Monday – Oh My God, the Dow Dropped 500 – Links

Fiction of Robert Moses

2007-09-30_06 The Panorama of the City of New York2007-09-30_06 The Panorama of the City of New York, originally uploaded by adamsofen

Writing the Myth of Moses:

Arthur Nersesian, a 49-year-old playwright, poet and novelist whose wavy gray hair gives him the look of a 1960s English professor, rummaged through the black messenger bag lying next to him in a booth at the Moonstruck Diner in the East Village. Then he gleefully pulled out what appeared to be three coverless, battered paperbacks and slid them across the table.
Closer analysis revealed these volumes to be, in fact, three parts of one eviscerated book, taped together and covered with handwritten notes. Stacked one on top of the other, they formed a substantial brick whose spines, in bold red capitals, collectively revealed the title, “The Power Broker,” Robert Caro’s 1,100-plus-page 1974 biography of Robert Moses, New York’s master builder.
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The progeny to date of the love affair that began in 2006 are two novels in a projected five-volume series titled “The Five Books of Moses.” They present a fictionalized account of Moses and his impact on New York, and are being published by Akashic Books, a small New York press that specializes in adventurous urban writing often overlooked by more mainstream houses.

Mr Nersesian’s fiction concerning Robert Moses is interesting, but I think that reality is stranger than fiction, even in Mr Moses case. The recent trend of institutional re-evaluation of Robert Moses into something less of a monster is perplexing. I have a dislike-hate notion of Robert Moses. On one hand, he created a network of highways which I use almost every week, but he killed numerous mass transit projects and decimated neighborhoods with the BQE and the Cross Bronx.

Lehman Brothers Liquidated, Merrill Sold

Lehman Brothers buildingLehman Brothers building, originally uploaded by Vidiot

In Frantic Day, Wall Street Banks Teeter:

In one of the most extraordinary days in Wall Street’s history, Merrill Lynch is near an 11th-hour deal with Bank of America to avert a deepening financial crisis while another storied securities firm, Lehman Brothers, hurtled toward liquidation, according to people briefed on the deal.
The dramatic turn of events was prompted by the cataclysm of losses that has shaken the American financial industry over the last 14 months.
The moves came after a weekend of frantic negotiations between federal officials and Wall Street executives over how to avert a downward spiral in the markets. Questions still remain about how the market will react and whether other firms may still falter like A.I.G., the large insurer, and Washington Mutual, both of whose stocks fell precipitously last week.

This is bad. Subsequently, this makes securing affordable credit that much harder, pushing corporate expansion, construction and will affect the solvency of many other institutions. Monday will not be a good day on the Street.

Farnsworth House Flooded Again

Farnsworth House Flood of 2008Photo of the Farnsworth House Flood of 2008 by the National Trust for Historic Preservation
If yesterday was a bad day for the SUPERTRAIN, today is a bad day for Modern architecture. The effects of Tropical Storm Lowell has flooded Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House. The Fox River in Plano, Illinois crested eight feet above normal water level, flooding Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House, which is elevated five feet above the flood plain. The National Trust for Historic Preservation has not been able to asses the situation.

As of mid-day Sunday, flood waters rose above the 5-foot risers on which the steel, glass and stone home sits, leaving its interior covered in another two feet of water, said Whitney French, historic site director.
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Employees at the Farnsworth House used boats to reach the home on Saturday and lift the designer furniture away from the water. Some pieces, including a custom-designed wardrobe bound to the floor, could not be saved. Officials could not yet estimate the cost of damages.
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The architect suspended its floor slab to allow flood waters to run beneath the house. Still, waters have risen above the raised level six times in 60 years, French said.

farnsworth housefarnsworth house flood, originally uploaded by park.will

The above picture illustrates the last time the Farnsworth House was flooded in 2007. Information from the Farnsworth House Website paints a bleak picture:

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s famous modern masterpiece, the Farnsworth House, fell prey to Mother Nature Sunday, September 14, as flood waters rose two feet over the top deck, entering the house. Built within the flood plain of the Fox River in Plano, Illinois, the house stands on five-foot tall columns which proved not high enough as record breaking rain amounts brought the river to over eight feet its normal level. More than eight inches of rain fell in two days as Tropical Storm Lowell passed through Saturday, immediately followed by the remnants of Hurricane Ike Saturday night and Sunday. Fox River waters rose quickly and by Sunday morning, September 14, they had breached the interior of the house by over a foot.

