Det har återigen snöat i Göteborg och snömodden är tillbaks med tung coh slirig löpning till följd. Men det gör inget för ISEN är "borta" och det var så otroligt FINT ute i morse. Även om benen var lite sega, jag fortfarande befann mig i sovmode och det var tungjoggat så var det en underbar start på dagen!

Resten av dagen består av klippning, författande av jobbansökningar (tror jag ska lyxa till det med ett par timmar på café), musikmixande och army med styrkefokus. Jag tror det blir en bra dag och jag ska mota bort stressen över vad jag ska göra med mitt liv.

Hur ser din måndag ut?

Some days you just don’t have anything useful to say. Today is one of those days. Except to wish my granddaughter Felise Happy Birthday! Hello Felise – your crusty old granddad will be back soon to give you a big hug. Here is a Duck for you.

My husband had hysterics when I told him about my most recent voluntary and unpaid endeavour. When he finished laughing, he sputtered: "You? Writing about ways to save? For a bank?" and then he started laughing again.
Lest you judge my husband, firstly, I already do and second of all it would be disingenuous of me to be upset at his reaction.
You see,
I refer to my husband affectionately as "my boat person."
He came as a child to Australia with his parents, as political refugees from Poland.
They had $200 and 2 suitcases between them. His parents, both highly qualified individuals couldn't work as engineers (the profession both were qualified in ) and he didn't speak a word of English.
Today, his parents having worked every minute since they got here, sometimes at up to four jobs at a time, are financially secure. But my husband is not. Well, he doesn't feel he is. And I get that.
Outwardly, with a degree, an excellent job and a home (heavily mortgaged mind you) he should feel comfortable, but he doesn't. My family often get frustrated at what appears to be a pedantic nature in relation to money. My family will lend money to each other and write if off to "being family." He doesn't.
He is passionate about being debt free and ensuring our children are secure when they grow up. He also wants to instill a savings ethic into them to make them appreciate how lucky they are.
My husband is incredibly generous with his time and will spend hours helping others with building things, installing things, making things. But he's careful about his possessions and careful about money. If I had been forced to leave all of my things as a child, and then live in absolute and utter poverty in a foreign country I'm pretty sure I'd be exactly the same.
As you can imagine though, over the years our biggest fights have usually been about money.
Specifically, his desire to save it, and my desire to spend it.
We already have a little system in place that tracks our spending. It's a little gizmo called iCompta.
But this month I want to try and save money. As much as possible. So I'm putting myself in your hands. I would love for you to tell me your tips for saving and if they are applicable to my little clan I'm going to try them out.
In return I'll randomly pick two winners to recieve these delightful gifts.
They are, ahem, un-given Christmas gifts,
because remember
I'm trying to save money.

Mon - Off, resting foot.

Tues - 4 mile (500') tester run at Reservoir Ridge with FCTR. Foot felt decent, if not great.

Weds - 8 miles (1,700'). Horsetooth/Audra route. Foot felt much better, but the whole run felt a little bit too much like hard work, as if I've lost some fitness.

Thurs - 8.5 miles (2,100'). Horsetooth/Audra with extra up on Southridge and Hilltop added. Felt like hard work again, but got easier as the run progressed. Foot was hardly noticeable, which is a huge relief. Felt the achilles a bit though.

Fri - 8.5 miles (2,100'). As yesterday. Things felt a little more fluid, but still like I'm missing a step and a lung.

Sat - 10.5 miles (2,000'). Twin Mountain Trudge.

Sun - 17.5 miles (1,200') easy with Eric B, who informed me that the Mountain Lion his wife had tagged as part of a Wildlife Service project had been shot somewhere near Laporte a couple of weeks back - just north of town - and then dumped off the side of the road in Evergreen. Seemingly someone shot the cat and then decided they needed to dispose of the evidence far away.

Couple of miles hiking with Alistair to Horsetooth Falls in the afternoon.

Total: 53 miles (9,600').
January: 252 miles (33,700)

Legs feel like they did significantly more than 53 miles this week, which tells me I'm far from recovered from the Bandera/Ghost Town double. Not really sure where to go from here. Two weeks until yet another long race, which looks like it's going to be fast - a concept that feels pretty foreign to me right now.

I definitely feel like I need to be training more and racing way less. After Moab, things calm down significantly, so hopefully I'll be able to get into a better rhythm with the whole training thing. I'm also beginning to think it might be an idea to skip Moab altogether and figure on getting some consistency going. Guess I'll see how the week goes and then make the call on race/no race.

[Image: Pole Dance, P.S. 1 competition-winning design by SO-IL].

I have to admit to being less than overwhelmed by the annual P.S. 1 competition—aka the Young Architects Program—as well as by the annual Serpentine Pavilion in London, but this year's P.S. 1 winner, by Brooklyn-based SO-IL, looks pretty amazing.


[Image: Pole Dance, P.S. 1 competition-winning design by SO-IL].

Although it will be nothing but a sea of bungee-anchored soccer nets and wobbly fiber-glass poles—with some colored balls thrown overhead as mobile ornaments—the structure has the feel of being the framework for an emerging game, an obscure sport whose spatial rules are yet to be determined.

As the architects themselves explain in their initial proposal, "On discovery of its elasticity, visitors engage with the structure, to envision games, test its limits or just watch it gently dance."



[Images: Pole Dance by SO-IL].

Put another way, if Yona Friedman were to become president of FIFA, perhaps this would be the weird new playing field he might develop.


[Image: Pole Dance by SO-IL].

The view from the street, of tall poles gently swaying amidst nets, will also be interesting to see.

While you're on SO-IL's website, check out their proposal Party Wall, as well as their well-weathered documentation of a garden shed in Belgium.

