Annette Koh
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“That robots, automation, and software can replace people might seem obvious to anyone who’s worked in automotive manufacturing or as a travel...
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On the future of learning
The Boston Review just finished a series on the future of learning inspired by a letter the San José State University...
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judge of the street in his corner office.
until i/we moved it across the street to a grander location. :)
when i was picking these photos to...
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Dennis Stock - San Diego Coastline, CA, 1968.
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MCL At Mouth of PE Subway MTA_0370 on Flickr.
Metropolitan Coach Lines streetcar no.5010 on one final excursion on the...
The Forgotten Space follows container cargo aboard ships, barges, trains and trucks, listening to workers, engineers, planners, politicians, and those marginalized by the global transport system. We visit displaced farmers and villagers in Holland and Belgium, underpaid truck drivers in Los Angeles, seafarers aboard mega-ships shuttling between Asia and Europe, and factory workers in China, whose low wages are the fragile key to the whole puzzle.
For folks who prefer reading text to watching video, get yourself a copy of The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the Economy Bigger
Drawing on previously neglected sources, economist Marc Levinson shows how the container transformed economic geography, devastating traditional ports such as New York and London and fueling the growth of previously obscure ones, such as Oakland. By making shipping so cheap that industry could locate factories far from its customers, the container paved the way for Asia to become the world’s workshop and brought consumers a previously unimaginable variety of low-cost products from around the globe.
Municipal planners are now used to thinking of post-industrial waterfronts as the perfect site for flagship cultural developments like Baltimore’s aquarium or mega-redevelopments like the London Docklands. The ever-multiplying impacts of economic and infrastructure shifts, though, are tricky to trace.
… reef break …
the biggest Teahupo’o waves ever ridden » Aug 27th, 2011 | shot by Chris Evans
The smallness of man in the face of nature… the best we can do is just ride it as long as we can.
Wayne Levin, Filming Akule
On Tuesday at the Hawaii State Art Museum’s Art Lunch series, Frank Stewart argued that Wayne Levin’s photographs of akule echo synchronized movements we see on land and in the air: starlings flocking, clouds hurrying. That these self-organizing patterns of nature are what bring our eyes to paintings by Mondrian (abstracted trees morphing into blocks of color as his patterns simplify) or Pollack, and what makes the akule series not just documentary but art. I remain convinced that everything moves differently underwater, even if birds share kinship with fish in their abilities to circle and school.
His comment about how the clarity of Levin’s photographs make it “seem like we are looking at [the fish] through air not water” put to words what seems so familiar/unfamiliar about these landscapes. For a moment I forget the underwater setting and envision schools of akule taking to the streets of Honolulu, like a Critical Mass for fish.
This marine incomprehension is paired with fascination…maybe repeated viewings of The Little Mermaid had a greater impact beyond the ability to produce an intonation-identical rendition of “Part of Your World”.
The one time I went scuba diving was just off the beach in Batangas, a two hour Scorpions-soundtracked bus ride south of Manila. I love snorkeling as it is, even if I may splutter in panic when I realize how far from shore I’ve gotten. But scuba diving sinks me past my fear.
Plunging beneath the thrum and thrust of surface mechanics to become submerged within the vocabulary of waving fronds and the grammar of darting fish. Sometimes modern dancers speak snippets of this sea language: a bare, slicing arm, like a silvery back jack-knifing. This is nothing like the plodding of pedestrian life. Goggle-eyed but hopefully not open-mouthed, I try to learn how to dance like I had fins.
I live a 15 minute walk from the Pacific. I am also terrified of the ocean. Just think of all the tentacles and all the teeth. Though I grew up a 15 minute bike ride from a lake wide enough to simulate a sea, I never saw anything but sea glass on the shore. Later encounters made it plain how unaccustomed I am to a living ocean. Seaweed slipping past my calves becomes barracudas in my mind, and sends me splashing back to sand. Box jellyfish on an Atlantic shore scared me away from beaches for months.
