Miscellaneous Interests

RENEWABLE DESIGNS

Green Skyscrapers

Cook+Fox Architects, LLP

There is a truly green skyscraper called One Bryant Park,which when completed, at 2,100,000 total square feet and 54 stories high, will be the tallest building in NYC next to the Empire State Building. It has an elegant and modern crystalline design, but in this case form and function truly support each other.

In its 1,000,000 square feet of office space, in addition to relying heavily on recycled materials for construction, and sporting 4.6-megawatt co-generation plant to produce it's own energy, the top floors will literally scoop up air from above New York city, and filter it. Most building filtration systems only clean a maximum of 20% of the particulate matter in the air. This building will not only filter out 98% of the pollution in order to provide air within the building, it will also then pump that cleaned air OUT into the surrounding area, literally serving as an air filter for the city itself.

Recognizing that water is a precious resource as well, it also has four tanks located at varying levels within the center of the building that will collect, treat, and purify all the rainwater that falls on the building. They'll also install an urban garden room, as well as a rooftop garden that spans between neighboring 4 Times Square, and the One Bryant Park building. As an added bonus, on the 43rd street side, the builders are supporting the arts by restoring the Henry Miller Theater, originally built in 1918.

The architects here are both forward-thinking, and respectful of history, all while being conscious of their environmental impact and how they might CONTRIBUTE to the betterment of the community around them.

Good choices all around.

Ceramic Construction - "Super Adobe"

CalEarth

These are ceramic dome-shaped houses that are glazed and set on fire to harden them.


"Khalili traces his mid-career epiphany to a realization that 800 million people were consigned to "totally unsuitable housing," through war, natural disaster or unkind history. As an architect, he concluded that "the only thing they had in common to them was the earth under their feet." In the Iranian desert, he studied structures that had stood for 4,000 years. He found that they were largely shell structures -- domes, arches and vaults -- made from earth, water, air and fire. Khalili's Superadobe structures respect the age-old form but include modern innovations, such as polyester bags, cement mixed in to strengthen the mud and barbed wire for structural support. They can be built for very little money anywhere relief officials and housing authorities are open to something other than steel and concrete boxes."

One of these houses can be built for as little as $3,000.

In an American context, the house could get pretty elaborate considering the low price point for a basic model. It would leave over enough money to do other things like invest in solar or wind power for the property, to take it completely off the electrical grid. You could also devote space for organic gardening. And they are very earthquake resistant and naturally cool even in the hottest weather.

Utilizing the apprenticeship system, teams of volunteers could be trained how to do this, then sent around the world with say the Peace Corps or other NGOs to build sustainable, inexpensive housing. The region of Pakistan that got hit by that earthquake still has vast numbers of people who are homeless. How much would their opinion of America improve if we started helping them build earthquake resistant homes?

Roof Gardens - Changing Land Usage

New Urbanism
Archinect - Fritz Haeg
Edible Estates
Sundance Channel "The Green - Big Ideas"

Here in America, I am of the opinion that we should start passing laws to mandating roof gardens on every flat roof in our cities. This would greatly reduce pollution, and cool down the "heat islands" of our urban areas, while simultaneously saving energy by providing for better insulation than standard man-made roofing materials.

A restaurant here in Los Angeles called Blue Velvet is doing it. They only serve organic food that hasn't been trucked long distances, and since L.A. is so vast, this can be difficult to achieve.

So they're not just putting sod on the roof, they're going to plant an herb and vegetable garden on the roof, thereby saving them money and increasing their profits, all while helping to save the environment.

They've also started a program called "Edible Estates" where they're getting local suburbanites to replant chunks of their lawns as food gardens. Every hour of lawn mowing with a typical gas-powered mower produces the same amount of smog as 40 new cars run for an hour, & over 50% of domestic water use in Los Angeles is used to keep lawns green.

