Category: http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post

Libraries

Though the libraries don’t really move they do pop up around the city in new locations. This is another great idea that has been promulgated in Bogotá: that of the (not sure what to call it) book stand. In an effort to promote literacy and reading among citizens the city has designed and operates mobile libraries. I only passed a couple of these but they were intriguing. This one was at the National University, not a place I would expect you need another library or would be looking to improve literacy. I knew that they had invested a lot of money and architectural knowledge in new library buildings. Penalosa, especially, sees these as public/shared space where people can come together and equity is improved.

They’ve also combined the library with the park, once again emphasizing this focus on public space and combining it with their literacy objectives. The sign reads “A stop for books, for parks.” The yellow panels open up when an attendant is there and there are books in there. It all works through the city library system so if you have a card issued at the main library you can get books from any of the stands, Gratis! (Free!). Also, not sure if you can return them anywhere or if you have to bring them back to the same stand. Colombian commenters, help me out here.

I like this idea and everytime I think about libraries I say to myself (aloud) “that’s so cool, you can just go there and get books for free, what a great idea.” But then I never go and get books. I look at material on the internet, download articles, or buy a magazine. That’s not even mentioning all the reading for school I have and never get to. So…. would this idea work here in the US, not to increase literacy but just to get people to pick up books more, which I guess is ‘increasing literacy’?

Smoke Signals

I’ve discussed Google Maps on here before and I realize that if I wanted to I could probably put a post up everyday about some new Google Map API, but I think someone else is already doing such things. Google also has it’s own blog to share new techy updates. Usually it’s over my head with things like Linux, and servers and such, but I wanted to share with you this little piece I found on there today. Maybe this will add a new twist to the next birthday greeting you decide to send to someone. Click on the map to see the real thing.

Google Maps News Straight from the source
Google Maps Mania

20 Julio

In a recent post I mentioned briefly that I’ve been exposed to some new Colombian media since arriving. Over the weekend I added to my repertoire, so to speak. Sampling the nightlife, the recreation and the television of the country.

Friday was a holiday, Independence Day. More than anything else, the day seemed an excuse for the country to show off its military, which is not to say that this is a departure from the habits of other countries. In the build up to the day I heard about parades and street closures as well as annual (rumored) guerilla attacks on cities. None of these happened (in Bogotá at least). On the day before, I talked a bit with a med student who is also in the Navy, or La Armada Nacional. He gave me the full scoop on exactly what was going down. Normally Bogotá is the place to be for a military man on Independence Day, however, this year thousands of servicemen from every branch were invited to festivities being held on the Colombian island of San Andres. He told me to make sure and tune in on TV to catch the pageantry.

And I did briefly. Then later I caught bits and pieces of the recap on the news and discovered that the decision to move the party was a thinly veiled affront aimed at Nicaragua. (hear me) San Andres Island is really far away from Colombia; so far away that it’s close to Nicaragua. So far, in fact, that Panama and Costa Rica don’t even try to get involved. So what better way to passively escalate the international tension then to amass military forces on the disputed territory for a Colombian celebration? I think this remote (relatively inconsequential) island situation is much more interesting than the Argentine-English dispute that keeps popping up in the news. At least Colombia is claiming an island in the same hemisphere.

Aside from the news and military operations, I have had the chance to sit down in front of the TV and catch some other offerings. The first thing I have noticed is that there are certain things you can always find. Soccer, a game show, some Latin music and movies. I think I’ve seen more MLS coverage here than in the US (and the same amount of Red Sox games). Granted, this week saw David Beckham’s debut against Chelsea. On side note, the most impressive thing about this event was the turnout and the enthusiasm of fans at a soccer game in the US not involving a Latin American country. Leave it to LA to get celebrities (or as they’re called there, governors) to a soccer game.

