No Money on Free Parking

Apparently there isn't much greenery in Fairfax anymore. According to David Plotz, a reporter for the New York Times, the little grass that exists in front of immigrants houses are being paved over to make room for transportation. Unfortunately, the other locals don't take kindly upon that.

In "A Suburb All Grown Up and Paved Over", Plotz talks about the necessity of the immigrants situation, and how the suburb surrounding them (mostly made up of richer, larger home owning whites) doesn't like the new development. According to the neighbors, the pavement takes away the little amount of greenery that the area has left (which is ironic, since the rest of the foliage has already been paved over to put in shopping malls and housing subdivisions already). After talking a bit about this problem, however, the article goes off on a related tangent. The author analyzes the rapid growth and immigration that is happening to the county, and he likens the whole ordeal to a mid-life crisis the county itself is having. The article is finally ended with Plotz reflecting that things are promising if the worst reaction to this aging process is a little squabble over a bit of grass.

The author projects a confident, well informed vibe all over this story. In the beginning, the text seems a bit condescending and ironic, as Plotz points out that Fairfax's culture and history owes a lot to the automobile (and most of the neighborhoods are named after the beauty they desecrated). In the second half of the article, however, the author starts to reflect over the diversity of the community. The tone here changes to more of a storytelling mode, where Plotz outlines the modern history of the county. Facts are used there (with a couple percentages and fractions), and these facts paint a more positive tone. Diversity, as he argues, is changing the community for the better.














The argument seems ethical, and the facts seem solid. The world view advertised is a rosier, "Lets all get along" kind of view, and the writing at the end seems positive and upbeat. Plotz is on the side of the immigrants here, and I agree with him. the newcomers are getting the most out of the property and land that they own, and they have a necessity in their actions that the old guard doesn't quite understand. I love nature, however, and it's pretty sad that you have to destroy some of that to get by; But I think this is a necessity sometimes, and after the immigrants find some wealth, hopefully that greenery will return someday.

And While We are on the Subject of Labyrinths...

While I was thumbing through People magazine like I normally never do (I wasn't looking to advertisements to blog about, no way), I came across this Toyota ad. (Sorry about the blurry picture, by the way. I had to scan it in.) In this ad, Toyota's new SUV the RAV4 -- which I suppose is an attempted l33tspeak way of saying rave -- is placed right before a huge, foreboding maze of city buildings. The caption is impossible to read in the photo, but this is what it says:

No matter how lost the city makes you feel, it's comforting to know the RAV4 is engineered to handle it all. With Vehicle Stability Control, 166 hp and an EPA 27 MPG hwy rating*, solving the city has never been easier. Learn more at toyota.com/rav4.

Vehicle shown with optional equipment. *2008 EPA-estimated 27 highway MPG for RAV4 4-cylinder 2WD models. Actual mileage will vary. c2007 Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.S., Inc.

The tone of the advertisement is dark, with plenty of shadowy buildings in the labyrinth. The maze paths themselves are lit in order to create contrast against the walls and the dark sky. The SUV itself is given prominent space right in the lower middle of the page; Your eyes are first drawn to the maze, then to the convenient solution sitting on the road right below it. The context and purpose of the ad is simple -- cities are large, complex challenges, so why don't you take them with a powerful, safe, and environmentally friendly car? Heck, even David Bowie would flee in terror from this thing!

Actually, I'm suprised that they didn't mention possible GPS/map finding equipment in this ad, because thats what I would actually want if I'm going to take on Chicago or New York. Why would you need all that horsepower in the city, for instance? Why would you care that the thing has a 27 MPG hwy rating if you will most likely never go faster than 27 MPH in the maze? The ad itself is most likely targeted at younger, suburb grown people (or those who never had to take on city driving), since those who have lived in NYC all their lives probably can deal with the urban jungle. In all actually, it doesn't really matter what specific car you would drive in a metro area, anyway. A small sedan can navigate the streets as easily (actually, probably easier) than a huge honking truck.