Now nearby homeowners can cut down on the lawn-mowing & make a little side money selling fresh produce to the restaurant. Food doesn't have to travel so far, the restaurant can assure customers haven't been poisoned with toxins or pesticides or e-coli ridden run-off from cattle farms. The initial planting gets donated by a locally owned garden center (not a big box store) that then hopes for repeat business. Everybody wins. Businesses, private citizens, and customers.

It's all about getting rid of these "dead areas" that aren't producing anything, and maximizing the productivity of the space we do have. Changing our thinking about land usage, and getting rid of artificial barriers like city/farm/business/home to find intelligent combinations of those concepts.

CURRENT READING LIST

Application of Chaos Theory to Psychological Models, by Rae Fortunato Blackerby, Ph.D.

This one's a tad wordy, being in essence a dissertation, but you've gotta love a book that uses phrases like, "The schism perpetuated in the social sciences engages global theorists against radical empiricists. The global theorists are usually unconcerned with demonstrability of their generalizations, while the radical empiricists, riveted on their specific statistical results, disregard the nomothetic significance or implications of their own findings." I think someone running about phrasing things in such a manner casually would be hysterical, but in truth, it's fun to read if only because I get to play mental gymnastics. Most writing barely scratches above an 8th Grade reading level, so if for nothing else, the complex writing and advanced vocabulary is refreshing to me.

As to the subject matter of the book so far, the author is basically presenting a new view of psychological and social analysis that involves the use of concepts more frequently found in physics. She maintains that most psychological and social analysis is still dependent on incomplete or outmoded concepts based in a Newtonian-Cartesian worldview, and more broadly, she sees chaos theory as a means to reversing the crisis of over-specialization in the sciences, because she views its equations and resulting conclusions as bridging the boundaries that separate varying scientific disciplines. She wants to build interdisciplinary coalitions.

Her contention is that when analyzing psychological processes, as social and behavioral models, that a systems approach is more complete, and more in line with the revolutionary challenges that quantum theory, chaos theory, and relativity have presented to the older Laplacian determinism and Newtonian-Cartesian worldview. Dr. Blackerby's basic argument is that chaos equations, and the patterns that emerge from them, offer a more precise way of modeling human behavior.

Images of Enlightenment: Tibetan Art in Practice, by Jonathan Landlaw & Andy Weber

The book catalogues and illuminates the meaning behind the complex visual imagery of Tibetan or Vajrayana Buddhism. Unlike Christian art, Buddhist illustrations do more than merely represent the story of Buddhism itself, but are used as tools of self-transformation by practitioners not solely in ritual, but as practical maps to the universe, instructions on how to escape suffering and achieve enlightenment, depictions of enlightened energy itself, and utilitarian methods to focus & develop the mind. Westerners generally view these representations as lifeless artifacts of some lost civilization, misunderstand them, or indeed are completely unaware they exist, but far from such erroneous perceptions, Tibetan art is dynamic, alive, and an integral part of the continually growing spiritual tradition of one of the world's great faiths. From a purely artistic perspective, the works themselves demonstrate equivalent mastery in their execution as can be found in Christian Renaissance art, or the complexity of nonrepresentational geometric aniconography found in Islamic and Judaic art. From the perspective of meaning, Buddhist art however, offers an order of deeply layered complexity that far surpasses that found in other faith traditions. This is partially due to the fact that it's founder lived and taught much longer than certainly the Christian tradition, and that unlike Islam and Judaism which are heavily codified and therefore more static, Buddhism remains adaptive due to the tradition of lineages, as well as the continual introduction of "tertons", or new teachings, hidden by the Buddha throughout existence, which are progressively revealed/discovered as beings become evolved enough to understand them.