Ok, back to the TV. I have to say that I am impressed with the selection of movies here. I can almost always find something that I could easy sit in front of and forget my troubles for two hours, though I refrain. The game shows are actually pretty interesting. Sure they have who wants to be a millionaire but they also have this twisted game show where people undergo a lie detector test backstage. Then they are brought out in front of the cameras and their family to reveal all. They are asked questions from the backstage interview and they have to say whether or not they are true. They are always true, and that is what troubles me about the show. It is not so much a test of wit or skill, rather it is a contest to see who is willing to be dragged through the mud with their family in tow. I only caught a glimpse tonight (I think it’s on everyday) but a guy outted his best friend who is gay. The other day they were asking a woman questions about whether or not she was making up excuses so that she did not have to go visit her mother who was sick with cancer. A women’s voice comes in and always states “es verdad”.

On Saturday night I made it out to Zona Rosa for my first taste of the nightlife and what the kids are calling Aguardiente. A night out in Colombia must consist of dancing of some kind, and there are several types. Everyone seems to know the many different types of music which sound about the same to me (gringo): salsa, meringue, regaton, cumbia, vallenato, currulao… Before I sound too amazed at the finely tuned ear of the Colombian people I should say that it’s like this everywhere. If you know jazz you start to get really picky, about bop, cool, acid, lounge, new age etc. Likewise, you won’t find too many of my peers calling Kanye, gangster rap. Electronic music is definitely like this; “techno” encompasses a lot more for some than it does for others. In any event, the sustained exposure to the Latin vibes gave me a chance to being to pick up on the subtleties. My personal favorite right now is salsa but young people here think it’s a little too old fashioned and I blame Tito Puente.

San Andres Island
Colombian Reality TV Game Shows
Aguardiente

Exito


I first heard about Exito on Friday when I asked someone where I might go to buy a pair of socks. I figured that there must be a small tienda or slightly larger, more specialized footwear store or even an entire district not too far away. In Colombia, like many other cities in developing places, the density is impressive and most people walk so it’s not uncommon to be able to find what you need in a short trip. As I hinted at, sometimes you see guilds pop up. Down the street from me exists a strip of about 20 optical shops in a row. In old Hanoi the streets still retain the names (and some of the shops) of the businesses that reside there. If this type of thing exists and it’s a specialty item, like glasses, a lengthier trip will often be made to take advantage of the market forces and the expertise. But this is socks.

Saturday I went on a hike through the countryside with a group here at the University. Many students carried plastic bags to hold their lunches and garbage as the day went on. Many of the bags said Exito on them, including one I had grabbed from home that morning. Now my interest was piqued, Exito seemed to be a staple of Colombian commerce and something I should see first-hand.

Sunday I stumbled upon Exito. I was walking down the main street and passes what looked like a renovated building (about half a block) that was being made into a mall. As I passed I saw the sign for the parking garage in the signature yellow. In this regard it reminds me a bit of Ikea with their blue but what people most often relate it to is Walmart because they carry everything from food to appliances, car parts and even socks. While that is one good reason that Exito is Wal-mart, there are several good reasons for why it is not. First, I walked there. Second, I had to enter the pseudo-mall and then go up an escalator to enter the store, which was not immediately visible from the street. Third, I had to go up more escalators to get to the second floor. This is what a Wal-mart would look like if they tried to put one in Manhattan. The fact that they’ve adapted their store design to fit into the dense urban fabric already would get them kicked out of Sam’s club faster than the Walton’s make their next billion. They are also set as anchors in the new malls that Bogotá seems to abound with. Finally, Exito is not the cheapest of the cheap. Colombians think it is surprisingly expensive (n=1).

A couple similarities do exist. As I said they carry everything from bananas to baby clothes to refrigerators. I went in looking for socks but found myself walking past a sad wall of HDTVs with nothing to broadcast in HD. Static-y programming looks the same in HD. Also, there are examples that resemble the US, big box, counterparts. I am interested on whether the design of the stores has evolved and they are moving away from the stand alone big box or if it’s just opportunistic. Also there are others following suit. Carrefour is one similar store that I have only seen through car window, standing alone, across a sea of parking. I have also been told of a Home Depot mimic called Home Center. I remember similar stores in Santiago, Chile. The fact is that in many cases the old, downtown sections of these cities remain dense, grid street patterns of development with multiple uses, however as the cities expand, people gain wealth, cars gain prominence and the scale of things change. I think paying close attention to these different development patterns is like reading the rings of a tree.

