Good Reads

[oggbashan]

I remember that one! Funny stuff.

I enjoyed writing it.

It was part repayment for catching squid when a youngster in Gibraltar - to supplement my pocket money. Three squid equalled one movie ticket.

 

[Phelia]

The octopus article above makes me so happy, I can't tell you. I loooove aquariums to an extent that I annoy my guy by wanting to visit one wherever we go. One we visited (Monterey Bay maybe? not sure) had a bat ray petting pool. It was aaawwwweeesoooommmee...

!!! Me too!! x a million. They're building an aquarium here and I'm losing my mind with anticipation. Melbourne has an AMAZING aquarium. If I remember correctly, they have a big dark room filled with tanks of shimmering jellyfish.

Oh, that article. "As we gazed into each other’s eyes, Athena encircled my arms with hers, latching on with first dozens, then hundreds of her sensitive, dexterous suckers."

Not to pile videos on you, but have you seen them carry around and hide in split coconut shells?? Don't even get me started on the mimic octopus and cuttlefish. Don't EVEN get me STARTED!!!

 

[oggbashan]

The wiki article on the Giant Squid: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_squid also refers to the Colossal Squid.

But what others might exist in the abyssal depths? We know more about the Moon than the ocean deeps.

 

[Laurel]

!!! Me too!! x a million. They're building an aquarium here and I'm losing my mind with anticipation. Melbourne has an AMAZING aquarium. If I remember correctly, they have a big dark room filled with tanks of shimmering jellyfish.

Oh, that article. "As we gazed into each other’s eyes, Athena encircled my arms with hers, latching on with first dozens, then hundreds of her sensitive, dexterous suckers."

Not to pile videos on you, but have you seen them carry around and hide in split coconut shells?? Don't even get me started on the mimic octopus and cuttlefish. Don't EVEN get me STARTED!!!

I've actually seen that! In videos anyhow - not in real life, unfortunately. What I really want to see is the octopuses opening Mr. Potatoheads to get to food, like they mention in the article.

The wiki article on the Giant Squid: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_squid also refers to the Colossal Squid.

But what others might exist in the abyssal depths? We know more about the Moon than the ocean deeps.

Yes, I think about this whenever I'm looking at the ocean. Just knowing that out there, deep under miles of water lays a whole world full of squiggly things living squiggly lives simultaneously thrills me and squicks me out.

 

[Laurel]

http://www.newyorker.com/images/2011/08/08/p233/110808_r21161_p233.jpg

My wife and I looked at each other with a wild surmise: the moment parents become parints, creatures beyond convincing who exist to be convinced. When it came to dogs, we shared a distaste that touched the fringe of disgust and flirted with the edge of phobia. I was bitten by a nasty German-shepherd guard dog when I was about eight—not a terrible bite but traumatic all the same—and it led me ever after to cross streets and jump nervously at the sight of any of its kind. My wife’s objections were narrowly aesthetic: the smells, the slobber, the shit. We both disliked dog owners in their dog-owning character: the empty laughter as the dog jumped up on you; the relentless apologies for the dog’s bad behavior, along with the smiling assurance that it was all actually rather cute. Though I could read, and even blurb, friends’ books on dogs, I felt about them as if the same friends had written books on polar exploration: I could grasp it as a subject worthy of extended poetic description, but it was not a thing I had any plans to pursue myself. “Dogs are failed humans,” a witty friend said, and I agreed.

We were, however, doomed, and knew it. The constitution of parents and children may, like the British one, be unwritten, but, as the Brits point out, that doesn’t make it less enforceable or authoritative. The unwritten compact that governs family life says somewhere that children who have waited long enough for a dog and want one badly enough have a right to have one. I felt as the Queen must at meeting an unpleasant Socialist Prime Minister: it isn’t what you wanted, but it’s your constitutional duty to welcome, and pretend.
...
She was a bit like one of Al Capp’s Shmoos, in “Li’l Abner,” designed to please people at any cost. (People who don’t like Havanese find them too eager to please, and lacking in proper doggie dignity and reserve.) The key to dogginess, I saw, is that, though dogs are pure creatures of sensation, they are also capable of shrewd short-term plans. Dogs don’t live, like mystics, in the moment; dogs live in the minute. They live in and for the immediate short-term exchange: tricks for food, kisses for a walk. When Butterscotch saw me come home with bags from the grocery store, she would leap with joy as her memory told her that something good was about to happen, just as she had learned that a cloud-nexus of making phone calls and getting the leash and taking elevators produced a chance to play with Lily and Cuba, the two Havanese who live upstairs. But she couldn’t grasp exactly how these chains of events work: some days when she heard the name “Lily” she rushed to the door, sometimes to her leash, sometimes to the elevator, and sometimes to the door on our floor that corresponds to the door on the eighth floor where Lily lives.
...
Darwinism begins with dogs. In the opening pages of “On the Origin of Species,” Darwin describes the way breeders can turn big dogs into small ones, through selective breeding, and he insists that all dogs descend from wolves. This was proof of the immense amount of inherited variation, and of the ability of inheritance, blended and directed, to take new directions. “Who will believe that animals closely resembling the Italian greyhound, the bloodhound, the bull-dog or Blenheim spaniel, etc.—so unlike all wild Canidae—ever existed freely in a state of nature?” Darwin wrote. Out of one, many.​