Det blev bandet och 22km lyckades jag skrapa ihop. Jag hade bestämt mig för att springa 2h (alltså närmare en halvtimme mindre än om jag hade sprungit enligt plan ute.), under den tiden p3 kultur sändes. Så strax före 14 klev jag upp på bandet och ställde in huvudet på envishetkanalen. Jag började riktigt lugnt och medan olika ämnen på temat det offentliga samtalet, och passande nog bland annat fenomenet bloggtroll, avhandlades ägnade jag mig åt någon sorts omvänd pyramidlöpning. Började med tio minuter på 10 km/h och sedan körde jag 1min på 10,1, 2min på 10,2 osv upp till 11 km/h som jag alltså höll i 10min. Sedan klättrade jag ner igen och hann med att vända nere på 10,1 och klättra halvägs upp igen. Eftersom det var så nära upp till 22km prick så fortsatte jag till 2:03:30 prick. Najs med jämna och bra siffror, sånt gillar mitt pedantiska jag. (Nu brukar jag ju visserligen alltid avrunda till hel, halv eller kvartsminuter när jag skriver ner mina springpass, men idag var det verkligen prickprick!)

Tyvärr hade jag inte tillgång till ett så här fint band idag.

P3 Kultur var intressant och det gick faktiskt bättre än väntat att springa länge på band. Det var först efter 90 minuter det började ta emot, men då var det ju bara en liten fjärdedel kvar. Jag är mycket nöjd med mig själv som genomförde och även om jag verkligen hoppas att nästa långpass kan köras utomhus är det ju aldrig fel att slipa lite på envisheten.

Swedish folk-giant The Tallest Man On Earth is setting out to release a new album called The Wild Hunt. If the first taste is of any kind of reference on what the album will be like we're in for a real treat.

On King Of Spain Kris Matsson strums his guitar more feverishly than on any of his debut album songs and his piercing voice sounds even stronger than before. In contrast to the raw energy of Kris' performance the debut's home-knitting recording esthetics have been polished up a bit. There's still plenty of dirt and gravel in the sound, no worries, but the loudest tape hiss and saturation, omnipresent in the debut, has been cleaned off.

And the song? You could probably go days listening to nothing else. What a beauty bomb!

The Tallest Man On Earth - King Of Spain

The Wild Hunt will be available on the 13th of April via Dead Oceans.

Idag är det en sån där sällsynt dag då träningen och min springsatsning inte känns rolig. Det händer inte särskilt ofta, men när dagens pass består av långpass på 27km och Göteborgs gator och vägar är täckta av ett flera centimeter tjockt lager blankis (om man har tur kan det ligga lite löst grus över) känns det faktiskt riktigt jobbigt. Dessutom ligger temometern på närmare 15 minusgrader (och vi vet ju hur det känns på västkusten), som om inte isen vore nog. Jag lovar härmed att aldrig mer beklaga mig över snömodd! Det må vara segt och frustrerande att springa i, men man är åtminstone inte livrädd från steg ett.

Igår kväll var jag ute på en kort återhämtningsjogg men jag vet inte om det blev så stor återhämtnade effekt för jag "sprang" på helspänn, med stappligt steg och med hjärtat i halsgropen. Pulsen var inte alls låg som den borde, trots att tempo låg närmare 7- än 6 min/km.

Så då är frågan; pest eller kolera?

Pest: Ska jag sätta på mig halva garderoben och ge mig ut på 27km-rundan, som på grund av extra långsamt snigeltempo, kommer ta halva dagen och dessutom riskera att ramla och, om inte slå ihjäl mig, så åtminstone skada mig?

Kolera: Ska jag åka in till stan och ställa mig på ett band och riskera att dö av tristess? Om jag väljer bandet kommer jag vara nöjd om jag lyckas stå ut i 20km men lovar att försöka tvinga mig till åtminstone 23-25km. Mental träning.

Gaah! Jag har stor beslutsångest! Vad ska jag göra? Pest eller kolera?

Headed up north this morning for the infamous Twin Mountain Trudge and my first Wyoming outing of the year.

Alec and Cathy Muthig started their little 'adventure race' six years ago with a mission to challenge the Wyoming running folk to even tougher conditions than they already have to deal with up there in the land of the frigid wind. The course is an 11 mile snow loop around the Twin Mountain massif; flotation devices and whining are grounds for disqualification.

Last year we had significant wind, but the snow levels were considered manageable compared to 2008 when 'runners' were wading through waist-deep snow. This year, the snow was definitely worse than '09, but we had a picture perfect morning: zero wind accompanied by glorious sun. With three layers on top, I was overheating within five minutes of the off.


Whereas last year a good 20-30% of the course was dirt, this year there can't have been more than a hundred yards of dirt and it came at you in patches of one or two steps: worthless. Undoubtedly the running was harder, but for the weather we had it was a fair trade.

A record 39 runners toed the line, with 14 - including myself - signed up for the double loop. Unlike last year, however, I wasn't committed mentally to the second loop from the start, instead I went in with a wait-and-see approach ... er ... the-second-loop-probably-ain't-gonna-happen approach.

Our small band of hardy souls got out at a trot from Alec's 'off' and I was soon breaking trail with a couple of other Fort Collins'ites: Ross Kontz and Mike Hinterberg. My first of many spills came early with a foot unexpectedly sinking knee deep into the abyss, followed by a face plant into the sugary snow. Pull yourself back up and start trudging again, that essentially was the MO for the remainder of the run.

By the time we hit Devil's Loop and the south side of Twin Mountain, I was losing interest in any thoughts of two loops and trudging in general. Ross had taken off and was soon out of sight, my energy levels were low, my foot was starting to hurt a bit, but hey, at least the wind wasn't blowing. The south side of the run seemed to take forever and the snow was unrelenting: crunch, crunch, posthole, stumble; crunch, crunch, posthole, fall.

I finally made the climb out of the Devil's Loop, missed a couple of turns and then was back up through the rocks and into an area with more exposed views. I caught sight of Ross a couple of minutes ahead and figured that I would give chase. My thinking went that if I could catch him by the end of the first loop, I could stop and still claim a win for the short course without having to go two loops for a win and a perfect January - all the incentive I needed.

With a couple of miles to go, we hooked into a snowmobile track that had crusted over nicely: finally some firm footing that was reliably runnable. I caught Ross with a half mile to go and cruised into the finish, happy to call it a day after a total of 110 race miles in January. Ross came in a half minute behind me, grabbed a couple of cookies and then proceeded to put me to shame by heading straight back out for his second loop. Alec had beers to hand, so the shame was soon forgotten.