I have heard why I should hate Wal-mart and of movements to stop them from coming into neighborhoods, but maybe that’s just the way things are going. A lot of people do shop there, but is it because they have few other choices? Also, with everyone driving their cars is the big box thing so bad. What if we completely rethought the way we designed and arranged shopping centers? Take the mall in DC as an example; nobody has ever thought to come up with a pejorative term for those ‘big box’ monuments and museums that are all over the place. Of course I’m being a little extreme and the Mall doesn’t exactly plentiful parking… getting items from the store to your car or home could be troublesome but people could play kickball between Office Depot and Petsmart. Others could relax next to the reflecting pool that abuts Best Buy and Lowes. Just an idea. Of course, when we start making monuments out of shooping centers we have bigger problems. But sometimes it already feels that way.

Frontline had a really good episode on Walmart awhile ago, it can be seen here:
Frontline Walmart Episode

Radiolab

The sudden lack of familiar media has exposed me several new things in the last two weeks, not the least of which is a bunch of new unfamiliar Colombian media. However as hard as old habits do die, I have turned to some of the Podcasts on my computer to catch up on months of NPR’s Health & Science briefs as well as some forgotten episodes of This American Life. Now I’m keeping up with my subscriptions to such things and also finding some new ones and I must say I am impressed at the breadth of topics covered and the availability of so much information that this relatively young media (Podcasts) affords us.

If you listened to last week’s episode of This American Life on Who Can You Save? (and you probably did given that it was the most downloaded Podcast that week) then you no doubt were introduced to Radiolab. Señor Glass, as he’s known down here, played an excerpt from Radiolab’s show on Morality and also gave it a resounding endorsement. Now, I know that some people treat finding the next ‘it’ thing like a race (against their own friends), but I subscribe to the ideology which says that the important is to know why you think it’s ‘it’, if you eventually do find it. So even though it’s in its third season, now’s as good a time as any to give it a listen. I don’t think you’ll regret it.

I have been trying to catch up on episodes back at my apartment where we don’t have broadband internet. The Podcasts are a great way listen to new media offline, meanwhile my roommate probably thinks I never listen to music, just news. I have been involved in a weeklong love affair (sorry Lauren) with this show. And I don’t think I’m alone because guess what was the week’s most downloaded Podcast last I checked. But why is this show so interesting; so ‘it’. First, it’s good radio. The two hosts, Jab Abumrad and Robert Krulwich (who has his own short NPR science Podcast) are enthusiastic, honest and creative. The way they unravel curiosity around the subject using audible performance to accompany the sound bites from their interesting contributors (Oliver Sachs, Steven Johnson, Alan Rabinowitz, etc.) adds to the stories, relevant as they are. Finally, it asks big questions about being human, about having feelings and thoughts and instincts. And to investigate those questions it turns to the scientific experiments designed to test such things, the history of the issue, and the real life experiences of people (ie This American Life).

Here is a clip from a show on memory that made me question what I really remember about some seminal experiences in my life.

http://www.wnyc.org/flashplayer/mp3player.swf?config=http://www.wnyc.org/flashplayer/config_share.xml&file=http://www.wnyc.org/stream/xspf/71872

So give the program a listen and tell me what you think. If it’s not like I said, it probably had something to do with how my brain interprets things differently than yours, or the way I constructed the memory of the show. Of curse to find out why that is, you’ll have to listen to more of the show.