- read the full article Dog Story: How did the dog become our master? (from The New Yorker)​

 

[trysail]

http://www.newyorker.com/images/2011/08/08/p233/110808_r21161_p233.jpg

read the full article Dog Story: How did the dog become our master? (from The New Yorker)​

James Thurber would heartily approve.

 

[Laurel]

James Thurber would heartily approve.

Totally agree.

http://jasonweinberger.com/_Media/thurber.jpg

 

[Laurel]

We won’t stop the rising tide of infections until we develop a new business model to fight them.

http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/newsroom/img/mag/2011/10/mcardle/mag-article-large.jpg?m8tlf3

By 2004, more than 50 percent of staph infections were caused by methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), up from 2 percent in 1987; some are also resistant to vancomycin, a common backup antibiotic. Other disease organisms show similar patterns: pneumococcus, E. coli, and, yes, M. tuberculosis now come in multidrug-resistant or extremely drug-resistant varieties. In 2001, the Food and Drug Administration warned:

Unless antibiotic resistance problems are detected as they emerge, and actions are taken to contain them, the world could be faced with previously treatable diseases that have again become untreatable, as in the days before antibiotics were developed.

We are not quite on the brink of some dystopian Victorian future. But every year, the prognosis for infectious-disease patients gets a bit grimmer. Ramanan Laxminarayan, an economist at the Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics & Policy, says that even extremely drug-resistant TB “can be treated with a couple of drugs. They’re just extremely toxic, and they’re not something you’d want to take”—think blood-sealed lips. And more-powerful drugs tend to cost more than the old drugs. “Right now the cost is in the hundreds of dollars, but the next step will be thousands of dollars,” Laxminarayan says. “In developed countries, it’s manifested in slightly higher average prices of antibiotics. In poorer countries, it manifests as more people sick and dying of resistant infections.”​

- read the full article Resistance Is Futile (from The Atlantic)​

 

[Laurel]

Interesting. Thoughts?

http://guernica.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/Boston-CIty-Hall575.jpg

Have you ever looked at a bizarre building design and wondered, “What were the architects thinking?” Have you looked at a supposedly “ecological” industrial-looking building, and questioned how it could be truly ecological? Or have you simply felt frustrated by a building that made you uncomfortable, or felt anger when a beautiful old building was razed and replaced with a contemporary eyesore? You might be forgiven for thinking “these architects must be blind!” New research shows that in a real sense, you might actually be right.

Environmental psychologists have long known about this widespread and puzzling phenomenon. Laboratory results show conclusively that architects literally see the world differently from non-architects. Not only do architects notice and look for different aspects of the environment than other people; their brains seem to synthesize an understanding of the world that has notable differences from natural reality. Instead of a contextual world of harmonious geometric relationships and connectedness, architects tend to see a world of objects set apart from their contexts, with distinctive, attention-getting qualities.

There are many such confirming studies. For example, Gifford et al. (2002) surveyed other research and noted that “architects did not merely disagree with laypersons about the aesthetic qualities of buildings, they were unable to predict how laypersons would assess buildings, even when they were explicitly asked to do so.” The researchers traced this disagreement to well-known cognitive differences in the two populations: “Evidence that certain cognitive properties are related to building preference [was] found.”
...
In the last half-century, the clear result of “architectural myopia” is buildings whose makers have been so concerned with the drama of their appearance that they fail on the most fundamental human criteria. They isolate people; they do not provide enough light; or provide a poor quality of light; they provide a hostile pedestrian environment at their edges; they cause excessive shade; or create winds in what is known as a “canyon effect;” or they trap pollutants in the “sick building syndrome;” they use resources wastefully; etc. Moreover, the buildings themselves are a wasteful use of resources, because they are not likely to be well-loved, cared for, repaired, modified, and re-used over many years. In short, it is not just that people find them ugly, but they represent a fundamentally unsustainable way of building human environments.​

