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Saturday, October 31, 2009
Friday, October 30, 2009
tenebrous
clipped from dictionary.reference.comWord of the Day
Friday, October 30, 2009tenebrous
\TEN-uh-bruhs\ , adjective;
1. Dark; gloomy.
Origin: Tenebrous derives from Latin tenebrosus, from tenebrae, "darkness."
And lurking behind our every move is the knowledge of our own mortality. It gives life its edgy disquiet, its tenebrous underside.
Iran's National Poet Speaks Out On Recent Events In Her Country
clipped from www.youtube.comIran's National Poet Speaks Out On Recent Events In Her Country
Simin Behbahani, Iran's national poet, spoke with NPR's Davar Iran Ardalan from Tehran on Friday June 26th. She recites two poems inspired by the protests -- one dedicated to the people of Iran and the other dedicated to Neda Agha-Soltan, the young woman mourned around the world because her death during last Saturday's protests was viewed by millions on the Web and TV.
Invisible man
clipped from www.hoax-slayer.com[The] attached photographs show a man who skillfully paints himself so that he so closely resembles his surroundings that he appears to be virtually invisible. At first glance, these amazing images may appear to be the result of digital manipulation and indeed a number of self-proclaimed experts have already dismissed them as being "photoshopped".
However, the images are in fact genuine photographs depicting the work of clever Chinese artist Liu Bolin. The Beijing based artist has exhibited his work around the world with shows in China, Paris, the United States and elsewhere. News.com.au notes that Mr Bolin is a perfectionist who can take up to ten hours to ready himself for photographs of his performances. The UK's Telegraph also reports on Mr Bolin's art, noting:
In a series of mind-boggling pictures Liu melts into any background, almost entirely invisible in front of red phone boxes, Chinese flags and even earthquake rubble.
It means people walking by while he is carrying out his performance often have no idea he is nearby until he moves away. Liu said he wanted to show how city surroundings affected people living in them and how.
He said the inspiration behind his work was a sense of not fitting in to modern society and as a silent protest against the Government's persecution of artists.
Mr Bolin generally uses assistants who help to paint him in readiness for performances.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Book thieves beware
clipped from www.oregonlive.comSecurity returns to Multnomah County's thief-prone library system
By Nikole Hannah-Jones, The Oregonian
October 27, 2009, 5:56PM
For years now, stealing from the Multnomah County Library has been an easy feat. You just have to pick up a book and walk out with it.
The Central Library -- which holds half of the library's collection -- has had no security system since the building was renovated 13 years ago. None of the 16 branches has working security systems either, leading to hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost materials each year -- nearly $300,000 in the last six months alone.
But book thieves beware: The days of easy pickings are almost over.
For the past month, workers at the Central Library have been busy in the back rooms sticking little flat tags in books and CDs that officials hope will reduce the number of missing items by 40 percent or more.
View full sizeDoug Beghtel/The Oregonian
Library pages Deanne Gabriel (right) and Wendy Dudelheim attach security tags to books at the Central Library in the Multnomah County system's new attempt to cut down on thefts.
Multnomah County commissioners approved about $1.3 million last year from the general fund and another $1.6 million this year from a planned bond to pay for installation of the Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) system at all the branches by the end of 2010.
"We're going from security that is pretty much people watching to an automatic system that works," said Deanna Cecotti, Central Library collections administrator.
The move comes four years after a police officer discovered hundreds of stolen library CDs and DVDs at a patron's home and the public learned that staff annoyed by repeated false alarms had turned off the few security gates that existed in library branches. The discovery led to a study of library security released two years later that showed massive annual losses.
Doug Beghtel/The Oregonian
The Multnomah County Library is installing a new $2.9 million system to reduce theft and make materials handling easier in the Central Library and 16 branches. The small, flat RFID tags allow several books to be cataloged at once and will set off an alarm at new security gates if someone tries to remove an item that hasn't been checked out.
