Lawrence Lessig is a kind of category upon himself.

Thomas Misc

Thomas Misc

I’m considering including this video for an exhibitions this month.

Thomas Misc

Matt Yglesias points me to the green design on the PvdA (Labor Party - Netherlands) website.

Thomas Misc, Visual Culture

My Daughter’s second grade class was on WGN news last night. Marta is in the middle-ground toward the end of the segment.

“These are moments of teaching that do not happen in a book, and I think your wonderful kids will be life long stewards of our world in their own way forever. Seeing a project through to the end is unique in itself, but having the kids be a part from start to finish was awesome for them and their very proud teachers!! The Friends of fisher house Illinois were amazed.”

- Ms. Power (Marta’’s Teacher)

Thomas Misc

Thomas Misc

via [ neatorama ]

In this video, Douglas Wolk explains the ideas expressed in 18th Century German philosopher Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Aesthetic Judgment using superhero comics. Wolk, a comic critic, is the author of the book Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean. Run time: 5 minutes.

Thomas Misc

Levi-Strauss contributed to how I move through this world.

via [ AP ] French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss dies

By ANGELA DOLAND (AP)

PARIS — Claude Levi-Strauss, widely considered the father of modern anthropology for work that included theories about commonalities between tribal and industrial societies, has died. He was 100.

The French intellectual was regarded as having reshaped the field of anthropology, introducing structuralism — concepts about common patterns of behavior and thought, especially myths, in a wide range of human societies. Defined as the search for the underlying patterns of thought in all forms of human activity, structuralism compared the formal relationships among elements in any given system.

Thomas Misc

[ Freebase Parallax ]

Displaying information as arrays.

Anyone who has done any sort of programing or data management is familiar with working with data sets and filters to produce a result. This is what occurs behind the screen, but what if you allow the data-sets and filters to hang out on the screen?  And what if are not looking for a single fact or a single person result or a date, but rather want to know about influences or patterns?

Freebase Parallax: A new way to browse and explore data from David Huynh on Vimeo.

Thomas Information Graphics, Misc

“Beyond Burnham - An Illustrated History of Planning for the Chicago Region” By Joseph P. Schwieterman and Alan P. Mammoser

“The Chicago River - An Illustrated history and Guide to the River and Its Waterways” By David M. Solzman

Thomas Misc, Reading List

Oh Lord, I know I’ve been forever changed by the conflict between these two lives. Being immersed in the mill, I’ve become like the steel I work: cold, hard, sharp, heavy, dirty, bent, flawed, and rusting, Yet through other’s eyes, I am useful, durable, and to an extent even valuable.

- By Greg Gvotny “Going to the Mill,” the Heat

Thomas East Chicago, Misc

via [ infraNet lab ]

The 20th century was witness to both an infrastructure boom and bust. It is the 21st century that will need to project not only how to address crumbling and insufficient infrastructure, but also how to position new infrastructures that confront urgent issues of climate change, sustenance inequality, and our increasingly urbanized world. 21st century infrastructure should create a new public realm, enrich political policy, and embed productive processes.

.

Thomas Misc

Another video about the Tar Sands.

Canada’s Dirty Oil: breaking our addiction from Dirty Oil Sands on Vimeo.

Thomas Misc

Pierogi Fest 2009, Whiting Indiana

Festival goers walking by (~15 min.)

Thomas Misc

Jorge Garcia “Streader”: 1958 - 2009

Streader and Sherry @ Club Ki Yowga for a Copeland Bingo 3-23-2007

I just heard the news of Streader’s passing. My heart goes out to Sherry and his kids.

Rarely have I photographed the moment of meeting someone whom I will befriend. This was the moment I met Streader. Politics brought us together. He was standing in the entry way just out side the hall at Club Ki Yowga. A story had just broke in the NWI times of Streader resigning his position with the City and blowing the whistle on unscrupulous activities at City Hall. This ignited a shock wave through the City - one of George Pabey’s inner circle was talking. He had worked along side George Pabey to overthrow the Pasterick regime, who had been in power for more than 30 years. Now Streader was putting everything he had into replacing Pabey. In so doing he showed himself to be larger than politicians. He always enjoyed himself.

As those in East Chicago know, the outcome of 2007 Mayoral race was a disaster, Pabey won big. Streader was very upset with the outcome. Since then we met occasionally to talk political strategy and future elections. I even learned he hung with the Rakoczy family when he was young. He threw himself deeply into his brothers race for County Engineer. Jorge never tired from it all. Your friends in East Chicago are going to miss you.