Uselessly big cars are overrated anyway, in my opinion. I will probably be in the target zone for this ad in a few years, but as long as there is something cheaper available, I don't really care. Let the stockbrokers have their gas guzzlers, and let me have a simple car with a nice speaker system that can get me from A to B easily. That is all that I need, at least for now.

Night on the Campustown

For such a large campus, it seems to me that we have a relatively small Campustown. Not that we don't have some good places to hang out at south of campus, it's just that there isn't a whole lot to see if you don't want to get drunk off of your seat over the weekend. Sure, we have a few coffee shops, a bunch of Asian food restaurants (probably the most I've ever seen in one particular area, not that it's bad or anything), and one OK pizza place, but the rest of the area seems to be taken up by bars and such. The streets and buildings themselves don't look all that bad, but it could definitely use a face lift. Luckily, it seems like the city of Ames agrees.

There might be some interesting talk in the article, but it seems to be just commentary more than anything else. If anything, the news story seems to deal more with wishes than actually doing anything, although I can see their problems. It would be a big project. The businesses that would set up shop would get very little traffic over the summer, and there would be a large amount of capital involved too. It wouldn't be easy, but there has to be a way, huh?













I would first try to clean up and remodel the place -- not only will it remove a bit of the "place for drunks" stigma, it would make it more inviting for businesses to set up shop. Next, renovate any empty buildings to make them easier to rent for new businesses. A big advertising campaign will be needed to get entrepreneurs to notice these new improvements too. Heck, handing out flyer's to business majors would be a great idea. A couple former students starting up a pizza place would be awesome for everybody involved!

Yeah, there might be a stigma of drunkenness to the place, but that would change gradually as new, unique businesses are let in (although it will always have a bit of that reputation -- after all, it is a Campustown next to a major university). Since the new shops won't get too much business over the summer, the product that they sell will have to be good (and popular) enough to make enough money during the school year. Ideally, whomever finances the project would pitch in with financial incentives and advertising costs, although this might get a bit expensive overall. (You got to spend money to make money, you know?) If things are successful, then eventually the place will change around, and successful businesses will lure more entrepreneurs in to claim a slice of the new financial pie. Of course, a person (or group) that could finance such a task would be hard to find, but I never said it would be easy, huh? Maybe donations by students could help? The University itself? Other local businesses? The city of Ames? Who knows?

This would be a great project for those with the will to do it. If the College of Business gets involved, then we could get some real student involvement too! Hopefully, with a bit of love and care, we can get Campustown back up and running for all of us who don't like to get plastered downtown every week or so.

Cy in Chains

There has been a lot of talk about the chains currently covering campus lately. Quite a bit of the student population seems to be against it, arguing that it breaks up the beauty of central campus and that once again, the campus government (henceforth known in this post as the "Man") is screwing up their land. Stephen Schmidt, one of our political science professors, equates the chains put up around campus "...like drawing a mustache on the Mona Lisa". Heck, a Facebook group about the subject already has over a thousand members and growing! The "Man" seems to disagree -- they say that the fences are to prevent people from trampling the beauty --,although the uproar is enough that they are planning to renegotiate where they will be plopped down, or even at all.

So where do I stand on this big issue? In all actuality, I don't really care all that much -- I thought the fences really didn't look all that bad amongst the foliage (they don't curtain every walkway!), and the ones that do get in my way are easily jumped over by my manly long legs. I can see where this is a big issue for some people, though, since there is a bit of a "The Man's trying to tell us where we can walk!" vibe to the whole story. In my mind, however, there is no real evil villain in this picture; Both sides are trying to preserve our common space in their own specific way. Nobody is going to yell or taser you if you take a nap on the grass. It seems to me that as long as you respect your surroundings and don't make any big mud holes in the middle of the green, then I think you will be fine.













