Blog Spotlight of the Week - Better Book Titles

Have you ever wondered, perhaps during your high school English class, why certain authors and publishers didn't make more of an effort with titles that really get to the point! They'd stop hemorrhaging profits to SparkNotes and save you the effort of having to actually read such drech as Beowulf (vomit), The Epic of Gilgamesh, Wuthering Heights, or Jane Austen (sorry folks).

With this in mind, the folks at Better Book Titles have graciously been retooling the literary classics with straight-shooting titles that really get to the heart of the subject. They were named one of the best new blogs of 2010. Here's to their success and more hilarious book titles like these:

Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea"

Al Gore would be nothing without the Seuss!

The Sound and the Fury

Robinson Crusoe

James Bond novels - all of them :)

Oh, Huck Finn, you silly bastard...

And...This is What Happens to Your Art When You're On Drugs!

The influence of drugs, especially psychedelic drugs, on art has always fascinated me.

Drugs have been the catalyst, if not the inspiration, for countless works of art over the centuries that have captured the masses. Without the element of this specific type of debauchery, so much of our artistic canon could never have come into being.

How else, for instance, do you think of this album cover for Santana's Supernatural?

Or this music video by the French band Justice, a chaotic ode to the city of Paris?

It's easy to see the influence that drugs in all their permutations have influenced art, but which drugs? What doses? What circumstances? My inner geek justs begs for a control group to test out the drug spectrum and see what parts of the brain each ingredient sticks to. A single artist, painting an identical self-portrait dozens of times to illustrate the effects of each....What's that, Good magazine? You read my mind perfectly.

Since March 30, 1995, multimedia artist Bryan Lewis Saunders has done one self-portrait per day, every day. When that started to get boring, Saunders began taking drugs of all types to liven up the work, a process he says has left him with brain damage. 

Saunders is still doing his self-portraits today, though he'll now only take drugs if they are administered by medical professionals for valid health issues. Regardless, the results of his endeavor are a fascinating glimpse into how different chemicals shape our perceptions of self.

The artist's idea was to test the environment's effects on the subconscious and use his brain like a canvas. You can only be soberific so long when you're painting nearly 8,000 (!!!) self-portraits over the course of a decade. Here are some of my favorite of his artistic ahem..."experiments":

Ambien - looks like it's not working...

Hydrocodone, Oxycodone, and Xanax - this is what art looks like when you can't feel your face...

Absinthe - monochrome (and cubist?)

Adderall - The artist is both literal and distracted :)

Cocaine is a helluva drug...

Two bottles of cough syrup later - wow, this guy had a bit of a death wish!

Sweet Jesus crystal meth...

Dilaudid and morphine - industrial grade gangsta...

Morphine meets Easter Island?

Huffed gasoline - this is probably what his brain cells feel like!

Mushrooms - wow, what do those bubbles mean? Cosmic...

Nitrous oxide - you know those little whip cream canisters that make you black out? I mean...

PCP - the one you should never, ever do

Pot brownies! Duhhhh

Pot resin hits - jeez, I wonder what he cleaned his bowl piece with...

Salvia - arguably his best work!

Ritalin is just unpleasant...

Good old mary jane!

Via: Good

Pintxo - If Heaven Were a Restaurant...

Pintxo in Belltown is my new favorite restaurant!!! If I had to spend eternity in any restaurant, I would choose to spend it here.

Full disclosure: I lived in Spain (Cadiz province) for six months, so my standards on Spanish cuisine are very high. This place was excellent in nearly every respect: the space is narrow, long, and compact like nearly any restaurant/bar in Spain. The ambiance is elegant and chic but certainly nowhere near fine dining a la Tango. Service was friendly and attentive but not overbearing - many orders of magnitude better than what you'd get in an "authentic" Spanish restaurant, that's for damn sure! There is some of the best modern art I've ever seen decorating their walls - be sure to ask for their art list, many of the pieces are reasonably priced.

The food:

Matt and I had the following courses as part of the Yollar (groupon) package - it really turned out to be the perfect little evening :)

-Pintxo platter
---manchego cheese
---queso de cabra
---chorizo
---jamon serrano
---catalan sausage
---BACON-WRAPPED DATES!
---marinated olives

Each of these dishes was near-perfection and reminded me deeply of the wonderful meals I had in Spain. The jamon serrano is worth the hype, it really melts in your mouth and (save for the expensive jamon iberico) is the best ham on the planet. The cheeses were perfect compliments as far as flavor, although we could've done without the catalan sausage (repetitive after chorizo). Bacon-wrapped dates were sugary and succulent - a totally unexpected delight! This is not "typical" spanish food, but then again maybe it should be!

-Main course
---Oxtail over a bed of potato cakes and spinach
---Rockfish over rice, vegetables

The oxtail was perfectly cooked and seasoned, its morsels were succulent and tender not unlike lamb. The rockfish was salty but still delicious.

