Carnival of the Architects and Urbanists, Second Edition

Welcome to the second edition of Carnival of the Architects and Urbanists! Since posting the first edition I have discovered even more blogs writing about the above-mentioned topics and I am still amazed that few have thought of starting similar kinds of carnivals. Anyway, let’s get started:

• As some of you may or may not know, the discipline of architecture is not known to be high-paying. It’s not uncommon to find firms who get away with not paying recent graduates. Partiv explores this case with one up-and-coming international firm, while Progressive Reactionary adds his own thoughts to this practice. My own view is that this is an endemic and abusive practice, but I can’t help thinking that it comes from certain architects’ perception that what they do is more of an art than a paid business service.


• For a fascinating example at the cross between architecture and contemporary philosophy, Pen(-lex/-sieve) is worth your visit. The writer makes an interesting point regarding the role of nostalgia in buildings:

Honesty demands I recognize that my love for certain places and even certain people is really a love for the past, a mnemophilia. Nostalgia assigns value, selecting and coloring "facts". There is, however, a kind of paradox implied by nostalgia -- it is at once a yearning and a denial of time.

• The popular architecture blog “A Daily Dose of Architecture” reports on the latest developments regarding the planned tallest building in Chicago designed by Pritzker winner Santiago Calatrava. Here are some of my additional thoughts on the Fordham Spire.


• Architectnophilia talks about his favorite architects by using the alphabet. Whether O is for is for O’Gorman or M is for Murcutt, it’s a good way for those unfamiliar with the giants of architecture to learn about what influences young designers today.


• Ever seen a building come to life on a chalkboard? Architecture Sketches shows master Swiss designer Mario Botta do just that for his museum for sculptor Jean Tinguely.


• Young Pong provides brief descriptions of wonderful resources on the contemporary avant-garde as well as on the evolving techniques used in the practice.


• The internet is a useful alternative in investigating the history of architecture outside the paradigms set by master historians like Kenneth Frampton, William Curtis, or Spiro Kostof.


• Andrew L Raimist explores in detail the career of the talented but almost forgotten Saint Louis Architect Harris Armstrong.


• Beyond providing a list of many symposia on design in the world’s elite universities, “Do You Want Some Coffee” (probably a reference to architecture students’s sleepless nights at the studio) discusses the reemergence of ornament in contemporary architecture by way of sophisticated curtain-wall systems.


• For a day in the life account of an advanced architecture student in England, check out Amy’s Diary at Slippers, Spearguns + Archilungs.


• World on Paper shows a nifty project of bringing a ruin to life. There’s also a profound statement by leading light Rem Koolhaas as well.


• Kinch at Building Big Easy chronicles the debate going on in his hometown of New Orleans between New Urbanist and avant-garde solutions to rebuilding after Katrina. The Dean of the Tulane University School of Architecture has made a reputation as the primary spokesman of those who seek to reinvent the Crescent City.


• Charlotte Bell, a graduate student in interior design, writes about the difficulty in reconciling the verbal with the visual. It’s easy enough to let the drawings speak for themselves, but words are essential in conveying to the client how one arrived at the solution. This is very well done blog that offers readers deep insights into what goes on in the mind of a designer.


• For those who are Francophiles at heart like (my critical essays on France notwithstanding) Louis La Vache serves up nice big helpings of well-researched essays of France’s most interesting people, places and recipes. In his post about the Grand Palais in Paris, La Vache doesn’t mince his words when mentioning Le Corbusier.


• Lawhawk summarizes the latest happenings with the redevelopment of ground zero. It’s easy to forget about that place since the pace of progress has been extremely slow and marred by protests from every conceivable side. It seems that a potentially great space will be frittered away by bureaucratic indecisiveness.


• It’s well known that Anthropomorphism is really big in contemporary architecture today. But sometimes these anthropomorphic experiments seem to go a bit far.


• Knotted Paths takes a look at planning issues in Melbourne, Australia.


• Tropolism is another premier blog about architecture, and this post may hint at the future of redevelopment of older neighborhoods.k


• And finally, don’t forget to visit BLDGBLOG, where Geoff Manaugh posts about a wide variety of subjects, including Vladimir Tatlin’s Tower for the Third International and Louis Etienne Boulee’s Cenotaphe for Newton.

Reclaiming the Word "Illegal"

Last Friday, Chicago hosted a demonstration for illegal immigration. Yes, a rally in favor of illegal immigration including speeches from both the governor and mayor decrying any attempt to stigmatize illegal immigrants. (Governor Rod Blagojevich even used the old, “I’m the son of an immigrant” line.) The focus was HR 4437, The Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005, which immigrants say limits their rights. Technically, a rally demanding illegal activity to be overlooked is no different from having demonstrations for any other illegal act, short of capital or violent crimes. Certainly we don’t see many people protesting arrests made of shoplifters, purse-snatchers, or drunk drivers…yet. But, for illegal immigration, 300,000 people will show up to lobby for it. How has the issue of legality come to be so thoroughly muddy?

I admit the issue has many difficult moral questions to answer. Slavery, too, used to be legal; maybe all immigration will be in time as well. And with immigrants, we are dealing with human beings, not cattle, and we naturally want to be as lenient as we reasonably can. Americans are also somewhat humbled given that we are a “nation of immigrants”, and may feel some guilt about saying who has a right to this land. For Christians, it is hard to ignore the commands, “love your neighbor” and “feed your enemy.” Likewise, the example of Jesus healing the Canaanite woman (15:21-28) and the Good Samaritan (non-Jewish neighbors) are hard to ignore. Aren’t those crossing the American border like the Samaritans and Canaanites, people different from ourselves only superficially and in desperate need of love and understanding? Certainly, no one would deny the Church should defend the citizenship and rights of any in this country legally.

Consequentially, the concept of the “illegal” in illegal immigration has become fuzzy, and virtually no lobby will take on the issue. Business won’t; the economic desire for cheap, non-taxed labor is lucrative. Politicians won’t; the political payoff for looking the other way could be enormous in a close race. The Church won’t: no organized church representing the Body of Christ would ever, or could ever, come out against these poor, migrant workers in search of work. And by this point, if any of these groups did, they would be seen as hypocrites who acted too late.

But before we make any headway on the issue, we must reclaim the word “illegal” when it comes to immigration. A nation without borders is no nation at all, and every one of the above lobbies, especially the Church, should see the projected problems coming our way as we refuse to call illegal action illegal. This numbing of language creates an atmosphere of nuance legalese and subsequent distrust of the law. Even those opposed to illegal immigration may very likely begin to live in a way less respective of the law, just by observing the way major institutions ignore it.

So the Church, in fact, has a great responsibility to call any illegal action illegal, even if it is against our neighbor. To not do so undermines the understanding of church and state that has formed over the centuries, which is that they are both ordained of God, and for good order, must both be obeyed. Roman Catholics have the principle of subsidiarity, which understands the individual responsible for himself first, and the federal (or world) government responsible for him last. Reformed churches talk of sphere sovereignty, and Lutheran churches speak of the Two Kingdoms theory. All effectively say that government and the rule of law should be respected, as should the weight the Word and Church carry with them.

Yet, the Church is lobbying against any notion of making illegal immigration a point of conflict, a conflict they say would push immigrants, especially illegal ones, to the margins. This “social gospel”, though, threatens the security of the nation and the basic ability to claim sovereignty as a nation. It doesn’t mean that the church cannot visit all persons who commit crime in prison, attempt to provide better economic opportunities for those in corrupt countries, or provide a visa for those who want to work in the United States. It does mean that to undermine the law is a grave mistake, one that will inevitably lead to a disrespect for the law as a concept first, and a disregard for the law in practice second.

The Visual Boredom of the College Campus

It’s been quite a few years since I stepped into a semi-rural university campus, where the setting felt more like an elegant park carefully framed by pseudo-historic buildings. These campuses can be surrounded by a dense city (such as Rice University in Houston) or within small towns like most small liberal arts colleges. In both instances the sense of isolation from the surrounding urban reality is pervasive—whatever takes place on campus is unimaginable if it happened anywhere outside the boundaries of the campus. The detachment brought about by its serene landscaping and its dignified architecture serve to induce the sense of being an almost utopian environment, disengaged from the chaos, noise, and dynamism of the dense cities that surround them. Even in smaller towns that host small colleges, there is a clear distinction made between the members that belong to the campus and everybody outside (or “townies” as we called during my undergrad years).

These little principalities permit the administrators tremendous freedom to control the environment within, either by policing the leisurely activities of students or by determining in precise detail the look of the campus and how it effects future development. Typical urban entities could never wield the degree of influence these administrators wield on the built environment. Individual property rights, the simultaneous flow of commerce, and the preoccupation in generating centers of job growth prevent city leaders and planners from being too prescriptive on how to plan the city. None of the above factors influence campus design, which therefore offers any observer numerous depictions of what many would build in an ideal world where the selfish pursuit of money and power replaced by the far more ennobling task of education and research.

