to make the effort | The photos are now 4 to 5 years old; the book published late in 2003 | It's nevertheless worth looking at if not actually purchasing |
One reviewer, Carole nagger, chided DeKeyser thusly "... Hell could be painted in beautiful colors, and often is – in everyday life and in prison camps. It is, nevertheless, hell, and de Keyzer chose neither to go beyond the surface nor to do his job as a photographer and as a human being. No one said that job was easy."
Touring institutions is an exercise is in caution and

quiet discernment | This photo project reminded me of a time when I'd gone with a group of officials to examine a mental hospitals for a quality review | One one occasion, not only was the strong smell of fresh paint permeating the halls, but one of the reviewers, a woman of some social prominence, brushed against a wall with her dark sable fur coat, and found it now covered with a layer of white paint | So, my advice is, look for the truth beyond the whitewash, and if the place just looks too good to believed, then don't believe it | And if the residents [patients, clients, inmates ~ they'll tell you what's the most honest term to use] can't speak with y ou at length, then just watch their faces | As in the photo provided here, one grimace speaks volumes |

SOME OTHER SITES THAT REVIEW THE BOOK: Urban Resources looks at Zona and Pixel Press questions DeKeyser's complacency |

¶ 11:15 0 comments

2005-01-27

HISTORY

Auschwitz ~ liberated 60 years ago today
~ one man's recollection ~

FOR THE REST OF THE STORY: Herr Mueller's Days at Auschwitz | READING LIST: Nizkor Project's Book List

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2005-01-26

PHOTOGRAPHY

American Homeless

My friend Ian Grey stumbled into photography and found himself a natural | Click on the pix for a larger sized image | Click on his name for his pbase photoblog

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FRACAS

More homosexual menace in our children's play spaces and bedrooms! | I have to thank James Dobson for raising the alarm about the disturbing and troublesome subversion | Seems like Dobson and Jerry Falwell are the only ones warning us about these things |
Sponges come in all size, shapes, and colors | Most sponges are hermaphrodites, that is, they produce both male and female sex cells | Sponges do not produce eggs until they are at least

three years of age | Some sponges reproduce by budding, a process whereby a tip of a branch is constricted off by the sponge, or broken off during a storm |
Sponges have few enemies | But they have some ...and thank G*D for that! | Picket the local Toys-R-Us NOW to help eradicate this sick and twisted perverted influence in society |
If we don't do something now, there's no telling how rapidly the walls of civilization will crumble down around us | DON'T LET YOUR CHILD BECOME AN UNSUSPECTING PAWN OF DEVIANTS!

FOR PROOF ABOUT THE ABERRANT SEX LIFE OF THE SPONGE Sex Life Secrets | PIX CREDIT Josh's Photoalbum | and to let you know how serious this posting is, check out The Hoolinet

¶ 22:40 0 comments

NEWS BLIPS + UPDATES

Mississippi Lawmakers confer with racist group | By Emily Wagster Pettus | The Associated Press
     Some Mississippi lawmakers are scheduled to speak Thursday to the Council of Conservative Citizens, an organization that the Southern Poverty Law Center calls "a patently white supremacist group."
     Bill Hinson of Pearl, president of the Great Southern chapter of CCC, announced on the group's Web site that "several House and Senate members" are to speak | He wouldn't tell The Associated Press the names of lawmakers or where the event is taking place, although AP learned it will be at a south Jackson fish house | Hinson said he wouldn't release details of the meeting because, "we've had so much negative publicity" | He said the CCC does not make an issue of race.
     "Our chapter is more focused on taxation, Southern heritage," Hinson said. "I guess you could call us the Christian right, something like that." | READ THE FULL STORY | FROM Steve Gilliard via Atrios

"Ex-Gay" Therapist expelled from counseling organzition for ethical violations | NEW YORK (Tuesday, Jan. 25, 2005) AP Author Wayne Besen today released a letter he uncovered from the American Counseling Association that "permanently expelled" reparative therapist Richard Cohen in 2003 for serious ethics violations | The letter referred to Cohen's violations which included inappropriate behavior such as fostering dependent counseling relationships, not promoting the welfare of clients, engaging in actions that sought to meet his personal needs at the expense of clients, exploiting the trust and dependency of clients, unethically soliciting testimonials from clients and promoting products to clients in a manner that is deceptive | READ THE FULL STORY | FROM Wayne Besen