Robobots & Convincicons

Tuesday night I went to see a sneak preview of the new Transformers movie. Save the fact that my seat was two away from the outside wall and one row from the front, it was pretty entertaining. At first I thought the perspective was going to make me ill, but ultimately it was the humor that was most disturbing. However, this is not a movie review (this is), rather it is a re-visitation of my fascination with advertising.

Transformers prominently features two major product lines that obviously made huge deals with the studio. The movie is like a big commercial, which is becoming more and more common these days. It’s almost exactly like this picture except that car shouldn’t be German. I don’t wanna ruin it for you but one’s a car company and one’s a computer manufacturer. Watching the movie I was more interested in some of the more subtle product use. For example, when the noticeably un-nerdy and, for some reason, Australian code breaker from the NSA decides which media to use when transferring the most important sound in the world (which disappears from the plot) how does she choose? Something tells me there’s more to her portable disk of choice than meets the eye. I couldn’t resist, and neither could the screenplay writers.

One particularly interesting aspect of this use of film as advertising, is its use for personal/group publicity. For example, when sports jerseys are worn in films, whose name will appear on the back. Did Clinton Portis’ agent get on the phone with Spielberg and make that happen? Or was it just because the story was taking place in Washington and they probably don’t sell a lot of John Hall jerseys? There’s a particularly interesting scene that gets at these deals in Thank You for Smoking. Nick Nailer is meeting with a Hollywood executive to strike a deal that will feature a lead man smoking in his next movie.

Maybe this sort of thing has been happening for ages. Actually, that is most likely the case. As long as there have been things to sell, there have been people trying to sell more of them to us. It is somewhat ironic that it took this movie to help me see – or at least motivate me to write about – how advertising is transforming entertainment.

John Hall’s agent… you’ll be hearing from me.

A Pacific Trip to the Atlantic Coast

I am not sure if anyone else is running into this problem but this year has been abnormally bad with ticks (for myself). I’ve found three in various places on me so far. Though none following our trip to Connecticut, the area perhaps most infamous for the insect. The latest came during a trip to the Georgia/South Cackalack coast over the weekend.

I suspect it hopped aboard during one of a couple hikes around the marshes of Skidaway Island State Park. Our first clue should have been the deer we saw when we pulled in to find a site. In any event, after the ride down there without A/C and following an incredibly hot, yet remarkably dry (see our camping record) night we were in desperate need of showers which would not come until several hours later.

After rising early on Saturday and making a second trip out to the Skidaway Narrows, we decided we’d try and make it to Hilton Head and get some beach exposure before heading to Savannah. Neither of us had ever been to Hilton Head but had heard a great deal about the place. Lauren from her mother and me from the hoards of high school classmates who sought the place out as a spring break destination. I was very surprised to see some of the attention put into sculpting the island’s development, which I can only imagine was a rapid and entropic process hesitant to be wrangled. The island has its share of retail including big box stores like Lowes and Best Buy as well as outlet stores. These merchants line the large main road (highway) through the island. However, all the stores are barely visible from the roadway. They are accessible via smaller service roads that line the main road but are hidden behind large stands of tall pines. They’ve managed to maintain some of the area’s attractiveness while adding businesses and limiting access points. It’s almost like a boulevard but there is no parking on service roads. The parking lots are also didactically interesting (if that may be said). Again, large tress have been preserved and provide shade for the cars.

As an example consider these two gas stations I snapped in passing. The top from the main route on Hilton Head Island. The gas station barely visible and, in this case I think the service road runs on the opposite side of the station and the division provides enough room for a landscaped bike/ped path (not that it’s used). The bottom gas station is something we’re probably all more familiar with. This example comes from somewhere in SC, AKA Juarez, MX. Of course there are a number for reasons we see both approaches and HHI is not perfect (I’m sure we could get the flaws of developing ecologically sensitive barrier islands at all), but it is good to see real-life case studies for how things can be done differently and hopefully better.