The United States is therefore a haven for these utopian mini-states, since its abundance of land allowed many institutions to take advantage of free land-grants. The thousands of these picturesque little worlds dot the land and testify clearly the prevailing preferences of the educated elite, the students that choose to attend them and what Americans overall expect of what places dedicated to the enrichment of the mind should look like. The most ambitious architects have always dreamed of having a clean slate to impose their own ideal plan of how to organize human settlement. They also yearn to have singular control on how each piece of the plan is designed at every level of detail. And what could be better for a designer than not to have to worry if the plan encourages vibrant economic life, only to create as poetic an assembly of built forms on a landscape as possible? Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe and renowned Texas architect O’Neill Ford had the fortune to do just that with interesting results, revealing the limitations of their style when applied consistently from building to building.

What these Modernist efforts reveal about the drawbacks the built environment on college campus are also applicable to places defined by more historicist styles. Last weekend I found myself at Southern Methodist University north of downtown Dallas attending an even there. I took the time to wander around the campus, to walk into its more notable buildings (e.g. Dallas Hall) and to generally orient myself to a place I had never really known after all these years. SMU is representative of the qualities of American campuses that I listed above: isolated from the reality of the city, beautiful manicured lawns with trees, and carefully maintained buildings that exhibit a singular historicist style (Georgian Colonial) of strict scale and proportion. New academic buildings under construction seemed to faithfully follow the prescriptions set by the university master plan, reinforcing architectural conformity sought by almost every other college campus.

And it was precisely this oppressive architectural conformity typical of campuses that instilled a sense of uneasiness in me during my excursion through SMU. On the one hand architectural coherence is a good thing in that it lends a recognizable identity to the university to people outside the campus. Yet on the other hand this sameness was kind of oppressive, the monotony in the repetition of materials and architectural elements turn the buildings into indistinct massive elements that merely frame the spaces. For someone unfamiliar with the place, finding a particular building from a map becomes a challenge when they all look eerily alike, and one can never tell what function is going on inside (ironically a common complaint against Modernism). The powerful architectural conformity of the Georgian style do indeed endow the campus a sense of timelessness, as if every building had been built together at once. Beyond the few modernist eyesores small colleges indulged in decades ago, time stops in a campus—the passage of time, of changing taste of distinctive built artifacts is suppressed or even demolished for the sake of maintaining conformity and even reestablishing a dignified tradition that wasn’t there in the first place (my alma mater decided to tear down this one-of-a-kind Star-Trek style food commons and build a new building on top more in keeping with the prevailing Richardsonian Romanesque style of the campus.)

My impressions do not imply that the campus is ugly. To the contrary, college campuses are among the most attractive built environments anywhere, a fascinating extrapolation of traditional English campuses into desirable places that successfully pull in many ambitious students to enroll and hoping for an enriching experience in an idyllic setting. Much of the architectural detailing, the execution in employing the vocabulary of the historic styles (e.g. Classical, Gothic, or Romanesque) is well done, while the Beaux-Arts-influenced landscape plan ensure pleasantly proportioned spaces and monumental axes. Yet the mere fact that it is all ‘beautiful’ still leaves out an important aspect that is vital for me to make a place enjoyable to be in—something I would call ‘possessing interest’. What is meant here is that I desire an environment to offer something unexpected, fascinating, ironic, embodying subtle tension. The liveliest urban environments in the city downtowns contain this in droves, in which each street, alley, and building reveals itself in unexpected ways. In such dynamic places, unlike buildings sit side by side, their juxtaposition suggesting all sorts of meanings. The contrasting building style on a busy city street document the passage of time quite vividly, each land plot containing a story of its own unlike those built for college purposes. Far from dissolving into this nondescript mass that serves to enhance the landscape, the heterogeneity of the urban block generate a sculptural cityscape, a hierarchy of masses and surfaces that give a community a unique visual identity. College campuses share these attributes, but usually in a tightly composed plan that borrows heavily on rules of design inherited from baroque and neoclassicist planning principles. The resulting visual austerity contrasts significantly with the un-composed, unplanned, and chaotic liveliness that make urban spaces exciting to be in. Urban university campuses like the University of Texas in Austin share this quality, which makes for more dynamic public spaces within and more architectural ecclecticism which lend the place an aspect of authenticity.

Reflecting on my response to SMU’s architecture led me to realize the futility of having one designer designing an environment as broad and complex as a college campus, much less an entire city. Ceding complete control to one designer for such large scope projects will yield an undesirable monotony to a place that induces an uneasy sense of calm. The quality of the individual design of each building suffers, often revealing the limitations of an architect’s stylistic toolbox across a large group of structures (e.g. Mies at IIT). An environment can only become enriched by the interplay between distinct buildings of various periods, endowing each with its own integrity. The result of encouraging architectural heterogeneity may not necessarily produce the kind of beauty promised by more rigorous design rules, but they are certain to generate interest (at least to an architecture geek like me.)

Family Chic

I know the conservative blogosphere prides itself on its on being above the pop culture frey, leaving that to tabloids and celebrity magazines. We are interested in ideas, cultural trends and political issues, and tire quickly of quips like “splitsville” and “fashion feux pas”. For many of us, the decadence of celebrity culture may be a sign that our culture is, in some sense, sick, infatuated with people of little talent propped up for superficial reasons. But it is hard to deny that pop culture reflects the values and mores that culture deems relevant; after all, it is popular. So I watched with some interest as two pop divas seemed to be in competition over who could create a family life first.

It is interesting to me that Jessica Simpson’s career was successful, but unremarkable until her television show, “Newlyweds.” Here was a show that celebrated marriage and presented an honest approach to what married life was about: moments of joy as well as moments of annoyance. Though the show garnered high ratings in part because of Jessica’s ditzy blonde routine, I also have a suspicion that viewers were glad to see celebrities sharing their own values towards marriage and family, even if it became clear later that this couple might not be the best of role models. The show combined the celebrity lifestyle with the hopes that so many of us have: to be married and contribute to the family tree.

Then there is the Britney Spears pregnancy and subsequent marriage, a career move I am convinced was a rebuttal to Queen Jessica taking over the pop throne. Some say I’m crazy, but I wouldn’t doubt that it was a shrewd professional decision more than a biological clock ticking. Either way, Spears produced a television show of her own, not about her career as much as her love life. The whirlwind of falling in love and starting a family was, again, thought to be wonderful television fodder. Her show happened to flop, and now charges about her being an unsafe mother have made it difficult for her to cash in on any public support she may have earned by being a mom.

But I’m not interested in the details as much as the fact that somewhere along the way, having a family came to be seen as something of a cool thing to do. Granted, celebrity marriages (and divorces) have always captured the public’s attention, but I don’t remember two starlets in the prime of their fragile careers parading the family life to this extent. It’s one thing to be married; it’s something else when that becomes a cornerstone of your career, the plotlines for your television show and sole reason for gracing “People” magazine. Somewhere along the way, traditional values became cool again. Marriage, family, kids and values that accompany them like commitment, sacrifice and honor were prized over independence, selfishness and carelessness. Well, at least they were for a short while.

Now, this does not mean that these values found particularly good vehicles in Simpson and Spears. In fact, the defunct marriage of Simpson suggests that, as many in Middle America might have suggested, traditional values and the celebrity culture lifestyle just can’t be combined. Which, in a way, is my point: the concept of family has become chic, but the actuality of marriage and raising children is still very much at odds with celebrity culture. Marriage and parenting are often unglamorous, thankless and self-sacrificing jobs, three concepts celebrities have little familiarity with.

Something is chic because it is stylish for the moment, but not necessarily any longer than that. Family chic represents a style that says one of the things that’s cool now is the family life, but the real stuff of family life, the hard stuff, seems to be inconvenient. Movies that highlight if not celebrate adultery like “Brokeback Mountain” call into question those old-fashioned values of commitment and self-sacrifice while honoring values like “being true to yourself.” This is not the stuff strong families are made of.

Muslims and Materialists: What They Have In Common

Though both would likely deny that they are much alike, Muslims and materialists hold one cultural linchpin so closely in common, they resemble each other more than they imagine. Both groups do not recognize Jesus as the physical manifestation of God, a claim that allows one group to follow the teachings of Mohammad and the other able to live decadently. (By Muslims, I do not mean a faction or the loud minority that is under such scrutiny, but the doctrine of Islam, applicable to all Muslims. By materialists, I mean the non-religious, possibly the generically spiritual who do not adhere to any doctrine, and tend to reject any claim of absolute Truth.)

In a culturally Christian nation like America, materialists (or secularists) disregard the divinity of Jesus, but not that he ever existed. (This, of course, is their right, and I in no way would want to infringe on that right.) In what may be an effort to make up for the fact that they don’t believe in Jesus’ divinity, they often attest to the wonderful teachings of Jesus, acknowledging his compassion, love and even brilliance. While they don’t tend to see the teachings as authoritative, per se, they see them as top-notch. His death was something of a tragic accident, a political misunderstanding between some Jews and Romans and not much more. Ironically, seeing Jesus as a mere teacher makes his teachings worth very little to us, because the character of the teacher is never legitimated.