I passed a good couple of hours shooting the breeze with the fine folk of the southern Wyoming running community and those that had come up from the Front Range, before heading back south with Alex and Michael to the comfort of a 48 degree Fort Collins afternoon.

On a side note, Patrick Eastman added a couple of growlers of Library IPA and porter to the post-race beer pool. If you ever find yourself in Laramie, be sure to stop in at the Library Sports Grille and Brewery to check out the brews - really good stuff.


So another fun run outing in Wyoming, and great to see so many people coming out to enjoy the silliness of Alec and Cathy's trudgeathon. Three more years and I earn the jacket.

I found this tiny snail in the mucky leaf litter under the ombu tree at the arboretum and brought it home to take pictures. The shell was about 4mm long.

Best audio quality (IPlayer)

Audio

Skream – Sweetz (2005 flex) – Keysound l
Loops Haunt – Impact Omnihammer – Black Acre
Kuedo – Shutter light girl – Planet Mu
DOM - Blakelock (Grievous Angel rmx) – mp3 pre
F – Poka – 7EVEN
Conforce – Sonar conversations – Machine Conspiracy
Paul Whiteman – I don’t want to lose you - Pressure Sounds
Jah Woosh - Shouldn’t say no - Pressure Sounds
King Tubby & the Santic Allstars – Santic meet King Tubby - Pressure Sounds
Yabby You – Judgement time – Blood & Fire
Al Green – Belle – Hi Records
Nick Butcher – Minutes overlap – Place Tapes
Dirty Projectors – Ascending melody – 4AD
Jim Bunkley – Oh Red No.2 – Big Legal Mess Records
Arthur Russell – You can make me feel bad – Audika
James Blackshaw – Cross – Young God
The Low Anthem - To the Ghost;'s Who Write History - Bella Union
Hexicon - Something Strange Beneath the Stars - Haircut
Nice Nice - See Waves - Warp
Pevin Kinel - Tiger tasty put - Evil Ink Pen
Oumou Sangare - Wele Wele - Music Beyond Mainstream
Les Fauves - Everlasting Soup -
Tamikrest - Outamachek - Glitterhouse Records

Ramlade över den här och höll på att svimma av Romonostalgi. Gud så det har dansats och gud så det har sjungits till denna gamla new romantic under sena romonights. Jag vill ha tillbaks lite av denna fina tid.

I helgen kör jag min egen version av Rock Victorious. Den kanske inte innehåller lika mycket träningstid och riktigt lika mycket inspiration, men den innehåller kvalitativ cykling, egotid, livsfarlig långlöpning på is, längtan, och andra saker som betyder livskvalité.

Först ut är ett cykelvick för en av de ambitiösaste instruktörer jag hittills stött på. Vi har en liknande träningsfilosofi (och antagligen ungefär samma deltagare) så det ska bli roligt att få köra tröskelintervaller/extensiva intervaller för denna grupp människor. 4min jobb på/strax under mjölksyratröskeln följt av 2min vila. En 45 minuters försmak på mina onsdagars upplägg de kommande fyra veckorna. Det är dags att öka upp intensiteten ett snäpp eller två.

The four Northern White Rhinos recently transferred to Kenya from the Czech Republic have been dehorned, primarily to limit their value to poachers. Radio-transmitters have been attached to the horn stumps to assist in tracking the animals as they move further afield in their new enclosure. The Times of South Africa has the news.

"With the increase of poaching in Kenya, we are simply not taking any chances," Elodie Sampere from the Ol Pejeta Conservancy, which is overseeing the animals' acclimatisation told AFP.
[...]
Sampere said that sawing off the four Northern White rhinos' horns would also allow them to grow back straight.

"All the rhinos had horns that didn’t grow upright. This is a result of them being in the zoo and not having trees to rub against," she said.

Satire for the Nu.nl news website, referring to indifferent reactions after the presentation of the iPad tablet from Apple.

You're invited to Sevensheaven.nl for more imagery.

[Image: Humans creating a future archaeological site on the moon].

In a meeting today in Sacramento, commissioners might vote to register items left behind on the moon by Apollo astronauts "as an official State Historical Resource," the L.A. Times reports.

After all, "California law allows listing historical resources beyond the state's borders—even if it's more than 238,000 miles away."

Some of the 5,000 pounds of stuff Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin abandoned at Tranquility Base was purposeful: a seismic detector to record moonquakes and meteorite impacts; a laser-reflection device to make precise distance measurements between Earth and the moon; a U.S. flag and commemorative plaque. Some was unavoidable: Apollo 11's lunar module descent stage wasn't designed to be carted back home, for instance.

"They were told to jettison things that weren't important," anthropologist Beth O'Leary, "a leader in the emerging field of space heritage and archaeology," tells the newspaper. "They were essentially told, 'Here's eight minutes, create an archaeology site.'""

If the Apollo site does become, incredibly, a California state landmark, this decision will open a legal path for the location to be recognized as an official UNESCO World Heritage Site. This, in turn, will help protect it from vandalism during "unmanned trips to the moon by private groups, and even someday by tourists." While the implied vision of Indiana Jones, Astronaut, is an exciting one, the idea that the State of California could someday have historical jurisdiction—or something like it—over a fragment of the moon's surface seems genuinely astonishing to me. Perhaps we could even have it declared part of Los Angeles County—the first offworld municipal exclave.

Texas and New Mexico also have plans to "place the items on historic registries" later this year, we read.

[Image: Via montenegro.com].

Somehow this morning I ended up reading about an artificial island and devotional chapel constructed in Montenegro's Bay of Kotor.

"In 1452," we read at montenegro.com, "two sailors from Perast happened by a small rock jutting out of the bay after a long day at sea and discovered a picture of the Virgin Mary perched upon the stone." Thus began a process of dumping more stones into the bay in order to expand this lonely, seemingly blessed rock—as well as loading the hulls of old fishing boats with stones in order to sink them beneath the waves, adding to the island's growing landmass.

Eventually, in 1630, a small chapel was constructed atop this strange half-geological, half-shipbuilt assemblage.


[Image: Via Skyscraper City].

