Aesthetics of Everywhere

A lot of moving and shaking this month. Let’s make things happen and learn something new every day. Here’s what I’ve learned on each day of the first week of October.

1: East African elephants are terrified of bees, and will emit a rumble as an alarm call in response to the sound of the African bees.  Science Magazine reports that this is the known finding of an alarm call amongst elephants.

2: Who knew watching paint dry could be this entertaining? Watch Pipe Plant by Sasha Aleksandrov.

3: China is absolutely riddled with what are known as ghost cities – entire cities devoid of residents – which if occupied could house over 200 million people. Some photos from Quora user Brian Roemmele help drive this point home. Nevertheless, China continues to build at the rate of something like 16 new cities per year, many of which lack the most essential resource to a city: its people.

4: HTML microdata is information about a web page that can be added to reduce ambiguity by providing semantic meaning to online search results. Schema.org provides guidelines on how to markup your web content using microdata. The benefit to doing this is that it indexes your web pages more accurately by the major search engines, like Google and Bing.

5: Because of the way English bulldogs been bred to select for certain traits, such as their wide shoulders and narrow hips, they are unable to reproduce naturally. They require artificial insemination and a cesarean section to give birth. This intensive breeding process also makes them expensive dogs to purchase.

6: You can sign documents electronically. It’s likely that I knew vaguely that this was possible, but I’ve never e-signed a document before and it was exciting to see how simple the process is. They’re legally treated the same as regular signatures in the U.S.

7: Pasta carbonara involves a specific process of cooking with an egg. I assumed it referred to a type of sauce, but real carbonara involves a raw egg that needs to be handled in a way as not to clump up or overcook when it’s added. The egg is added after the pasta is cooked and drained – it’s cooked by the residual heat of the pasta. After looking through a few recipes, I’ll try my hand at making this soon.

It’s been a busy week. Here are a few things I’ve learned in the past few days.

08: Specific to Washington, DC… DCist explains ghost buses! Ghost buses are those ones that seem to disappear off the NextBus online tracker (which uses GPS data for Metrobuses). The explanation is that not all of the buses are GPS-enabled, therefore some of the NextBus ‘tracked’ buses are simply predictions. There may be a specific bus that was scheduled for that time, but for whatever reason it never ran. So then there’s you, wondering why you’re standing at the bus stop with a prediction for “Arriving” with no bus in sight.

09: Here is probably the most plain-language explanation of your health plan: Health Savings Plans: Making Sense of HSAs, HRAs, and FSAs Unless, of course, you’re part of the 16.7% of Americans who are uninsured.

10: Go read this long-form story, On Change in India by Siddhartha Deb. It’s hard to point to a “lesson” here.

11: David Choe has a very entertaining documentary called Thumbs Up! about his adventures hitchhiking. He explores a lot of desolate places, plays a tiny travel drum set, and meets many people along the way.

12: Jiang Pengyi makes miniature stills of the demolition and urbanization in Beijing. See image at left; click to see more.

13: Triskaidekaphobia is the fear of the number 13. It explains why many buildings don’t have a 13th floor (by name), instead numbering their floors from 1-12, skipping 13, then 14 on. This is true of many residential buildings and of my office building. Also, interesting to note that the 13th floor of hospitals is usually mechanical.

14: There’s a WiFi-free zone in the mountains of West Virginia, where people who have a debilitating fear of electromagnetic radiation go to live, as wireless technology is banned by law there. Here is an excerpt from the article:

The wireless association, CTIA, says that scientific evidence overwhelmingly shows that wireless devices, with the limits established by government regulators, do not pose a public health risk or cause any adverse health effects.

And the World Health Organization, while acknowledging that the symptoms are genuine and can be severe, says: “EHS has no clear diagnostic criteria and there is no scientific basis to link EHS symptoms to EMF (electromagnetic field) exposure. Further, EHS is not a medical diagnosis, nor is it clear that it represents a single medical problem.” (BBC News)

15: The biggest dam removal project in history, on the Elwha River in Washington, begins this week. Via Matador Network.

It’s no news that Seven Corners successfully detours motorists more often than allowing them to go about on their desired path, but I found this description of the intersection by a transplant to the area very succinct:

…consider the instruction “take Arlington Boulevard to Leesburg Pike south,” which involves navigating Northern Virginia’s notorious Seven Corners — a seven-way intersection with seven traffic lights, two levels, 150-degree turns into merging traffic, and signs that refer almost exclusively to state and federal route numbers but not the familiar local street names.

Even when I make the correct turn on my first attempt, I immediately find myself in another intersection, and in the wrong lane to make the next turn I need, because I only knew about one turn at a time.