In Islamic doctrine, a similar disregard for the divinity of Jesus takes place, albeit for a different reason. Islam rejects the Christological assumption that Jesus was God, the Word made Flesh, because there is only one god, Allah. They reject the teachings of St. Paul and especially the gospel of John, the gospel that makes the most claims about the divine and eternal nature of the person of Jesus. In essence, they have chosen to ignore parts of the Christian canon, a canon that had been established almost 300 years before the prophet Mohammad. Islam does regard Jesus as one of the great prophets, which, of course, he was. They recognize his birth from Mary, his moral teachings and authority. But they don’t recognize his death on the cross as a salvific act. (I believe they actually don’t believe he died on the cross, but sometime later. I may be wrong about that.) Ironically, seeing Jesus as a mere prophet makes his prophetic teachings worth little to us as well, because they don’t come from God, but from man.

Both groups concede that Christ was “a great teacher.” But he was much more than that. For Christians, he was a savior, an intermediary between man and God, a person who would forever change the relationship humanity would have with any god, or God. The problem with the view of Jesus as only a great teacher is that if Jesus was a mere teacher, he was one of the most bizarre teachers in history. He was always talking about this new kingdom of God that was on the way, the final judgment, how he and the Father were one, and all sorts of other strange ideas. Surely no great Ethics or Philosophy professor would be considered great the moment he started to prattle on about his divinity, his upcoming death and resurrection, or the upcoming reign of God. He wouldn’t be great; he would be nuts.

As usual, C.S. Lewis puts it best. This is from “Mere Christianity”:

”I am trying to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: “I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.” That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

This alienation of Jesus as only a teacher allows materialists to disregard his teachings, because they’re just a series of good teachings, no different from Plato or Aristotle. This leads to a lifestyle religious fundamentalists often find offensive: decadent, amoral, relative. And because Islam does not have the ability to regard Jesus as the final prophet, it is at the whim of Mohammad’s prophecies, which include the teaching that those who are not believers are infidels, a religious dogma materialists would find offensive. Yet, I would argue both offenses are born out of not taking who Jesus was at face value, and saying exactly what C.S. Lewis said not to say: that Jesus was a great moral teacher, but not God.

Did the Impressionists Invent Modern Architecture?

Dallas and Fort Worth are blessed with a few of the country’s best art museums. Even with the impressive contributions by Renzo Piano and Tadao Ando, it is Louis Kahn’s Kimbel Art Museum which has garnered the most affection by locals as well as by architectural critics since its completion in the early seventies. The building is quite modest in size, which allows the art within to be exhibited at an intimate level. The travertine walls and the smooth concrete cycloid vaults above create a comforting and familiar environment counter to most museum’s blank white walls and ambiguous natural lighting. If it weren’t for the art within, most art museums seem to suffer from bland and obscure spaces, lacking tactile quality, and providing no way to encourage a meaningful relationship between the viewer and the architecture.

Last week I made my way to Fort Worth to see the Paul Gauguin exhibit. It showcased his early work before producing his better known Post-impressionist paintings. The exhibit was therefore a show of impressionism through the efforts of one man; how his style was influenced by the great masters of the genre and how he diverged towards his own style. Like most amateur art lovers, I enjoy Impressionism for its simple beauty and its celebration of natural phenomena like light and wind that seem to enliven the most mundane subjects. Gauguin’s impressionistic efforts were descent, but not remarkable compared to his friends Pissaro and Monet and even Cezanne. Still, Gauguin’s gentle tendency towards greater abstraction revealed in these early works made me realize another thing I liked about Impressionist painting, particularly during the latter phase of the movement.

The paintings revealed a simple truth about our environment: all that we see around us is merely an assembly of volumes, colors and textures bathed in light and air. What was painted still mattered, but their significance and meaning was deliberately more ambiguous, with the painter instead focusing on abstraction through technique.

Cezanne, more than his follower Gauguin, was a master of revealing the visceral world as the interplay of masses, surfaces and light. It is no coincidence that his paintings inspired the first Cubist painters, even as most of the public prefers Cezanne’s representational style of familiar scenes over the aggressively fractured abstract compositions of Cubism. Still, Gauguin’s efforts were enough remind me what importance this has on my preferences regarding art but particularly architecture. His streetscapes and landscapes depicting village rooftops and gardens have this reassuringly pleasant quality about them, as if to make me realize what an ideal architectural and urban space should be. I am not saying that we should imitate the French village and architectural vernaculars of the nineteenth century, but rather learn from the organic and harmonious interplay between nature, solids, and color and the effects of light. If you stare at the paintings long enough, you get lost the repetitive rhythms of primary shapes, of suggested textures, and rich shadows. It’s as if the world were made a singular kind of quilt that could be manipulated to look like any kind of surface imaginable but also maintain an unchanging quality that visually ties all the surfaces together.

It’s important to remember that such abstracted scenes tend to draw the viewer into imagining ideal places. There was much in those painting that were not presented as they did not serve the artists’ compositional intentions. But it was those very abstractions that permitted the viewer to notice our surrounding environment as a phenomenological event, the constant interaction of primary natural elements and forces. The tendency towards greater abstraction in later art led to nature being depicted as an abstract composition of forms, not as an intelligible combination of phenomena. Forms in all their abstract glory took precedence over objects, over forces in nature, as fragments of suggested objects floated, and depth and shadow became elements to be manipulated regardless of the way the viewer sees the world around him or her.

The ascendancy of abstract art at the beginning of the twentieth century foretold the imminent rise of the Modernist school of architecture. Abstraction became a fundamental part of the strategy towards creating a new way to build, emphasizing surface, materiality, and volumes and the interplay of planes and solids rather than the superficial dressing of a façade that wraps a simple masonry box. It makes sense that the earliest Modernists dabbled in painting, often producing Cubist-inspired works. Le Corbusier himself was as much a disciplined painter as he was an architect and deeply engaged in the avant-garde art world of Paris in his time. His Cubist explorations, along with his original observations during his travel as a youth, led him to declare about architecture which was just as true about late Impressionist art:

“Architecture is the masterly, correct and magnificent play of masses brought together in light; light and shade reveal these forms; cubes, cones, spheres, cylinders or pyramids are the great primary forms which light reveals to advantage…”

Were the Impressionist masters therefore the first Modern architects? Some of Gauguin’s paintings I saw as well those of his contemporaries (Monet’s study Rouen cathedral) seem to suggest that they helped shape the preoccupation of architecture in the twentieth century. It was from the drive to create buildings as abstractions for abstraction’s sake, with little regard to nature that Modern architecture became unpalatable to the general public.

No Child Left Behind Leaves Children Behind

Contrary to what our embattled president is saying, No Child Left Behind is leaving plenty of children behind. Though I support Bush and believe him to be honorable, I cannot support No Child Left Behind, mainly because it reeks of politics, not an honest effort in improving education. In the 2000 presidential election, W was insistent that every child in America would get an adequate education. But in the political arena what else can a presidential candidate say? A candidate can’t say, “Well I believe that all children in America deserve an education, but let’s face the facts. Some of you have children that are just ill-equipped to receive a quality education, and should plan on careers in manual labor.” (Of course, this would be spun as bigotry for George Bush, but for Al Gore it might have been a gutsy statement by a gutsy guy who can level with the American people.)

With this new philosophy, test scores would be raised and bad schools and teachers would be held accountable. This makes for a great sound byte, but what are the unintended consequences? Here are a few: Power is taken out of the teacher’s hands and put into the hands of administrators. Teachers are made to teach for a test and children don’t receive all of the education that they need. The only thing that matters at the end of the day is the test scores. Many teachers go into teaching not for the glory or the money (though it is true the unions will never admit to this). Many teachers teach because they like working with children and want to influence their lives, but now, teachers can’t make individual decisions to teach to the child’s strengths.

Like all government institutions, the Education system is entirely too top-heavy. This is where misguided ideas like “No Child Left Behind” come from. Instead of firing leaders who are incompetent and in their position purely from being a “Yes-Man”, the system makes new positions and moves the up to the administrative offices. Principals are no longer the link between the School and the Superintendent of Schools. Now there is a whole litany of “administrators” in the middle that just stamp and pass the paper along.

So what is the solution? The first step is to cut the fat; any private industry that ran this inefficiently would be bankrupt. Red tape has taken over and the politicians will continue to throw money at the problem (solely to enhance their standing with the public) until the public is so outraged that something that might work is done. But like with Social Security, cutting the fat need not necessarily call for cuts first, but for more options with the same amount of money, like vouchers or tax credits.

The real dilemma here is that there is no place for parenting in the public educational philosophy in our country. Some parents could care less about their child’s education and only care that their child is out of the house between the hours of 7:00 and 3:00. But worse is the growing mindset that education is a right, and a state-promised one, not first and foremost the responsibility of the parent. Vouchers and the explicit recognition that choice should exist in education would be a step in placing the emphasis for education on parents before the state.

