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The Natural Space Savers and Social Communicators

Society defines the value of space. This includes personal space, storage space, recreational space, ect. In the US space not hard to find, even in large, suposidly crowded cities, there are spaces which afford citizens luxuries other nations lack. When space becomes an issue the discourse around how it is used and whether luxury is valued as much.

Image by Lacrymosa

The Japanese are renown for their conservation and innovative use of space. When there are roughly 5847 people per square kilometer living in one country the function and use of space becomes essential. The Japanese seem to be the world leaders in utilizing the little space they have. From their pod hotels to automated vehicle storage the Japanese have shrunk spaces to fit their esential needs.

These sort of space storage techniques aren't just found in highly populated cities. They are also found in nature. The most common example is probably the honeycomb. Bees use a simply designed array of hexagonal tubes to store honey as well as larva and pupa, ultimately maximizing their usage of space within a hive.

Image by BotheredByBees

It seems though that we as humans have even more to learn about than space-saving from insects though; their ability to function as effective individuals within a group is also astounding in terms of social development and discursive interaction. Even the most basic of insects which live in colonies, such as ants, have the ability to convey information about the fastest routes to different locations as well as deciding on structural organization. Steven Johnson discusses this in his book Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brians, Cities, and Software which is essentially inspired by the ant's ability to function and communicate within a colony.

Image by McKillaboy

So as our societies are expanding and cities developing how else can we learn from the innovations which surround us in the natural world? It seems that nature has already produced many answers that we are developing discussions for in our ever day lives. When you tell a friend the quickest way to get to a new store or someone passes information to you about a great new restaurant, an ant has done that. When a new kind of car garage or hotel emerges in a nearby city, a bee has already built something like it. I think we should begin to be more aware of natural spaces and incorporate them into our discussions on how to use our space effectively.

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The Distant Stage and Immediate Audience: Public Standards

Recently, while discussing psychogeography and situationists with colleagues, I remembered this video of Jason Mraz singing, "Live High." I then read Guy Debord's short chapter and critique of urban psychogeography. I find that some of what Debord discusses is a bit radical, however, much of it rings true in this video. I am most interested in what doesn't work though. Debord discusses creating different experiences in our everyday lives. He also discusses what these changes do to publics by breaking up the mundane nature of our understanding of a city (giving the example of a friend navigating a city with a map of London).

Mraz creates a new use for the space that he occupies. Where most street performers might remain stationary, Mraz moves about. Where people walk, travel to work, and mingle Mraz performs. But look at how the people react to Mraz's alteration of the space's purpose. They don't react. Debord says that taking art and movement and innovative techniques to recreate space and interpolate publics in to the situationist's understanding of how a city is to be used will change publics the Mraz video demonstrates that people often resist this interpolation. They ignore Mraz and the cameraman.

But what does this do for the audience that receives Mraz's video. The publics in the video resist his use of space and maintain their own reality. Mraz is in a place yet his audience isn't necessarily the public that occupies it. Mraz creates a broad sense of psychogeography by allowing the video audience to witness the repurposing of space as a stage and performance area. How does this work? How is the distant audience more influenced by the event and spectacle than the immediate public? How does immediate public's reaction to the disruption of everydayness differ from that of a more distant audience.

Social norms often govern how people associate themselves. If one person and a friend would have stopped more would have gathered. If one person is willing to break a norm more will come. How can we use this to encourage new understandings of the places and spaces which we occupy?

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Programming the Chaos out of Megacities

Among IBM's many new Smarter Planet initiatives is an effort to straighten out the knots that are Mexico City's roads and streets. LA Times Mexico City bureau chief Hector Tobar says some 29 million people commute in Mexico City every day, in 6 million-odd vehicles. IBM is working with the city's transport and sustainability managers to find a software and systems fix to the problem, knowing that existing infrastructure can't just be dug up and relaid. 

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Just Because Australians Are Drunk a Lot Doesn't Mean They Can't Drill Offshore for Oil

Oil Rig Fire, Timor Sea

In case you haven't heard, there's an oil rig on fire in the Timor Sea:

An oil spill disaster that could rival the impact of the Exxon Valdez is playing out tonight off the coast of Australia. For 10 weeks, a crippled deep-water oil rig has been leaking millions of gallons into the ocean between Australia's northwest coast and the islands of Indonesia.