That said I do not want to get into all the ways that Savannah’s Historic Review Board manages to have it’s way in the city’s growth and rejuvenation while the surrounding coast gets gobbled up. I like what they’ve done but think that those in the historic district could be leveraging their power to ease some pressure on the coast. Regardless, I always enjoy my time in the old city. We stayed in a wonderfully restored bed and breakfast thanks to a wedding gift given to us by friends from Atlanta. It even had showers, or as I like to call them, the watery grave of the Skidaway tick.

http://picasaweb.google.com/s/c/bin/slideshow.swf
All in all it was a great weekend to get away from all the video games, gutters (which are finally back up), and possible injuries that Atlanta offers. It was a also a fitting way for Lauren and I to spend our last weekend together before I leave to Colombia (where ticks are not one of things you have to worry about).

Alternative Radio

Thanks to the diverse and quality-driven program directors at WREK I have been introduced to Alternative Radio. I was lucky enough to catch it two weeks in a row at it’s scheduled time of 11AM on Sundays and now I am fairly interested in it. Interested enough to visit the website and begin to tell people about it in casual conversation and on this blog. Basically the show broadcasts public awareness talks given by political and social activists calling for cultural change, or at least awareness. If you don’t catch the show on the radio you can always find a recording of the talk on their website, if only for a small fee.

The first week I heard the show it was a talk given by Bill Moyers on media reform. I agreed with a lot of what he was saying and thought his argument was very well formed and enthusiastic. Last week I happened to be in the car when it came on and caught Chris Hedges talking about the radical Christian right. This talk was not really something I knew too much about. His delivery was heated and the content scathing but definitely plausible. I found it pretty interesting to hear his perspective on things coming from seminary and having spent time inside some of the mega-churches and societies which he was describing.

All this is to say that you should give Alternative Radio a listen. If you’re not in Atlanta check out the website and find out when it’s on in your town. Or if you’re ready to jump right in, I recommend buying the episode with Bill Moyers. His argument on media reform might make you a regular subscriber.

Merchan-DIE-sing

If you’re familiar with the blog you have probably seen my remade (improved) helmet. After making it, I had the idea to partner with helmet makers and create a licensing agreement with schools and teams to make their helmets. Not sure who the market would be since messengers would be above them and the typical bike advocate fitted in complete Discovery Channel kit might also shun the pseudo-‘patriotism’. Fitting it to the public health paradigm, I could argue that these helmets are much cooler and more likely to be worn by children, and everyone want to protect children, even if they are just riding to the end of the cul-de-sac and back. Plus their heads grow faster and alligences run less deeply than adults and they would be in the market for new helmets more often. I guess I should have gone in to business/marketing.

Yet, no matter how bad you think that idea is, it must become a little more feasible in your mind after you hear what Major League Baseball has given its teams’ identities to. Urns. Now you have your worldly remains committed to the official human ashes receptacle of your team. This type of fanaticism says, “Family, Take me out to the ball game… forever.” And I don’t think stadiums will be charging admission for entry of the departed. You can only hope that your team doesn’t get nixed. Just think of all the Expos fans in urns that would be getting laughed at.

Happy opening day everyone.

Planet Earth


If you were not tuned in to the American premiere of the series Planet Earth on Discovery Channel, you truly missed out. This series uses nature footage in HD collected over 5 years to convey the world’s landscapes and ecosystems as you’ve never even imagined seeing them. They use high tech cameras and film to slow down the attacks, follow the hunts from above and transform months to minutes. The clip above is from the show and show a great white hunting (and capturing) a seal. The attack takes one second but is slowed down to 1/40th that speed. This article in Wired reports on some of the never-before-used techniques employed for this series.

The series originally aired on BBC and has been re-narrated for our American ears by Sigourney Weaver. The look this series provides at nature is truly awesome and breathtaking. It constantly challenges my presumed ideas of what is possible and how varied life is. It will make you want to go back and watch over and over until you finally overcome disbelief. In a time of high tech graphics and special effects, the use of technology to capture the realest of occurrences is the most stunning of all.