It all comes down to respecting our environment, although the issue is more complicated, like most big issues usually are. Cow paths, on one hand, do look pretty ugly -- but they are a sign of life on the campus, a sign that students do go to learn and live in the place. My old roommate said once that the paved pathways throughout our school were originally cow paths themselves (which pretty much explains some of the stranger trails that you can follow around!) I don't mind the cow paths much as long as they are quick little shortcuts through a small area; If there was a big trail going north-south through the center green, then there would be a bit of a problem.

So yes or no on chains? I err on the side of no, since they can be a hassle to get around (or over), even if I don't mind the ascetics. Here is my only real comment; don't get too mad at the administration over this -- they are just trying to preserve our shared space too!

David Bowie Takes on Jim Henson.

(SPOILERS FOR THE MOVIE)

Oh, Labyrinth. When I looked at the possible films that we could review for this assignment, nothing jumped out at me more than this little feature. I went in figuring that it would be a dorky (but still pretty fun) 80's fantasy movie, and believe it or not, I was completely right. Besides, it had David Bowie in it -- how the heck could it NOT be awesome?

Anyway, the story is about an especially whiny teenage girl (Sarah, played by Jennifer Connelly) who wishes away her baby brother to the goblins. As it turns out, these kind of wishes do come true every once in a while. Realizing her mistake, she jumps into Bowie's little fantasy world to find her brother (and hopefully gets over her whiny emo like behavior while shes at it). All along the way she is taunted by Mr. Ziggy Stardust himself, who pretty much acts like you would expect him to in the film (and he never wastes a moment to pop in a show stopping number while hes at it). Anyway, her quest takes her through an increasingly crazy fantasy world, populated by the somehow familiar distant cousins of the Muppets. Anywasys, she goes through adventure and toail, picks up some wacky friends, gets her head about her, and finally faces down Jareth (Bowie) for the fate of her little brother. It's very touching.


The Labyrinth itself is very dreamlike. Nothing ever happens the way you would suspect, and there is plenty of crazy obstacles for Sarah and company to get past. Her colleagues include a cowardly dwarf (who Conelly finds near the entrance to the place, trying to keep down the epidemic faerie infestation), a gentle giant monster (who can't speak a word of any known language coherently), and a noble bridge guarding fox (who I wanted to see tossed right into the Bog of Eversmelling Bad. Never happened, though.) Her challenges are varied; she will have to get through tricky labyrinth guards, a shaft full of crazily grabbing hands, the aforementioned bog, spooky forests, meat grinding tunnel cleaners, and these weird imp guys that like to toss around their own heads while singing. She doesn't have time for this crap, though; Her true goal is Jareth's goblin castle, and if she doesn't rescue her baby brother in 13 hours she might have a bit of explaining to do back at home. (I SWEAR, he just happened to turn into a little goblin kid!)

It might sound ridiculous, but it's actually quite a fun movie. The denizens of the maze (thought up and designed by Jim Henson, who also directed the movie) are pretty interesting, and they all have their own distinct personalities (they even crack a joke or two). The labyrinth itself is pretty imaginative, and every area that our heroine goes through, again, has it's own personality and flair. The place and the characters are what really give this flick it's charm; without them, it would just be another boring fantasy quest with an annoying heroine and some awful 80's rock/dance/sing along numbers. Yep, even though the songs were written and performed by Bowie himself, the score itself is pretty freaking crappy. The songs all sound very 80's, and while the kids that this movie was targeted to won't mind much, I certainly did. All of the music, for instance, has that distinct 80's synthesizer sound which dates it immediately, and Bowie looks like a 80's rock star through and through (go figure).

One final little thing on Bowie; he plays his role of strange, semi creepy villain pretty well, although I was hoping that he would go a little more over the top then he actually did. (He song and dance numbers were pretty lame, though.) Although he was a pretty memorable villain, he didn't really save the whole ending sequence, which I thought was pretty cruddy. Just falling off of a platform after the heroine rejects you? At least Sarah could have pulled a 300 and kicked him off of the world while yelling something really cool. Yeah, that would have made this movie awesome.