Would it be possible to go so far as to punish parents who don’t provide education for their children? Since it is illegal for a child not to be receiving an education, could parents be forced to provide education when their children can’t behave in school or keep up with the class through lack of trying? At the end of the year, the child that has been home-schooled still has to take the test and if that child doesn’t pass, the parents are fined. I want to applaud Bush for trying, but if he really wants to help education, he can start by giving teachers their power back in the classroom and allowing them to discipline, cutting the fat out of the education system, and most importantly, holding parents responsible for their children’s failings. Maybe then we will have an education system that leads the world.

This article was co-written by civilserviceman and relievedebtor

Why Self-Help Turns Into Self-Hate

[Full disclosure: my fiancée was one of the winners of Oprah’s Pontiac G6 giveaway cars. She’ll probably be mad at me for writing this.]

Knowing that “Oprah” makes me angry, I try never to watch it. But occasionally, female influence forces the issue if I am to share couch time. I happened to catch an interview with Tracey Gold, former star of “Growing Pains” who has since battled with anorexia and been a frequent guest of Oprah’s. I was reminded what drives me nuts about the show: with self-righteous humility and a vague sense of the spiritual, the billion-dollar hostess offers little that gets one to look beyond themselves. When I read of a future show guest being a woman who had sex with almost 90 people and turned to Oprah for help, I began to believe a friend when he quipped that Oprah was a cult. Does this woman really think Oprah has the answers? Is there no other place she could have turned first, especially a place that is not on national TV? And where will Oprah point this woman to seek help?

All of this navel-gazing is unhelpful, and worse, unhealthy. While presuming to be the shining star of mental health, the self-help movement is an impossibly hopeless venture. It promises a never-ending quest for fulfillment, which must, to people on that never-ending journey, seem like a dead end after a while. If you go to any bookstore, you will notice a gigantic “self-help” section, which always makes me ask the question, “If the self-help movement was so successful, why would it need all of these silly books?” Doesn’t it seem obvious that if self-help worked, we would need relatively few expressions of it? Instead, we keep reinventing the self-help wheel, thinking if we can nail this aspect or that aspect of it down, we’ll finally figure ourselves out.

But we won’t. Even the masters of meditation, Zen Buddhists, would agree with that. There does not exist within us a magical key to turn for personal fulfillment, even as yoga, health food and eastern philosophy crazes come and go. There does exist a vast supply of cheats, walls and nooks that shield us from pain for a certain period of time. But looking for this magical key within us over the course of time will be limited, and all of the self-help in the world will come crashing down. And then, we will hate ourselves all the more. Why? Because we will always fall short of the ”potential” self-help wants us to see in ourselves. Always. It is our nature. It is the condition of original sin, which, whether you believe it or not, seems to have manifested itself enough over the course of history to prove it exists.

Of course, Oprah can never admit this. While she cedes a vague spirituality that is quasi-Christian, quasi-Buddhist, mostly-New Age, if she ever actually owned the precepts of Christianity, her show would cease to have a platform. The same is true for Dr. Phil and even courtroom television programming. (How I long for the days of Judge Wapner…) The advice to people could no longer be, “Look inside yourself and find what makes you happy,” but instead might be service, humility and blessedness, a form of happiness superior to that of self-help. But then, there’s no audience in that, and besides, that’s what churches are for. As someone who works in the church, I find Oprah’s philosophy of self-help to be futile in the end. Oh, occasionally, self-help can be a helpful tool in helping people to see their faults and repent, etc. But if it leads to a path of arrogance that includes the motto, “I can solve my own problems,” it is a dangerous way to view life.

Finally, I am not critical of Oprah for being wealthy. She has made her money the old-fashioned way in a free society, and I know she has been philanthropic with her wealth. I am critical because it is time we recognize the limitations of the pseudo-philosophy of self-help. It is a contradiction in terms and will lead innumerable people down a path no one is capable of staying on for a sustained amount of time, and when they get off of it, they will be too exhausted to examine other options. When they realize their limitations as fallen people, their failed self-help will lead to self-hate. The only bookstore section to help with that dilemma is “Religion,” and I’m afraid the religion of self will have already taken over by then.

What's Wrong with the Military?

Note: Architecture + Morality would like to welcome its readers to a new contributor to the blog, Civilserviceman. A native of north Louisiana and a recent graduate in civil engineering from the University of Louisiana in Lafayette, Civilserviceman spent several years in the U.S. navy as an enlistee. His perspectives from a person who served his country in the high seas will add even more depth to the topics discussed in this blog. Enjoy!-- Corbusier

Years ago it was not uncommon for a judge to give a convicted offender a choice, the Army or prison. Most of the time the convicted offender would take Army life over prison life if the Army would accept him. This is not the case toady. Today if a 19 year old comes in with an ounce of weed he is given a fine and some community service for his offence. Our liberalized society has made the military a bad thing. You have to volunteer to serve your country because your country shouldn’t be able to make you do anything you don’t want. I believe that in some parts of the country, being San Francisco and some corners of the northeast, you would be more respected being in prison than if you served in the military. We can force people into prison but can’t put them in the military. That just doesn’t make too much sense. So why don’t we go back to the ways of the past?

Today the media reports problems within the military in recruiting and retention. I don’t think there is a problem with recruiting members of society to do the jobs in the military that require more intelligence, but the military requires ditch diggers too. I believe that most of the people that are ambitious enough to join the military have a good head on their shoulders and want to do something with their lives. They aren’t druggies and trouble makers in society so they are qualified to do better jobs than the ones that are given to them. I submit that if we were to put some of these convicted offenders to work washing aircraft, painting ships, and doing general maintenance work around bases, the persons who volunteer for the military could be used to their full potential. This is one benefit to putting the petty offenders who are making no contribution to society in the military.

Another thing we must understand is that not all of the people doing bad things in society are bad people. Okay, a lot of them are and couldn’t be trusted to work in Wal-Mart, but some of these people have a lot of potential if they find something that interests them. Taking a 19 year old kid that has done some petty things and putting him in the military would expose this person to things which he has never been exposed. For example, if a kid is sent into the Navy and gets stationed on a ship as a deck hand, that person will be painting, standing lookout watch, hauling lines, and doing other things that need to be done but don’t take a lot of brain power. But, as this person lives on the ship he might find that he is intrigued in the gun systems or propulsion systems. Once being in the Navy myself I know that the opportunity is there to go as far as you want if that is the lifestyle that you choose.

Another benefit to these people is stability. We all know that a kid that is committing crimes at a young age usually comes from a home where there was a lack of discipline and stability. The neighborhood provide no future for these kids and many times the ones that try to better themselves are looked down on and harassed by their constituents. What a tragedy. The military would provide structure and stability for some of these people that have never seen it and remove them from a society that will only push them in a downward spiral. Who knows, maybe if we give a kid a job, he makes a little money, and has something he is proud of there will be a change in that person’s life.

In conclusion, I believe that putting people in the military who have no direction in life, drop out of high-school and don’t work, and generally become a burden on society is a good thing. In essence you would turn a burden on society into a person who serves his society. I understand that not all of these people being put into the military will be successful in the military and maybe only 25% will be, but that’s a lot better than having to keep these people in prisons and pay all their court costs for years to come. If only 25% get their lives turned around that’s 25% less people that will be living off social programs and in a perpetuated state of nothingness. That sounds good to me. Our tax dollars could be better spent by supporting our national defense than by building more prisons and hiring more guards. Maybe some day our country will rid itself of some of it’s liberalistic views and get back to the ideals that made this country great.

The Ports and Education in the UAE

As we all know the United States Ports being sold to the United Arab Emirates are a hot bone of contention in government today. I have been listening to Rush and Sean Hannity for the past couple of days and done some reading online as well. My position is that I trust the President, but there is one question that I have that has not been reported by the press. Is the government in the UAE teaching anti-western views in their public schools? We know that the government of Saudi Arabia supports an anti-western view to be taught in their public schools. For this reason and for this reason alone I would not let the Saudi government attain access to anything that could remotely affect our ports. So does the government of the UAE feel the same?

I have been to UEA, Dubai to be exact. I will say that it is a beautiful country as far as countries go in the desert. They are far ahead of their neighbors Oman and Yemen. The architecture is second to none and the people of that country enjoy a prospering free market economy. The UAE is probably the most like the U.S. of all the countries in the Middle East. There has been debate because some of the September 11 hijackers used the banking systems in the UAE to fund their activities in the build up to September 11, but should we not talk to the Swiss? We know that banking is their biggest commodity and that they give banking support to some of the worst people in the world. So what about them? Also people are talking about the UAE not being trust worthy because some of the 9/11 hijackers traveled to the U.S. via UAE. Well what about the place they stopped in between the U.S. and the UAE? I’m sure it wasn’t a non-stop flight.