Alabama Boy Scouts falsify enrollment records by the thousands | Apparently an effort at helping prepare impressionable minds for the next generation of ENRON and WorldCom scandals, the Greater Alabama Boy Scout Council was listing fake members to boost enrollment, perhaps to bring in more funding from agencies like the United Way | The FBI is investigating to determine whether or not fraud occurred | READ THE FULL STORY | FROM Corrente

¶ 01:02 0 comments

2005-01-24

JOURNAL EXCERPTS
Written 11 nov 1993 for a presentation at an Abuse Survivor's "Speakback" held in Waterbury, CT |

Some Thoughts on Making Productive Social Change

Affecting Social Change is much more than mouthing slogans or sound bites | It can mean devoting hours - days - years - spending time with those who are reluctant and unwilling to hear the truths of others; years to work at changing existing social policy or considering other ways of living ||
Yet making the fundametal changes in the values that underlie oppressive social policies require interacting with those who oppose us | This must be done before we get to the voting booth, before we get to legislative committee hearings or public forums | We need to get our points across and to affect change in board rooms and private offices; in juvenile and adult corrections, mental health, the courts, in educational, cultural, legislative and personal spheres ~ whereever decisions affecting all our lives are made regulalrly and daily ~ and we need to do this now!
We must infiltrate the meeting places of adversaries and decision makers who oppose eliminating wrongs | We must insist upon and make impact by directly negotiating policy change [or in protecting good policies and practices], laws and directions for the future | Once there, being heard, we have to make our points clearly enough to be effective advocates for change | Now, affecting change doesn't necessarily make for chit chat or small talk at parties | You won't be making friends with those you meet and confront at policy plannings or while negotiating change, nor will your own friends necessarily want to know about the details of your efforts ||
Even if we cannot immediately make changes to oppressive social policies or practices, our mere presence in some of these meeting places can prevent additional harmful policies from being implemented |

Also ~ remember to stay in touch with others who know what you say to be true, and to refresh and replenish yourself from behind-the-scenes battles rather than burn yourself out | Stay healthy to battle successfully ||
JOURNAL EXCERPTS Written 20 apr 1994 in the print journal vol # 28 |
FEAR of the future, combined with an Apocalypic interpretation of events, can be a dangerous union | Mix into this brew the posturing exclamations of demagogues and proponents of social control via scapegoating and blame-pointing, and the foundation of tyranny is well on the way to being solid | This assumes, of course, that no firmly established counter-movements are present or recognized | And for some, this is the collective psychological state we find ourselves in at the moment ||
WE could dismiss the impact of all of this easily; say that throughout human history people have gotten irrational and weird when the millenium arrives | But to dismiss the effect of this kind of collective psychosis is a foolhardy action | IN EUROPE, in the 900s [years, not phone chat lines] historians now recognize this period as an intellectual and spiritual Dark Age | Moreover, in dismissing similar lines of reasoning {well, rationalizing is more like it] that occur in our own times, we open wider the door to the same things occurring to us, now ||
Since the opposite arguement is to wholeheartedly endorse the "End of the World" / Battle of Armageddon belief, this doesn't seem a productive alternative either | No, what we need to do is to recognize that severe and negative consequences of past human actions can and will occur [indeed, they are already occuring] but that these violent upheavals shall pass as well | That belief being a "given," the next course of action need to be to prepare for the rebuilding of Civilization ||
Making productive use of past and existing technologies, tools and knowledge are among the necessities in planning and preparing for opening a new Millenium | Certainly there will be catastrophis conditions and situations with which we must work [again... there already are] but we do not prepare ourselves for them by being shocked into inactivity ||
We must instead forge ahead, make the decision to work at developing solutions for social, psychic, technolocial, environmental and spiritual problems | We may not always make the best decisions, but the alternative of making NO decisions, of taking NO action, is not a viable option |

¶ 08:45 0 comments

URBAN PLANNING

Arcologies | Visionary architect Paolo Soleri, during much of the latter half of the 20th century, sheparded the creation and devoplment of an experimental urban center known as Arosanti and based near Arizona | Author Ivan B. Schonfeld has written in some detail about Soleri's vision and goals | Arcosanti also got a major write up in Electronic Green Journal |
The objectives in such endeavors include:

