editor

http://www.forbestraveler.com/islands-beaches/best-boardwalks-slide-9.html?thisSpeed=25000

Houston's Major Airport Lands Multi-Million Dollar Grants to Reduce Emissions Houston, TX - (August 25, 2009) - Mayor Bill White and the Houston Airport System (HAS) have announced that the City of Houston Department of Aviation has received $8.8 million in grants from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to install new state-of-the-art equipment at George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH) that is expected to reduce emissions by up to 60 percent. The two grants awarded through the FAA's Airport Improvement Program (AIP) will allow the purchase and installation of new solar panels, heaters and chillers in the airport's central operating plant which controls the air conditioning and heating in all five airport terminals. These upgrades will replace the outdated gas-powered steam generation system currently used in the facility. "This meets two of our major goals as we continue to improve our airport system - operating more efficiently, and with significantly reduced emissions," said Mayor White. "These benefits don't stop at the end of the runways." One of the grants is a $5 million contribution from the FAA's Voluntary Airport Low Emission (VALE) program, a nationally competitive initiative designed to reduce airport ground emissions at commercial service airports located in regions of the country with higher than normal pollution levels, according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency. The project allows airports to use grants to finance low-emission vehicles, refueling and recharging stations, gate electrification and other airport air quality improvements. Currently the entire Sedan/SUV fleet at HAS is composed of hybrids and more than half of them were purchased with VALE grants. "We have presented some very unique ideas to the FAA and we've already worked closely and successfully with them on eight other green projects," says Eric Potts interim director of aviation for the city of Houston. Potts also added that, "this project will allow IAH to significantly shrink its environmental footprint and that is good news for all of us." To date, only nine airport operators in the U.S. have received VALE grants and the most recent grant to IAH is among the largest ever issued. In order to expedite the project the system will be designed and built to order, beginning in 2010 and is scheduled for completion in 2011.

Telwink calls this photo "El Problema." I'll let you argue over whether it is, or not. To me, it signifies something sad about a society when the most important feature of a home is not an entrance which welcomes others, but a fortress garage.

/still waiting for my flying car.

Wow... Very random. I love the pic with the ships that appear to be cruising through the weeds, and the pink cadillac.

Kind of bland. Very Vancouvery. And what's with all the new skyscrapers in Austin? Is there really that kind of pent-up demand for urban living there? Seems like all the outsiders who flocked to town over the last ten years are trying to transform the sleepy capitol into a mini metropolis.

There, I fixed that for you. Threads are rarely marked moved because it makes things look messy.

I was doing some research on something entirely unrelated, I came across this map from the Chicago Daily Tribune September 25, 1934. A few things strike me about this map --Fort Worth is the big North Texas city, not Dallas; the states are labeled with the abbreviations used before the Post Office standardized them in the 70's; and the whole thing looks like it was drawn by a child with a crayon.

I don't think any political policy will affect the TMC. The basic facts are that there are more people today than yesterday, and that all people will eventually require health care services. Who pays for the service will mostly affect the accounting department.

If they're anything like the ones I've seen in other cities, its job is to coordinate communications and manpower between different fire companies and agencies involved at the scene.

You are correct. "111" is a one-alarm fire. "211" is a two-alarm fire, etc... The number of alarms isn't always an indicator of the severity of a fire. An extra alarm may be called if extra manpower is needed because it's hot, or the fire is going for a long time, or it is a special structure like a skyscraper or warehouse.

What Democrat do you think "censored" your free speech? Do you mean the registered Republican who owns this forum? When the thread turned political it was moved to the Politics section. What's the problem?