But I guess I'm just rambling now. This isn't a movie for everyone, but those into campy, fun, sometimes over the top fantasy adventures will have a blast. For me at least, it was so weird (and sometimes just bad) enough to make it a worthwhile experience.

Google: the Blog

Blogs are the popular thing to do on the net these days (as evidenced by the fact that we have to make our own and keep it updated!) The activity actually isn't very new: personal sites have existed long before anybody ever thought up the name, but social networking sites made it easier for newbies to jump in on the fun. Without Myspace, Facebook, Blogspot, and LiveJournal (to name a few), we would constantly have to wade through HTML and such to get anything posted (although the option is still there for those who want to dive in). In reality, all that these networking sites above did was to take a galaxy of random places on the web and smash them together with a common, streamlined site layout. It made it easier to contact and link up with your friends and acquaintances, but at the price of a bit of conformity. Still, there isn't a whole lot that separates blogs from just random personal websites after you take away the hype and the built in networking aspects.

In this light, corporate blogs don't make a lot of sense on the surface. Major corporations already have elegantly designed net-homes that can give more information than you would really care to read about their said services. The major drawback to these pages, however, is that they are rather impersonal; they are monoliths to the masses, rather than the closer intimacy of a personal website. I'm guessing this is why many companies are creating their own blogs; They can get out their message with more personality and intimacy than their main site. The blog that I looked at is Google's official blog, which is hosted by Blogger (a service that our own personal blogs are hosted on).

Simplicity is Google's image on the web, so it's no real surprise that their official blog is clean and uncluttered as well. Google's blog isn't any more distinct, in fact, than the multitude of the other sites hosted by the blogger service -- which is a cool little bit of humbleness that makes the journal seem a more realistic and friendly. The articles posted on the site may be a little more formal than most bloggers, but this is offset by the quirky little stories that make it seem a little more homelike. For example, two cool, personal stories are on the front page right now; One a recipe for making Buttercup Squash Soufflé, the other a warm tale about two unexpected baby deliveries that a couple of Google's employees got wound up in.


Google's corporate policy is "Don't be evil", which is a policy that sums up it's blogs world views. While the articles sometimes drift into corporate speak, the text is bit less formal than it could have been otherwise. Most of the articles are about technology that Google has designed, developed or are still working on (which obviously makes sense). Luckily, that's not all that they type about -- there are plenty of articles about the activities that their employees are doing outside and inside of the company. (They deck out their offices with caffeinated soap and binary clocks, or so one article suggests). You can't post comments on their articles, however, which disappointed me; It would be cool to interact with the company on this same personal level.

The Google blog might be a little more formal than most of the sites it shares it's bandwidth with on Blogger, but it still works just like it's brothers -- it gives its information with intimacy and personality. The clean white layout gives it an inviting edge over the cluttered, uglier look of some of it's competitors, and the more relaxed atmosphere of Google's culture really shines through. It's really not bad for a site mostly updated (or so it seems) by middle and upper management types. Overall, it is a well created blog (heck, well enough that I added it to my bookmarks), and it's a neat way for Google to better get out it's message.

When the Levees Broke...

Zep's a good band, aren't they?

Many of my favorite songs by Led Zeppelin are off their forth album. You know, the vinyl/CD that have a few little known, obscure songs like Stairway to Heaven, Rock and Roll, Misty Mountain Hop... OK, every song on this album is a classic rock hit. The best of the bunch (outside of Stairway, my all time favorite song) would have to be When the Levee Breaks.

The song is a sonic masterpiece. The first thing that you hear is an echoing drum and top hat beat (played by John Bonham, the drummer). After a quick few seconds, the song breaks into full force with mega-heavy riffs by Jimmy Page (the guitarist) and a crazily haunting harmonica melody by Robert Plant (the high pitched singer). The harmonica in this song is interesting; the sounds made seem almost like echoing train whistles, almost like a fleet of locomotives going north. The verses are sung in the old fashioned Blues style (A-A-B), and seem to be about a levee. (Apparently, its in danger of breaking.)

