5, originally uploaded by soundofdesign

Ty Lettau is collecting abstract satellite images from Google Earth:

The only rule is that the composition should not be recognizable as a feature of earth. Some look like pure geometries, others like micro-organisms, while still others look like circuitry or wires… they all share an unfamiliarity that makes them unique.

The only pity is he isn’t including the location of each feature to directly look in Google Earth of Maps (small quibble).

(untitled), originally uploaded by [phil h]

Today the Transport Politic has an excellent article comparing the funding mechanism of the MTA and the RATP (Which runs the Paris Metro), How to Fix Transit Financing:

The real question for us, then, is how Paris’ Stif is able to maintain fiscal balance: how is it funded, and why does its system work more efficiently than that of the MTA?
About 2/5 of Paris’ transport funding comes from the versement transport, a tax collected on salaries in the Paris region. The fees are highest – at 2.6% – in Paris and the neighboring rich département (similar to a county) Hauts-de-Seine; they’re lower, at 1.7%, in two poorer neighboring départements, Seine-Saint-Denis and Val-de-Marne. In the four départements on the edge of the region, the rate is 1.4%. Having the tax rate vary by location, with people who are more likely to be able to take advantage of public transportation paying more, makes a lot of sense. The region’s decision to tax the poorer départements bordering Paris at a lower rate also serves as a social equalizer, attempting to encourage investment in less-well-off areas.

It just so happens that the Ravitch Plan includes both inflation-adjusted tolls on the East River Bridges and a payroll tax on all counties who are serviced by the MTA.
Now if the politicians can just pass this plan.

A concept for a tiny house I hope to build this year (2009). This model doesn’t show all the details but the plans include everything needed for a house, kitchen, toilet, bed, shower, storage, etc… all contained in a nine square foot house.

If you want excellent explanations on how we got to where we are in our wonderful global economic meltdown, the following three pieces of reporting published in the last week is an excellent place to start.
First, listen to This American Life episode 375: Bad Bank:

The collapse of the banking system explained, in just 59 minutes. Our crack economics team–the guys who explained the mortgage crisis, Alex Blumberg and NPR’s Adam Davidson–are back to help all of us understand the news. For instance, when we talk about an insolvent bank, what does it actually mean, and why are we giving hundreds of billions of dollars to rich bankers who screwed up their own businesses? Also, two guys go to New Jersey to look at a toxic asset.

The second is Felix Salmon’s article, The Formula That Killed Wall Street:

As a result, just about anything could be bundled and turned into a triple-A bond–corporate bonds, bank loans, mortgage-backed securities, whatever you liked. The consequent pools were often known as collateralized debt obligations, or CDOs. You could tranche that pool and create a triple-A security even if none of the components were themselves triple-A. You could even take lower-rated tranches of other CDOs, put them in a pool, and tranche them–an instrument known as a CDO-squared, which at that point was so far removed from any actual underlying bond or loan or mortgage that no one really had a clue what it included. But it didn’t matter. All you needed was Li’s copula function.

Lastly is The Crisis of Credit Visualized, an 11-minute high-level overview of the worldwide credit crisis by Jonathan Jarvis:
http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=3261363&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=ffffff&fullscreen=1
The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.
All three put together will help explain where we are, how we got here and what future steps we might have to take. And all three do this is a way which isn’t condescending and without dumbing down the content.

Shiny, originally uploaded by plemeljr

The loss of the controversial Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn and the Grand Avenue in Los Angeles forced Frank Gehry to make over 50% of his staff redundant.
Frank Gehry considers an accomplished past and uncertain future:

“I’ve had a disappointing year, couple of years, with Grand Avenue and Brooklyn,” he said in a wide-ranging conversation in his office last week in which he was by turns ruminative, weary and hopeful. “All my life I’ve wanted to do projects like that, and they never came to me. And then all of a sudden I had two of them. I invested the last five years in them, and they’re both stopped. So it leaves a very hollow feeling in your bones.”
…
For young architects, the way Gehry has organized his office and integrated new technology remains an inspiration. But for some of them, his recent work also represents the excesses of a decade that combined easy money and architectural celebrity. They are less interested in the bravura, photogenic icons that Gehry has lately produced — so-called signature buildings by a so-called starchitect — and more compelled by eco-friendly designs or anti-poverty efforts such as those aimed at providing affordable housing in rural areas. Other young architects are looking beyond the star model of architectural practice and toward communal, even anonymous, design initiatives.

Please find me architects who, taking Gehry work as a whole, believe that his work is an inspiration.

Assignment desk: what would you like me to talk about?
Please email me randy AT plemel DOT com.

For today only: No Line On The Horizon mp3 download from Amazon for $3.99 (and use this link to give me some kick backs!).

Emblems to Stamp Projects Funded by the Stimulus Package:

Put a stamp on it — that’s what the White House says.
President Obama announced today that his administration will begin stamping an emblem on projects funded by the economic stimulus package so that people can easily recognize the effects of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
All projects will be stamped with the ARRA logo (short for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act) and lists the recovery.gov website on the emblem.

Later
No wonder I liked this logo, Mode, Aaron Draplin and Chris Glass designed the logos. Cheers, mates!