It’s a discussion about GPS devices for driving, digital maps, and our understanding of places. Read the full article here.

1: Painting the roofs of buildings white is one strategy for reducing energy costs. In the summer, this allows more sunlight to reflect off of the roof (as opposed to a dark-colored roof) keeping it cooler inside the building.

2: Labor omnia vincit is a Latin phrase that is also Oklahoma’s state motto. It means “Labor conquers all” and appears in a work by Virgil in encouragement of Caesar’s back to the land policy (to promote farming as a profession). According to USDA’s Economic Research Service, almost 80% of Oklahoma’s land area is farmland.

3: As we know, there’s a great disparity in America in terms of transportation. Lack of good mass transit in the U.S. is one critical barrier to employment. A recent report on transportation states that for Americans in the lowest income bracket, approximately 42% of their annual income goes to paying for transportation. For middle-income Americans, that number is only 22%. And those lowest-income Americans tend to have the longest commutes – many of the poorest NYC residents have a commute of more than an hour each way. Transportation policy affects access to healthcare, to economic opportunity, and to affordable housing. (Source)

4: Via the Washington City Paper, here’s a great oral history of Fort Reno, an institution of local music: [Your Band] Played Here. For those who don’t know, Fort Reno is a park in the Tenleytown neighb DC that’s been putting on free summer concerts (punk, hardcore, indie rock, and other genres) on its outdoor stage on and off since 1968.

5: I haven’t had to search for housing in New York City before, so this is what I hear from friends living there: apparently it’s pretty common to hire a real estate broker to help you find a place to rent. No one I know has had to use a broker to find housing in DC, but then again the real estate market is much more competitive in NYC than in DC. For some of my friends, it’s taken three months just to find an apartment rental in New York.

6: The Guggenheim Lab is a traveling lab that is “part urban think tank, part community center and public gathering space.” It’s in NYC until October 16th of this year, and we saw an interesting demonstration of edible water by a culinary performance group called a razor, a shiny knife (these are the same people that put on a 6-course brunch for 50 people on the L train).

You learn something new every day. The key to contentedness in life is to continue learning each day – that sense of curiosity keeps you young and your mind sharp. And experiencing new things, whether it’s a newly-discovered trail through the woods or the culture of a foreign nation, opens up the mind. Here are lessons from the latter part of July. Hello, August!

25: The idea of a third place in cities was a central tenet of urban sociologist Ray Oldenburg’s writing. In The Great Good Place, Oldenburg describes the benefits of having a ‘third place’ to accompany our homes and our workplaces (the ‘first’ and ‘second’ places in our lives):

Most needed are those ‘third places’ which lend a public balance to the increased privatization of home life. Third places are nothing more than informal public gathering places. The phrase ‘third places’ derives from considering our homes to be the ‘first’ places in our lives, and our work places the ‘second.’

26: Code switching is common in Hong Kong. The two official languages of Hong Kong are Chinese (mostly Cantonese) and English, and many residents will switch between the two often.

27: Longshot Magazine is a project that writes, edits, and publishes a magazine in 48 hours and the only funding comes from Kickstarter. The topic of Issue 2, which just finished, is debt. It’s well-designed and worth a look.

28: The Seven Corners intersection in Virginia, possibly the most confusing and aggravating intersection in the country, was named after the original seven corners formed where four roads crossed. There are now more than seven corners, but the name remains.

29: In modern times, darker, or “tan”, skin is considered more attractive in Western cultures such as in the United States (this wasn’t always the case, even here). In most other cultures, however, darker skin is often associated with the working class and manual laborers – lighter shades represent upper-class or indoors living. This explains the prevalence of sun umbrellas and of products such as whitening creams in India and in most East and Southeast Asian countries. One survey reports “4 out of 10 women in Hong Kong, Malaysia, the Philippines and South Korea used a skin-whitening cream.” (Source)

30: An introduction and a history of go-go, DC’s own music genre, via Jesse Tittsworth’s blog. (The music videos may not be safe for work.)

31: Subway or train station platform screen doors, which are meant to open only when the subway train arrives at the platform, are an expensive addition to the station and are still not very widespread. They do, however, save the station money in air-conditioning costs.

19: In terms of land area, the top five urban agglomerations in the world today are New York, Tokyo, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Boston. These cities have huge urban footprints – not surprising that most of the top cities in terms of sprawl are in the United States. In terms of population, Demographia reports the top 5 most populated urban areas as Tokyo, Delhi, Seoul, Jakarta, and Manila. (Source)

20: crepuscular = relating to twilight.