Throwing stones into the bay and, in the process, incrementally expanding the island's surface area, has apparently become a local religious tradition: "The custom of throwing rocks into the sea is alive even nowadays. Every year on the sunset of July 22, an event called fašinada, when local residents take their boats and throw rocks into the sea, widening the surface of the island, takes place."

The idea that devotional rock-throwing has become an art of creating new terrain, generation after generation, rock after rock, pebble after pebble, is stunning to me. Perhaps in a thousand years, a whole archipelago of churches will exist there, standing atop a waterlogged maze of old pleasure boats and fishing ships, the mainland hills and valleys nearby denuded of loose stones altogether. Inadvertently, then, this is as much a museum of local geology—a catalog of rocks—as it is a churchyard.

In fact, it doesn't seem inaccurate to view this as a vernacular version of Vicente Guallart's interest in architecturally constructing new hills and coastlines based on a logical study of the geometry of rocks.

Here, the slow creation of new inhabitable terrain simply takes place in the guise of an annual religious festival—pilgrims assembling islands with every arm's throw.

(Eller nåt ditåt)

Idag jobbar jag (check), springer ett kort lättdistanspass på band (ja det är nog med att jag kommer halka runt i flera timmar på söndag, det är SJUKT halt i Götborg), tränar mig (förhoppnignsvis) underbart endorfinhög och uttröttad med, en för mig, ny armyinstruktör, äter god mat och dricker vin (och pratar viktiga och oviktiga saker med snyggaste powerprinsessan och gör allt för att förtränga att jag missar årets stora händelse för oss gruppträningsinstruktörer (och andra träningsglada).

(Jo jag är nog in love. Fast inte bara för att det är fredag och jag har en nästintill ledig helg framför mig.)

I take collation pretty seriously, mostly because I enjoy knowing what I'm going to get once I know the top card (or sticker, as the case may be). For this box, if Tom Seaver was first out of the pack, your four others would be in this order: Jerry Remy, Dusty Baker, Mike Schmidt, and Vida Blue. Similarly, if you pulled Paul Molitor first, there was nearly a 100% chance that the third sticker would be Manny Trillo, the fourth sticker would be Bob Horner, and the second and fifth stickers would be random.

Even the seemingly random-seeded stickers weren't seeded all that randomly. For instance, Andre Dawson was locked in the 1 hole, John Castino and Fred Lynn both 2's, John Mayberry a 3, Pete Rose Highlight a 4, and Cecil Cooper, Cliff Johnson, Dave Collins, and at least 18 others at 5.

There were "Rogue" stickers as well, or those that didn't appear in a consistent slot (Keith Hernandez, Rollie Fingers League Leaders). And there, hidden amongst the doubles, triples, rogues and locked rows were actual single print stickers – 25 of them to be exact, including all five of the stickers from Pack 1. Amazing.

Someone asked me today what my goal of this project was. I answered that I wanted to be able to hypothetically assemble an uncut sheet of stickers without knowing exactly where each sticker would have fit. And while that would be a neat exercise to actually do, the more I thought about individual box collation, pack cycles, and pack pockets, the more I realized that to make generalizations based a very small sample is at best unwise and at worst just plain stupid.

I remember a few years ago when I started A Pack A Day, I ripped a box of 1989-90 Hoops Series One. I found that not only was the David Robinson draft-day rookie short print not actually short-printed, but I found that if you got it in a pack, you also got Larry Bird (I ended up getting about 4 of each from that one box). But while my experience tells me that the Robinson wasn't actually a short print, why is it always listed as a short print? Using my one-box example to make a generalization doesn't really work.

There are reasons why card companies serial-number cards nowadays. For one thing, it creates a sense of a limited supply. For another thing, it completely destroys the idea of a general collation. Just because you get autographed relic card A doesn't mean you'll also get commons B, C, and D (well, unless the auto relics are considered Rogues, then that opens up whole new possibilities...). Of course, this is not true of regular card products. I'd bet that Topps 2010 has just as poor collation as Topps 1986.

In any event, if you can view a Google doc, you can take a look at my documented collation from my box of 1982 Topps Stickers.

Colored-coded Collation

Min filosofi om att man aldrig bör ha några förbud när det gäller mat och godsaker stämmer. Jag kan knappt tänka på något annat än att jag vill ha en semla! (Ok nu överdrev jag lite, men jag är faktiskt grymt sugen.)

Härmed upplöses mitt "förbud", jag förlorar utmaningen och säger grattis till Mia. Eller ja, än har jag ju inte haft tillfälle att äta någon, men jag har en känsla av att tillfällen kommer att dyka upp inom de närmaste dagarna. Och precis som en del har kommenterat så är faktiskt semelsäsongen alldeles för kort för att begränsa möjligheterna till mumsande!

Så nu återstår bara att ta reda på vad straffet är? Och så kan vi dra igång en tävling. Hur många kommer jag äta? :)

(Fast jag har inte några lyxiga priser att dela ut :)

Julianna Barwick is an angel, or at least she has the most angelic voice and tunes on the planet.



Here's a new video for her song, "Sunlight, Heaven" that features, well, some sunlight and the skies up above.



You can listen to both of her albums with Spotify or "Florine" right below.

So you thought you used to play 2D games. If you had taken a look behind the screen, then you'd have seen this. The featured game is Donkey Kong from Nintendo, a classic 8-bit video game for the arcades, released in 1981.

You're invited to Sevensheaven.nl for more imagery.