NEXT UP

101 Things I Learned From Architecture School, by Matthew Frederick
The Death and Life of Great American Cities, by Jane Jacobs
Visualizing Data, by Ben Fry
Robot Building For Beginners, by David Cook
Sketching User Experiences, by Bill Buxton

A FEW PAST FAVORITES

Wine of the Dreamers, by John D. MacDonald

Solid science-fiction, originally written in 1950, the book imagines a unique connection between two worlds. One in which inhabitants live underground due to wars which destroyed survivability on the surface of the planet. From their perspective, they are sealed off from the rest of the universe, and their chief means of entertainment and escape is entering "dream machines" which yield particularly intense sensory experiences. However, those dreams are not mere mental projections in their own minds, but rather, unknown to the dreamers, they are inserting themselves into the waking consciousness of others half a galaxy away, and directly altering the behavior of those on that other world. That other world, is Earth. Their wildest fantasies, mundane choices, violent impulses, and worst nightmares become our own.

The Art of Japanese Management, by Richard Tanner Pascale & Anthony G. Athos

The authors are faculty members at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business and the Harvard University Graduate School of Business Administration respectively, and offer here a study of Japanese management techniques. They further discuss how American executives can adapt and apply these techniques to Western business operations. It also addresses how the culture of Japan has developed a historically unique approach to all aspects of business development, competition, organization, staff motivation, and relationships both within, and outside of, the company. From a purely cultural standpoint it is fascinating to reflect on the differences in tactics between our two societies, and intriguing to consider how one might adopt the best practices of the Japanese corporation to American business, while simultaneously not sacrificing our own unique strengths.

One Man's Wilderness: An Alaskan Odyssey, by Sam Keith

Taken from the journals of Richard Proenneke, who lived alone, isolated in the Alaskan wilderness for over 30 years, building his own cabin, and recording the entire process of survival on film. Seen as a series now on PBS, the book goes into more detail about his daily life, and contains gorgeous photographs of the pristine wilderness that surrounded him. The cabin has since been donated to the Park Service as a memorial to a simple way of life far too few of us will ever enjoy - a life truly in touch with nature and at peace with the Earth.

The Encyclopedia of Acrylic Techniques, by Hazel Harrison

This offers a pretty complete basic catalogue of techniques used in acrylic painting - impasto, blending, dry brush, wax resist, sgrafitto, spattering, texturing, extruding, glazing, etc. It also presents methods to combine oil, charcoal, pastel or pencil methods with acrylic painting. Then in the second section of the book, it discusses various applications of themes - landscape, portraiture, architecture, still life, abstraction, etc. This is a journey into old-school analog fine art, and after dealing with bits and bytes in my professional work, getting my hands dirty with actual paint is a nice treat that I don't get to give myself often enough. This particular book offers a critical inspirational resource in that regard.

The Quantum and the Lotus, by Matthieu Ricard and Trinh Xuan Thuan

This is a dialogue between a Buddhist who became an astrophysicist, and a molecular biologist who became a Buddhist monk. The discussion centers on how the central teachings of Buddhism and the contemporary discoveries of science correspond, and how both paths lead to empowerment and enlightenment. While reading this, I combined it with nightly sessions of listening to the audio books of The Universe in a Single Atom, by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and read by Richard Gere (who's voice is weirdly soothing), and The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space Time & the Texture of Reality, by Brian Greene (who also wrote The Elegant Universe). Basically, if you want to really take your mind and launch it out to some very intriguing and odd places, this is the way to go. And extra bonus, by the end of it, you'll be able to describe all 11 dimensions of time and space without breaking a sweat.

The Douglas Adams Quintology

Ok, I'm not so sure "quintology" is an actual word, but it is at least as absurd as what I'm about to talk about, so there you have it. Longmeadow Press has a great leather bound volume of 5 of the books in Adams' series, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Life the Universe and Everything, So Long, and Thanks for the Fish, and Young Zaphod Plays It Safe. In case the surreal nature of well.... EVERYTHING, is overwhelming you these days, I've found these books to be an excellent diversion into something even more surreal. So don't panic, read this, and bring a towel.