21: Infants hear higher-pitched sounds better because the kinocilium (a type of cilium on the hair cells within the ear), which is only needed during fetal development, has yet to involute. Involution of these hair cells occurs first with the higher pitches then progresses down through the lower pitches. So, it follows that babies may respond better when caretakers and other adults speak to them using that pattern of intonation, also known commonly as “baby talk.”

22: pleonasm = the redundant use of words to express something, such as “null and void” or “for all intents and purposes.”

23: Scottish baggage handler John Smeaton earned his 15 minutes of fame when he fought the attackers of the Glasgow International Airport in 2007. Although what might be more amazing is his accent, and the various YouTube videos dedicated to him.

24: The Red Army Faction (the RAF, or the Baader-Meinhof Group) was a extreme left-wing Communist group that fought against the post-WWII German state. The violent political scene in 1977 became known as the German Autumn, and involved kidnappings and murder of prominent political figures, including the President of the Confederation of German Employers’ Associations.

A couple more observations I noted on my recent trip to South Korea:

Catch a cab at a cab stand. I saw cab stands (similar to bus stops, sometimes with a shelter covering them) along the busier streets in Seoul. Cabs will come by and pick up any passengers waiting at the stop, or even wait in a line of cabs in popular areas near train stations. I’ve seen cab stands at big transit hubs in the States like Union Station in DC, but I spotted more of them in Korea in a few weeks than I have in all my time in U.S. cities.

Stairs and mountains and… moving walkways. Korea is, more so than not, mountainous. It makes for great hiking. This also means navigating the subway stations involves lots of stair-climbing. And in some of the transfer stations, the different subway lines are so far apart that there are moving walkways to help you get to your destination.

Hotel vs. hostel. We stayed in a hotel in Daegu, but it was worse in every way than any of the hostels we stayed in during our trip. It was a really old building that seemed like it hadn’t been updated since at least the 60s, the shower would only give you hot water for about a minute at a time, and it was completely empty. I think we were the only ones staying on the entire floor, and possibly in the entire hotel. To be fair, Daegu’s not a city that draws in tourists, which is also the reason it doesn’t have any hostels. When we could, we stayed in hostels – they’re cheaper and much more social.

Kimchi! If you’re a fan of spicy food, the food in Korea is so, so good. Kimchi, a fermented Korean side dish with lots of red pepper, is the accompaniment to any proper meal in Korea and essentially the national food. Koreans take a lot of pride in their kimchi, often touting its health benefits and cooking with it in a huge variety of ways.

T-money transportation cards combine a number of important uses for getting around in Seoul, Korea. Not only can these cards be used to pay for the bus, the subway, and taxis, they also work for paying for calls on pay phones and for subway locker rentals. You can buy the T-money cards for 2500 KRW (about $2.50 USD) at any convenience store such as FamilyMart and add value to your card at a machine in any subway station. It’s worth the minimal cost, which you earn back quickly with the 10% fare discount on every subway ride with your T-money card.

Speaking of the Seoul subway… check out how extensive this transit system is. It looks like pure chaos at first, but it’s the complete opposite: easy to understand where you are and where you need to go, with platforms well-marked and maps everywhere. Some of the subway stations even have digital touch screen tourist guides so you can see a map of the local area and browse interesting places nearby. We spotted a cell phone charging machine in the Dongnimmun subway station – important for Koreans who have cell service and wifi almost everywhere throughout the subway – and these free recharging stations are at every subway stop on lines 1 through 4.

One of our Korean friends even has a Visa card that is T-money enabled. This means he can automatically add value to the card from his bank account, and it’s one less thing to carry in his wallet.

Following are a few photos from yesterday’s Seersucker Social hosted by Dandies & Quaintrelles. The temperature was ideal for a seersucker-clad bike ride around Washington DC and up to the Hillwood Estate for a lawn party complete with crochet, badminton, gin cocktails, and a live band.

Please leave a link in the comments if you have photos from the event!

More photos after the cut.

From ‘The Return of the Native‘ in the Urbanophile blog:

The act of moving away from home unmoors us from the limits of our origins. It’s no surprise that the college educated are more likely to migrate. It isn’t just the skills, it’s that four years away from home opens a world of possibility in our eyes. Even at 22, if you return, it’s to a difference place than you left, because you’re a different person. Because those who didn’t leave haven’t experienced this change, there’s an estrangement from your past. You no longer fit in. There’s something wrong. The cliche is true: you can never go home again.

The full post is worth reading for a discussion on “boomerang” migration in the United States.