Science fiction writers beginning with Arthur C. Clarke have put forward the idea of a “space elevator” that could lift things into orbit far more cheaply than by rocket. The idea surfaces again from time to time; if I had the money, I might make a Long Bet that we’ll see one of these within 25 years or so.

I went to a lecture last Friday by David Orr, who teaches Environmental Studies (nee’ architecture) at Oberlin. He’s one of those that belive that the environment is the issue of the 21st century, and that everything else — including global economic and social health — stems from sustainability and minimal-impact human presence on the land. The theme of this month’s Metropolis is “Architects Pollute” — a design “manifesto” for architects, designers, planners and builders to help lead the transition to a sustainable economy. This article isn’t available online, but they have posted a good interview with Jeff Speck, the new Director of Design for the National Endowment for the Arts. Jeff was former director of town planning for Duany Plater-Zyberk, the founders of the New Urbanism movement.

The Economist reports this week on the latest progress in the project to install massive gates protecting Venice from high water… And I’m thinking about doing a paper on “third-wave” tourism in small towns in Baja for one of my classes this semester.

Other than that, I’m exhausted. Taking four classes, along with local work and AdMonsters, and trying to have a personal life, is beating me up. My free time at this point is down below the threshold of recharge. We’ll see how long I can keep that up.

I might have joked about DWR, but if you do love design you’ll understand why Design Within Reach has met with such success. DWR makes good, thoughtful design easy to find — mostly in furniture, but founder Rob Forbes also writes a weekly newsletter that makes remarkably good reading (if you’re into this sort of thing). While the topics are often product focused, he often covers urban design topics as well — see these articles on Cinque Terre, and transit design in Portland and San Francisco.

Metropolis has long been the magazine for those interested in architecture, design, planning, and related fields — although it’s focused on physical design, Metropolis often carries great writing on urban planning issues. More recently, Dwell is much more of a consumer mag focused primarily on residential design, but often with good writing about urbanism, planning, neighborhoods, etc… You can complete the design circle by furnishing your loft with the latest repros from DWR. Consumerism aside: launched earlier this year, The Next American City is concerned with topics “including but not limited to transportation, urban economies, planning and development, architecture, housing, environmental issues, labor issues and workforce development, education, crime, and religion…” with tone suitable for both professionals and educated ‘civilians’ interested in planning, land use, and urbanism. Check it out!

What’s wrong with Internet Explorer? Although I don’t have a categorical anti-Microsoft bias, it does seems that, given their overwhelming share of the brower market at this point, MS doesn’t have much incentive to develop innovative browser features or even to work on improving IE’s performance. I’ve looked at Opera on and off over the years, and the latest version is pretty slick. While the Google Toolbar gives you integrated search and popup blocking in IE, Opera adds tabbed browing and (seemingly) improved performance, as well as better (and fully customizable!) keyboard shortcuts and a bunch of other features without any real side effects. As nice as Opera is, I thought I should check out Mozilla too. It appears that the main Mozilla development track is being deprecated in favor of Firebird, a streamlined browser-only product that doesn’t bother with integrated email and a bunch of other jive. Firebird essentially claims to offer many of the same benefits as Opera, and is freeware as opposed to adware (my main annoyance with Opera being that it wastes a huge amount of space displaying an ad banner when running in “free” mode — understandable of course). It took me an hour or so of low-level hacking to customize Firebird to duplicate my favorite Opera keyboard nav features (z=back, x=forwards), and I had to install the TabBrowser Extension to make tabs work propertly, but with that done, it seems to work pretty well. It seems quick, but Opera still seems faster — although that may just be a perceptual artifact due to Opera’s busier feedback UI. At this point, I’m going to try Firebird as my default for a while, before I shell out the $29.95 (well, $20 with the student discount!) for the ad-free version of Opera.

