Jane Jacobs
NEW YORK (AP) – Jane Jacobs, an author and
community activist of singular influence whose classic “The Death and Life of Great American Cities'' transformed ideas about urban planning, died Tuesday, her publisher said. She was 89.
Jacobs died at a Toronto hospital, which she entered a few days ago, according to Random House publicist Sally Marvin. The author, who would have turned 90 on May 4, had been in poor health.
A native of Scranton, Pa., Jacobs lived for many years in New York before moving to Toronto in the late 1960s. She and her husband, architect Robert Jacobs Jr., were unhappy that their taxes supported the Vietnam War and moved to Canada. Robert Jacobs died in 1996.
Jacobs, who based her findings on deep, eclectic reading and firsthand observation, challenged assumptions she believed damaged modern cities – that neighborhoods should be isolated from each other, that an empty street was safer than a crowded one, that the car represented progress over the pedestrian.
Her priorities were for integrated, manageable communities, for diversity of people, transportation, architecture and commerce. She also believed that economies need to be self-sustaining and self-renewing, relying on local initiative instead of centralized bureaucracies.
Jacobs received a number of prizes, including a lifetime achievement award in 2000 from the National Building Foundation in Washington, D.C.
Category Archives: Celebrity
You can’t buy publicity like this
Republican Jesus Speaks
And he sounds just like Oprah! Stolen from Jesus' General, a site whose comments section kicks the heathen ass of virtually every other comments section in the blogosphere, and I can prove it. And the General, like all right-thinking men, loves Trailer Park Boys. If I find out he's actually George Stephanopoulous, I may have to get out the Acme Stalker Kit. Kidding! I never put it away!
Proof that the General's troops are channelling divine wisdom:
Max Shrubby
Deciderata
Don’t go placidly; create noise and haste,
And remember, what? Peace there may be in leaks.
As far as possible never surrender and
Be on bad terms with all persons.
Speak your lies quietly and clearly to Novak;
And don’t listen to others,
Even though you are dull and ignorant;
You too have a story but have suppressed it or you’d be in prison.
Hang out with loud and aggressive persons; they are vexations to the dems. Compare yourself with others, you vain and bitter chimp; for always there will be greater persons than yourself. You haven’t achieved crap with your plans.
Stay bored in your own career, try not to stumble; in your case it is not a real possession in the changing fortunes of time. Abandon caution in your business affairs; for the world is full of trickery, anyway, so why worry ‘cause the debt will be $10 trillion before you plow this country into the ground. You are blinded to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals which you ignore; and everywhere life is full of heroism because of your bad, false decisions.
You can’t be yourself. You used to get away with feigning affection. You are cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as perennial as the grass you used to smoke.
Ignore the advice of intelligent generals; ride your bike and listen to your ipod – bike around the world while you’re at it. You act like a baby in sudden misfortune. Distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond an unwholesome discipline, go rough on yourself ‘cause you deserve it.
You are a C student of the university, MBAs know less than the trees and the TV stars; you don’t have a right to be here, but somehow you swam out of your dad’s ball sack. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should and Fitz is going to take the rest of your staff for a little ride to Algoa or similar prison for the rubber glove cavity search.
Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Her to be, and whatever your labors and assolation, in the noisy confusion of life keep a piece within reach.
With all the sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, you have projected on this country; it will be a beautiful world once you are out of office. Cheerful? You’re the lamest lame duck. Quack!
Major McBug
My First Book Review: well, since school anyway, and there we always had to conclude that Dickens was the greatest prose stylist the universe has ever seen
A review of The Dream of Rome, by Boris Johnson, who is on the blogroll over there if you look closely. And all of this was posted over there anyway, but give the man a click. It's the least you can do since none of my readers will ever vote for a Tory anyway.
First off, I don't review. I opine. This will hopefully excuse much.
As an introduction to the Roman Empire and the reasons for its long-running success, The Dream of Rome is perfectly marvelous. Boris obviously loves his subject, knows it fluently, and isn't afraid to go to the experts when he's at a loss. Picks interesting experts, as well. And of course the writing flows like the river in a Hudson School painting. It's quick, it's beautiful, and it's sometimes challenging.
And, like the contemporary Hudson river, it's sometimes full of crap.
As an explanation of why the EU is doomed to failure, however, The Dream of Rome fails to prove its case. Really, it must be said that it doesn't seem to try very hard. Boris has some policy points to make, and he makes them, but any examination of the EU is glaringly incomplete without mention of our apparently limitless desire to form meta-states like the UN, NATO, G7, NAFTA, etc etc. There is a reason behind this, and it's not mere economic advantage. Nor is it mere ego.
The only emperor-manque the world has who has any sort of real power is Osama bin Laden. So it's easy to see the point of the Americans who don't want his videos and audio broadcast, lest they start a cult of personality. His power comes from the fact that he writes the cheques. Once that stops, he's over.
William S. Burroughs, who had a knack for being as right as he was wasted, wrote a fascinating piece on why we don't have grand Augustus figures anymore. Here it is:
No More Stalins, No More Hitlers
We have a new type of rule now. Not one-man rule, or rule of aristocracy or plutocracy, but of small groups elevated to positions of absolute power by random pressures and subject to political and economic factors that leave little room for decision.
They are representatives of abstract forces who have reached power through surrender of self. The iron-willed dictator is a thing of past.
There will be no more Stalins, no more Hitlers.
The rulers of this most insecure of all worlds are rulers by accident. Inept, frightened pilots at the controls of a vast machine they cannot understand, calling in experts to tell them which buttons to push.
–William S. Burroughs, "No More Stalins, No More Hitlers," from Dead City Radio, Island Records, 1990; and Interzone, Viking Books, 1989.
Trailer Trash: Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will
The soundtrack, though: isn't that American? It makes so much sense now…
raincoaster 