Things to do with an abandoned shack in the middle of the desert.

Nice!

Does your city allow you to build a little house in your backyard — an "accessory dwelling unit"?

Madison, Wisconsin does. Here we see a couple that has a house, and they're building a tiny house behind it, on the footprint of what had been a detached garage, 12 x 18. Then, they bring in tenants and make income for a while, and ultimately, as they age and no longer can or want to manage the big house, they move into the tiny house.

"We thought we might live in it when we're too old to live in the larger house... It's a way for us to stay in the neighborhood and live here."

"I've always liked the idea of living smaller and more beautifully... This idea is pretty neat."

So what do you think? Is this a great way to increase density in the city, build up the tax base, free people to make income from their property, provide appropriate housing for younger and older people, and boost the tiny house movement? Or is this a bad intrusion onto existing neighborhoods, pitting homeowners against each other?

I look out on our backyard and see 4 detached garages impinging on our view. Would we be worse off if those were converted into little houses? Put the cars in the driveways or on the street, and install little old couples or singles into those spaces. Or maybe Meade and I should build our perfect little dream house in our backyard, then sell the big house to new owners who will loom over us until we move on to the ultimate truly tiny house.

"We are supposed to be the vandals, but this is the biggest rag and disrespect in the history of graffiti."

The work of 1,500 artists, whited out overnight.

The "quiet dignity" of 4 World Trade Center.

Not to be confused with 1 World Trade Center — the 1776-foot-tall "Freedom Tower" — 4 World Trade Center is designed to reflect the reflecting pools that occupy the place where the original Twin Towers stood. The video is worth waiting out a the commercial. I especially enjoyed the views of the interior and the modest, gentle expressiveness of the architect Gary Kamemoto. Listen for what he says about craftsmen.

"As architects, if we push and try to do something extraordinary and give the workers that opportunity, we see that everybody is wanting to prove their trade."

Banksy graffitis protest against the NYT for rejecting his op-ed mocking the new World Trade Center tower.

I got to his website from the NY Post, via Drudge, which takes at face value the statement "Today’s piece was going to be an op-ed column in the New York Times. But they declined to publish what I supplied. Which was this..."


Banksy's post says it was to be an op-ed, but it's not in the format of an op-ed. It's presented in the form of a front-page news story about the artist's opinion, not a column written by the artist, so I take it the mock-up of the NYT is just another artwork, a viral promo pointing to his graffiti (a photograph of which you can see at the first link, above).

But let's read the text anyway. Part of me resists artists who elbow me for attention, but that's not the part of me writing this blog post. We might ask: If this is in fact a rejected op-ed, why was it rejected? Well, obviously, it says "you've got to do something about the new World Trade Center," and that's too close to saying: Knock this one down too. It continues: "That building is a disaster," and how can you not think he's trying to do edgy comedy calling up memories of the disaster of September 11, 2001? The next line makes that obvious: "Well no, disasters are interesting."

Yeah, Artist Boy? Well, take your interestingness and go to hell.

That's my reaction after reading 2 paragraphs. But then I read on, and guess what? Artist Boy, self-professed lover of interestingness, goes on to natter out criticisms of the building that have all been aired extensively in the media as the reconstruction of the site has been debated over the years. Is Banksy familiar with any of that, or did he just wander over to America to start talking off the top of his head as if any of his thoughts are probably interesting?

I know. There seems to be a paradox: Why am I blogging about this if I don't find it interesting? It can't be interesting to say something is not interesting, can it? Yes, I'd say it is, if people are already acting as if it is interesting.

"What Is Mitt Romney Hiding in His New House's Hidden Room?"

"You can see the room in the blueprint at right. It's a little over 50 square feet, twice as long as it is wide. The document marks where the 'hidden door' will be built in to shelving in the adjacent study. It's next to the 'powder room' and the 'coat room," which many people would call a 'bathroom' and 'closet.'..."

Beautiful libraries.

Photos here.

And here's the book.

"A Roman bathhouse still in use after 2,000 years."

In Algeria.

All those commenters who wanted me to read "The Fountainhead."

All I did was buy the ebook "Atlas Shrugged" so I could blog about things Ted Cruz — "Political anarchist or genius?" — said in his (not a) filibuster yesterday. Having riffed on and sniffed at some bloody metaphors in the Ayn Rand tome, I was beset with comments telling me the Ayn Rand book I really must read is "The Fountainhead."