Here in our little corner of the world a certain site went "live" today.The site was mired in controversy before it even started with educators saying it would be used to create potentially damaging school rankings, less fondly known as league tables.
Having taught in the UK for a number of years where league tables were published as a matter of course I've found the controversy fascinating.
Mainly because I think parents and would be parents want to know this information.
They want to know how the school they send their child to every day is performing.
They want to know how to make things better for their child.
They want to make a difference.
For myself, I looked at the data and when I saw results for my child's school that I wasn't thrilled with, my first thought was for my child and how could I help them.
As parents we are, and should be the first port of call for our children. It makes me very cranky when parents abnegate responsibility for their child's education once they reach school age.
Because at the end of the day, teachers can only do so much.
Do you hear that?
They can only do so much.
I know.
I used to be one.
There are some appalling teachers in our system. I've worked with some. If we look at the ease with which students can obtain entry into teaching then we can see that by setting our standards so low for entry, we are setting ourselves up, no, we are setting our children up to fail.
We have to do better than this.
If your child's school is failing on every area, then the management of the school needs close scrutiny. And it needs meaningful and useful funding from our Federal Government to ensure that your child isn't failed by a system that's meant to serve it well.
They have to do better than this.
If your child's school is failing in one or two areas then go see the teacher. Find out what they are doing to address the issue. Find out what YOU can do to support your child. I swear by the SchoolZone books sold at Target. For the bargain price of $4.00 I taught my daughter her alphabet and basic word recognition.
Because you, as a parent have to do better.
You have to be an advocate for your child. If they are struggling at school for whatever reason, you need to be their voice.
I am mystified as to why people are up in arms about this site. They say NAPLAN isn't a good indicator of a child's ability. Having helped create a marks scheme for NAPLAN in the past I can tell you the hours of agonising that goes into ensuring every childs work is deemed to have meaning. It's not a perfect indicator, but I can tell you, it's a pretty comprehensive one. Having marked various school test papers I have been almost bought to tears by the appalling work I've marked. Class upon class where I can see children being totally and utterly failed by a system supposed to make their lives better.
And that's why I for one am pleased this site went live.
Because our children deserve better.
And so do you.

I'm thrilled to announce that Edible Geography has teamed up with Sarah Rich to host a public event here in New York City next month; it will take place at Studio-X and will also be broadcast on Columbia University's iTunes U channel.

Nicola's own description of the day's themes says it best:

The free afternoon program will consist of four panel discussions: “Zoning Diet,” about the hidden corsetry of policy, access, and economics that gives shape to urban food distribution; “Culinary Cartography,” a look at the kinds of things we can learn about New York City when we map its food types and behaviors; “Edible Archaeology,” about the socio-economic forces, technical innovations, and events that have shaped New York food history, in the context of the present; and “Feast, Famine, and Other Scenarios,” an opportunity to collaboratively speculate on changes to the edible landscape of New York in both the near and distant future.

Each panel, she adds, will feature "a range of voices, including designers, policy-makers, flavor scientists, culinary historians, architects, anthropologists, health professionals, and food producers and retailers." The line-up so far looks amazing, and a public announcement of all confirmed speakers should be up soon.

So if you're interested in how food shapes cities, from urban culture to built geography, mark your calendar—and I hope to see some of you there.

Foodprint NYC will take place on Saturday, February 27, from 1-5:30 p.m., at Studio-X, 180 Varick Street, Suite 1610, New York City. Here's a map.

När jag satt på en av bussarna hem från cyklingen (jag måste först åka buss eller spårvagn och sedan byta till buss för att ta mig till mitt gymmet jag har min fasta klass på) började jag fundera på hur otroligt mycket tid jag egentligen lägger på träningen utöver själva träningen!

Först och främst all stretch. På funbeat kan man se att jag tränade 26482 minuter under 2009. Men då är endast några få specifika och rena stretchpass medräknade. Dessa kan lätt räknas på en hand, dels då kraven jag har för att få regga dessa pass är att de ska vara minst 20 minuter och dels då jag började regga dessa pass först i sensomras. Kör jag exempelvis ett cykel- army- eller corepass räknar jag inte med de 5-10min stretch som ingår. Varför inte? Jo dels för att jag ju inte gör det på löppassen och dels för att stretch faktiskt inte är cykling/army/styrka etc och jag är en petig, pedant och strikt typ :) Eftersom jag ibland slarvar och bara snabbstretchar efter egna styrkepass och löppass (och ibland "råkar" glömma och inte gör det alls (ja jag skäms)) så kan vi för enkelhetens skull säga att det är i genomsnitt 5min per pass som inte är medräknade i totaltiden. Det blir ett antal minuter på ett år.

Sen har vi som sagt all transporttid. Tid det tar att gå till och från gym, bussar och spårvagnar. Meningslös tid. Lägg där till all tid jag lägger på att planera, drömma, tänka, prata och läsa träning! Sjukt mycket tid!

Men det är ju såklart självvalt (förutom det där med transporterandet på sega kollektivtrafiksfordon då. Jag kanske borde skaffa en bra löpryggsäck och bli en snorkkare? Fast problemet är att jag då är rädd att inte klara av lika mycket kvalitetsträning. Hm.. Jag får fundera en stund till.) och jag vill ju till viss del (ja det finns faktiskt annat som är viktigt för mig också) leva träning. Men själva träningen tar ju faktiskt typ bara halva "träningstiden". Men det talar vi tyst om så att inte några eventuella träningsmotståndare (av den sort som anser/tror att de inte har tid att träna) får nys om det :)

Halsen kändes föresten bättre efter passet (mystiskt) och efter massa honungste, vitlök och Ben & Jerrys (inte samtidigt) känns det nästan ingenting. Vi får väl se hur det utvecklas det här. Ibland tror att jag min kropp är lite konstigare än alla andras :)

On the advice of a friend here in New York, my wife and I went over to the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn on New Year's Eve to watch the school's underground steam infrastructure be transformed, temporarily, into a thunderous musical instrument. Somewhere between subterranean calliope and mutant wave organ, steam-powered explosions of sound threatened to deafen everyone as it turned 2010.

I've finally gotten around to uploading some footage I shot that night; you can watch (a very badly edited) clip, above.


[Image: Pratt's underground steam HQ, stitched together and cropped by iPhone].

According to the Municipal Art Society, Pratt's steam-powered plant "is the oldest privately-owned, continuously operating, power plant of its kind in the country"—and, once a year, it gets turned into a gigantic musical instrument. One of the whistles used has even been repurposed from an old steamship, the S.S. Normandie.

The implication here, that you can attach pieces of musical instruments, and even old ship parts, to your city's existing infrastructure and thus generate massive waves of sound is pretty astonishing; this might be a very site-specific thing, to be sure, and something only Pratt has permission to do to its own steam tunnels, but the mind reels at the possibility that this could be repeated throughout New York. For instance, on any point of the existing steam network as documented last month by Urban Omnibus:

Every winter, a typically unseen machine becomes visible in the streets of Manhattan: Con Edison’s District Steam System. Seen from the street as steam leaking from manholes, or more safely vented through orange and white stacks, leaking steam hints at an underground energy distribution system that is the largest of its kind in the United States and offers a chance for the public to become more aware of and more involved in how the city works.