It is bringing to light the possible environmental impact when offshore drilling goes wrong, as CBS News correspondent John Blackstone reports.

With explosive gas spewing into the air and thousands of gallons of oil pouring into the water each day the spill began claiming sea snakes, birds and dolphins.

The blowout is thought to have been caused by a fracture in a pipe 8,000 feet beneath the sea floor. Again and again over two months the Thailand-based company that owns the rig tried and failed to plug the well.

"We remain committed and resolved to achieve our goal," said Jose Martins, chief financial officer of the company, Pttep Oil. "That may require a few more attempts."

Just how much has spilled is uncertain. Environmental groups say satellite photos show its spread across more than 9,000 square miles and estimate some 9 million gallons have poured into the ocean - nearly as much as the 11 million gallons that escaped from the Exxon Valdez in Alaska.

While there may be some use of this symbolic image to try to slow down offshore drilling, you have to remember that the defenders of offshore drilling are going to attack this issue in several different ways. First, they may point out that the state of the art technology used by the oil rig is different from the state of the art technology we might be using off the coast of Florida or Texas. Second, they may point to it as an isolated incident, blown up out of proportion to how safe and reliable offshore drilling really is. Third, there is always the fact that oil and natural gas has always leaked into the ocean naturally, through deep fissures in the ocean floor. Even though I'm not a geologist, and I have never had occasion to pretend to be one to get a government loan, I do know that you can certainly fudge the amount of oil that it is possible to extract from a site. That might be another argument against banning or slowing down the expansion of offshore drilling.

Then there is an entirely different angle that I am afraid they might use, and that's the angle nearly everyone uses to attack anything Australian, and that's the "drunk Aussie" angle. This is so wrong, I hesitate to bring it up. The image of smash-drunk Aussies, dancing around a neglected bonfire, shooting guns and throwing fat girls into the ocean springs to mind.

Let's be brutally honest--the Australians are a bunch of drunken louts. They're not as bad as the Russians, but, bear in mind, a lot of Russians emigrate to Australian because their livers can't take the vodka anymore, and they move on to that weak Australian beer they serve down there. There's a term for this type of individual by the way, and it's "yabbo." When you think of a drunken Australian, dropping his freshly-trimmed short pants and howling into a rolled up sheet of aluminum like it is a ten dollar megaphone, think of the hateful implications of assuming that a rollicking yabbo party on the main deck of the oil rig, complete with Radio Birdman songs and sex dolls cavorting with wallabies, caused this disaster. Don't give in to the hate. Incompetence is a disease, and, brother, that disease has taken hold in Australia.

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The Lobbyists Are Still There, Sir

How hard is this to figure out?

Lobbyists this year began terminating their formal registrations with the federal government at significantly higher levels than usual, a joint study by OMB Watch and the Center for Responsive Politics has found.

The OMB Watch-CRP study found 1,418 "deregistrations" of federally registered lobbyists during the second quarter of 2009, a marked increase for any reporting period during all of 2008 and 2009. This occurred shortly after President Barack Obama issued Executive Order 13490, which created new restrictions on former lobbyists appointed to the executive branch. Guidance was then issued in March, which marks the start of the 2nd quarter reporting, that enacted a gift ban and further restricted the kind of communications lobbyists could have about stimulus and TARP funds. Via a recent blog post, the White House also announced, “it is our aspiration that federally registered lobbyists not be appointed to agency advisory boards and commissions,” a practice that is common today.

[EDIT]

The study also indicates that since the beginning of 2008, the number of lobbyists filing termination reports has generally outpaced the number of newly active lobbyists – a trend that considerably accelerated during this year's second quarter. All told, there have been 18,315 lobbyist termination reports filed since January 2008. Meanwhile, only 15,310 lobbyists became active again after previously filing termination reports. This leaves a total of 3,005 lobbyists who have effectively “de-registered,” of which more than half (1,691) have come since April 2009.