Here are a couple of other Opera vs Firebird comparisons:

   http://nontroppo.org/wiki/WhyOpera
   http://www.flux.org/pipermail/linux/2003-July/013175.html
   http://www.tntluoma.com/opera/beyond30/2003/08/opera_vs_mozilla.html

I must admit, sometimes I feel a little self-conscious about my bright orange Vespa. But sometimes the wisdom of my choice is redeemed — last week, I got not one but two “cool scooter” comments in a single day! Now, you might think it’s amusing that both came from girls under the age of ten, but hey, I’ll take what I can get. Today I actually got two more “cool Vespa” comments — from adults this time. And I think there was one yesterday — the second soccer mom “nice color!” comment. I’m going to start keeping a tally…

Yeah, I know, I know, what’s an I-20? Well, an I-20 is the smallest of the scow family, a 20-footer with a fractional sloop rig and an asymmetrical spinnaker. Basically an “I” is very similar to an E-scow, but easier to rig and sail — it’s designed for a 2-person crew, as opposed to 3+ for the “E”. I skipped out of work today to find 10-15+ knots of wind, 70 degrees and perfect blue sunny skies — an absolutely beautiful day on the lake here in Madison. We had a south breeze, and so I set the spin straight away and before long we were planing at 15+ and surfing the little wind swell on a broad reach off Maple Bluff. I was getting ready to douse and head back upwind when my hiking strap broke, dumping me ass-first into the drink — luckily, still rather warm (that won’t last much longer). I came up laughing, everything intact, to see the boat gybe around and broach with the spin by the lee. My crew scrambled around but couldn’t depower the spin or highside or steer before the thing went over… and so I learned that when a scow goes over, it fills up very very quickly! We righted the boat, collected the loose parts, and hung on while “Harvey” the tow boat made her way down the lake to give us a ride back to the boathouse. Give the lack of freeboard, it would have been very difficult — but perhaps not impossible — to bail the boat out and get her sailing again on our own. In any case, I got the ride of the summer and had a very amusing (and educational) crash. Fan-fucking-tastic.

PS. bit of a downer in that I have fiberglass itch all over my forearms from holding onto the half-sunken boat. ah, well. at least it was Lake Mendota on a warm fall day instead of howling a gale in the roaring forties with an iceberg bearing down on us.

I had my first official visitor this past weekend: the fabulous, famous-in-West-Africa Alison Brooks. It turns out that Alison has beat me to the planning game (along with all of my other friends), and is busy schmoozing with Calthorpe et al and throwing around “new urbanism” and such like no tomorrow. We hit a few of Madison’s hotspots (yes, there are some): the Orpheum and the Majestic … Tried Cafe Continental again, but the verdict is in: food not good enough, prices too high — and worst of all, ice in my martini. I certainly won’t make that mistake again. Since all of this followed the previous night out at a similar series of bars, lounges, and basement speakeasies (none of which I can remember the names of), Sunday was for napping at the local “beach” (read: lawn abutting lake), and then 7pm bloody mary brunch at the Weary Traveler.

Last night after class I went down to the boathouse with Ezra and ran into my man with an E-Scow rating Andy. Days are getting shorter: we hit the water as the steam whistle blew, which means you’re supposed to be back at the dock in ~45 minutes. We put up the chute and ran out into the middle of the lake… with clear air, the wind picked up to 10, then 12… then 15 at least. With only three guys on the boat, my instinct was to run off and plane like crazy, which we did — until it started getting dark and the sheriff came by… We made it back to the dock just as we lost the last light. It turns out that Ezra’s great-grandfather actually designed the original E-Scow!

If you haven’t discovered him already, Mark Morford is a genius. Beats the pants off The Onion (sometimes), and another reason to thank George Shirk for his work at SFGate (even if he didn’t have anything to do with hiring Morford). Check out today’s column: Recall God And Fake Orgasms or another of his recent highlights: Action Figures For Imbeciles, or Pat Robertson, God’s Simp, from the archives.

As the SF Chronicle notes, the experimental traffic circles in the Haight are drawing mixed reviews, and “some S.F. motorists are confused by the devices.” If it’s true that the DPT is “trying to educate people about methods of traffic calming,” then they should make sure that there really is education that goes along with the experiment, so that they don’t succumb to knee-jerk rejection by democratic vote. How about explanatory signs at the intersections, or an article discussing the project in the local paper?

The Bay Guardian has an article on these things this week as well. Visit SFGov to send feedback to DPT.

Interesting article in the Times today: As Suburbs Grow, So Do Waistlines “…The suburban paradox the Witts describe — landed comfort but near-total car dependency — is the subject of a growing debate across the disciplines of public health and urban planning: Is the American suburb, originally conceived as a relaxing alternative to the city, now a contributor to medical problems from obesity to depression and high blood pressure?”

Here in Madison, summer is over. 80’s and 90’s have given way to 70’s and rapidly cooling evenings. I went for a quick sail yesterday in ~30 knots of fall breeze — planing in a 420 is fun, but that’s a lot of wind!