Quoted: New details of how Britain would have been governed in the event of a nuclear war from the 1960s into the 1990s have been disclosed with the publication of the secret War Book. The document, over 16 chapters, gives precise plans and instructions for what would have been done by officialdom during the build-up to an international confrontation and after the bombs started falling.

20 years

Quoted: Since the personal computer debuted in 1971, a Darwin-esque evolution process has lifted the PC from modest beginnings to its current role as an indispensable part of life in the 21st century.

quoted: When we try to resolve the problems of the present, we often look to the past. One chapter from the unfinished past is, without doubt, the project of communism. What can cultural revolution have in common with potential solutions to the current financial crisis? Today the world’s most esteemed economists and sociologists assert that the key to solving the economic crisis lies not in some new mechanical device, but rather in the creativity of as many people as possible and the development of new ideas. The idea of the socialist cultural revolution was, in fact, based on the deliberate education of the masses: on giving them the knowledge and skills they needed to participate as fully as possible in the public affairs of the community.

cool gigantic compoooters. so mod. =}

longass first post. looks like it's going to be some pretty invested reading. =)

Quoted: This is the first post in a series that will explore the possibility of developing some new conceptual tools through which to think through urban design. Blind spot is the first concept in a sequence that will include: attractor, bifurcation, black box, body, canalisation, cascade, cohesion diagram, double articulation, entrainment, friction, front, meshwork, organ, porosity, suspension, damping, exception and interruption. As part of a long standing project that is nearing completion, these words are meant as a bastard dictionary of urban dynamics that appropriate terminology from diverse sources in order to try to redistribute the set of questions we take for granted around the urban.

Quoted: There was flashmobbing during the Hide and Seek Festival last year, in which Hisae and I performed as "shamans" of a sort, alchemizing London into Tokyo via a ritual on the South Bank. Our intervention no doubt inconvenienced a few people and annoyed others -- it was, after all, in public space. But I personally think such "disruptions" are extremely valuable. They bring shamanic practices back from the margins into the cultural mainstream. They devise new rituals and provide solutions to problems like boredom, alienation, the mechanical quality of everyday life in a big city.

Quoted: Antiquities museum hit; fears grow for excavated archaeology. The Antiquities Museum of Gaza, privately founded and run by Gazan contractor and collector Jawdat Khoudary, was badly damaged during Israel’s 22 days of air and land strikes.

Quoted: Art is a type of human expression fundamentally different from the other activities carried on by people in society, let alone by a state. It is a far more individualistic enterprise and has to be conceived -- I almost am tempted to say jealously guarded -- as such. Similarly, the cultural programs carried out by the American government thrive on the individualism and energy found in their respective agencies.