If you look at these numbers, you would think to yourself, that's good news for good government. Finally, someone has decided to tackle the rolling bum scuffle that is lobbying and corruption. Finally, the Obama Administration has started to roll back the wanton excesses of the Bush Administration.

If there are fewer lobbyists, the reasoning would hold, then there are fewer people pushing an agenda that doesn't necessarily represent the will of the American people or what is best for them. Now, it stands to reason, not all lobbying is corrupt and evil. A fair enough portion of it is blandly evil, pushing a corporate agenda past the need to accomplish things like health care reform, environmental policies that are good for us, and to make peace in the world. If you think about those who lobby for the insurance industry, for the companies that pollute our environment, and for the companies that make a killing off of killing, that's a sizeable chunk of evil advocacy right there. And even that is not all bad. I used to think all corporate lobbying was simply the business of the American people conducting business. Now, I take a broader view of it, one that is unfettered by party affiliation nonsense. I want good government for a change.

We're not getting that, apparently:

Another troubling issue highlighted by the organizations is that the thousands of lobbyists who appear to have left their line of work may not have actually done so. At the federal level, many people working in the lobbying industry are not registered lobbyists, instead adopting titles such as "senior advisor" or other executive monikers, thereby avoiding federal disclosure requirements under the Lobbying Disclosure Act. 

Additionally, the terminology the lobbying community uses does not align with the categories of the U.S. Senate's or the Clerk of the House's lobbying disclosure databases.  For example, on the disclosure form, there is no such term as “deregistration" – a phrase lobbyists and many in the media frequently use.

Given this limitation, the most accurate way currently to determine the number of unique active lobbyists terminating their registrations requires tracking lobbyists' names listed on line 23 of the Lobbying Disclosure Act's form (LD2, which tracks lobbying activity on behalf of a client) and standardizing the data per unique individual lobbyist. Congressional disclosure offices must therefore research the activity of each lobbyist prior to sending notification of missing reports. With no unique identifier per individual lobbyist and with no “deregistration” field, verifying and enforcing compliance with the rules is made much more difficult.

It's one thing to issue and order; ensuring everyone is complying with that order is another matter. The Congress seems unwilling to do what is necessary to ensure that he who deregisters stops lobbying, no matter what. The government is asleep at the switch. It gives a weak order, everyone laughs at it, and business is conducted as usual.

Yes, yes this really is my blog...

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The Connection between Territory and QoL

Transport Infrastructure!

In transport infrastructure policies, the nation set its sights on the enhancement of national competitiveness by lowering logistics costs.

Improve of quality of life through higher mobility, better accessibility and greener transportation...

Vertical Search: Social Interactivity

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Welcome to the BOPNet

Trying to answer a number of loosely related questions lately, an important idea has become increasingly clear: we are rapidly entering the age of the BOPNet. 

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The "God view":...where everything interacts

   

Click here to download:

The_God_view...where_everythin.zip (388 KB)

This summer, I traveled to St. Louis and I visited the Gateway Arch, which has a beautiful museum . But the main attraction is the view from its very top. Standing about 630 feet tall, the view is amazing to say the very least.

On one side of the Gateway Arch is the amazing view of the city, with high-rise buildings, roads, and bridges intertwined; it's a distinctive sight that is highlighted by the St. Louis Cardinals Stadium.

On the other side sits possibly the only thing you cannot view in its entirety from the top, the Mississippi River--2,320 miles in length--the second largest river in the United States. Seemingly the whole world around you shrinks and you get close to possessing what I term the “God view.”

The “God view” is the ultimate unreachable perception of the world in its entirety, with everything and anything being in sight. The idea of the "God view" came to me as I stood on the ninth floor of Teacher’s College (TC), a building on the BSU campus. I looked out the windows on the side of the building, with a view down N. McKinley Avenue.

I immediately noticed the vast difference from the experiences I have during my everyday walks on campus. I saw everything beneath me in its entirety and not just in little tidbits. For instance, you see the Atrium as it relates to the sidewalks, the sidewalks as they relate to the streets, the streets as they relate to the people, the people as they relate to the cars--as the Atrium relates to the library, as the library relates to the Bell Tower, and the interrelationship never ends.