Surfed started it:

The Fountainhead was a better read, a more cogent and focused book and you get the same dose of the philosophy....

Addendum: In the movie Dirty Dancing (1987) Baby confronts Robbie to pay for Penny's abortion. Robbie refuses to take responsibility and preaches “Some people count and some people don’t” and then hands Baby a used paperback copy of The Fountainhead saying, “Read it. I think it's a book you'll enjoy, but make sure you return it; I have notes in the margin."

And then Kit Carson said:

Yes, Atlas Shrugged is great. But her earlier novel, Fountainhead, is her greatest work. Fountainhead is much shorter and she presents all her main themes and her analysis more clearly and in more entertaining fashion. The epic scene where Ellsworth Toohey explains himself and his intentions is one of the most significant pieces of writing of the modern world. Reading those few pages may well change your life.

And Tank:

I too would recommend The Fountainhead instead.

And the (here inaptly named) SomeoneHasToSayIt said:

Yes. Read Fountainhead before Atlas Shrugged, which would have been better served, imo, by the title Rand wanted, The Strike.

And Tom began with an excellent appeal to my vanity:

Althouse, I believe you'd find The Fountainhead a more enjoyable read. In fact, I've often though of you, as a blogger, blogging in a similar manner as Howard Roark worked in architecture. To the point that I could see you destroying this blog if it was co-oped and transformed into something without your consent. What I believe that Rand was getting at - at least in my limited understanding - was a sense of personal ownership and self-accountability.

In Atlas Shrugged, she explores these concepts more. And while she always warns against the "looters" and "moochers", it is on the productive and creative that she aims her lesson - your success or failure is owned by you and is created or destroyed by your choices. What she telling the productive and creative is that there are those would will use all manner of tactics to instill in your a sense of guilt. But it is your choice to accept or reject this premise. This is not moderation in the political sense of, "should we put the road in this location or that?" -- those choices are not what Rand is getting at. Rand is asking the virtuous to understand the nature of personal ownership and self-sovereignty.

My initial reaction to both books was probably more of an adolescent "I'll take my ball and go home" reaction. Only over time did I understand that life really requires me to understand my values and to live those values based on my choices, not others. It doesn't mean I divorce myself from others - in fact, just the opposite - it means valuing who I love in the deepest sense.

Henry dumps a pitcher of cold water:

Atlas Shrugged was readable as a kind of gaseous Hindenburg melodrama. I'm baffled how anyone can recommend The Fountainhead. That was as unreadable as any novel I've ever picked up. It doesn't help that Rand conflates ideology with aesthetics. Foolishness results.

Mike Dini had a different approach to appealing to my vanity:

Ann -- You are normally interesting. It isn't April fools. Are intentionally trying to piss off the type of individual that tends to follow your blog? This is the sort of tripe I’d expect out of Chris Matthews.

Don't jump into Atlas Shrugged from Anthem. Read Fountainhead first. You've decided beforehand not to like the books but at least you will be able to talk intelligently about the novels. You didn't do that here.

Stay away from me. Stay away from my sister, or I'll have you fired.

"It was the most inconvenient and the most delightful place ever seen."

Wrote William Morris of Broadway Tower (which was built in 1799, to please the Countess of Coventry).

The Tower... certainly was absurd: the men had to bathe on the roof — when the wind didn't blow the soap away and there was water enough — and the way supplies reached us I don't quite know; but how the clean, aromatic wind blew the aches out of our tired bodies, and how good it all was!

"Such a captive maiden, having plenty of time to think, soon realizes that her tower, its height and architecture, are like her ego only incidental..."

"... that what really keeps her where she is is magic, anonymous and malignant, visited on her from outside and for no reason at all. Having no apparatus except gut fear and female cunning to examine this formless magic, to understand how it works, how to measure its field strength, count its lines of force, she may fall back on superstition, or take up a useful hobby like embroidery, or go mad, or marry a disk jockey. If the tower is everywhere and the knight of deliverance no proof against its magic, what else?"

Thomas Pynchon, "The Crying of Lot 49."

Visualizing the completion of Barcelona's Sagrada Familia cathedral, which was begun in 1882.

The end of the construction is projected for 2026, and this 90-second video shows what will be done. I said "wow" out loud at 0:58:

"I thought it might be better to be like a chameleon — able to adapt and change and blend with our environment rather than conquer it."