- read the full article Michael Mehaffy and Nikos A. Salingaros: The Architect Has No Clothes (from Guernica)​

 

[Laurel]

http://www.slate.com/content/dam/slate/articles/arts/culturebox/2013/03/130307_CBOX_JohnBelushi.jpg.CROP.rectangle3-large.jpg

Wired is an infuriating piece of work. There’s a reason Woodward’s critics consistently come off as hysterical ninnies: He doesn’t make Jonah Lehrer–level mistakes. There’s never a smoking gun like an outright falsehood or a brazen ethical breach. And yet, in the final product, a lot of what Woodward writes comes off as being not quite right—some of it to the point where it can feel quite wrong. There’s no question that he frequently ferrets out information that other reporters don’t. But getting the scoop is only part of the equation. Once you have the facts, you have to present those facts in context and in proportion to other facts in order to accurately reflect reality. It’s here that Woodward fails.

Over and over during the course of my reporting I’d hear a story that conflicted with Woodward’s account in Wired. I’d say, “Aha! I’ve got him!” I’d run back to Woodward’s index, look up the offending passage, and realize that, well, no, he’d put down the mechanics of the story more or less as they’d happened. But he’d so mangled the meaning and the context that his version had nothing to do with what I concluded had actually transpired. Take the filming of the famous cafeteria scene from Animal House, which Belushi totally improvised on set with no rehearsal. What you see in the film is the first and last time he ever performed that scene. Here’s the story as recounted by Belushi’s co-star James Widdoes:

One of the things that was so spectacular to watch during the filming was the incredible connection that [Belushi] and Landis had. During the scene on the cafeteria line, Landis was talking to Belushi all the way through it, and Belushi was just taking it one step further. What started out as Landis saying, “Okay, now grab the sandwich,” became, in John’s hands, taking the sandwich, squeezing and bending it until it popped out of the cellophane, sucking it into his mouth, and then putting half the sandwich back. He would just go a little further each time.

Co-star Tim Matheson remembered that John “did the entire cafeteria line scene in one take. I just stood by the camera, mesmerized.” Other witnesses agree. Every person who recounted that incident to me used it as an example of Belushi’s virtuoso talent and his great relationship with his director. Landis could whisper suggestions to Belushi on the fly, and he’d spin it into comedy gold.

Now here it is as Woodward presents it:

Landis quickly discovered that John could be lazy and undisciplined. They were rehearsing a cafeteria scene, a perfect vehicle to set up Bluto’s insatiable cravings. Landis wanted John to walk down the cafeteria line and load his tray until it was a physical burden. As the camera started, Landis stood to one side shouting: “Take that! Put that in your pocket! Pile that on the tray! Eat that now, right there!”

John followed each order, loading his pockets and tray, stuffing his mouth with a plate of Jello in one motion.​

- read the full article Regrettable: The troubling things I learned when I re-reported Bob Woodward’s book on John Belushi. (from Slate)​

 

[KRCummings]

http://www.slate.com/content/dam/slate/articles/arts/culturebox/2013/03/130307_CBOX_JohnBelushi.jpg.CROP.rectangle3-large.jpg

Wired is an infuriating piece of work. There’s a reason Woodward’s critics consistently come off as hysterical ninnies: He doesn’t make Jonah Lehrer–level mistakes. There’s never a smoking gun like an outright falsehood or a brazen ethical breach. And yet, in the final product, a lot of what Woodward writes comes off as being not quite right—some of it to the point where it can feel quite wrong. There’s no question that he frequently ferrets out information that other reporters don’t. But getting the scoop is only part of the equation. Once you have the facts, you have to present those facts in context and in proportion to other facts in order to accurately reflect reality. It’s here that Woodward fails.