The Book of Five Rings, by Miyamoto Musashi

More accurately entitled "The Book of Five Spheres" Mushashi's 17th Century book is a classic work of martial science, on a par certainly with Sun Tzu's The Art of War. Made up of five scrolls - earth, water, fire, wind, and void/emptiness - Mushashi's work, like Sun Tzu's, has applications beyond mere military exploits. Such things as "shin-ken" or something done with deadly seriousness, the psychology of attack, how to keep inwardly calm and clear even in the midst of violent chaos, the importance of swift, but unhurried action, how to have a beginner's mind, how to set aside worry and act decisively, & the value of perseverance and strategy. It's one of those "must-haves" for any complete personal library.

TV FAVORITES

Current & Past (In no particular order.)

Battlestar Galactica
Threshold
Odyssey 5
The Dead Zone
Speed Buggy
Wonderfalls
Psych
John Doe
The Harlem Globetrotters
Babylon 5
The Daily Show
The Colbert Report
The Jetsons
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Numbers
Real Time with Bill Maher
Superfriends
Tru Calling
Samurai Jack
Monk
Inch High Private Eye
Johnny Bravo
The Boondocks
Lucky Louie
Rome
Xena
Eureka
Secret Squirrel
My Gym Partner's A Monkey
Arrested Development
Dark Angel
The 4400
The Bugaloos
Dead Like Me
Weeds
Star Trek
X-Files
The Lone Gunmen
Chuck Jones Animation of Rudyard Kipling's The White Seal, and Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, as well as A Cricket in Times Square
The Tick (Animated and Live Action)
Doctor Who
Russell Simmon's Def Poetry
Heroes
Jericho
Hex
30 Rock
Flight of the Conchords
Blood Ties
Californication
Bill Moyers' Journal
Burn Notice
Mad Men
Bionic Woman
Life
Primeval
Gemini Division
Fringe
True Blood
Dollhouse
The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency
Better Off Ted
Caprica
Leverage
Warehouse 13
Defying Gravity
Flash Forward
Community
V

