The Russians are coming? But will WE ever have a fixed link?

April 27, 2007

The Times Online reports that Russia plans $65bn tunnel to America. Yes, not only does Russia plan a floating nuclear power plant (now there’s a bad idea if ever there was one), but now some folks there have a tunnel under the Bering Strait in mind. Ok, so you could eventually take a train from […]

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I typically sleep well, but…

April 25, 2007

…there are times when even I am an insomniac. And so, after a whopping amount of restlessness last night, it occured to me at about 3 or 4 a.m. that certain kinds of insomnia feel like one is clumsily using a hammer to sculpt mashed potatoes into an impervious, seamless cube of sleep. (I claim […]

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Virtual “reality”?

April 23, 2007

MIT Technology Review blogger Simson Garfinkel just posted an interview with Brian Shuster, CEO of Red Light Center, a virtual reality site for, well, red light type activities (or what a homogenised and American-centric perspective believes to be red light reality). I watched the introduction (which you can view without having to open an account […]

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Signs of life: what we see in cities

April 20, 2007

I recently finished reading the catalogue by Grant Arnold and Michael Turner for the Vancouver Art Gallery‘s current exhibition, Fed Herzog – Vancouver Photographs. Herzog, who was born in Stuttgart, came to Vancouver (via Toronto) in 1953. Orphaned in the forties, and a survivor of Stuttgart’s Allied bombing raids, he was 23 years old when […]

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Loft Cube: from Trailer Park Boys to …real men who know design?

April 12, 2007

This is interesting — via cultural blah blah: the sexy mobile home. Did I say sexy? I meant sexy! This isn’t your hick cousin’s trailer park trailer: this is tasty…. Called the Loft Cube, it’s currently making the rounds in Europe, according to Men Style. The design is by Werner Aisslinger. It’s 400-550 square feet, […]

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To grow or not to grow…

April 11, 2007

Or: once there was a little hamlet… There’s an interesting conversation that Gordon Price is chronicling on his blog Price Tags. The entry in question is called The Growth Debate: Kelowna Version. I thought of posting a comment there, but since I’m a new/ recent reader of Price’s blog (and since I don’t really want […]

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Better later than not at all…

April 10, 2007

I just discovered CEOs for Cities, an organization which, according to its about page, argues, “We must have strong cities to have a strong America.” Cities incubate new businesses, connect people, ideas, money and markets and house most of our great universities. Their ports and airports connect us to the world. In our increasingly diverse […]

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Victoria Proxemics

April 8, 2007

Last Monday I sent off my May submission to Focus, the local monthly magazine I’m currently writing articles for. This particular piece is based in part on the work of Edward T. Hall, specifically his book The Hidden Dimension. Hall, an anthropologist, introduced the concept of proxemics, which he described thus: The hypothesis behind the […]

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Friday links

April 6, 2007

Ok, I don’t really have a “Friday links” convention, but thought I’d do one today. First, there’s a google video of Reyner Banham narrating his own Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles film. It’s from 1972, made as a documentary for the BBC. The sound and visual quality is in places quite atrocious, but it’s still […]

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Update on publishing elsewhere

April 1, 2007

In my last Focus magazine article (just published in the April issue), which was all about downtown Victoria and its development issues, I argued that experts need to make room for engaged and informed non-experts. My argument was informed by Paul Graham‘s essay, The Power of the Marginal. This afternoon, walking the dog, it occured […]

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