Everything felt like it had a more defined relationship, and I began to realize how much the environment and surroundings affect our being and our movement. My one question remains what is the ultimate reachable “God view”?

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Monster Mash, Indianapolis

Have you ever heard of alleycats? Do you have a bike? Any plans on Halloween? No? I have an idea for you...

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Counter-Discourse, Counter-Sites in Camajuaní, Cuba

The Repurposing of Garages as "Espacio Segrado" (Sacred Space)

This is a special guest contribution to :: repurposed :: by Christa B. Teston, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Writing Arts, Rowan University.

“Rhetorical agency—in social space—depends on the strategic application of a range of representational devices, whether the goal is to continue a given spatial tradition or to sponsor a counter-discourse via a counter-site.” –Ackerman 2003, p. 86

For the past two summers I've had the rich and worthwhile experience of being able to travel to Camajuaní, Cuba for humanitarian purposes.

The terrain, architecture, and overall organization of streets, stops, and stores in much of rural Cuba simply has not been managed or maintained.

A street side view in the Camajuaní neighborhood I stayed in.

A second street side view.

Despite the seeming neglect of common areas and travel paths in Camajuaní, there is a kind of hyper-vigilance on the part of the government toward places and spaces of public worship. Except in very few cases, the government owns all land in Cuba. There are, therefore, strict laws about what you are and are not allowed to do with it. If you can afford to, though, you can build an outdoor kitchen.

Children playing around the outdoor kitchen.

The entrance of the outdoor kitchen with the family's pet parakeets.

Outdoor kitchen's counter top.

Outdoor kitchen's cook top.

Outdoor kitchen's shelf (the recycled bottles are used for storing sauces, etc.).

While you could construct an outdoor kitchen in Cuba, it is not permissible to build or add on to an existing place of worship. Penalties for noncompliance range from outrageous fees (when the average monthly income for a Cuban is only 17 to 20 U.S. dollars) to jail time. For over 50 years, therefore, no new churches were built in Cuba. Hurricane damage and increases in population have left many towns without local houses of worship. Larger Catholic churches still stand strong in Havana, but for protestants, farmers and their families who live in rural areas, there is no place to collectively worship.

Many faithful in Cuba, however, have subverted the government’s religious repression, dominant discourse, and disavowal of collective worship by making material a kind of “counter-site.” That is, while it is not permissible to build a church in Cuba, it is permissible to build, or expand upon a garage.

One pastor, for instance, has repurposed his family’s home garage as a sacred space for the parishioners in his community. After o btaining building permits and collecting financial support from several churches in the United States, Pastor Alejandro* and many from his community began the hard work of turning their garage into a temple.

Constructing the outside wall.

Pastor Alejandro scraping paint off the old interior walls of the garage. Later, walls were painted a bright Caribbean pink.

The temple, under construction.

As a law, garages in Cuba must have one completely open wall large enough to fit a car into. Therefore, three walls along the “garage’s” perimeter may be built and a roof can be added in order to enclose the space, but one whole side of the temple must remain open and exposed at all times. Pews, musical instruments, and any religious artifacts or relics must therefore remain mobile.

Mobile pews, instruments.

The front of the temple with freshly painted Caribbean pink walls.

Community members deciding where oscillating fans should be hung on the wall. It gets quite warm in the temple during summer months.

Pastor Alejandro's story is one of many. Several pastors in rural Cuba have chosen to repurpose their garage in order to facilitate a sacred space for worship. These repurposed spaces are but a few examples of the Cuban people’s circumnavigation of political dominance through rhetorical agency--the collective sponsorship of a counter-discourse made material through counter-sites.

Structure built under the guise of being a garage.

Same structure, but filled with mobile pews and a makeshift movie screen on which parishioners watched Magdalena in Spanish, with English subtitles.

Another pastor's repurposed garage. Fits four pews.

A young parishioner in one of the church’s pews, having her first iPod experience.

*Names used throughout are pseudonyms.

These and various other images from Cuba can be found here.

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