Over and over during the course of my reporting I’d hear a story that conflicted with Woodward’s account in Wired. I’d say, “Aha! I’ve got him!” I’d run back to Woodward’s index, look up the offending passage, and realize that, well, no, he’d put down the mechanics of the story more or less as they’d happened. But he’d so mangled the meaning and the context that his version had nothing to do with what I concluded had actually transpired. Take the filming of the famous cafeteria scene from Animal House, which Belushi totally improvised on set with no rehearsal. What you see in the film is the first and last time he ever performed that scene. Here’s the story as recounted by Belushi’s co-star James Widdoes:

One of the things that was so spectacular to watch during the filming was the incredible connection that [Belushi] and Landis had. During the scene on the cafeteria line, Landis was talking to Belushi all the way through it, and Belushi was just taking it one step further. What started out as Landis saying, “Okay, now grab the sandwich,” became, in John’s hands, taking the sandwich, squeezing and bending it until it popped out of the cellophane, sucking it into his mouth, and then putting half the sandwich back. He would just go a little further each time.

Co-star Tim Matheson remembered that John “did the entire cafeteria line scene in one take. I just stood by the camera, mesmerized.” Other witnesses agree. Every person who recounted that incident to me used it as an example of Belushi’s virtuoso talent and his great relationship with his director. Landis could whisper suggestions to Belushi on the fly, and he’d spin it into comedy gold.

Now here it is as Woodward presents it:

Landis quickly discovered that John could be lazy and undisciplined. They were rehearsing a cafeteria scene, a perfect vehicle to set up Bluto’s insatiable cravings. Landis wanted John to walk down the cafeteria line and load his tray until it was a physical burden. As the camera started, Landis stood to one side shouting: “Take that! Put that in your pocket! Pile that on the tray! Eat that now, right there!”

John followed each order, loading his pockets and tray, stuffing his mouth with a plate of Jello in one motion.​

- read the full article Regrettable: The troubling things I learned when I re-reported Bob Woodward’s book on John Belushi. (from Slate)​

It was also made into one of the worst movies ever made and still the only one I've ever walked out of.

 

[oggbashan]

It was also made into one of the worst movies ever made and still the only one I've ever walked out of.

Worst movies? Wild Women Of Wongo is a serious contender.

 

[Laurel]

First, we really don't know as much as we should about the effects of porn on society generally. Janet Rosenbaum, of the SUNY Downstate School of Public Health, says there are hardly any rigorous studies on the subject -- political risks make the government squeamish about funding porn research, making research funds scarce.

"People go through the database of the grants given by the government and pull things out and say 'look, the government's wasting money,'" Rosenbaum says. "The amount of money is small and shrinking."

Second, there are a whole lot more important drivers that do impact relationships, and the long-term decline of marriage, more than porn. A 2010 paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research identified a host of economic factors as the primary drivers, like technology that makes housework less valuable. Education, actually, is strongly correlated with higher rates of happiness in marriage. So academic researchers aren't particularly interested in studying the effect of porn on relationships specifically.

"I think that just testing the idea of porn impacting relationships is an intrinsically conservative idea," Rosenbaum said. "If you went to scholars of marriage and family about the issues that are important, it wouldn't make their top 20 list."

And third, for all we know, porn is good for relationships. Bryant Paul, a professor of telecommunications at Indiana University-Bloomington, says that watching porn doesn't desensitize men to sex; they tend to have fairly insatiable appetites. It's also reasonable to expect, he says, that viewing porn could give couples new ideas to keep sex fresh, as well as serve as an outlet from the monotony of monogamy without resorting to infidelity.​

- read the full article Porn is everywhere. But that's not what's killing marriage. (from The Washington Post)​

 

[Balladeer08]

Worst movies? Wild Women Of Wongo is a serious contender.

"The Osterman Weekend".

It was a great whodunit murder mystery, with just about everyone in the film as a good suspect at one point or another. Fascinatingly complex.

Apparently too complex for the script writers, who suddenly jumped up and said "The CIA did it!", and ended the movie. When the hell did the CIA get into this? Not so much as a passing reference beforehand. How did they do it? Why?

I stormed up to the box office and demanded EVERYBODY'S money back!

Compared to this, "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes" was ART.

 

[trysail]

It was also made into one of the worst movies ever made and still the only one I've ever walked out of.

That places you in a minority of exactly one.

 

[trysail]

read the full article Regrettable: The troubling things I learned when I re-reported Bob Woodward’s book on John Belushi. (from Slate)

With the exception of writers or journalists recounting their own experiences, all non-fiction writing is the work of a professional gossip.


The output of a professional gossip will be different than the input. That's a fact you may rely upon.

 

[Laurel]

Don't read if you don't want to cry.