The security of the ports will not be lessened by doing business with the UAE. Security will still be controlled by the Coast Guard and the work in the ports will still be done by United States workers. If anything, I believe there will be a higher amount of security as a by-product of the added attention. Although the UAE is a country that embraces a violent religion such as Islam, I believe that the government of the UAE puts this aside in the interest of money. Also, it is not like terrorists to be so public in their affairs. I believe that most of our country is acting in prejudice because the UAE is a Middle Eastern Nation. It is understandable though. The scars from 9/11 run deep, not to mention all the terrorist attacks before and after.

The bottom line is that I don’t believe that the government of UAE is willing to sacrifice what they have in the interest of terrorist agendas. Why spend the money? But, this is the position of the current government in place. If these people are still supporting the teachings of anti-western views then what will happen thirty years down the road? Children are very vulnerable in their younger years and very impressionable. If we look at the Palestinians we see the result of teaching a people anti-western views from the earliest years of their lives. Although I don’t believe that any future government of the UAE would risk or even be successful in an attack on the United States, doing business with a country that condones this kind of teaching is morally wrong. These teachings by a foreign government to their children undermines the efforts of the United States in the War on Terror and promotes the idea that the American government is more interested in establishing business relations than acknowledging the principles that the people of the United States stand behind. National Security and Moral Principles come first.

Choosing the Oppressor over the Liberator

Why is it that whenever a country is saved from a brutal enemy by another country, a sense of resentment arises towards its rescuer? The young French have pretty much forgotten the United States' efforts in liberating the country from its Nazi occupers. Young Germans are unaware that their country is free and democratic because of American efforts in containing the Soviet threat. And now this poll reveals a pervasive feeling of antagonism against Americans among young South Koreans:

Nearly half of South Korean youths who will be old enough to vote in the country's next elections say Seoul should side with North Korea if the United States attacks the communist nation, according to a poll released Wednesday.

Maybe I am jumping the gun and ignoring the possibility that young Koreans simply share more in common with other Koreans on the other side of the demilitarized zone. In a traditional ethnocentric national polity like Korea, it's likely that the unity of the Korean 'race' trumps all other considerations and alliances. As the poll later reveals, most Koreans wish reunification with the North. But I wonder if these youths are being a bit naive on their desire for both Koreas to become one. Having lived in Germany three years after reunification, I was able to observe how the euphoria of national togetherness was replaced by an endless litanny of resentment from both sides. From the West Germans' loathing of having to pay extra taxes for reconstruction in the East to the Easterner's disenchantment with Westerner's snobbery and indifference to their plight, reunification has exacted a heavy toll on everyone. Korea's reunification would pose an even greater challenge than that in Germany, as the disparity in the standard of living between North and South is greater, and South Korea has even fewer resources to sponsor reconstruction. In addition, the collective psychological damage done to the North Koreans will inflict insurmountable hardships on South Koreans who are, in my opinion, very much in the dark about what goes on north of the border.

The poll reveals a lot about what these youths don't know. They seem to be unaware of the excessive famine, brainwashing, expansive political gulags, and illicit weapons development taking place in their northern neighbor. The youths also are completely unaware of who their true international partners are:

The youths named China as South Korea's most important partner for maintaining friendly relations, at 39.5 percent, followed by the United States and North Korea at 18.4 and 18 percent, respectively.

China is North Korea's only real ally, and is also the primary reason that Kim Jong Il is still in power. Not only does China provide North Korea with just enough materials and resources to prop up one the most oppressive regimes in the world and thus ensuring the fragile military tension between North and South. But China had sacrificed hundreds of thousands of its own citizens during the Korean War to repell American-led efforts to unify the country under a democratic government. What angered most about the poll results was the implied ingratitude towards the one nation that guaranteed South Korea the opportunity to prosperous and free. This one nation isn't China, which has tirelessly in the last half century ensured that half the Korean peninsula remains imprisoned under a totalitarian dictatorship. It's the United States, which has deployed over 35,000 soldiers to contain North Korean aggression, that has guaranteed young Koreans to highlight their hair, enjoy their own kind of hip-hop music and take part in their obsession of short-track speedskating. Without the American presence at the border, the young Koreans would have missed out on having hosted the Olympics and the World Cup. The selection of China as their best friend reminds me of polls showing Germans trusting Putin's Russia more than the United States. Somehow they feel more secure allying with a regime that has progressively shut down the press and excluded opposition parties than with one that lets individuals around the world enjoy the fruits (and risks) of freedom.

I have listened quite a lot to the viewpoints of these young Koreans, particularly during my time as a graduate student. They hold a suspiscion that Americans are only in Korea to exert power and influence and could care little about the actual well being of South Koreans. They are confident that they could handle the job of containing the North Koreans by themselves, and anyway the policy of rapprochement with Kim Jong Il will inevitably lead to a joyous reunification. It makes me wonder what these young (and often brilliant) students are told by their teachers and political leaders. There must be a concerted effort among the South Korean political leadership to conceal that true nature of their neighbors in the North. It is obvious that the North Korean political refugees aren't given much of a forum when they make it past the border.

Is it just a natural reaction for the people of a country unable to defend itself at a crucial moment in their history to convince themselves that they were indeed quite capable, but that a foreign power prevented them from proving themselves? It's quite entertaining to listen to Europeans brag about their 'superb' military forces and advanced tactical skills, making it seem that they could have man-handled the Soviets all by themselves. Or that because young conscripted South Korean soldiers repeatedly practice their movements in the event of North Korean aggression, that somehow they could overrun the border and disregard nuclear retaliation.

The desire to believe that one's nation is completely self-sufficient is a strong influence on a person's views about America. If you come from a country that has displayed military impotence and economic disarray, the shame of having a benevolent foreign power revive your country must provoke sense of shame. This in turn incites feelings of resentment, as in "how dare you show how weak I am in confronting my enemies!". I'm sure quite a few Iraqis feel this way, especially when the Americans got rid of a regime in three weeks that the people themselves were unable to depose for several generations. But the Koreans have much to be proud of, and have sorted themselves in an enviable position internationally. From where I stand, any contrarian point of view spouted by a young Korean will be moot. The South Korea of muscular industrial conglomerates, top-flight schools and competitive athletes owes the United States an unending due.

For “catholic” Christians, Old is the New New

If history repeats itself, it’s interesting to be re-living an era for the first time. Liturgical scholarship has paved the way for where the Church will head: into the Past, and with great reverence. This scholarship has pointed to the historical continuation of and new appreciation for very old Christian habits: a meal, a bath, readings from an old book, praying and healing. And now, not just in worship but in lifestyle, some Christians may find themselves reliving the early years of their Christian forefathers and fore mothers.

The reason is very simple. Something else that is old is gaining strength, even if in new ways: persecution. I am not an alarmist, and I don’t want to sound melodramatic. I’m not into shock value, and I rarely engage in conspiracy theories. This new persecution is in many ways not active at all but passive. It finds its voice in many conduits. Here are a few:

1. A media that holds a double standard towards Muslims and Christians. Muslim violence towards Christians (and certainly Jews) is often overlooked, downplayed or ignored. This places Christianity in a defensive position, having to justify its history and doctrines, while Islam is never asked to do the same. Any Christian violence is examined, and a claim of absolute truth is sneered at with flippancy.
2. The assumption of Christianity as culture, not a religious life that asks some obedience, if not total obedience. This is a mild persecution that makes the Christian life one choice of many, a consumerist decision more than a radical faith claim.
3. The effort by some Christians to turn the faith into a business, leaving an orthodox faith to look obsolete, naïve and outdated. These Christians would never want to see this as persecution, but to my mind, it forces orthodox Christians into a place that looks like a medieval dungeon to a world used to mass media and celebrity.

This may not be persecution as much as apathy. Either way, it is slowly causing Christians to look to Church History with more frequency and earnestness. This shows up in many ways, from highly successful Christianity 101 programs (like “Alpha”) at churches to History Channel documentaries on the early apostles to the success of Roman Catholic radio programming like Relevant Radio. (The topics here are not selling WWJD bracelets or promoting the latest Christian rock concert. They are Eucharist, baptism, confession, and certainly political issues like abortion and birth control.) I believe “catholic” Christians are seeing themselves the way they used to be seen in many respects, as household meetings in a community that is doing something obviously different from the community, because the faith is no longer assumed.

This is happening in Protestant communities as they shift from a “membership” model to a “discipleship” model. Christians are starting to see themselves as disciples of the person of Jesus more than members of a local church. This is their response to living in a Post-Christian culture where the faith is no longer the assumption, even if over 80% claim to be Christian. This sort of “ownership” of the faith often finds its common denominator in simple things, old things, things pre-Constantine Christianity considered their defining rituals and lifestyle.

