student section for game against cornell

can you spot me?

"This young man was encouraging passersby to join the "American Society for the Protection of Tradition, Family, and Property"—presumably in that order—a Catholic lay organization (heh) whose chief campaign right now is to stop the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." Because what screams, "I'm not gay!" like a red cape?"

Proposal for my Final Project for Urban Studies

For my urban studies class the final project is to do a research project and put it into blog form. This is my topic proposal for the project:

I want my final project to be a study of a specific city that exemplifies the idea that housing should not be the primary objective of developmental projects. Instead, strong and widespread economic growth should be the focus, and with the success of this goal, better housing will follow naturally.

There is a huge focus on providing the people in the slums with better housing, but these texts never address the question of, “if we were to succeed in putting everyone in “better” housing, where would we go from there?” The act of putting someone in a different location or inside a different structure does not necessarily have an effect on their job, their income, their education, their ability to move throughout the city, their political influence, or their potential for socio-economic mobility. New housing has a massive financial cost to the provider (presumably the government) yet it fails to address the root causes for why the poor need these new assistance in the first place.

Public housing sometimes starts dilapidated but even when it starts in good condition there is little political or economic incentive to keep the housing in good conditions. In addition, even if the physical structure is well built, the housing may not meet the most important needs of the people, from the people’s perspective. This disparity between the perceived needs and the actual needs seems to be related to the hierarchy that Davis describes among NGOs.

So far a few cities stand out as possible subjects for the project. In Bangkok, Davis reported that the poor actively preferred their slums to public housing blocks. In Jakarta, the poor complained that the public housing didn’t meet their needs because there was no access to workshop space. Finally, in Lagos there is evidence of the creative energy of the slums and their restrictions because of a lack of infrastructure. Thus far I don’t know enough about these cities to say if they are a good match, so as the semester continues I will continue looking into these cities and keep an eye out for better potential matches.

how schools kill creativity

farm on a roof

I dont know how much truth their is to the stuff the lady in the video says, but the idea is really cool and the views are awesome.

A Farm Grows in Brooklyn...on a Rooftop! from SkeeterNYC on Vimeo.

mmm lobster roll

This comes from a vimeo profile that has lots of other little videos about local tasty food makers.

The Underground Lobster Pound: A Purist, An Apartment & The Perfect Lobster Roll - *food curated* from SkeeterNYC on Vimeo.

internship fair

Tomorrow there is a internship fair on campus and amongst the mass of investment banking firms there is the biggest branding consultancy in the world, Interbrand. I looked through their website and they do consulting for companies like BMW, Prada, and Nikon among many many more. We'll see how they respond when I go up to them and tell them that I am perfect for the job and they must give it to me.

interbrand.com

new cleats!

what a cool person!

amazing tv ads from the last couple weeks

These two ads are very different, but both are extremely effective. They both give that butterfly feeling I get when I see something that really clicks. There's currently a better audi ad on tv but I couldn't find a clip of it. Sorry, can't make the video fit in the screen!

profile type photos

These are really great photos to accompany a profile type article. I don't always like photo-shoot type portfolios but these feel a lot more artistic than typical PR stock photos.

I didn't read through the words that accompany the photos so I can't vouch for writing.

http://streetetiquette.com/sewn_from_the_soul/SewnFromTheSoul.html

matt and kim

this link is a video of a whole 30 minute concert of Matt and Kim playing at an outdoor concert in Brooklyn two summers ago. They're so cool. The video gets you really excited cause of how awesome they are, and then sad that you aren't there right now.

http://www.baeblemusic.com/concertvideo/McCarrenPark/MattandKim.html

urban studies blog

My urban studies class has this website where every week we are supposed to post an image that relates to the class. There are a lot of really interesting photos of slums, urban landscapes, etc. so over time the site should have a nice pile of photos to check out. Nothing is posted yet, but the first batch of photos should be up by tomorrow.

http://urbanism.posterous.com/

the photo is the cover of one of the books for the class.

view from my couch

barcelona

So when I was doing this in illustrator the graininess of the image was a lot more evident and it looked really grungy and old and nice. When I saved it as a pdf it became a lot cleaner and the circles and stuff became clearer and more obviously made in illustrator which I'm a little disappointed about. At some point I think I'll try it again and make the original photo in photoshop a lot grainier so the illustrator work remains more hidden.