Kevin has a rundown of the Obama Bailout Plan, which can be summarized as:

• Creation of a Bad Bank financed from private investors to buy up the Big Shitpile from banks
• Direct capital injections from TARP to financial institutions
• Expansion of the joint Treasury/Federal Reserve lending for student loans, car loans and credit card debt; up to $1 trillion
• $50 billion homeowner mortgage restructuring initiative

I’m not an economist, but this looks like a very sensible plan to me covering a wide latitude of financial instruments from the Big Shitpile (which financial gurus should lose their jobs over), to continued capital injections, to consumer spending, to home mortgages. While there is concern that we don’t go into moral-hazard territory with buying toxic assets at inflated prices and saving people’s McMansions, the fact that this is a multi-faceted plan strikes me as a positive development. The worst thing to do right now is to announce this or that plan will be a silver bullet, saving the economy. That is why listening to the President last night talk about health care as another leg of the recovery stool is very encouraging.

The CCTV Complex is on fire. Or more specifically, the Mandarin Oriental, Beijing designed by OMA at the CCTV Complex. From the NY Times:

A fierce fire engulfed one of the Chinese capital’s most architecturally celebrated modern buildings on Monday, the last day of festivities for the lunar new year when the city was ablaze with fireworks.
By late evening the blaze was still raging and the cause remained unknown, but it seemed clear that the 34-story structure, not yet completed, had been rendered unusable.

As BLDG BLOG put it, The Boom is Over.

IMG_8187 Four Corners Monument – NM, AZ, CO, UT – 063007, originally uploaded by MoLisa44

Four Corners encompasses the point where Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico meet – the only location in America where four states touch. The Four Corners are not a natural phenomena, rather a political construct – as if political other borders are more natural. This construct is the result of how Arizon became a State during the Civil War. The Confederate States were laying claim to the New Mexico and the Arizona Territories and the Congress, now without their Rebel counterparts, voted to create Arizona by deviding New Mexico and Arizona at the 32nd meridian west from Washington. You can see the Four Corners in the Google Maps view below:

Some enterprising cartographer and historian should research the transition of using natural borders to abstracted political borders and the causes and effects. Was this the result of the confluence of advances in surveying (probably not as George Washington himself was a master surveyor who set the fence post for the White House) or advances in river ecology (rivers shift their courses over time) or some greater Enlightenment quest for rationality and perfection?

Four Corners by penguinchris
I’ve long been fascinated with demarcation of territory, especially as a notion of boundary. Boundaries often were delineated by natural phenomena such as rivers, lakes or mountains. Just east of the Four Corners is the San Juan River, which is wholly ignored in laying out the territories. At what point did boundary, often manifested through corporeal elements (walls, fence, etc), detach to become abstracted Monadic elements?

SBB, originally uploaded by gsdali

Aluminum No.39, originally uploaded by Draplin

Aaron uploaded a killer series of illustrations from Aluminum: How It’s Made And Where It’s Used – you should really check this out.

New York World’s Fair 1964-65, originally uploaded by bobster1985

Ze Frank has an interesting flash app, Voice Drawing. I was messing around with it and decided to play some music through it. One of my favorite works is Clint Mansell’s Requiem For A Dream played by the Kronos Quartet.
Much like ink blotches, beauty and subject are in the eye of the beholder. But I see a dog on a leash.

The following list of Republican Senators voted for Sen. Thune’s (R-SD) asinine amendment, Senate Amdt. 238 amending the Stimulus bill, HR-1. Unfortunately, there is no snappy short title, but this is the description is awesome: To ensure that the $1 trillion spending bill is not used to expand the scope of the Federal Government by adding new spending programs. You would think that someone who hates government wouldn’t actually be part of that government.
The Hoover List:

• Alexander (R-TN)
• Barrasso (R-WY)
• Bennett (R-UT)
• Bond (R-MO)
• Brownback (R-KS)
• Bunning (R-KY)
• Burr (R-NC)
• Chambliss (R-GA)
• Coburn (R-OK)
• Cochran (R-MS)
• Corker (R-TN)
• Cornyn (R-TX)
• Crapo (R-ID)
• DeMint (R-SC)
• Ensign (R-NV)
• Enzi (R-WY)
• Graham (R-SC)
• Grassley (R-IA)
• Hatch (R-UT)
• Hutchison (R-TX)
• Inhofe (R-OK)
• Isakson (R-GA)
• Johanns (R-NE)
• Kyl (R-AZ)
• McCain (R-AZ)
• McConnell (R-KY)
• Murkowski (R-AK)
• Risch (R-ID)
• Roberts (R-KS)
• Sessions (R-AL)
• Shelby (R-AL)
• Thune (R-SD)
• Vitter (R-LA)
• Voinovich (R-OH)
• Wicker (R-MS)

Today alone there were four separate attempts to zero out the stimulus bill, and one attempt to add additional money for mass transit was rejected.
As for the above list, these Senators have fully crossed into Hooverville.