The library made security changes after that, said Cindy Gibbon, access service manager for the library, such as moving DVDs -- the items of choice for thieves -- and some other media behind counters and experimenting with locking shelves. But Gibbon said it took time to come up with the money to pay for a security program that would work systemwide and with all library materials.
RFIDs are small devices about the size of a nametag sticker that adhere to books, CDs and the other materials. They've been gaining popularity among libraries nationwide for the last five years and have been used in libraries in Europe even longer.
The tags store and retrieve data and contain antennas that enable them to respond to radio-frequency queries. They can't be removed from items without damaging them and will trigger an alarm at the door if the item isn't checked out.
RFIDs are favored because they're much more accurate than the magnetic strip systems often used by libraries.
In a year, items lost from the Multnomah County Library account for about 10 percent of the system's annual materials budget. The tag project, which will cost about $155,000 a year to maintain and mark new materials, could save $238,000 a year in lost materials, according to library estimates.
But just as important, library officials said, is that RFIDs are more efficient for both library workers and users and will save both time and money in handling books and other material.
"We wanted to make sure that whatever we did for security would make handling easier, not harder," said Gibbon.
The library is one of the busiest in the nation, but also has among the smallest in square footage for the number of books it circulates.
That means employees spend huge amounts of time logging books that must be transferred to, or that come in from, different branches throughout the county.
With the current system, workers must pick up each item that comes in and scan it in. Check-out workers must touch each item twice -- once to scan it into the system, the other to demagnetize the metal strip.
The new system allows workers to scan an entire shelf at once with a hand wand. Or, they can set a stack of books on a flat scanner and the scanner will catalog the entire stack. The tags will also allow the library to put DVDs back on the shelves where patrons can get them themselves.
Checking items in and out can be 60 percent faster with RFID tags, Gibbon said. That could save another $425,000 annually in streamlined materials handling.
The library is also adding new self-checkout kiosks that will work the same for library patrons.
"It speeds the checkout for patrons and for us," said Lucien Kress, project manager for the new system. "We handle so many items in this system and it take so much time that it can take 24 hours to get a book back on the shelf. With this system, things will go much quicker."
So far, the Central Library has tagged about 250,000 of its 800,000 items with a completion goal of early January. The new Kenton library will open by February with the new system and other branches coming online after.
"This should make it harder for someone whose intention is to steal materials," Cecotti said. "And it makes us better stewards."
-- Nikole Hannah-Jones
Saturday, October 24, 2009
22@Barcelona, District of Innovation
clipped from citiwire.netIndustrial Graveyard To Hot Innovation Center
Neal Peirce / Oct 23 2009
For Release Sunday, October 25, 2009
© 2009 Washington Post Writers Group
BARCELONA — How can a city resuscitate an entire depressed, old inner city district, many of its blocks marked by the skeletons of abandoned factories?
Even more challenging–how to transform the same area into a high-powered knowledge hub that adds jobs by the thousands and draws dozens of high-powered national and international firms?
The "free enterprise" American approach might be to bring in the bulldozers, create an industrial park that displaces the old residents, and maybe offer companies public subsidies to move in.
Not Barcelona. Ten years ago this entrepreneurial city decided to build a modern "knowledge economy" close to downtown in its old waterfront Poblenou district, once a leading cotton mill center, renaming it "22@Barcelona, District of Innovation."
Barcelona's then-mayor, Joan Close, took the initiative. But an extraordinary political consensus–ranging all the way from the city's capitalist right wing to socialist-oriented left–came together to design 22@Barcelona and set it in motion.
Their central idea: Talent is the gold of our time, crucial to build thriving new economic clusters. Talented people (and cutting-edge firms) want lively urban environments. Instead of the isolation of corporate campuses, they're anxious to brush shoulders with other gifted people from companies, universities and the artistic realm.
So 22@Barcelona has been consciously shaped to include attractive green spaces, restaurants and entertainment, bike lanes, and plentiful public transit both within the area and between it and greater Barcelona.