As Urban Omnibus adds, "the steam system is largely ignored by the public until things go wrong"—or, of course, until that system is turned into a city-scale musical instrument through a maze of well-placed reeds, valves, and resonators.

The city is a saxophone, your grandfather explains, pointing down through sidewalk steam-grates as haunting whistles begin to sound. We have always lived inside an instrument, he adds, even if not all of us have known.

In 1978 I bought my first edition of the ‘Dictionary of Australian Colloquialisms’ by G. A. Wilkes. This wonderful book documents the many colourful expressions which are or were used in Australia. The new edition was released recently and I have received my copy from Amazon.

To broaden your horizons I will occasionally include some uniquely Australian expressions in my blogs. Feel free to use these in appropriate situations and startle your friends with the scope of your vocabulary.

My packing at the Spar checkout has not improved at all in the time we have been here – mainly because of the enormous pressure that one is placed under. The ideal situation is for you to put pack the heavy things at the bottom of your bag with the light and fragile things on top – and airily toss the the last item into the bag just as Helga the Iron Maiden with the steely gaze announces the price.

You can then pay – with the right money – getting rid of some of the kilos of brown coins which infest your pockets - and move on without being buried under the avalanche of stuff from the next person in line. (The cost in itself is usually enough to incite panic as you wonder what you possibly have bought that cost so much and did you accidentally pick up a bar of platinum and drop it in to your trolley).

But this never happens. The king’s ransom is always demanded while I still have a pile of things to dispose of. Then I start scratching around trying to find the small change I need but can’t do it quickly enough – panic - and pay with notes – getting yet another handful of change to add to my mountainous collection - and stuff this in my pockets as someone else’s tins and bottles start cascading onto my remaining groceries.

Other people don’t seem to have the same kinds of problems. The young people are much more agile and do the job with ease. The older women of course just stand there and pack their stuff while we all wait.

I always get something that just doesn’t go in the bag properly – or gets caught in the handles. Just one of these and it’s curtains.

In a ghastly incident in 2009 I got a baguette caught sideways in my shopping bag and just couldn’t get the damn thing out again. The bags are cloth and this one expanded to accommodate the baguette – which then made it impossible to get anything else in there.

I eventually had to break the baguette in half to extricate it and this took me maybe 30 seconds – it seemed like an eternity – and I raised my gaze fearfully to see Helga wanting money, a gigantic pile of my groceries glowering at me - and six customers waiting impatiently behind me.

The worst case scenario is when the little old lady (LOL) pays and then packs the rest of her stuff while you are still behind her - while you are having your items processed by Helga.

In this nightmare scenario Helga starts piling the stuff on top of the plastic shelf in front of the bench. When this is full she the starts putting it where the old lady is – but using your items to push the LOLs stuff further down the bench.

In this scene from hell you are then trying to move stuff off the plastic shelf and at the same time keeping it separate from the LOL - and grabbing back from her your Angus McTavish Pure Butter Shortbread biscuits that she is trying to snaffle.

By the time the LOL moves on you are up to pussy’s bow in groceries - and Helga is demanding money.

At this stage you can either cram everything into your bags as quickly as possible – and untangle the mashed remains when you get home – or throw everything back into your trolley and then retire to the packing bench to start all over again. I have often had to do this – first breathing into a paper bag for a few minutes to settle myself down.

There is very little you can do to slow the process down a bit. Some items don’t get scanned and if you put these at the back of the pile Helga may have to look up the price and this will give you a breather for maybe three seconds – long enough to hurl two items into your bag. You can also mess up the bar codes on some items so that Helga has to input them manually – but she is remarkably quick and efficient and has a vested interest in causing panic.

It is an excruciating and debilitating process and I always end up trudging home with a tangled mess of groceries and my pockets clinking with yet more unwanted change which I then add to the enormous and growing pile in a large dish.

I am checking online. There must surely be remedial grocery packing courses available somewhere.

Jag har en oroväckande känsla i halsen. Inte riktigt ont, men liksom en försmak. Precis så som mina (oftast väldigt korta (tack för det!)) förkylningar brukar börja. Hur ska det NU gå med semelgrejen?? Nog för att min huskur mot förkylningar inte innefattar semlor (utan honungste, glass, godis, färskpressad juice och marinerade vitlöksklyftor) men det hade ju verkligen varit ett optimalt tillfälle att äta årets första. Jaja, får köpa på mig allt det andra (plus extra godis som kompensation) hem efter dagens instruerande. Egentligen kanske jag borde vicka bort passet, men jag känner att det är i senaste laget. Det är ju sista veckan med distanspasset och där ligger jag ju bara på en behaglig ansträngning och jag kan ju faktiskt ta det extra lugnt. Så får det bli. Extra lugn cykling och därefter huskuren.

Måste föresten berätta om dagens lunch! Hade en date med min kompis Niklas på Ica Fokus restaurang (Ica Fokus är en mellanstor ica butik i gbg med lite exklusivare grejer som mycket hembakat bröd, mycket delikatesser etc.) där jag aldrig ätit innan. Shit så mycket mat! Jag kommer definitivt äta där fler gånger. För 75kr fick man en jätteportion dagens (fyra alternativ varav ett vego), en jättestor och varierad salladsbuffé, nybakat bröd av olika slag, ostar, fruktter och kaffe. Jag åt så mycket att jag fortfarande, nästan fyra timmer senare, är mätt! (Och det hör inte till vanligheterna när det gäller mig, jag äter jämt!) Jag fotade med mobilen men kom på att jag ju glömt öveföringssladden i Stockholm så tyvärr blir det ingen bild på underverket.