Upcoming Shows That Look Interesting

Spartacus
Past Life
The Prisoner

iTunes Playlist

10,000 Maniacs -- Trouble Me, These Are Days
A Tribe Called Quest -- Can I Kick It?
Adam Ant -- Goody Two Shoes
Aimee Mann -- Pavlov's Bell
Alanis Morissette -- You Learn, Head Over Feet, UR, That I Would Be Good
The Alarm -- Sixty Eight Guns
Alexkid -- Don't Hide It
Anastacia -- Left Outside Alone, One Day in Your Life
Andrew Bird -- Heretics
Angie Hart -- Blue
Angie Stone -- Wish I Didn't Miss You
Antonio Vivaldi -- Allegro from Mandoline Concerto
Bach -- Suite for Cello No. 1 in G Major
Band of Horses - Is There a Ghost
Beastie Boys -- No Sleep Till Brooklyn, Intergalactic
Bif Naked -- Lucky
Billie Holiday -- I'll Be Seeing You, God Bless The Child
Bjork -- All Is Full Of Love, Big Time Sensuality, Human Behavior, Army of Me, It's Oh So Quiet
Blondie -- Call Me
Bob Marley & The Wailers -- Is This Love, Sun Is Shining
Bronski Beat -- Ain't Necessarily So
Bubbles -- Bidibodi Bidibu
Cadillac Tramps -- Alright, Shake
Cake -- The Distance, Never There
The Church - Under the Milky Way
The Clash - London Calling
Cory Lee -- The Naughty Song
Craig David -- 7 Days, Fill Me In
Creedence Clearwater Revival -- Fortunate Son
Crosby, Stills & Nash -- Just a Song Before I Go
CSNY -- Almost Cut My Hair
The Cure -- High, Just Like Heaven
David Draiman/Disturbed -- Forsaken
Dead Prez -- Radio Freq
Deep Forest -- Sweet Lullaby
Deftones -- Change
Dixie Chicks -- The Long Way Around, Wide Open Spaces
DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince -- Summertime
The Donnas -- Take It Off
Echo & The Bunnymen -- The Killing Moon
Elvis Costello & The Attractions - EveryDay I Write the Book
Ella Fitzgerald -- Love Is Here to Stay
Erasure -- A Little Respect, Too Darn Hot
Erykah Badu -- Back in the Day
Evanescence -- Call Me When You're Sober
Feist -- 1234
Fine Young Cannibals -- Johnny Come Home, Good Thing
Fischerspooner -- Never Win
The Five Stairsteps -- O-o-h Child
Frente -- Bizarre Love Triangle
Fugees -- Ready or Not
Gang of Four -- Is It Love
Garbage -- Only Happy When It Rains, Push It
Go-Go's -- Turn to You, Head over Heels
Goldfrapp -- Ooh La La
Gorillaz -- Clint Eastwood, 19-2000
Great Northern -- Telling Lies
The Guess Who -- American Woman
Hanayo -- Joe Le Taxi
Hole -- Celebrity Skin
Horrorpops -- Thelma & Louise
Hot Chip -- Ready for the Floor
Hugh Masekela & Metro Area -- Mama
Iron & Wine -- Boy With a Coin
Jamiroquai -- Virtual Insanity, Love Foolosophy
Jen Foster -- Web Of Roses
The Jesus & Mary Chain -- Just Like Honey
Jesus Jones -- Right Here, Right Now
Jill Scott -- Golden, A Long Walk
Jimmy Sommerville -- From This Moment On
Joan Jett & The Blackhearts - Crimson & Clover
John Lennon -- Instant Karma, Beautiful Boy, Watching the Wheels, Imagine, Happy XMas
Johnny Clegg & Juluka/Savuka -- Umfazi Omdala, Scatterlings Of Africa, Great Heart, Cruel Crazy Beautiful World, One (Hu)'Man One Vote, Asimbonanga
Joni Mitchell -- Big Yellow Taxi, California, Woodstock
Jovanotti -- L'Ombelico del Mondo
K's Choice -- Virgin State of Mind, Not an Addict, Everything for Free, Believe
k.d. lang -- You're OK
Kaiser Chiefs -- Oh My God, Modern Way
Kate Bush -- The Man With The Child In His Eyes, Running Up That Hill, Babooshka
Keren Ann -- Lay Your Head Down
Kidney Thieves -- Before I'm Dead
The Killers -- All These Things That I've Done
Kill Switch... Klick -- Follow Me
L7 -- Pretend We're Dead
Labh JanJua & Panjabi MC -- Munidan To Bach Ke
Laird & John Pickett -- Oh Ma Ma Ma
Lakeside -- Fantastic Voyage
Lauryn Hill -- Doo Wop (That Thing), Every Ghetto Every City, Everything Is Everything
Linkin Park/Chester Bennington -- System
Linkin Park -- In The End, One Step Closer, Papercut
Liz Phair -- Rocket Boy, Take A Look, Why Can't I?
Lou Reed -- Doin' the Things That We Want To, New Sensations
Love and Rockets -- So Alive