Said Ross Langdon, a Tasmanian-born architect who built "eco-lodges and socially sustainable tourism in ecologically sensitive locations." He died in the Nairobi terror attack, along with his partner Elif Yavuz, a Harvard PhD and malaria specialist, who worked for the Clinton foundation.

"Elif was brilliant at her job and a joy to work with.... She was a friend both in and out of the office, and always had a great sense of humor – recently, her baby belly had been the subject of a number of jokes."

ADDED: Many pictures of this couple here.

NYC builds a newsstand designed to be run by blind workers, then decides to scrap it because it's not theft resistant.

Now they're going to build an new one.

“As part of a major and vital rehabilitation of the Kings County Criminal Court, we are adding a new newsstand and investing to make it accessible,” said a spokesman for the city Department of Design and Construction. The Office of the Criminal Justice Coordinator ordered the DDC to build the stand as part of a $38 million courthouse renovation. City courthouse newsstands are operated by blind workers through a program run by the state Commission for the Blind.

Blind people have traditionally run newsstands, but the safeguard against theft —  a problem at any newsstand — is the heightened sense of morality people feel about cheating the blind.

Said one court source, “Let’s face it. It’s in the lobby of a courtroom, so you might get a few criminals walking by who wouldn’t think twice about stealing from a blind guy.”

You might think NYC should just use the new place and not employ a blind worker, but consider that there is a pre-existing but run-down newsstand in the lobby, run by a 61-year-old blind man who's worked there for 10 years, the design of the new shelves really does facilitate shoplifting, and there are other aspects of the design that aren't suitable for a blind person. The area behind the counter is said to be too small to use a cane or seeing-eye dog.

It sounds almost as though the designer had a secret agenda of ousting the blind. That's a premise I'd explore if I were suing. Things less cheap than lawsuits: 1. building another new newsstand, and 2. eating the cost of shoplifting.

Quite aside from potential litigation, there's the political problem. Here you've got: 1. wasting the taxpayers' money, 2. looking stupid, 3. showing lack of concern for the blind, 4. the embarrassment of a ridiculous crime paradise in the lobby of a criminal courthouse, breeding more and more disrespect for the law among those with the least reason to feel respect.

Brick smokestacks.

From the Des Moines cityscape.

My favorite view of the Iowa state capitol.

If some artist sought to conceive of an installation and construct it on site, he could not do better. Reality! So brilliant! So perfect!

At the Iowa State Capitol...

... in Des Moines:



Looking up into the dome:



The Civil War looms large:




Elsewhere, I see vague swastikas:



A similar pattern appears in the frosted glass on the door to the legislative chamber, where we can see an image of Barack Obama between Abraham Lincoln and George Washington:



More patterning in the floor tiles:



There's a large model of the U.S.S. Iowa:





In a glass case, there are dolls representing all of Iowa's First Ladies, dressed in their Inauguration gowns:



In the rotunda, children are drawn to the glass floor:



And I'm drawn to do an I-was-there pose:

Where we were when we were not in Madison.

We were in Lincoln, Nebraska.



For the National Amputee Golf Open Championship, cheering on the Meade family member who comments on this blog as "The Elder" (previously highlighted in this 2010 post).



Lincoln is a fine American city, like Madison, a capital city, and though we are big fans of the state capitol buildings, we skipped that building this time, because we were there in January 2012. Remember those pictures? Instead we got our fix of state capitolosity as we drove home today, via I-80, stopping in Des Moines, Iowa. I have some nice Iowa Capitol pictures, but I'm going to put them in a separate post.

"The Passive House: Sealed for Freshness."

Quite aside from the environmentalism and the long-term cost savings, I love the promise of quiet:

Look out the living room windows and you can see a gardener wielding one of those ear-piercing leaf blowers in the yard, but you would never know it inside.

There is no furnace or air-conditioner clicking on or off, no whir of forced air, and yet the climate is a perfect 72 degrees, despite the chilly air outside....In one of the most humid cities in the country, you aren’t sticky or irritable....

"In what will surely go down in history as one the greatest architectural blunders..."

"... the town of Benidorm in Alicante, Spain, had almost completed its 47-story skyscraper when it realized it excluded plans for elevator shafts."

And I thought the blunder was that the building looks like a giant pair of pants. No elevators, eh?

ADDED: Apparently, the blunder is only looking like a giant pair of pants.