So, we were talking in class today and the question my professor asked was, " How much of the world does it take to make what I wear?" I thought this was an interesting question.  And this led me to the question of what kind of structure, both economic and financial, we would have to have to have to support our consumerist needs?  Just to have the basics, for cotton shirts, jackets and socks we would need enough cotton fields to support the population of ruston, we would need looms, the machinery or employees to sew all of it into those patterns. And if you picked machinery then we'd have to find steel or iron deposits somewhere in ruston, fat chance of that happening! So we'd have to do it by hand. If we wanted to dye it, we'd have to figure out what natural native ingrediants to use.  And then we'd buy it.  It would be soo expensive and consume such manpower that it is illogical to propose such a plan.  I think however we, in our move to a global economy and culture, are missing it.  Local and regional cultures are being overrun.  People in india know what grits are.  And "you're not from around here, are you?" has become an expired phrase.  I think that we are losing our local identity but to retain it we'd have to revert to club-wielding neanderthals.  Or would we?  Is there a happy medium that we could acheive.  Could grow the cotton locally and ship it 30 minutes away to we made into textile fabric, and ship it back to be dyed and sewn, by machines made from regionally mined and refined steel?  Should Mcdonalds be able to ship chicken in from God knows where to feed to us.  It isn't healthy, it makes us sick?  Should they be allowed to, but should we have the sense to say no? 

I think these big localized factories need to start spreading out, waaay out.  I think our cars should be made within 2 hours of where they are sold.  I think if we have to move our fuel more than 500 miles just to get it into our cars then it isn't a valid fuel source.  Why can't we as a people acknowledge that this import/export economy is bad for our health and bad for the environment?  I don't think that the government should give us what we want right now, it may sound socialist, but shouldn't they give us what we need?  I'll close on this, If 60% of America went and voted to legalize murder, shouldn't the government say no?

I think Architecture should not give us what we want, when it isn't what we need.

Halloween and the Jack-O-Nano

I said a couple weeks ago that I'd post pictures of my pumpkin carve so here they are. be forewarned, this year's isn't as good as last year's, although I still won 1st in scariest and overall at the City of Ruston Pumpkin Carving Contest and at RAW's contest. I'll post a pic of the one from last year after the pics from this year.

F*^# the apathy

Marshall McLuhan, 1967:“The city no longer exists, except as a cultural
ghost for tourists.”1
Yes, yes, I know; it’s a familiar trope—death of God, death of
the subject, death of the author, death of the drive-in, end of history,
exhaustion of science, whatever. But he turned out to be right—
though a few decades ahead of his time, as usual.

This is the opinion of William J Mitchell in " Prologue: Urban Requiem"
He is proposing in this short but packed blurb that we are experiencing the death of the city (and by association architecture). But I'd have to disagree. See, I don't think we ever killed God or the subject, the author or history. I think what we've done is stopped caring. He talks about how all of these tiny intangible particles called bits are wrecking our society but I don't think that they are to blame. I can't describe my burning hatred for the non-chalant attitude that people have towards good design. It seems lately I'm lucky to get a "that's pretty cool" out of my professors and classmates when showing them some new awesome chair or speaker or building. The last of which we are supposed to be excited to see. It seems that we have slowly been exterminating not God, history, authors, drive-ins, or science, but enthusiasm. I can only assume that bits have acted as a catalyst in our endeavors to wipe excitement from our collective face. We killed the campfire and the water wells. We said they weren't important, and in a logistically driven but lazy and shallow approach dismissed them from our cities. Now we communicate with thousands of people who we term friends on our faceyspaces and tweetbooks. But like we don't really know the people on our friends lists, we also don't really know our world or buildings. I saw a new commercial for a phone that claims that we need a phone to rescue us from our phones. Frankly, it was one of the most depressing commercials I have ever seen. Hundreds of people who had fallen of thier bikes or wrecked thier cars into lightpoles, sitting, lying and shambling blindly about while thier eyes remained glued to thier phone screens.

What I'm trying to get at, is this. Either we have to give a shit, or suffer everyones apathy to our architecture. We have to make our building transformative, interfacable, technologic. We have to give people a reason to look up.