Now, why am I limiting this discussion to “catholic” Christians? The Relievedebtor bias strikes again! From my experience, too many charismatic or evangelical Christians have resisted this subtle persecution in a different way: they have attempted to blend into the culture as seamlessly as possible. (Disclaimer: this is not true for them all, I know it’s painting with a broad brush, etc. etc. etc.) In ways I’ve discussed previously, charismatics have made evangelism a business model. In music, attire, mass media and even coffee shops in church lobbies, charismatics have not reverted to the old things of Christianity, but tried to bring a post-Christian culture into their “new” way of being faithful. My bias is that this is ultimately misleading about what the faith truly is, and will create a cultural Christianity that makes Christians indistinguishable from anybody else. It is often great for behavior modification, but I don’t know that it cultivates a life of faith as well as a creedal and sacramental piety.

In many ways charismatics are indignant about this persecution and offer harsh rebuttals to the world before adopting many of its sales techniques. For that, it deserves some credit. But to my mind, catholic Christians have no interest in turning Christianity into a fad. They have an interest more in bringing the world to a counter-cultural revolution, fueled by water, bread and wine. I don’t mean to sound pietistic or simple; I’m referencing a simple return to orthodoxy more than anything else.

One final thought: if the “clash of civilization” comes to a head and the threat of Islam to the west is taken more seriously, I can see more Christians reverting more quickly back to the “old” things of Christianity. A theology of prosperity will have much less appeal when Iran’s nuclear weapons are headed towards LA or NY.

Why I Like the Winter Olympics

Alright, I’m kind of fed up by all the joking criticism the Winter Olympic Games are getting. From the complaint that everything is pre-taped to questioning of the relevance of particular events like curling, to many people it seems that the games are for the most part a waste of time. Somehow we're better off ignoring sports highlighted once every four years so that we can focus on more exciting team sports like college basketball’s “March Madness” and the beginning of the baseball season. To which I respond with a big ‘ughh!’ Shouldn’t one just let go and simply soak up the unusual and yet fascinating sports once every four years?

It’s true many of the sports featured in the Winter Olympics could never command a permanently large audience like the more traditional team sports. Making a living as a skier, snowboarder or figure skater is extremely difficult, and the only real incentive for competing is for the love of the sport. But just because the sports are neither commercially nor professionally viable does not mean the Olympics can’t offer the more exhilarating action and beauty than anything else out there. The picturesque snow-covered venues for the outdoor events, the dizzying jumps and spins made possible by skates, the gleaming icy surfaces on which permit the body to travel faster than is humanly possible, —all of it is a treat for viewers like me who marvel at the ideals of faster, higher, and ever more graceful. I’ll take any coverage of sports that combine technology, art and precision where I can find it.

Part of the commercial success of team sports over individual competitive sports is the simplicity of the former. To play soccer, all one needs is a ball and ten other teammates. Football requires a ball and the primordial ability to throw, catch, run and tackle. Baseball is about hitting a ball with a big stick and catching the ball with the enhancement of a glove. By contrast, figure skating not only requires you to know how to skate, but to move the body in ways that are only confined by one’s imagination and the force of gravity. Skiing not only requires one to know how to ski (from my own experience, it doesn’t necessarily come naturally) but also the knowledge of how to negotiate icy terrain and calculate the shortest distance. Luge looks easy to many, but if it were, how come so few in the world are willing travel up to eighty miles an hour on ice? Some question the validity of snow-boarding as Olympic worthy, to which I reply: of course it is! Every time I go skiing, at least a quarter of the people on the mountain are snow-boarders, and it isn’t restricted to youngsters. Few even attempt the somersaults featured in the half-pipe events as that skill demands gymnastic talent beyond the mere skill of knowing how to snowboard.

The Winter Olympics provide an aesthetic richness to sport I find mostly lacking in popular team sports. Sure there’s beauty in the perfect throw or goal, but I’m more captivated by elegant forms, whether by the apparatus used by the athlete (the skis, the bobsled, the aerodynamic outfits) or by the bodies in motion. Maybe that’s why the ice hockey competition is my least preferred event, as it’s a bunch of guys in bulky padding and masks clumsily chasing a puck and whacking it to the goal however they can. Heck, even in curling there is a precision and patience that is far more appealing. My perspective is somewhat influenced by my few years in competitive gymnastics. I never reached a high level of accomplishment in the sport, but I did develop a deep appreciation for the discipline’s emphasis on the purity of form, pace, and choreography. I can’t think of any other sport that combines strength, flexibility, rhythm, balance and art as powerfully as gymnastics. The winter sports incorporate many of these similar qualities, and for me they are as much a celebration of the potential of the human body as they are about who wins the medals. I sincerely hope that many of the critics of the Winter Games would pause and just take in the speed and grace unique to the events.

Are We Too Cool for the Olympics?

When I heard the news that the ratings for the Opening Ceremony of the Olympics were only half of what they were a mere four years ago, I was not surprised. These Olympics have crept upon us with seemingly no fanfare, little publicity and even less joy or excitement about them. I heard no one speak about the Olympics until they had already begun, and whereas “America Idol,” “Friends,” or “Oscar” parties are commonplace, I have heard of no such parties for viewing the Olympics. Not that my experience is a great barometer, but the lax approach to the games seems widespread. So I have to ask, are we too cool for the Olympics? Why have they ceased to have much meaning for us anymore?

Ceremonies of that nature have never appealed to me, so I didn’t watch four years ago or this year. The importance of ritual for all meaningful acts was reinforced, though, so I appreciate Christian rituals all the more. I do enjoy the games, however, and I have watched some of the competition even though I don’t have cable and Peacock barely comes in on my television. But where I live, I have noticed the older generations paying more attention to these Olympics than anyone else. It seems that a few things have changed since the Olympics last mattered: culture became skeptical about patriotism, professional sports events like the Super Bowl have supplanted less common sports seen in the Olympics, and the splendor of it all has been reduced by personal luxuries like leisure and travel.

Patriotism is seen as an old-fashioned value for the naïve at heart. Loyalty to country is less important than loyalty to self, and sacrifice is no longer a pressing demand from the American government (with the exception of high taxes). There are no drafts, there are no moon walks, there is no great moment our nation needs to gather around because even the greatest of our achievements (spreading democracy in the Middle East) can be done with but a portion of the population at minimized loss. But because doubt about the greatness of America has crept into the subconscious of her citizens through lunatic professors and a media that seems to have disdain for the US, there seems to be less joy about our sons and daughters competing against the world’s best. But what a tragic day when we have the luxury of caring less about our great land! While we may be in a malaise about our precious athletes, make no mistake in thinking that every other nation does not want to beat us, because they are hungry for a victory over the good ol’ USA.

Perhaps it isn’t all our fault, though. The three major sports leagues in America (NFL, MLB, NBA) have done such a wonderful job of marketing their sports that we are more proud when our Cubs, Mavericks or Saints win than when the US wins. And for those of us who actually like the NBA, we notice that some of the greatest players in the league come from Bosnia, Germany or Brazil, and this alone diminishes the unique appeal of the Olympics. Like everything else, professional sports has become globalized to the point where the novelty of seeing people from other countries is nothing new. Consequentially, the Olympics has lost some of its mystique, glamour and charm. But more than that, there just isn’t enough money to be made on the Olympics anymore. Endorsement deals for athletes that get face-time every 4 years isn’t sensible to shoe and credit card companies. Nike will take a McNabb who quarterbacks 17 days a year or a LeBron who dunks 82 nights a year over a downhill slalom skier who is seen 1/100th of the time any day of the week.

Finally, as the world grows richer, travel and leisure are a staple of yearly life for many of us. Traveling to once exotic destinations as Athens, Salt Lack City or Turin is a charge on the credit card, a call to a travel agent and maybe an adjustment on our timeshare. The Olympics can no longer be situated in any place that is thought of as too “far away,” or a distant corner of the world worth learning about and appreciating. It’s all within our grasp; the world has grown much smaller, and the sentiment associated with the Olympics has suffered.

I just finished watching the documentary “From the Earth to the Moon,” and I was struck at how little people cared about Apollo 12, 14, 15, 16, and 17. Of course Apollo 11 was Neil Armstrong’s giant leap and 13 was a disaster unlike anything anyone had seen. But all the other trips to the moon were largely ignored, even though the most interesting finds were made and the feat no less impressive. These Olympics are also impressive, and these athletes worthy of our attention, if not just for their physical prowess, but also because they in fact represent America. Lest we forget, this is a special place countless millions in the world give anything to live in. We should cheer on our ambassadors, and laud them for their achievements.

Imploding Democrats Hurt Conservatives Most

There has been much talk about the implosion of the Democratic Party and its lack of sane leadership in recent years, and it seems to be coming to fruition. As Democrats continue to try to sell socialism to conservative buyers, they have been reduced to a loud minority with little real power. Only power enough to annoy, and annoy they have.

But their implosion may hurt conservatives the most. Because conservatism is strongest in a climate of political gridlock and the free debate of ideas, Republican conservatism is hurt by not having a legitimate debate partner and having the luxury to pass most legislation they want. Which would be great if tax cuts and Social Security reform were the only priorities for Republicans. But “big government conservatism” seems to be a mainstay, with prescription drug and education spending out of control. This appeasement to the “middle” is the very triangulation conservatives resented Clinton for pulling off with just enough votes to get him elected in two three-way races.