Thomas Misc

[ Community Global Monitor ]

Betsy Dent of Calumet Project with one of the Buckets

The Bucket Brigade is the brain child of Denny Larson of the Community Global Monitor. 

“The “Bucket Brigade” is a simple, but effective, tool that dozens of communities are using to find out for themselves what chemicals are in the air.  Armed with their own data and information about the health effects of chemicals, these communities are winning impressive reductions of pollution, safety improvements and increasing enforcement of environmental laws.

The “Bucket Brigade” is named for a easy to use air sampling device housed inside a 5 gallon plastic bucket.  The “Bucket” was developed in Northern California in 1995 by an environmental engineering firm in order to simplify and reduce the costs of widely accepted methods used for testing toxic gases in the air”

The Bucket Brigade was brought to East Chicago by the Calumet Project to help monitor the discharges from the construction of a confined deposal facility (CDF), the dredging of the Indiana Harbor Shipping Canal (arguably the most polluted waterway in the country), and the long term management of the site. They have also looked at BP discharges. 

[ Post-Tribune ]

A group of East Chicago residents hope to convince the government to do better air quality monitoring in their neighborhood and will lobby for better pollution control. 

The so-called Calumet Project Bucket Brigade took an air sample on July 10 near the intersection of 129th Street and Indianapolis Boulevard in East Chicago. The result was 14 chemicals. Five of them — acrolein, acrylonitrile, carbon disulfide, styrene and 1,4-dichlorobenzene — registered well above what other states list as “levels of concern.” 

Thomas Misc, The Air I Breath

via [ The Big Picture ]

Today marks 64 years since the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan by the United States at the end of World War II.

Thomas Misc

• via [ Infrastructuralist ]
  “7 Urban Freeways To Tear Down Today–And What Tomorrow Might Look Like If We Do”
   
• via [ Jetson Green ] 
  Unlocking Energy efficiency in the U.S. Economy, a McKinsey & Company Report
  [ Full Report ]
   
• via [ NY Times ]
  “White Roofs Catch On as Energy Cost Cutters”
   
• via [ Pruned ]
  “The Wetland Machines of Ayala” - designing and building artificial wetlands to treat contaminated water from agriculture, industries and urban areas so that it could be reused
   
• via [ Phil Gyford's Website ]
  “Graphs that Lie”
   

Thomas Misc

I associate Lake Baikal, along with the Aral Sea, and Caspian Sea, with the Great Lakes. Lake Baikal is the deepest lake in the world, and the largest freshwater resource by volume, with 20% of the worlds fresh water.

Recently, Putin descended to the bottom of Lake Baikal. It wasn’t until a year ago that the first human descended to the bottom. Putin is know for his commitment to protecting this body of water. Last year he rerouted an oil pipeline outside its watershed.

Thomas Misc

via [ Triplecanopy ] by Joseph Clarke

Tracing the parallel histories of the American megachurch and the corporate-organizational complex.

THE 1980S AND ’90S SAW THE RISE of so-called seeker megachurches, which targeted those disillusioned with religion. Rather than enforcing traditional worship styles, they embraced counterculture and youth rebellion. Chief among them is Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church, in Orange County, California. Built in the ’90s, Saddleback plays down crosses and other conventional Christian signifiers and avoids mention of its Southern Baptist denominational affiliation. Instead of a massive auditorium, the church occupies multiple midsize structures scattered across a lush 120-acre campus. Visitors customize their worship experience by choosing from a range of services: “Saddleback Classic” in the main Worship Center, “OverDrive” for youth, and “Praise!” for gospel-music lovers. 

As Warren’s model gained traction, the ideology of the democratic office was taken to new levels by management theorists associated with the Quality of Work Life movement. They recommended radically open office environments that would give workers control over their environment and dissimulate corporate hierarchy. “Office facility planning should be a systematic process that encourages employee participation, promotes innovation, and champions mobility,” advised a 1985 article in National Productivity Review…

It’s no coincidence that Saddleback mirrors the top office environments of its day. Warren was a good friend of Drucker’s (the consultant died in 2005), and the books he has written for pastors quote Drucker liberally. Drucker, in turn, was so impressed with the business acumen of evangelical leaders that in 1998 he declared the megachurch “surely the most important social phenomenon in American society in the last 30 years.”

Thomas Case Studies, Misc, Visual Culture