-Dessert
---Chocolate mousse - served in a cute shot glass, rich, dense, and everything that mousse should be
---Bread pudding - a bit overcooked and crispy, but still good.



I would highly recommend this restaurant for any occasion, but reservations are a must - this place is tiny!

Where Should the Cast of Jersey Shore Party Next?

For whatever it's worth, I think Jersey Shore, for as trashy and lame its storyline is, is able to provoke nearly everyone in some way. As the most ridiculous logical extension of reality TV culture yet, it's symbolic of our pop culture, for better or worse. Whether out of schadenfreude or just plain morbid curiosity, you're fooling yourself if you haven't at least heard of the show within the past two years.

Snooki already has a book out. Apparently one of its best lines is Snooki describing "feeling like a bunch of Ellis Island immigrants stepping off the Mayflower..." So in other words, the same feeling you get the morning after you take a shot of Jager mixed with Four Loko and then chase it with a Vicodin? Followed by much fist-pumping action!

So far the show has taken its brave contestants from the decayed decadence of the Jersey Shore to the (juiced!) locales of Miami Beach. Next season will be in Italy - bring these guidos back to black out the old country, shall we?

This brings us to the question of where their next party destination should be for the following season. Time had a great run-down of possible locations:

1. Rimini, Italy:

It would be fun to send the group to Corelone, Sicily to escape the repercussions of their crazy shenanigans at Seaside Heights – aka the town Michael Corelone in The Godfather was exiled to after his restaurant shoot-em-up. But, sending an Italian with mainland heritage to stay on the island is almost equal to blasphemy.

Located near the Adriatic Sea for that must-have tanning time, Rimini’s got tons of discos to replace Karma. Oh yeah and there’s many monuments including the Tiberius Bridge and the Church of San Giuliano Martire to give them a taste of the real Italy because that’s the reason you watch Jersey Shore - for the culture.

2. Ibiza, Spain

Everyone knows that Ibiza is the party capital of Europe and, some might argue, the world. The place where fist-pumping electronic music lives and breathes, Ibiza has featured some of the world’s top techno, house and trance DJs – and hopefully soon DJ Pauly D. That mandatory Spanish siesta can only help this group to keep going strong on Ron Ron Juice into the wee hours of the morning.

Not only is Ibiza full of some of the world's largest (and douchiest) nightclubs - see, for instance, the annual 10,000 person foam party at Privilege. It is also home to world-class beaches, beautiful Mediterranean coastline, friendly locals, and my 21st birthday bender. See Facebook evidence below.

Even their graffiti is sexy

Pacha - this is an off-season off-night at one of the most famous clubs in Ibiza

 3. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

The girls in the house, who already wear skimpy clothing that sometimes doesn’t even cover their nether regions, will feel at home in Rio De Janiero. With guidos and guidettes mingling with the local Cariocas, there will be plenty of guys around for Snooki to smush and plenty of girls Sammi to slap and punch away from Ronnie.

Isn't she beautiful?

4. Phuket, Thailand

Let’s move the (mostly) Long Island residents from one island to another and send them to Phuket. See MVP put their brawling skills against the best muay thai fighters in the world. What will The Situation make for family dinner when he only has the local fare to work with? Also, we hear it’s pretty cheap to get those, um, enhancements that JWOWW loves to show off.  

Megan, since you were in Phuket, can you confirm/deny Phuket's appeal as a Jersey Shore destination? Can the full moon parties handle Ronnie and "The Situation"?

5. Sarah Palin's Alaska?

Let’s see if the crew can survive in a place with no GTL. If they can party here, it would prove that they can party anywhere. The drinks would always stay cold – and the temperature even colder. Instead of hunting for people to take home and avoiding grenades, they’ll be hunting for meat and avoiding buckshot. Bonus: If they could combine at least one episode from these two shows, that would be classic. We’d love to hear Sarah Palin versus The Situation on foreign policy.

Other suggestions:

6. Barcelona - aside from having one of the world's most exciting nightlife scene (most bars close at 5-6, with the clubs open until 8-9am!), fantastic scenery, and beautiful people, this city has enough booze and soccer fans to satisfy the most hardcore guidos/guidettes.

7. Madrid - this city has the most bars per capita of any city in Europe, enough said.

Via: Time

So...What Do You Do Exactly?

Every so often, I find an article that hits the nail on the head for exactly what I wish I could say, if only so eloquently. When I was in school at UW and told people that I studied urban planning (don't even get me started with Geography!), I was met with blank stares and mild eye-rolling 90% of the time. You wanna do what now? The other 10% probably has some idea of the profession and assumes you are either a) an architecture school reject or b) a lost hippie who wants to create urban farms to feed organic food to the homeless - don't worry, some of us still do!