How can a man get through such a thing? After the brutal murders of your wife and children, you have two choices: You go on living. Or you don't.

http://www.esquire.com/cm/esquire/images/wE/esq-bill-petit-0611-lg.jpg

Bad things happen to everyone. And in their aftermath, it is the human instinct to adapt and survive. By and large, people want to live. Biology and human history and our own lives tell us that we are indeed a resilient little bug.

But there is bad, and then there is depraved.

When your family is murdered, and the home you had made together is destroyed, and you yourself are beaten and left for dead — as happened to Bill Petit on the morning of July 23, 2007 — it may as well be the end of the world. It is hard to see how a man survives the end of the world. The basics of life — waking up, walking, talking — become alien tasks, and almost impossibly heavy, as you are more dead than alive.

Just how does a man go about surviving such a thing? How does a man go on?​

- read the full article The Survivor (from Esquire)​

 

[Phelia]

Interesting. Thoughts?

http://guernica.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/Boston-CIty-Hall575.jpg

Have you ever looked at a bizarre building design and wondered, “What were the architects thinking?” Have you looked at a supposedly “ecological” industrial-looking building, and questioned how it could be truly ecological? Or have you simply felt frustrated by a building that made you uncomfortable, or felt anger when a beautiful old building was razed and replaced with a contemporary eyesore? You might be forgiven for thinking “these architects must be blind!” New research shows that in a real sense, you might actually be right.

Environmental psychologists have long known about this widespread and puzzling phenomenon. Laboratory results show conclusively that architects literally see the world differently from non-architects. Not only do architects notice and look for different aspects of the environment than other people; their brains seem to synthesize an understanding of the world that has notable differences from natural reality. Instead of a contextual world of harmonious geometric relationships and connectedness, architects tend to see a world of objects set apart from their contexts, with distinctive, attention-getting qualities.

There are many such confirming studies. For example, Gifford et al. (2002) surveyed other research and noted that “architects did not merely disagree with laypersons about the aesthetic qualities of buildings, they were unable to predict how laypersons would assess buildings, even when they were explicitly asked to do so.” The researchers traced this disagreement to well-known cognitive differences in the two populations: “Evidence that certain cognitive properties are related to building preference [was] found.”
...
In the last half-century, the clear result of “architectural myopia” is buildings whose makers have been so concerned with the drama of their appearance that they fail on the most fundamental human criteria. They isolate people; they do not provide enough light; or provide a poor quality of light; they provide a hostile pedestrian environment at their edges; they cause excessive shade; or create winds in what is known as a “canyon effect;” or they trap pollutants in the “sick building syndrome;” they use resources wastefully; etc. Moreover, the buildings themselves are a wasteful use of resources, because they are not likely to be well-loved, cared for, repaired, modified, and re-used over many years. In short, it is not just that people find them ugly, but they represent a fundamentally unsustainable way of building human environments.​

- read the full article Michael Mehaffy and Nikos A. Salingaros: The Architect Has No Clothes (from Guernica)​

Wow. So interesting. A very good friend of mine is an architect - I think I'll send this to her. She designs beautiful things. I have a model of hers in my kitchen, actually. We do see things differently. It's fun walking around cities with her; she notices things I don't. Usually above eye-level, and it made me realize that I just don't think to look up very much when I'm walking. I would have missed out on some beautiful stonework if she hadn't pointed it out to me. Then again, I am a space cadette with virtually no awareness of my immediate surroundings ever, so.

Really interesting breakdown, and I think they're correct that it holds truth outside of just architecture. Sometimes I see tech products, particularly software, that was designed almost too well for people to actually use it. On the one hand, I do think you have to challenge people, and risk can lead to growth, but we also need to be able to see things from outside of our own lenses.

 

[Laurel]

A happiy footnote to the Esquire article:

http://img2-2.timeinc.net/people/i/2012/news/120820/william-petit-600.jpg

The Connecticut doctor who lost his wife and children in a brutal home invasion five years ago married his fiancée Sunday in an emotion-filled day that included his late wife's family, who has given the couple their blessing.​

- read the full article Dr. William Petit Remarries Five Years After Family Tragedy (from People)​

 

[KRCummings]

A happiy footnote to the Esquire article:

http://img2-2.timeinc.net/people/i/2012/news/120820/william-petit-600.jpg

The Connecticut doctor who lost his wife and children in a brutal home invasion five years ago married his fiancée Sunday in an emotion-filled day that included his late wife's family, who has given the couple their blessing.​

- read the full article Dr. William Petit Remarries Five Years After Family Tragedy (from People)​

The home invasion was horrible. How anyone can come back from that experience is beyond me. You'd think most people would end up too damaged to ever do anything again.

