[UPDATE: Pratt Administration has stated that next year will be the last year (not this year) for the steam whistles, at Conrad’s discretion!] For the past 50 or so years Chief Engineer Conrad Milster has been setting up steam whistles at Pratt Institute’s campus in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn on New Year’s Eve. It is a […]
Archive | December, 2013
Income Rising?
I was reading this article on Bill Moyer’s website, which is essentially following up on a Pew Study which indicates in very broad terms that educated people tended to see increases in wages over the past 20 years. Many commenters responded by saying they hadn’t seen those sorts of increases. I too haven’t seen them […]
Counting the Carbon Foot Prints and Changing Our Behavior!
In a recent discussion with a planner the question of over-consumption came up and how it impacts the health of our planet. It is understood that we consume more raw materials than a sustainable eco-system can provide for. In 2007 our (global) Ecological Foot Print was 1.5 planet earth, i.e. we consumed earth’s resources 1.5 times faster than the earth […]
What if Steve Jobs was a housing developer?
A recent Urban Land Institute (ULI) conference posited a question to a panel of developers: “What if Steve Jobs had been a residential developer?” This question attempts to get to the root of disruptive technologies which could be applied to the housing industry, a business sector which has remained relatively unchanged since the mid-20th century […]
Architecture of Love and Death (part II)
This is the second, and last post, of Architecture of Love and Death. In the first post, I proposed that Egyptian pyramids were built in preparation of Death for their nobility, while Muslim mausoleums such as the Taj Mahal were built by family members out of love and devotion for the deceased. Islamic orthodoxy frowns upon building permanent structures over graves, fearing […]
Creativity
Thanksgiving was a time to take stock of the good things in one’s life. Some of the things I am thankful for (beyond the usual health/family/friends items) include: having some sort of sense of humor, and having had multiple opportunities to work with creative people. One of those creative people I have had the pleasure […]