Really urban planning is much more simple than that. I want to be able to take people's vague ideas of what a "sustainable" future is supposed to look like and put them into practice. Are you happy with your current lifestyle? Do you worry about pollution and its effect on your health? Do you hate your morning commute and wish there was an alternative to sitting in your car wasting fuel while you idle? Do you wonder why you can't walk to your corner store the way your parents could? Ever wonder how your city will restructure itself due to the recession? Where its jobs will come from? Well, that's where urban planners come in. Because I'm terrible at explaining things like this, I'll leave it to a PhD student at UMaryland whose full article is below:

It happened again, as it invariably does every holiday season. In the midst of spiced eggnog and office holiday parties or visiting with family and friends, I get asked a simple question: “What do you do?” I politely say, “I study urban planning.” And then there’s the inevitable silence as I wait for the quizzical follow-up – “What’s that?” – and another brooding year of Christmas heartache. However, this year something changed. After I uttered my usual phrase, “I study urban planning,” my speech was met with a “Wow, that’s really cool,” and “Ah, that’s interesting, I have a friend who is studying that,” or my personal favorite: “I wish I had gone into planning rather than settle for law school.”  Yes, the field of urban planning was met with unbridled enthusiasm as I made the rounds this holiday season. A Christmas (or Hanukkah) miracle? I think not.

The plain truth is that urban planning is hot. If we take a look at the numbers, according to the Department of Labor, the urban and regional planning field is expected to grow by nineteen percent, from 38,400 jobs in 2008 to 45,700 jobs by 2018. Moreover, quite apparent is that a burgeoning global population has created the need for additional infrastructure including transportation systems, affordable housing, and schools while simultaneously existing infrastructure needs repair and restoration. It is no wonder that U.S. News and World Report included urban planning as one of the fifty best careers for 2011. But this is really just the beginning. 

In his notable work, Planning in the Face of Power, John Forester describes planning or designing as “a deeply social process of making sense together.” Planners, to appropriate the sociologist’s C. Wright Mills language, translate personal troubles into public issues.  Moreover, they help individuals and communities communicate and develop visions for the future based upon shared interests, values, and norms. In a time and place where the prospect of the future seems uncertain, unsettling and even frightening at times, the expertise that planners bring is needed more than ever. In this context, a perfect storm of factors is contributing to an auspicious growth for the field. 

Let’s be straight: Urban planning is and traditionally has been a relatively obscure field in a relatively obscure set of disciplines known as the social sciences (we like to talk things out). In her article “Planning Theory’s Emerging Paradigm: Communicative Action and Interactive Practice,” Judith Innes writes, “There are probably 1,500 people today who hold a planning Ph.D. The proportion of educators with a Ph.D. in planning is steadily increasing.” This was in 1995. Today, my educated guess is there are in the range of 2,500-3,000 people with planning Ph.D.’s and they are in more places than walking the corridors of the Ivory Tower both here and abroad. You can find them in think tanks, NGOs, law firms, and public policy organizations. In terms of academia, one only need take a glance at the Job Bank on the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP) website to see the plethora of faculty jobs available. Indeed, the L. Douglas Wilder School at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) alone has announced it will be filling ten or more tenure-track or tenured positions in the coming two years. Ten positions! That’s larger than the entirety of many planning departments, and along with a number of new positions, the field is seeing whole programs commence and become newly accredited including those at Boise State University and the University of Louisville, among others. To put this in perspective for those new to the field, the annual planning conference for academics draws between 400-500 individuals yearly. The field is not large; we aren’t talking a department of history, economics, or political science here. We are talking about a field where there are at present fifty-four openings for urban planning faculty (I counted). 

Why all the activity?  A constellation of factors are at play, including:

• The first full generation of trained planners are on the eve of retirement

• The growing relevance and significance of planning, both locally and globally from Dubai to Detroit reflected by the ascent of wealth and the capacity to build mega-project (e.g. as in Dubai), but also the ascent of poverty resultant from failed public policy, markets, and structural economic forces (e.g. Detroit)

• The growing visibility of planning through media (including this magazine) and the blogosphere thereby precipitating more interest from the general public

As both supply and demand factors continue to incentivize the field, the explicit notion that both individuals and communities are looking for answers and find themselves increasingly reflected in the language of planning, whether tacitly or knowingly, begs the question: What does this emergence mean for how we train planners for the future? It is a question that generations of planners have considered, including Paul Davidoff and Judith Innes. 