Nu ska jag försöka få ner lite mellanmål :)

Pack 87: Rick Burleson, Toby Harrah, Ron Oester, Juan Eichelberger, Rick Camp

Pack 88: AL All-Star George Brett, 1981 World Series Game 5, Gary Matthews, NL All-Star Gary Carter, Bert Blyleven

Pack 89: Greg Minton, AL All-Star Carlton Fisk, Lloyd Moseby, Ken Singleton, Ken Oberkfell

Pack 90: 1981 World Series Game 4, Gene Richards, Ray Knight, Burt Hooton, Cliff Johnson

Pack 91: Neil Allen, Luis Salazar, Jerry Reuss, Ozzie Smith, Fernando Valenzuela

Pack 92: Len Barker, Billy Martin Highlight, Omar Moreno, 1981 World Series Game 3, Ken Oberkfell

Pack 93: Ivan DeJesus, Bob Boone, Tony Armas, Jack Morris, Jim Palmer

Pack 94: Enos Cabell, Tommy John, 1981 World Series Game 6, Gary Lucas, Dave Concepcion

Pack 95: Dennis Leonard, Bob Boone, Tony Armas, Jack Clark, Willie Stargell

Pack 96: 1981 World Series Game 4, Gene Richards, Ray Knight, Burt Hooton, NL All-Star Dave Parker

Pack 97: Ivan DeJesus, Luis Salazar, Tony Armas, Jack Morris, Jim Palmer

Pack 98: Len Barker, Tim Blackwell, Omar Moreno, 1981 World Series Game 3, AL All-Star Dave Winfield

Pack 99: Hubie Brooks, Broderick Perkins, Andre Thornton, Roger Erickson, Chris Speier

Pack 100: Larry Herndon, George Foster, Dick Tidrow, Cesar Cedeno, Frank White


Notes. Well, that's all she wrote: With only 15/75 new stickers, my sticker album will be forever unfinished. And only 11 stickers short. So that means that within my box of 500 stickers, I only got 249 individual stickers (and 251 others). What I find most interesting about this is the idea of where certain stickers appeared within the box, and then how long it took to get a double, and then sometimes a triple, of that sticker [the Pack Pocket hypothesis, introduced in Sunday's post].

Highlight stickers seemed to appear in the first third of the box, World Series and League Leaders appeared in the last third, and All-Stars appeared throughout. Also, I completed the Red Sox team page before receiving a single Padre, and for a very long time was one Jim Palmer sticker from completing the Orioles team page, only then to receive two Palmers within a few packs of each other towards the end of the box.

Other Notes... This sticker of Omar Moreno has to be the worst sticker in the entire book. Why isn't he facing the camera? A sane person would not have known it was Moreno... I've been staring at the album cover for a while now and I'm convinced that a) the players obscured by the large "25¢" in the lower right corner are shown in team-less uniforms, which is bizarre, and b) Gary Carter's eyes are closed, which begs the question: Why didn't Topps use a photo of one of the World Series-winning LA Dodgers? Like Valenzuela mid-windup or Ron Cey picking his nose?... And speaking of Dodgers, like the other teams, there are only eight players on the team page: Ken Landreaux, Dusty Baker, Ron Cey, Steve Garvey, Pedro Guerrero, Fernando Valenzuela, Burt Hooton, and Jerry Reuss. OK, so most of them are star players, but because the team won the World Series, I would've thought that Topps would have given them a spread. Because how would you feel if you were Davey Lopes, Mike Scioscia or Bill Russell? Or even Tommy Lasorda, for that matter? If anyone deserved a sticker, it was Davey Lopes. The guy was traded after the 1981 season to the A's presumably because he was 36. But then he goes on to put up respectable numbers for six more seasons, including a great 1985 with the Cubs, where he steals 47 bases while getting caught only four times. I'm Davey Lopes! Gimme my damn sticker!

Final Notes. In the next few days I'm going to do a post outlining the entire box, just to see if there's any reason to the madness of opening 100 packs and not finishing the set.

Jag älskar som sagt semlor och äter nog minst tio stycken per säsong. Vet inte hur lite bröd, mandelmassa och grädde kan vara så sjukt gott, men jag tror det har något med kombinationen av dessa att göra. Och så florsockret på det.

Nu är jag ju inte den enda som gillar det här och Mia slängde fram en utmaning om att hålla sig ända till själva semeldagen! Ojojoj. Men utmaningar är ju kul så det är klart jag är på! Med villkoret att jag från och med den 16:e februari, då semeldagen infaller, får äta obegränsat av dessa godingar.

Hm.. sextonde februari.. dit är det ju en hel evighet!! (tjugoen dagar)

Men vad är straffet om man misslyckas? Och vad vinner man? :)

She's been so excited.
She's asked me hopefully every day: "Is it school today mummy?"
And each day we've counted down the sleeps left to go.
But today
my heart broke a little,
for her.
There was a "soothe mums nerves before school starts up get together" at the local park today.
And I saw my daughter being bullied.
I saw another little girl who looked as if butter wouldn't melt in her mouth don't they always look like that? telling my daughter she couldn't play with her because she didn't like her.
And I saw my daughter walk away head bowed, holding back tears.
I sit here now itching to pick up the phone to the other girl's mum. But I won't. My little girl needs to learn to fight her own battles.
I hate the bewilderment that she feels because of the rejection.
I hate that she's only five and has to go into a world that somehow, isn't quite as friendly as before.
Somehow I don't think we'll be counting down the sleeps anymore.

[Image: The black pyramid at Tama-Re, the Egypt of the West].

After watching a documentary about Ted Kaczynski—the Unabomber—a few months ago, I got to looking into the supermax prison where Kaczynski is now being held in the mountains of Colorado. And there are a lot of bizarre people up there, including Andrew Fastow, former Chief Financial Officer of Enron, and Charles Harrelson, the (now deceased) hitman father of actor Woody Harrelson.

One of the inmates who particularly stood out, however, was Dwight York. York is "an author, black supremacist leader, musician, and convicted child molester," Wikipedia tells us, and he built a colorful, Ancient Egyptian-themed instant city on several hundred acres of forest land in the U.S. state of Georgia.


[Image: Tama-Re photographed from above, via Wikimapia].

The Urban Dictionary's description of Tama-Re is amazing; it reads like every race-based fear of the white U.S. middle class summed up in one surreal location.