So here is the opportunity for Democrats: give conservative voters a legitimate choice at the ballot box. Become libertarians in spirit, keeping your social liberalism, but offering a serious challenge to Republicans when it comes to government spending. Reclaim your namesake by advocating democracy at the local level, try arguing for limited government, and make socially liberal arguments not on moral grounds, but on grounds concerning the size of government. Make “Pro-choice” about freedom from government more than granting the judiciary the power to make life and death decisions.

Another winner of an issue might be immigration. To win over conservatives who don’t believe in “big government conservatism,” set the standard on strict immigration standards by simply enforcing the laws already on the books. I think conservatives would actually welcome this and given that 99% of the fastest growing counties voted “R” in 2004, it appears demographics are pointing towards a conservative majority in America for a long time. Couple this with the Wall Street Journal’s ironic “Roe Effect” and it’s easy to see the possibility for a serious reformation in the works.

I don’t doubt that I’m dreaming, mainly because it seems that it is no longer possible to be a party of ideas without immediately finding a way to fund them. So “big government conservatism” has been born and true conservatives should feel at least a little duped. And while Democrats have themselves to blame for their powerlessness in DC, conservative voters rightly should cringe when any one party controls all major branches of the federal government. We had a balanced budget in the Clinton years because stubborn Republicans refused to pass Clinton’s socialized programs (and a phony economy). Now we’ve lost that gridlock, and the debate has turned personal, spiteful, and even boring.

Good foreign policy is still monopolized by Republicans, which seems to lock in wins for another several elections. I can’t even imagine as many in France and Denmark are chanting anti-Bush slogans with the Islamic violence they are experiencing. And if border crossing terrorists begin suicide bombings in US, patience will quickly disappear among moderates unsure of what the reaction should be to radical Islam.

But on the domestic front, should conservatives be saying “Hillary in ’08?”

J'en peux plus: What will it be, moderate Muslims?

Before events regarding the Danish cartoons that have incited violent reactions by Muslims in the Middle East wind down (or expand?), I felt I should briefly share my own feelings about it. Many other writers frame the debate better than I can and there isn’t much to excuse the acts of either the cartoonists or the protesters/arsonists. I don’t at all enjoy childish provocations that belittle anyone’s religious belief, even as I come to expect it more and more, especially if one is a Christian like me. Every story and character in the Bible has been employed by creative types to make all sorts of points irrelevant to their religious origin. Sometimes it is fine and I applaud the new take on an old story, but other times its just plain crass. My reaction is that of pity for the person who is so intent to trash religious figures. I never wish ill on such people but hope that they will discover somewhere along the way a greater respect for religious belief.

Still a society that abides to the principle of freedom of expression will have to tolerate all ideas regardless of their unpopularity. Insults and other verbal offenses are to be dealt with civility, as is common to any civilized place. To respond with violence is therefore un-civilized and resembles the kind of conflicts that generate intergenerational blood-feuds. I had learned that Islam was quintessentially an urban religion, one that enabled the organization of a wide multitude of peoples under a set of coherent rules for daily conduct. I don’t see where arson and dressing up children as future martyrs advances this enlightened civilizing order that is Islam.

In determining who the winners and losers in the Danish cartoon fiasco, right now things don’t look good for Muslims who want no part in the violence and would rather more sensibly protest or debate peacefully about it. I’m awaiting evidence that shows moderate Muslims are committed to extinguishing their fundamentalist detractors’ political and media influence. But with every public eruption, incessant terrorist activity within Muslim areas, with numerous incidents of torture supposedly sanctioned by sharia, I lose my patience and am forced to reassess the actual intentions of moderate Muslims. I know there are many of you out there, currently enjoying life and indulging in the same pleasures all other dhimmis do. What are you going to do when the most radical elements of your religion have taken over its major megaphones and have taken over most regimes in the Middle East, subjecting everyone to strict social and legal codes?

National Review’s Jim Geraghty, who currently lives in Turkey, sums up my general feelings best when he writes:

I know, from my experiences, that there are significant numbers of Muslims who have no beef with the West, who want to live the American dream, who can practice their faith and coexist with other religions. I’ve documented their efforts to take back their faith from the bin Ladens of the world. But apparently they are too quiet.
I wonder how many Muslims understand how the actions of the embassy-torching maniacs define their faith to so many. I wonder how many don’t know, how many don’t care, and how many do know and care but are too scared of the consequences to stand against the violence committed in their name. I’m trying to articulate my positive experiences with Muslims over here to my readers, but it’s not as powerful and penetrating an image as screaming lunatics burning down embassies and threatening to behead anyone who they believe has insulted them. And frankly, I’m not all that wowed with the reaction of moderate Muslims. I’m not sure how much further I want to stick my neck out defending a faith community that won’t loudly and firmly police or rebuke its own members. It’s depressing, but maybe we've got to go through this... delaying a clash might be just postponing the inevitable...

It’s not enough for some Western-based moderate cleric or even a chic young attractive Muslim woman to appear on a television talk show to say that what the terrorists are doing is against Islam. Within a secure country where everyone’s dignity and individual rights are respected (E.U., U.S.), that kind of message is almost mandatory but changes little the threat posed by radical Islam on Muslims. Saying this same message in the many parts of Middle East appears to require a lot more courage, and it’s telling that we don’t hear near enough from people who bring a sound understanding of Islam to hostile places. Where are the emerging political parties in the Middle East that preach a tolerant Islam, democratic government and intellectual freedom? Politics is a vacuum and competing powers are quick to cover as much of the vacuum as possible. It does not necessarily reward the parties that have the good sensible ideas. It rewards the party that organizes itself the best. This is the time for the moderates to take charge and organize, because it will be close to impossible to have a chance under the dominion of the Islamists.

Update: I just found this in which Canadian columnist David Warren crystalizes what I was getting around to say never did:

"Every time we refuse a radical Muslim demand, by sticking to our sound Western principles, we strengthen reasonable Muslims against the fanatics. Every time we relent, we strengthen the fanatics."

Leisure and the End of Housekeeping

I’ve realized lately that I’ve been so accustomed to going to work every day that the mere act of taking a lengthy vacation seems to be a hazy memory of the past. Week in, week out, I show up at the office with any thought to my deserved leisure time out of mind. Once I’m on vacation the experience of having nothing important (business-wise) to accomplish catches me bit off guard. And yet, given the choice, I would always desire more vacation time over a pay raise.

So it was with a bit of skepticism that I read Tim Worstall’s piece at TCS Daily about the rise of leisure time among American workers. Using an interesting set of criteria in the form of unpaid work, the latest research indicates that as Americans have maintained the same rate of hours worked, the hours devoted to leisure have risen steadily in the past decades. What accounts for a large proportion of this rise in leisure time has been the reduction of unpaid hours of work performed typically by women. What some may call “chores” like housecleaning, cooking, laundry and raising children was calculated as unpaid work. Many women have recently been more than happy to let others do these things for a fee so that they could pursue real paid work rather than opting to stay at home and do unpaid work. Because one can now hire maids, landscapers, dry-cleaners, and daycare, that leaves them more time to enjoy themselves when not at the workplace.

This ‘outsourcing’ of traditional household duties has therefore nurtured abundant low-skilled jobs. Immigrants benefit from such jobs which permit them to assimilate into the economic mainstream quickly. Though these jobs pay relatively little, it’s better than there being no job available, which only exacerbates feelings of exclusion and resentfulness. Worstall’s article makes this point about unemployment in Europe:

"The smaller number of service jobs per adult in Germany than in the US shows up in both the least skilled service sectors and in high-tech and high skilled service sectors. The conventional explanation of the US-EU employment gap focuses on the relative dearth of low skilled service sector jobs in the EU because of the consequences on joblessness and social exclusion."
That is, if everyone stays home canning there are no simple jobs in the factories for people to do. So they rot on the scrap heap of unemployment, burning cars for entertainment's sake. This European social model doesn't seem to have all that much going for it so far really, does it?

There’s more on the comparison between the U.S. and Germany regarding the difference hours worked and leisure. The overall gist of Worstall’s article is that Europeans end up being stuck doing a lot of house chores on their free time, while Americans increasingly leave it to others and actually have fun on their days off. It’s an interesting conclusion, and it certainly explains a little bit the difference between the two sides on what one expects to do during their time off.

My experience has always been that Europeans tend to enjoy the simple things during their time off, often happily frequenting the town’s parks, cafes and other amenities. Americans seem impatient to leave town be whisked away to some place that’s as far from their mundane reality as possible. Vacations tend to be short, often no longer than a week at a time, which is why the more a vacation trip can be packaged, the better. In Europe, particularly in France, vacations are long enough for the family to rent a seaside villa and hang around for a month with no effort in scheduling activities from day to day. Working Americans, I’ve noticed, prefer coordinated activities provided by the resort/cruise/theme park, giving the visitor the impression that one can get the most complete exposure to a place in the shortest amount of time. Bear in mind that I’m generalizing quite broadly, as I’m aware that there are Europeans and Americans who like to spend their free time in ways that are not all that different. Many Americans like to spend their vacations quite leisurely while numerous European tourists flood the Mediterranean in tightly packaged resorts.