But to create that environment–and not force out the families and workers living there–the Barcelona politicians decided on an ingenious but highly controlled form of real estate redevelopment.
Each of the district's 100-square meter blocks–rather than individual land holdings–were made the basic unit for regeneration. Once 60 percent of landowners in any one of the 115 blocks agree to act collectively, they can–as a community–increase the value of their property by getting city permission to rebuild with greater height (more stories) than allowed in the past.
But there's a tradeoff. In return, owners must agree to release 30 percent of their land holding for new public investment. Of that 30 percent, the city takes a third each for shared green space, for publicly subsidized housing, and for knowledge-based activity such as a technology center or university facility. The land parcels can also be exchanged across blocks–for a larger park, for example.
One can imagine American property owners screaming "property rights" and "eminent domain abuse" at any such proposal. Not to mention another "taking": 22@'s owners are obliged to pay 50 percent of street infrastructure improvements.
But look at what they gain, notes Josep Miquel Piqué, Barcelona's forceful CEO of 22@ operations. There's revitalized public space to lift the spirits of residents and workers. District heating and cooling, plus fiber optic connections are provided. There's actually a pneumatic underground waste disposal system (with colored bags to make recycling easy). Plus a system of underground "galleries" for cables and pipes and future needs, avoiding the need to keep digging up streets for improvements.
And 22@ isn't shy about defining and shaping the economic environment. It's defined five top "innovation clusters" –information technology, media, design, medical devices and energy efficiency. And, says Piqué, "We are managing the ecosystem for innovation. We've grown to 1,441 companies, many international, in nine years. If we need university talent, finance, or information technology, we promote the connections to make it possible. We incite artists to work with the companies, for inspiration. We work together with the private firms, the universities, to create a critical mass to compete in the world."
The physical result is an amazingly eclectic neighborhood. Technology centers and new apartments are cheek by jowl with old lots and housing still in transition. Government offices, television and radio studios, cultural centers, social service agencies–they're all there, and much more.
Yet Piqué claims "We don't forget the people living here beforehand. We are including social housing. We recognize residents' children as the new generation of talent we want right here. We invite students for internships in the firms, the activities we have. That's the difference between the Silicon Valley model and ours."
An American can't visit 22@ without wondering: Could U.S. cities ever find the left-to-right political consensus, muster the faith in a government-chartered organization with 22@-like powers, to remake our lagging neighborhoods with parallel stem-to-stern remedies and approaches?
For our dawning back-to-the-city era, what better? But I'm not optimistic. Barcelona-style collaboration (and trust in government) just isn't in our political DNA.
But what if a talent-focused economic era, marked by keen global competition, requires intensely entrepreneurial and rule-setting city government on the 22@Barcelona model? It will be a tough shift. But we Americans can't keep saying "no" and "can't" forever.
Neal Peirce's e-mail is npeirce@citistates.com.
Friday, October 23, 2009
Autumn in Portland by June Underwood
clipped from southeastmain.wordpress.comAutumn in the City
When I read Terry Grant's post about the gorgeous fall we've been having in Portland, Oregon, I almost just sent you to her site. She stole my fire — and my blog post idea, too. Not that that's so surprising; we do live in the same place, after all.
But then I looked at my photos and decided that all was not lost. I take different photos of fall than Terry does, even though I have equal amounts of abject adoration of its colors:
This looks like the usual fall color photo — with the addition of the bike, the fire hydrant, cars, and utility wires. But aren't those grasses yummy.
Even when Hawthorne fills the camera's screen with debris, there's still no denying the advent of the color.
And southeast Grand Avenue's bars can't match the maple across the street.
I have a couple more that I couldn't resist, but I'll put them in the continuum. I wouldn't want to show Terry up <snort> June
I was particularly fond of the one above, particularly as I had just been complimented on my photo processes a moment before, when I took this next one:
This one is nice, but there's something very zen about the glimpse of beauty amidst the debris of the quotidian — telephone poles, posters for rock bands, graffiti on the back of a walk light — and a blaze of oak leaves.
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