When York and his Nuwaubians moved there and began erecting pyramids and obelisks there was much curiosity about the group. However trouble started when the citizens became aware of the fact that York was an ex-Black Panther and a convicted felon and statutory rapist who was preaching the gospel that whites were mutants and were inferior to blacks. There is also a foam rubber alien on display in the compound that causes problems with public relations. Officials have had problems with the Nuwaubians failing to comply with zoning and building permits that coincide with what they have created. The Nuwaubians feel that this is a racist attack.

It's hard to top a "foam rubber alien," but the fear-factor nonetheless gets ratcheted up a notch:

Many children from upper middle class cities have left college to live in poverty at the cult's compound, Tama Re. This has caused a lot of turmoil in the lives of many families who can't accept the fact that their sons and daughters have left them to follow an alien messiah. Throughout the grounds speakers everywhere emit the humming sound of Egyptian chants 24 hours a day. Inside one of the pyramids you can buy books and clothes as well as a Dr. York doll. The people who live on the land dwell in a trailer park full of double-wides. York claims his people are Moors who traveled by foot from Africa to what is currently Georgia before the continental drift. The only problem with this "indisputable" fact is that the moors were Muslims who existed way after the birth of Christ which was only approximately 2000 years ago.

Ergo, there was no way in plate tectonics that they could have walked all the way to Georgia.

In June 2005, after the compound's governmental seizure, financial forfeiture, and ensuing sale for $1.1 million, outright demolition began. As the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported at the time, the local sheriff was on the scene, "speaking with relish as he watched crews tear through the series of obelisks, statues, arches and buildings. Many of the dozens of structures were weathered and in disrepair. He said very few of the Egyptian structures or objects were worth salvaging. 'It feels good to tear down the SOB myself,' he said. 'By the middle of next week, there will be nothing but a couple of pyramids.'"

How, though, could these sorts of messianic compounds be addressed by and incorporated into architectural discourse? How do tacky black pyramids full of Luxor references complexify or contradict something like Venturi & Scott-Brown's ideas of pop cultural ornament discussed just this past weekend at Yale?

Put another way, when will religious compounds meet their Tom Vanderbilt—that is, a journalist willing to travel around the world writing an architectural history of these fringe religious environments and stylistically eccentric cult enclaves?

These are sites built such that their every spatial detail is not justified by some historically rigorous academic architectural code, but because they function, psychologically, as a piece-by-piece tuning of the built environment. Add enough ornamental references together, these spaces say, and some weird new Messiah might yet someday return. It is functional ornament.


[Image: The ashes of the David Koresh compound in Waco, Texas].

Of course, I'm fascinated by the idea that Tehran, for instance, has been analyzed by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad—who trained as a traffic engineer—for its ability to handle the crush of cars and pedestrians that will show up to greet the returning Messiah. And, spatially speaking, I would love to read more about the now-destroyed Texas farmhouse inside of which David Koresh once preached his Branch Davidian gospel. But what about the central headquarters of Aum Shinrikyo, where LSD-fueled physicists meditated in the dark, crowned with well-lit helmets of electrodes, or the mirrored room inside of which Heaven's Gate cultists once strangled themselves out of fear of Hale-Bopp?

Somewhere between Spaced Out, Survival City, and the excellent (though over-exposed) Gomorrah, a seriously amazing book about the architectural design of religious compounds is waiting to be written.

Princeton Architectural Press should contract Sam Jacob and Charles Holland to write this, immediately: gonzo architectural criticism in an era of the postmodern religious baroque.

Magnetic Fields' new album Realism was promoted as being an acoustic counterpart to the 2008 feedback-laden "Distortion".



It leaves one pretty much speechless as it's hard to think of words of any kind that wouldn't sound stale or trite next to Stephin Merritt's witty songwriting. So instead of further prosaic endeavors in describing the music on the album here's the opening song.

Magnetic Fields - You Must Be Out Of Your Mind

You can also listen to the entire album on Spotify.

So you thought you used to play 2D games. If you had taken a look behind the screen, then you'd have seen this. The featured game is Donkey Kong from Nintendo, a classic 8-bit video game for the arcades, released in 1981.

You're invited to Sevensheaven.nl for more imagery.

[Image: Fresh Kills landscape masterplan by Field Operations, via Mammoth; "With 2,200 acres filled with 150 million tons of trash to contend with," Metropolis writes, "the challenge is making Fresh Kills public and safe, which means covering the garbage mounds with some four feet of fresh soil. The park would grow itself with cost-effective soil farms that aren’t eyesores." Read more at the Freshkills Park Blog].

Mammoth has posted a great list of the best architecture of the decade. It runs the gamut from groundwater replenishing infrastructure and Chinese high-speed rail to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault and the iPhone, by way of the Large Hadron Collider, Rome's Pontine marshes, and a library in Medellín (among others).

The purpose of the list, they write, is "to share a handful of the reasons that we’re genuinely excited about the future of architecture, and to hopefully engender a bit of that excitement in a reader or two." It's an inspired (and refreshingly non-building-centric) list of innovations (like microfinance) that have affected the built environment—and yet another reason why Mammoth is one of the best architecture blogs being written anywhere in the world today.

As a list, it also fares very favorably against the mind-numbing self-congratulation of other critics' decade-in-retrospect lists, in which the last ten years appeared to exist only to validate the publishing decisions of people who, long ago, forgot how to engage with anything more than a shaving mirror.

Again, here's a link.

Keiichi Matsuda, a student at the Bartlett School of Architecture, produced this fantastic short video in the final year of his M.Arch. It was, he writes, "part of a larger project about the social and architectural consequences of new media and augmented reality."

The latter half of the 20th century saw the built environment merged with media space, and architecture taking on new roles related to branding, image and consumerism. Augmented reality may recontextualise the functions of consumerism and architecture, and change in the way in which we operate within it.

The bewildering groundlessness of surfaces within surfaces is beautifully captured by this video, and its portrayal of drop-down menus and the future hand gestures needed to access them is also pretty great. Augmented-reality drop-down menus are the Gothic ornamentation of tomorrow.

Now how do we use all that home-jamming ad space for something other than Coke and Tesco? What other subscription-content feeds can be plugged into this vertiginous interface?

Take a look—and you can find more thoughts, and another video, on Matsuda's own blog.

(Thanks to Nic Clear for the tip!)