editor

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.

You can use the space to store you meal capsules.

In the last few weeks at least three fairly Chicago hotels have filed for bankruptcy, and several more are on the edge. No one ever thought people would stop going to conventions, but it's like a secondary bubble that burst after real estate.

My father built ten-foot-wide balcony onto the second story of our home all by himself. I bet a commercial contractor that knows what he's doing could do it pretty cheaply, especially if the building is already under renovation. (Subsequent owners removed the balcony because the local bears developed a habit of climbing up the cherry tree and sitting on the balcony to feast.)

When I was a kid growing up in Brooklyn you would occasionally see small-scale auto elevators. Like someone would have a double-height garage and one car could park underneath the other. It wasn't so much an elevator, though, as a kind of fancy cantilever device. LTAWACS brings up a good point about fire codes, though. After 9/11 some cities are requiring diesel storage tanks to be kept on the lower levels, and gasoline is far more flammable than diesel.

http://dallas.bizjournals.com/dallas/stories/2009/08/17/daily18.html?ed=2009-08-18&ana=e_du_pub

METRO LAUNCHES EXPRESS SERVICE / IMPLEMENTS SERVICE CHANGES METRO is rolling out another fast, premium service, the TMC SwiftLine, on Monday, August 24. The express service will provide a swift connection between two of the agency’s busiest transit centers – the Southeast and TMC Transit Centers. The demonstration line - a precursor to Quickline service – travels on an existing route, (the 26 Outer Loop / 27 Inner Loop) but with limited stops during peak periods, only. M The SwiftLine runs along Holcombe and O.S.T. between the Southeast and TMC Transit Centers and operates every 15 minutes between 6 a.m. to 9 a.m., and 3 p.m. to 6 p.m., Monday through Friday. With only five stops, patrons will enjoy a short trip - approximately less than 20 minutes – aboard a state-of-the-art hybrid bus. Swiftline patrons will be able to connect to multiple routes from both transit centers, and have an easy link to METRORail from the TMC Transit Center. In addition to the launch of the 426 SwiftLine, METRO will also be implementing several service and schedule adjustments to provide more efficient service. This includes adding trips to the 50 Harrisburg/Heights and 77 Liberty/M.L.K., and increasing frequency (time between buses) on the 65 Bissonnet and 50 Harrisburg/Heights. The 26 Outer Loop / 27 Inner Loop will now be recognized as two separate routes. This will not affect bus stops or signs, only the trip planner. The 26 Outer Loop travels counterclockwise and the 27 Inner Loop travels clockwise. For a complete list of METRO’s service changes, please visit our Web site at www.ridemetro.org and click on the Take One icon.

I've upgraded the forum software to the latest version. As you can probably tell already, a few new bugs cropped up. I'm working on them and will post progress reports here and on the Twitter feed.

HAIF does not have the ability to freeze your cursor. Your operating system controls the cursor, not the web page.

The search function in the new HAIF is slower then the old one. The old one was farmed out to Google. But since Google isn't as friendly with the new HAIF as the old, search has been taken in-house. There is a chance of implementing a new type of search software for HAIF that's supposed to be speedier and better, but there are some more fundamental flaws I have to deal with first. So... yeah, search is slower than old HAIF. But everything else should be pretty much the same speed.