• reducing reliance on invidual transit
• minimizing wasteful construction practices
• dense development while preserving vast open spaces
• building with closer consideration to the impact on the environment
• developing a sense of community over mere placement of structures

Since it's inception in the 1980s the Arcosanti site itself has been slow to get beyond what looks like the beginning of a massive construction project, but it's not the progress of the initial project so much as the concept of arcology itself that seems to me to be important |

     A similar project vision, Auroville has been progressing in southern India | That project was initiated in 1968 and has grown since that time | The project has a clear overarching vision and, unlike Soleri's Arcosanti, has been meshed with the local community experiencing successes and pitfalls [the latter when a developer bought a tract of land without concerns for integrating his efforts into the larger community]
     On a less grand scale, Milagro co-housing outside of Tucson, Arizona, has been working on a housing development that seems more compatible with the local habitat than other communities nearby | But the focus of that effort is principally on housing, not community overall |
     So, where am I going with this? | Mainly to explore some less than conventional ways of thinking about how humans live with and interact together with the planet |

¶ 01:48 0 comments

2005-01-23

A motor bike visit to the ghost town of Chernobyl and an amateur archeological trip along Kiev's Serpent's Wall are two well done virtual tours

created by a woman from the Ukraine going only by her surname, Elena |
With each recount she provides both

gripping images and documents that back up or provide detail to the stories described | The detail provided is rich, though often grim, serving up with clarity the long trail of atrocities

that humans have waged against each other for millennia |
Both virtual tours speak to histories above and beyond singular events | And her commentary bears extra import, at times, to more recent events in the history of our planet,

some of which now warrants consideration:

There were "...soldiers there too, under leaves, bones, skulls, jaw-bones... teeth mostly good of young people. In Soviet army of those who were born in 1922 only 3 out of 100 came home from war, the rest 97 on those hills.
"I believe, for German army statistic must be similar as young people the same everywhere, do not know the value of life, have no fear and for their regimes it was easier to fool young."

Elana has posted some comments and photos from the Ukraine's The Orange Revolution | She's also put up some of her short stories | But I've no way to contact her | All photos [except for painting] © 2005 / Elena |

¶ 16:36 0 comments

STORM WRAP-UP
photo by Bob Holtzman, Porter County IN

Weather forcasting has improved dramatically since the days when I was a kid | Seems that the only thing that the weathr trackers get off is the time | Usually seems to occur a bit later than initially predicted | But the precipitation levels and the degree of severity seems to hold true these days |
Right now the sun is shining and blue skies are prevailing | I've shoveled out a path to the main road, see that the morning paper has finally been delivered [mind you, I never went out to get it until around noon] although the road the runs behind the property has not yet been plowed | Nobody lives on it for about a 1/4 mile, and it's more easily accessed from the other direction, so I'm not particularly concerned about this | I suppose this means we'll be heded to work in the morning | Could have usd a snow day | Ah well, that's life |

¶ 13:36 0 comments

NOTABLES

F. Darrin Perry | 1965-2004
     He influenced how we see things | Serving as Design Director at ESPN Magazine from it's inception and, more recently, as Creative Director at WIRED |
     Both publications payed him tribute recently | I find it curious that ESPN, the macho sports magazine was open about Mr. Perry's having a male partner, but the whiz-bang tech magazine left this part of his life out of their notice | Does homophobia exist more strongly in geekland than in pro sports | Just wondering |
     An avid Rugby play and enthusiast, he is survived by his partner, Jonathan Manzo of San Francisco and his family in North Carolina |

¶ 13:16 0 comments

FUEL EFFICIENCY
Ernie's VW

Here's a guy, Ernie Rogers, who gets 50 to 61 mpg with his Volkswagen a 2003 VW New Beetle TDI diesel with a newly-designed wing attached at the rear to the trunk lid | The wing improves fuel economy by 5% to 8% by lowering aerodynamic drag |
His website, max-mpg.com documents a trip from Salt Lake City to Alaska made last summer | Once in Montana he'd converted to using biofuels | A more recent posted he'd made on Renewable Energy - a Yahoo Discussion Group, asserts that he'd gotten 61 mpg on a trip from Provo, Utah to Lake Tahoe, Nevada |
On the blog portion of his website Ernie posits that we can build more efficient engines and alludes to some real-time changes that can be made right away | He doesn't update the blog often, but the things he mentions remain timely |

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