RAFAEL VIÑOLY ARCHITECTS COMPLETE NEW EAST WING OF CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF ART New 139,200-square-foot museum wing designed by Rafael Viñoly Architects unites historic Beaux-Arts building and Marcel Breuer addition All photos © Brad Feinknopf CLEVELAND - Rafael Viñoly Architects has designed the new East Wing at the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA), Ohio, which opened to the public on June 27, 2009. Its completion marks the opening of the first of three planned wings. Rafael Viñoly Architects’ design for the new East Wing forms part of an impressive seven year expansion and renovation project. The 139,200 square foot East Wing connects CMA’s original 1916 Beaux-Arts building and the 1971 addition by Marcel Breuer, creating spectacular new spaces for the presentation and conservation of one of the leading encyclopaedic art collections in the United States. Double-height special exhibitions galleries and an entrance lobby, located on the Lower Level, serve as the centrepiece of the two-story East Wing, while new galleries for the museum’s collection of 19th- and 20th-century European, modern and contemporary art, as well as the extensive photography collection, are located on Level Two. The new wing also houses expanded offices and workrooms for the conservation department on Level One. The CMA, one of the largest and most important art institutions in the United States, was built in 1916 by local architects Hubbell & Benes as a grand Greek revival pavilion, created as the focal point of a formal landscape designed by the Olmsted Brothers. However, subsequent additions, including an education wing by Marcel Breuer, obscured the rational plan of the original structure, presenting a disjointed, confusing warren of spaces. In 2001, Rafael Viñoly Architects won the commission to resolve these elements with an expansion and renovation program, creating a coherent sequence of galleries that accommodates projected growth and unifies disparate architectural vocabularies into a singular composition. Rafael Viñoly Architects’ plan restores focus to the original 1916 building, conceiving it as a “jewel” set within a continuous ring of expansion space that includes the renovated Breuer building. Other later additions are being demolished to make way for a vast, indoor, sunlit piazza, topped by a gently curving canopy of glass and steel, around which the entire museum will be organized. The naturally lit piazza with its attractive landscaping will naturally draw visitors into the center of the museum complex, a central meeting place as well as an event space for large functions. New gallery wings to the east and west enclose the piazza and taper toward the 1916 building, where they culminate in fully transparent, glazed galleries and pedestrian bridges that permit unobstructed views of the sides of the historic pavilion. The stone cladding of the new gallery wings consists of alternate bands of granite and marble that modulate the two very different aesthetics of the 1916 and Breuer buildings. In this manner, the distinctions between “modern” and “historic” are preserved, yet integrated into a cohesive whole. A two-phase construction process accommodates the museum’s fundraising schedule and allows continued operation (on a reduced basis) while the project is underway. The project is due to be completed in 2012. About Rafael Viñoly Architects Rafael Viñoly Architects PC is a critically acclaimed international practice headquartered in New York, with offices in London and Los Angeles. Founded in 1983, and now employing over 170 architects and support staff, the firm provides comprehensive services in architecture, master planning, and interior design for new facilities and renovations. Rafael Viñoly, the firm’s principal, has practiced architecture for forty-five years in the United States, Latin America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. His work has been recognized in the world’s leading design publications and by numerous prestigious awards. He is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, an International Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects, and a member of the Japan Institute of Architects. Viñoly has completed many critically acclaimed civic, private, and institutional projects including the Kimmel Centre for the Performing Arts in Philadelphia, Jazz at Lincoln Centre in New York, the Boston Convention & Exhibition Centre, the Brooklyn Children’s Museum, Curve theatre in Leicester, UK and the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, all resulting in popular, well used civic gathering spaces for their respective communities. About the Cleveland Museum of Art The Cleveland Museum of Art is renowned for the quality and breadth of its collection, which includes over 40,000 objects and spans 6,000 years of achievement in the arts. Currently undergoing a multi-phase renovation and expansion project, it is a significant international forum for exhibitions, scholarship, performing arts, and art education. Admission to the museum has been free since its founding charter. The Cleveland Museum of Art has a membership of nearly 25,000 households and is supported by a broad range of individuals, foundations, and businesses in Cleveland and Northeastern Ohio. The museum is generously funded by Cuyahoga County residents through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture. Additional support comes from the Ohio Arts Council, which helped fund this project with state tax dollars to encourage economic growth, educational excellence, and cultural enrichment for all Ohioans.

This remains a bug in the current version of the software that I installed yesterday. However, I have been told that it's fixed in the next version.

These kind of peculiar plans pop up every now and again. I'd like finally for someone to build one so we can find out if it would work or not. How many people could you get in a building that size? I'm guessing not all that many if it's supposed to be a "city within a city." Strange that it would be in New Orleans, though. The building I'm in is about the same height, and if the office portion was converted to residential would comfortably house about 4,000 people (also assuming that all the amenities were doubled for the increased number of people). Since this thing has three legs, I'd guess that it would hold 12,000 people. I'm not sure where New Orleans would find 12,000 people who could afford to live in something like this, even if a portion was set aside for low income housing. You don't want that portion to be too large, or you end up with the crack stacks ("Ghetto In The Sky") that they ended up with in Minneapolis. Again, though -- I'd love to see one of these crazy plans finally come to fruition. But it would take a crap load of money and a metric assload of leadership. Both are in short supply these days.

There are lots of private companies that will do the DNA testing you require. It's usually not cheap. I've seen OTC kits, but I don't trust them for accuracy. If you have a good relationship with your doctor, or he's in a very professional office you could ask them who they would recommend. Yellow pages and internet search are other possibilities.

Here's some random pictures I snapped while hanging around Beverello Harbor in Naples, Italy.

Firebug with a grudge?

Looks promising in the top pictures, but I've seen similar buildings before (Ontario Place that use balcony staggering as a textural gimmick. You have to be careful or it ends up looking cheap and dirty.

I'm not a fan of this one, and I'm not sure why. I think I'd prefer something a little more brick-y and a little less glass-y for Austin.

It's remarkable in that the building actually resembles the sketch. I've never understood why some renderings look like they were done by Pixar and others were done by a blind, retarded monkey with a paint-by-numbers watercolor set. Who spends $100 million on a building based on a drawing that looks like it belongs on the back of a soiled cocktail napkin?

I like it, but I'm not sure it fits in with Austin's vibe. Then again, it's better for the environment to stack people than to spread them out and plow under the prairie and build more roads, so maybe it is an Austin thing.

You would be wrong. And they're only getting cheaper these days. Too much competition. Everyone wants to be the face of the news. No one wants to go through all the hard work of being a good journalist.