Luciano Pavarotti -- Non ti scordar di me, Nessun dorma, E Lucevan Le Stelle, Rondine Al Nido (with Griminelli)
Madness -- Our House
Marianne Faithfull -- The Pleasure Song
The Martinis -- Free
Marvin Gaye -- What's Going On, Got To Give It Up
Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell -- If I Could Build My Whole World Around You, You're All I Need To Get By
Mascagni -- Cavalleria Rusticana
Metric - Poster of a Girl, Dead Disco, Combat Baby
Modern English -- I Melt with You
Modest Mouse -- Invisible
Morrissey -- How Soon Is Now
Mylene Farmer -- Rever
Natasha Bedingfield -- Unwritten
Nawang Khechog -- Healing Through Kindness
Neil Young -- Rockin in the Free World
Nelly Furtado -- I'm Like a Bird
New Order -- Temptation
Nina Simone -- Feeling Good, My Baby Just Cares For Me, I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free, Sinnerman, Here Comes the Sun
Nine Inch Nails -- Head Like a Hole
Nirvana -- All Apologies
Nitzer Ebb -- Fitness to Purpose
No Doubt -- Hellagood
Oingo Boingo -- Dead Man's Party
Orbital -- Halcyon and On and On
Otis Redding -- Change Gonna Come, Try A Little Tenderness
Pachabel -- Canon in D
Paris -- What Would You Do?
Pat Benatar -- Heartbreaker
Paul Oakenfold -- Lapdance, Password, Get Out Of My Life Now, Hollywood
Paul Simon -- Homeless
Peaches -- F*ck
Pinback - From Nothing to Nowhere, Good To Sea
The Police -- Synchronicity II, Wrapped Around Around Your Finger
Polyester -- J'aime Regarder Les Mecs
Portishead -- Glory Box
The Presidents of the USA -- Dune Buggy, Naked & Famous
Pretenders -- Brass In Pocket, Back On The Chain Gang, Middle Of The Road
The Prodigy -- Breathe, Smack My Bitch Up, One Love
Rage Against the Machine -- Guerrilla Radio, Testify
The Ramones -- I Wanna Be Sedated
Republica -- Ready to Go
Robert Plant -- In the Mood, Big Log
Royksopp -- Eple
Rufus & Chaka Khan -- Ain't Nobody, Ain't That Peculiar
Sarah McLachlan -- Prayer of St. Francis, World On Fire, Fallen, Adia
Sarah Vaughan & Gotan Project -- Whatever Lola Wants
Scott Walker -- Plastic Palace People, The Seventh Seal, Big Louise, Boy Child, Rosemary, The Old Man's Back Again, Clara
Sheryl Crow -- Soak Up the Sun
Simon & Garfunkel -- The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy), Scarborough Fair
Sly & The Family Stone -- Hot Fun In The Summertime
Snoop Dogg n' Pharell -- Drop It Like It's Hot
Snow Patrol -- Run
Soft Cell -- Tainted Love
Solarstone -- Speak In Sympathy
Sonic Tribe -- Synchronized
Soul II Soul -- Back to Life
Spandau Ballet -- True
Static X -- Cold, Not Meant For Me
Stereo MC's -- Connected
Stevie Nicks -- Stand Back, Crystal, If You Ever Did Believe
Stevie Wonder -- Signed Sealed Delivered I'm Yours, Isn't She Lovely, Superstition
Sting -- Desert Rose
Stray Cats -- Rock This Town, Stray Cat Strut
Sugar Hill Gang -- Rapper's Delight, 8th Wonder
The Sundays -- Wild Horses
Supernova -- Chewbaca
Switchfoot -- Dare You To Move
Tears for Fears -- Head Over Heels
Ted Leo and the Pharmacists -- The Unwanted Things
The The -- This is the Day
Thunderclap Newman -- Something in the Air
Tiziano Ferro -- Perverso
Tom Tom Club -- Genius of Love
Tomoyasu Hotei -- Katana Groove, Battle Without Honor or Humanity, Believe Me I'm a Liar, Howling
Tracy Chapman -- Change
U2 -- One, Pride (In the Name of Love), Sunday Bloody Sunday (Live 1983), New Year's Day, All I Want Is You
Urban Dance Squad -- Good Grief
Us3 -- Cantaloop
Uta Lemper -- Scope J, Lullaby (by-by-by)
Van Halen -- Right Now
Violent Femmes -- Blister in the Sun
Vixtrola -- The One, Enduser, Gunboat, Never Again
The Walker Brothers -- The Electrician
Wax Tailor -- We Be, Ungodly Fruit, Que Sera
Weezer -- Island in the Sun
The White Stripes -- Seven Nation Army
Wilson Pickett -- In the Midnight Hour
Youssou N' Dour & Neneh Cherry -- 7 Seconds
Ziggy Marley & The Melody Makers -- Conscious Party
Zero 7 -- Home
The Zombies -- Time of the Season