As the song sludges on, the guitar and harmonica get even more intense, almost epic sounding. Drums fill in the areas that are not covered by the whirlwind of noise, along with giving a strong back beat to the fiery guitar (and harmonica) solos and the pleading, biting vocals. Everything seems ghostly, almost. Things pick up again near the end, with a big drum roll by Bonham -- and then things get strange. The sound itself starts swirling around, as if in some gigantic blender. Finally, once you had all you can possibly take, the song plops you out into an almost electronic sounding finish. And then you can finally breathe a sigh of relief.














So what does this song have to do with a place? Well, surprisingly a lot; this is actually a cover of a Memphis Minnie song about the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. According to National Geographic, they had a lot of rain down in the Mississippi delta that year (like TEN TIMES as is usual annually!) Anyways, the article states that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built many levees to hold back back the river back then, and the Corps stood by their work, thinking that it would be enough to hold back the river. Unfortunately, they weren't enough to hold back the massive amounts of fluid that would come by that year. After the levees were razed, the Corps forced the local Blacks to rebuild the engineers shattered failures, many of them at gunpoint. This is the place and event that the song is about.

Zeppelins interpretation of Minnie's blues number seems to evoke the chaos of the flood. The music sounds crazy, chaotic and hard, much like the storms and rushing water (and slave camp like conditions for the workers) really were. The lyrics in the non blues sounding verses deal with getting out of the place, and these lyrics are more pleading, frenzied than the relatively quieter bluesy sections. It's quite a hellish place that the music takes you to.

Anyways, the reason I probably like this song so much is the hard blues rock feel that it has with it (as well as its epic sounding qualities, as I mentioned above). The music states it's emotion and purpose well, and in my humble opinion, is probably one of the deeper and more gripping Zeppelin songs. (Of course, most Zep songs are about how great women and Hobbits are, in all fairness.) For me at least, it is a great pleasure to listen too.

EDIT: Just in case you wanted to listen to the song itself... The music is set to pictures of the devastation that Katrina left behind, and I think the combination is very moving. This song really took a whole new meaning two years ago.

Mandatory Cell Phones on Campus? Hmm...

Heres an interesting article that I found while I was browsing Drudge Report -- apparently, one university (Montclair State) is making it mandatory that you must buy their cell phone when you enter their college. This 'school phone', which is Sprint operated, costs $420 a year and is required for all students on the campus to have. You cannot talk long to your friends or family on the device (it only comes with 50 talking minutes a month), although it comes with unlimited text messaging, along with "unlimited campus-based data usage, and student activated emergency GPS tracking".

This is an interesting idea, to say the least. To be positive, I can see where it would be useful. One of the students mentioned in the article state that you can check your email on the thing; another student says that he feels comfortable with it. Heck, you can even call home sometimes to ask your parents for more money, as the article jokingly states.

Anyway, heres what the cell looks like:

It's sounds like a cool idea.

Except for the fact that it costs FOUR HUNDRED AND TWENTY BUCKS.

420 * 4 = another $1680 that you have to pay Sprint (according to the article, the university gets no take in this) just to go to school. A fee that goes right to a corporation! Great!

If this wasn't mandatory, it would be a great idea. The phone itself (and all it's school specific features) would be a good deal to those students that don't already have their own cell. If the phone was free to students (like it is over at Farleigh Dickinson University) it would be a good deal. For those that already have a chosen Razr by their side, this is not a good deal.

The phone also has GPS (although it's student activated) which can be used for emergencies. Again, a nice feature, as long as they don't make it mandatory to have the GPS tracking always on. Then we start having some major privacy issues (I don't want the school to know my whereabouts all the time!)

If Iowa State starts a program like this, I wouldn't like it at all. (But they are not, so no big worry right now). Colleges should try to keep the cost down for their students (lower costs mean more paying kids, you know), and adding fees going to a third party doesn't help out that much. But I guess it's up to the students going to the school to decide if they like this plan or not.