Davidoff, regarded as the founder of advocacy planning, described in his 1965 article Advocacy and Pluralism in Planningthe need to broaden the scope of a planners’ education. He wished to widen the focus of planning to include all areas of concern within government. He speaks to the primary role the planner has as a coordinator and suggests that two years of graduate study may be insufficient to broadly train planners for this difficult job. Judith Innes, writing in the mid-1990s, notes the importance of allowing students to take over their own learning processes. She references an anecdote in a teaching workshop she attended which imbued her with a Deweyian lesson, “that learning by doing has far more power than simply learning by reading or listening and that social learning – learning as part of a group effort – has important advantages over the solitary investigation of the lonely researcher.” More recently, Leonie Sandercock contends the need for “therapeutic” processes to transform urban spaces from places of fear (racial, socio-economic, etc) to places of cohabitation and coexistence. Such processes could be structured in helping residents organize meetings in moving from fixed positions to shared interests. These three scholars are but three voices over planning’s lifespan that add to the discourse on planning pedagogy. The ascent of issues such as all things sustainability-related, social justice, and international development planning only contribute to the dialogue on what a planner should be learning.   

Peter Bosselmann, a professor of urban design in architecture, city and regional planning, and landscape architecture at the College of Environmental Design at the University of California, Berkeley, notes that among his students,

“

There’s an interest in international work right now, which probably has to do with the economy . . . Geographically, China is very important, as is India, and we assume that soon the urbanization of Africa will start becoming of interest. [Topic-wise], the environment is becoming stronger and stronger, especially the forces of nature and how they’re acting on cities, such as the rising of water tables.”

What so many of us love about planning is that it is dynamic. And urgently so. From the growing wealth gaps in the United States and globally, to environmental issues, individuals come to planning because they wish to effect change. We can only hope that as the institution of planning moves into the next decade, planners will be more cogent of their past, their context, and their responsibilities to their craft in embracing this dynamism. No Christmas (or Hanukkah) miracle required. 

Via: Planetizen

Why Your State Sucks...

Back in October, I posted a map of the 50 states with their most iconic movies that define the state's history and culture. How about a map of the states' dirtiest little secrets? I think so :) Thank you, Time!

A few of my favorites:

Washington - bestality? Unfortunately, this one's true and true. I'm going to quote the multiple sclerosis awareness industry here for a second, but: Is it the Trees?

North Dakota - ugliness? Maybe at the country fair.

Wisconsin? Binge drinking? Milwaukee is the drunkest city in America. Thank you Miller and PBR!

Via: Time

Ecotality's EV Project Gives Coulomb's ChargePoint a Run for Its Money

Last month I wrote about how Coulomb Technologies' ChargePoint America program plans to install 4,600 EV charging stations across nine metro areas in the next several years. So far, however, the EV stations have been geographically limited, especially in the Puget Sound area. Long story short, it's going to be hard to ease questions of "range anxiety" that many potential EV buyers will have if the only available ChargePoint stations are at Bellevue City Hall, UW Bothell, and a high-end condo building in Downtown Seattle (residents only). That's hardly the way to expand a network and create the necessary perception that plugging in your electric car will be as seamless and convenient as filling up at any gas station.

Luckily, that necessity breeds invention, and Ecotality's EV Project has filled in to give Coulomb's ChargePoint America program a real run for its money. The EV Project has a much larger budget, having landed a $99 million grant from the DOE - nearly three times the size of the grant awarded to ChargePoint.

The EV Project began in August 2009 and will be completed by the end of 2012 and takes a markedly different approach to the implementation of EV infrastructure than Coulomb. Rather than focusing on installing public charging stations, the EV Project is assisting customers who bought the Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf by providing then with over 8,300 home charging systems. Not to be outdone in terms of public visibility, Ecotality is also installing 15,000 public charging stations. The project spans six states - WA, OR, CA, AZ, Tennessee (odd choice, although they've installed some of Ecotality's charging stations at the Cracker Barrel!), and DC.

Courtesy of The EV Project

Ecotality's EV Project also has the advantage of having major funding outside of the federal government. Swiss power grid corporation ABB just agreed to invest $10 million in the EV Project.

The bulk of the 15,000 plus residential and commercial charging stations will be primarily on the West Coast, as well as Texas and Tennessee. Just where will you be able to soon find your Ecotality charging station? One of the coolest things to come out of Ecotality's EV Project has been the official maps it has released showing station density in several cities.

OREGON

According to a September press release, Ecotality plans to install 1,100 charging stations in four Oregon cities: Portland, Euguene, Salem, and Corvallis. The stations seem to be logically aligned along Portland's major arterials, like Burnside Street, Sandy Blvd, MLK, and the downtown core.

Map of Portland charging stations

WASHINGTON

The EV Project plans to install 1,200 charging stations in Washington State, which will be a great complement to plans already underway to create an electric highway on I-5. With the help of planners at the Puget Sound Regional Council (PSRC), Ecotality has finally released a detailed map of charging station density in the Seattle area.

Via: GigaOMElectric Vehicles