For reference, below is the google map of the Farnsworth House.

Bad Day For the SUPERTRAIN

Yesterday was a bad day for the SUPERTRAIN around the world. In Los Angeles a Metrolink commuter train collided with a Union Pacific freight train: At Least 18 Killed as Trains Collide in Los Angeles. the same day a Freight Train Fire in Channel Tunnel shut down the Franco-English tunnel; there were no casualties, but it is unclear what structural damage occurred inside the tunnel.

Both accidents illustrate how our current rail infrastructure is running at capacity. Freight and passenger service must be segregated on their own right-of-ways and capacity, especially in high-traffic areas such as Los Angeles, must be increased.

Update 9/14

Apparently the Metrolink engineer missed a red signal which caused the passenger train to collide with the freight train. Sad.

What Hurricane Ike Spells for Texas

I was just reading the National Hurricane Center’s Hurricane Ike Advisory, and this is not pretty:

SEVERE INUNDATION IS LIKELY NEAR THE IMMEDIATE COAST AND BAYSHORE AREAS!
NEIGHBORHOODS THAT ARE AFFECTED BY THE STORM SURGE…AND POSSIBLY ENTIRE COASTAL COMMUNITIES… WILL BE INUNDATED DURING THE PERIOD OF PEAK STORM TIDE. MANY RESIDENCES OF AVERAGE CONSTRUCTION DIRECTLY ON THE COAST WILL BE DESTROYED. WIDESPREAD AND DEVASTATING PERSONAL PROPERTY DAMAGE IS LIKELY. VEHICLES LEFT BEHIND WILL LIKELY BE SWEPT AWAY. NUMEROUS ROADS WILL BE SWAMPED… SOME MAY BE WASHED AWAY BY THE WATER. ENTIRE FLOOD PRONE COASTAL COMMUNITIES WILL BE CUTOFF. COASTAL RESIDENTS IN MULTI-STORY FACILITIES RISK BEING CUTOFF. CONDITIONS WILL BE WORSENED BY BATTERING WAVES CLOSER TO THE COAST. SUCH WAVES WILL EXACERBATE PROPERTY DAMAGE…WITH MASSIVE DESTRUCTION OF HOMES… INCLUDING THOSE OF BLOCK CONSTRUCTION. DAMAGE FROM BEACH EROSION COULD TAKE YEARS TO REPAIR.

To get a comparative view of what this will potentially do to Texas, please see the Google Maps flood mashup below (view in own tab) by Alex Tingle which paints a bleeck picture:
http://flood.firetree.net/embed.php?ll=29.3337,-94.8820&z=6&m=3&w=600&h=600
The city of Galveston was wiped off the map during the Hurricane of 1900 killing between 6,000 and 12,000 people. In response the city rebuilt itself around a Galveston Seawall which tops out at 17 feet above sea level and raised the mean city level as much as 17 feet.

9/11

Large Hadron Collider Rap

The Large Hadron Collider successfully passed its first test, and hasn’t launched the universe into a black hole:

An international collaboration of scientists today sent the first beam of protons zooming at nearly the speed of light around the world’s most powerful particle accelerator–the Large Hadron Collider (LHC)–located at the CERN laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) invested a total $531 million in the construction of the accelerator and its detectors, which scientists believe could help unlock extraordinary discoveries about the nature of the physical universe.

What does the Large Hadron Collider do? Well, the Large Hadron Collider Rap drops some knowledge: