Urban design?
What is this?
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Photo by Erich Vieth[/caption]
This is a photo I took a few weeks ago, looking straight up the circular ramp of a garage in downtown St. Louis.
Recent Articles
Photo by Erich Vieth[/caption]
The answer is: Make good art.
It doesn’t matter what the question is or the situation. One ready-made answer is “Make good art.”
Chicago skyline
I’m in Chicago tonight, preparing to take a deposition tomorrow. It was a beautiful evening to view the downtown skyline.
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Chicago skyline (by Erich Vieth)[/caption]
Comprensive look at American English dialects
You could get lost in these maps and data regarding American English dialects for hours. I learned many things, so as the fact that there are 16 vowels (not just a, e, i, o, u and sometimes y), and 24 consonants. I invite you to check this out. 
And the fact that we haven’s pulled things into a homogeneous language, despite all
the years of electronic mass communication demonstrates, I believe, that we are inherently tribal–that we are wired to strive to be like our local tribe and different than those who we perceive to be outsiders.
Inside Denmark’s fixing rooms
Within Denmark’s fixing rooms, addicts are provided the drugs (such as heroine, methadone or cocaine) they would otherwise break laws to obtain. Nurses supervise. England is debating whether to open its own fixing rooms.
In Copenhagen’s fixing room, eight people at a time, and another four in a van parked up in the courtyard, inject, in the knowledge that they are being watched over by nurses and are taking their drugs in a clean environment using sterile needles, a dose of saline solution, a cotton bud and a pump, all provided by staff. . . . Year on year, burglaries in the wider area are down by about 3%, theft from vehicles and violence down about 5%, and possession of weapons also down. “From the police perspective, I can see the benefits,” said Orye. “It feels calmer.”
About Americans
I know that this article at Bananenplanet is filled with generalizations, but many of them rang true to me. Thoughtful article that suggests that Americans need to look in the mirror. Here are some of the main points:
- We Know Nothing About The Rest Of The World
- The Quality of Life For The Average American Is Not That Great
- The Rest Of The World Is Not A Slum-Ridden Shithole Compared To Us
- We’re Paranoid
- We’re Status-Obsessed And Seek Attention
- We Are Very Unhealthy
- We Mistake Comfort For Happiness
School fires security guards and hires art teachers
Who would have predicted this amount of success from firing five security guards and, instead, hiring five art teachers? Not politicians. But maybe it’s time they learned.
U.S. Supreme Court limits state government access to citizens
Modern times are discouraging to those of us who believe that freely available information is the only way to run a democracy. Here’s the latest blow, as reported by Mother Jones:
On Monday, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that states have no constitutional obligation to honor public records requests from non-residents. Journalists, who frequently rely on freedom of information laws to expose corruption and break open stories, fear that the decision may make it harder for them to access public records.
The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (RCFP) and 53 other media organizations filed a friend-of-the-court brief arguing:
By largely limiting public record access in Virginia to commonwealth citizens, [the law] inhibits the media from acquiring newsworthy records and stymies efforts to provide state-by-state comparisons on important topics such as public education, healthcare, and law enforcement activities,” the media organizations argued in their brief.
MuckRock, a website that files public records requests on behalf of activists, journalists is proposing this fix, offering out-of-staters seeking public records by pairing them with locals willing to co-file the requests.
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