 

[Laurel]

Wow. So interesting. A very good friend of mine is an architect - I think I'll send this to her. She designs beautiful things. I have a model of hers in my kitchen, actually. We do see things differently. It's fun walking around cities with her; she notices things I don't. Usually above eye-level, and it made me realize that I just don't think to look up very much when I'm walking. I would have missed out on some beautiful stonework if she hadn't pointed it out to me. Then again, I am a space cadette with virtually no awareness of my immediate surroundings ever, so.

Really interesting breakdown, and I think they're correct that it holds truth outside of just architecture. Sometimes I see tech products, particularly software, that was designed almost too well for people to actually use it. On the one hand, I do think you have to challenge people, and risk can lead to growth, but we also need to be able to see things from outside of our own lenses.

Yeah, send it to her and let us know what she says. I have a hard time believing that the problems/attitude specified in article is that widespread, but I have no idea about architecture or the industry thereof. Or anything, really.

Except cats. I know a lot about cats. Well, my cat, anyhow.

 

[Laurel]

The home invasion was horrible. How anyone can come back from that experience is beyond me. You'd think most people would end up too damaged to ever do anything again.

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. I remember being horrified and sad reading about that on the news. When I came across the Esquire article I linked about how it practically destroyed him, I Googled to see what William Petit was up to. How cool to see that he's found love.

Human beings are surprisingly durable.

 

[Laurel]

He looks better with a beard IMHO.

 

[pete]

Interesting. Thoughts?

http://guernica.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/Boston-CIty-Hall575.jpg

Have you ever looked at a bizarre building design and wondered, “What were the architects thinking?” Have you looked at a supposedly “ecological” industrial-looking building, and questioned how it could be truly ecological? Or have you simply felt frustrated by a building that made you uncomfortable, or felt anger when a beautiful old building was razed and replaced with a contemporary eyesore? You might be forgiven for thinking “these architects must be blind!” New research shows that in a real sense, you might actually be right.

Environmental psychologists have long known about this widespread and puzzling phenomenon. Laboratory results show conclusively that architects literally see the world differently from non-architects. Not only do architects notice and look for different aspects of the environment than other people; their brains seem to synthesize an understanding of the world that has notable differences from natural reality. Instead of a contextual world of harmonious geometric relationships and connectedness, architects tend to see a world of objects set apart from their contexts, with distinctive, attention-getting qualities.

There are many such confirming studies. For example, Gifford et al. (2002) surveyed other research and noted that “architects did not merely disagree with laypersons about the aesthetic qualities of buildings, they were unable to predict how laypersons would assess buildings, even when they were explicitly asked to do so.” The researchers traced this disagreement to well-known cognitive differences in the two populations: “Evidence that certain cognitive properties are related to building preference [was] found.”
...
In the last half-century, the clear result of “architectural myopia” is buildings whose makers have been so concerned with the drama of their appearance that they fail on the most fundamental human criteria. They isolate people; they do not provide enough light; or provide a poor quality of light; they provide a hostile pedestrian environment at their edges; they cause excessive shade; or create winds in what is known as a “canyon effect;” or they trap pollutants in the “sick building syndrome;” they use resources wastefully; etc. Moreover, the buildings themselves are a wasteful use of resources, because they are not likely to be well-loved, cared for, repaired, modified, and re-used over many years. In short, it is not just that people find them ugly, but they represent a fundamentally unsustainable way of building human environments.​

- read the full article Michael Mehaffy and Nikos A. Salingaros: The Architect Has No Clothes (from Guernica)​

wow. well obviously, not all architects are alike. nor are all architects good at their job.

it's true that we see things differently, but i can't help but disagree to certain points of this study. only the megalomaniacal 'starchitects' lose sight of the human element. the vast majority i've worked with are more concerned with the end users over the aesthetic. after all, happy clients make better referrals.

then again, 80% of the people have no sense of aesthetic taste

 

[oggbashan]

wow. well obviously, not all architects are alike. nor are all architects good at their job.

it's true that we see things differently, but i can't help but disagree to certain points of this study. only the megalomaniacal 'starchitects' lose sight of the human element. the vast majority i've worked with are more concerned with the end users over the aesthetic. after all, happy clients make better referrals.

then again, 80% of the people have no sense of aesthetic taste

Often the clients are the worst enemies of good architecture, and if they aren't, City planners can be a real obstacle to innovation.