Study for a Glass House

Nice ring: Innovation Officer

I think I'd like to be a Chief Innovation Officer. Seems like it would involve all the fun and none (or at least less) of the soul-crushing process. That's really the job isn't it - rebuilding the process so it crushes fewer souls?
Maybe after school, I'll have the breadth of experience (and hopefully some enhanced management capacity) to pull this off. CAO is pretty much off the table now - gotta reconstitute that backup plan!

interview-with-adel-ebeid-chief-innovation-officer-city-of-philadelphia

I hate lawn bowling?

So it's off to lawn bowling again tonight. I don't think I've actually been truly enthusiastic about the prospect once this season, but always fairly satisfied in the moment. Today, as the rest of the team is galavanting around the country, I'm skip. There are plenty if better things to do and the sky looks like we're in for chapter 2 of the epic #tofloods but what the hell, we make the most of it until I have a more legitimate reason to bail - like school in September...
Still trying to identify exactly why I have a latent animosity toward the experience. Sold on false pretenses? Just too damn far to travel? Not that keen on the perks of drinking on the lawn or beering after? Hanging with a different generation? Lack of actual physical activity? Lack of expertise? Maybe, but doing something out of a sense of responsibility rather than interest is never a good place to start with extra-curriculars.
_r

Apple Urbanism

Cleaning out my inbox at work and came across this link from a colleague and a half-baked response I never sent (below):

http://m.theatlanticcities.com/neighborhoods/2012/03/why-apples-new-campus-anti-urban/1473/

I guess the real story is – should Apple have built a new tower downtown?

I’m intrigued by the criticism but I wouldn’t necessarily blame Apple for the urban design... someone clearly has the ear of the ecological urbanists at Harvard that seem to have developed a whole new excitement for buildings-in-fields over the last couple of years.

I’ve seen a couple presentations of similar concepts IN cities with people promoting the idea that paving over with grass is going to be markedly better than paving over with asphalt. I'm sure it is from an ecological site-oriented perspective, but you don't have to look far for the externalites that will negate much of the benefit.

I'd say it’s pretty tough to argue that this is an ideal response, but in the context of a highway-oriented office bunker, it's better than many.

I’m a bit skeptical about the critique of walkability in the article too... HP’s original campus plan certainly wasn’t any better with all the parking lots. It is more walkable now, there just doesn't seem to any place to go. Perhaps the score on this point is a wash.

Hockey:Suburbia:Fiscal_crisis

Once people accepted that there were certain other who were able to go certain places and have certain things that they don't, and that was simply the way it was.We don't accept that today. Privilege is for everyone. (Ken Dryden, The Game, pp.301)

He's talking about hockey games here, but it certainly applies to all sorts of aspects of Western life. It's an unsustainable pattern of consumption that pervades our culture, and perpetrated, at least in part by our cities and patterns of development. How and at what point do we interrupt those patterns?
Can we disrupt the system that privileges not just elite people, but elite attitudes?, where if you deserve it whether you can afford it or not. This is at the root of the next oncoming financial crisis - spending above our means, but at the same time the choice to do things cheaper or more simply becomes harder and less apparent. Strikes me as a conundrum of the American Dream mentality: there is a hierarchy built into the system that is self-sustaining - in the same way a pyramid scheme is self sustaining. It's called keeping up with the Jones', but this doesn't even imply a conscious effort.
Suburban development is the low-hanging fruit in this argument: big house and a big yard beget a certain lifestyle. Equally though, the patterns of downtown development are aligned to support the same goals and attitiudes. Urban living is pitched as a money-saving, time-saving endeavour - the up front costs are greater (per square foot) but the time you save and access to all the amenities (including pro hockey) is priceless.

Now I'm just going to post this half-baked for posterity. "Better than nothing", says my new social regime...

Postcards from 2043

Sometimes I wish the Republicans would win every election for 30 years just so the electorate can see the catastrophe - then make them go back in time and fix everything.

2012 GOP Platform review

...do I sense a short story coming on?

FANEXPO notes

Officially feeling not nerdy enough for fanexpo. It was an excellent way to spend a Sunday but I appreciated my time in an observational, rather than interactive role. The hoards of people grappling for posters, action figures, rare comics, and new trinkets made moving across the exhibitor floor like a slow march through the trenches of a traffic simulator.
The costumes
The plenary
The lunch crowd
The entrance
The transit
The mystery famous

_r