Whether you’ll ever convince an American worker that he or she has the same amount of leisure time as a European, most of my colleagues would love to have even more time off if possible. Of course all that time would be useless if one’s wages were to be diminished in exchange. The one thing I do agree with in the article is the importance of how non-paid work affects the quality of the time spent outside the workplace. When I lived in Germany as an exchange student, I recalled the endless hours spent just maintaining the house, whether by cleaning, taking care of the numerous potted plants and making sure there was enough coal or chopped wood for the furnace (this was in the former communist German Democratic Republic).

There was rarely a family excursion to enjoy, and I found I had to organize my own leisurely trips around Europe. The family I lived with was relatively well-off for their community, and they were so because they were aggressive small business entrepreneurs. In spite of the depressed economic state of the surrounding towns, they understood that tremendous initial efforts were required in order ensure long-term success of the business. Their dedication to working and depriving themselves of any valuable time off was more in keeping with American ways of doing things than German.

Kanye West- Image over Music

When pictures featuring the rapper Kanye West as the crucified Christ were circulated in the media a week ago, I was immediately reminded that much of what passes for pop music today is really about public image than about talent. Granted, West has displayed a talent in creating rhythmic loops that can be infectious on the radio and dance floor, even as his music is really mostly a tapestry of samples and pre-recorded beats stored on a computer. But what the “Passion of Kanye West” photo for Rolling Stone magazine reveals is how aggressively the artist is trying to project a public persona. With his controversial (or inane) statements, and his seemingly childish arrogance, West is really trying to promote the person more than the music. Music therefore becomes a means toward celebrity, or rather towards becoming a public icon.

The opinion columnist Jonah Goldberg describes this well when writing about Kanye West. He points out how the image of the rebellious individual has been used repeatedly to generate sales of records, and that audiences are willing to fall for image over music again and again:

But I do think I understand marketing and public relations, and I am astounded by the naïveté of young people — black and white — who actually buy the canned rebelliousness not just of rap music but of most pop music.
West is simply the latest example of decades of hucksterism. Under the headline "The Passion of Kanye West," the rap star graces the cover of Rolling Stone posing as a bloodied Jesus with a crown of thorns. I particularly enjoy the publicity around the piece. Clearly borrowing from the same press release, publications across the country proclaim that the "outspoken rapper defends his brash attitude inside the magazine."
Ah, yes. It's about time. After all, it's so rare to find a rapper with a brash attitude. Normally they're shy, retiring types overflowing with modesty and humility. I was particularly enamored with the "aw, shucks" Andy Griffith personalities of Niggaz Wit Attitude and the late Tupac Shakur.

Rebellion and arrogance sell, especially to the youths who identify with such behavior. It is likewise evidence that teenagers are incapable of actually judging what’s actually good, and so aesthetic decisions on art, music, and even fashion are determined by attitude and mood. Whether it’s the gangsta rapper, the goth rocker, or the techno DJ, their musical output emphasizes an attitude against the world and particular obsessions common to the cult of fans who buy their music. And yet the fans do grow up and their attitudes on life change, while the music they once listened to hasn’t. What was once an overpowering image of rebellion and sexuality to the teenager now seems whiny, sleezy and shallow to the mature adult saddled with responsibilities. Pop music, which is anything that is popular to a mass audience, often relies on an image to represent it, preferably one that relates to the primary target market -- the youth. Without an attractive icon, the music becomes unmarketable, no matter how appealing. The Milli Vanilli scandal was a case in point: a German producer with his session musicians and vocalists had created pop r&b tracks that he was confident would be popular, but he was in desperate need of an image that could headline the music. He saw nothing wrong with taking a couple of black models with no singing talent to promote the songs and the rest was history.

The show American Idol is very illustrative of the importance of image. The show’s founder and most critical judge Simon Cowell is the embodiment of the contemporary music industry’s fixation with style over substance. Whether its Teletubbies or handsome tenors playing shlocky operatic pop, Mr. Cowell is a pro in turning unlikely acts into hits in spite of the embarrassing quality of the music. He repeatedly makes the distinction between vocal talent and sellable image and makes it clear that the latter is more important than the former. There’s no arguing that this works in selling many records, especially in the initial releases. The drawback is that often the icon’s music success is short, which it is rare to find artists who can maintain hits past a second album. The icon’s relevance evaporates as tastes among the public change. To maintain relevance, the icon either has to remake their image to fit the new times or one engages newsworthy behavior.

My suspicions are that Kanye West will follow the latter, as it’s clear to me that he has no intention in pursuing a music career longer than he can afford to do something else. His image as the ‘preppy rapper’ was well timed as the need to react against the thug image of prior rappers was long overdue. But West’s music is for the most part insubstantial. He’s eager to promote his brand identity and unsurprisingly is already starting his clothing line. “Me, Inc.” has now evolved into “Me, registered trade mark”. Kanye will likely pursue Hollywood, the ultimate place where individuals are valued by who they are over what they can actually do.
What’s interesting about pop stars or starlets is that their career paths end up in two opposite directions: Either they are consumed by celebrity, the image they have cultivated and embark into a self-destructive life of alcohol, drugs and crime; or they become the savviest of businessmen, parlaying their brand image beyond recording and usually becoming executives in the very music industry that exploited them in the first place. The instance when David Bowie issued “Bowie Bonds” comes to mind, or when Michael Jackson bought the Beatles’ song catalogue.

One of the most enlightening case studies regarding the value of image over music is the career of David Bowie. Long known to be a chameleon, his music was often erratic in quality, and his most profitable part of his career was regarded by fans as his artistic low point (1980’s). Before then, Bowie struggled to create the right persona, from mod gentlemen, to hippie folk singer to proto-metal rocker. He finally scored when he created his character as a bi-sexual alien glam-rocker, but soon transformed himself into a white soul singer before it was too late. Bowie’s early struggles and massive debts had taught him lots about the music industry, and as soon as he attained solvency, took steps to secure his wealth with very little pressure to generate lots of record sales. Still, Bowie is quite different from West in that he cultivated a changing layered persona that is markedly original, with music of such admirable complexity that he earned a loyal fan base. West’s fan base is more ephemeral, as demonstrated by the fact that he could only fill half the auditorium during his last concert in Dallas.

I get the feeling that Kanye is clever enough to secure his wealth. He probably knows that he has probably only five album’s worth of material in him before opting for other opportunities. Still I have doubts as to whether he can maintain his brand identity for that long as he tries hard to put off many potential fans with his silly comments. He doesn’t seem to be cultivating fan loyalty at all which is crucial to ensuring a long career as a recording artist. Today’s predominance of hip hop kind of reminds me of the disco era, in which some catchy songs were produced and are still enjoyed but listeners could care less about the music’s artistic merits. And whatever happened to the disco divas of the past?

The Great Escape: Nostalgia, Ski Resorts and Psychological Gratification

During my recent ski trip to Colorado, certain observations led me to reflect about contemporary trends in building. Dropping by in Vail, I noticed that some massive construction projects were underway. As we were making our way to the gondola, the main building in the village that I had used frequently before getting on my skis had disappeared. In its place was now a gigantic hole with underground parking under construction. The pictures along the surrounding construction fence featured renderings of the future multi-use development and an accompanying list of added functions and amenities that did not exist before in the prior complex designed in the 1970’s Brutalist style ubiquitous in American ski areas (the modern ski tourism industry arose after World War II, with Vail itself being established only since the 1960’s.) Looking closer at the renderings it was obvious that the planners and developers at Vail sought to remake the drab Brutalist village into a nearly authentic Austrian village, down to the smallest detail. The new Lionshead village would match the architecture, proportions and overall feel of the ski area’s central core, Vail Village, which dutifully imitates the spaces of a small medieval European town.

The fact that the new development at Lionshead abandoned the modernist style for a historicist one was of no significance. Though the Brutalist structures stressed functionalism and ruggedness against extreme alpine weather, they were ugly and served poorly the role of scenic backdrop. What seems to have defined stylistically new development in ski villages in the U.S. is a modern vernacular often referred to as ‘mountain’ architecture, which uses lots of heavy timber framing, multiple little gables and traditional horizontal windows throughout the façade and glazed wood balconies similar to Swiss chalets. Small, windy pedestrian streets complement this vernacular, and open public plazas are framed by the vernacular facades in such a way so as to recall a European village without actually being literally European.

It was in the deliberate abandonment of this modern ‘mountain’ vernacular that I realized that the new development revealed a trend that many designers engrossed in theory should take the time to examine. The culture and psychological reality that are Las Vegas and Disneyworld has become pervasive to the extent that the developers at a ski resort have no interest in evolving a contemporary vernacular but instead recreate a past reality to the minutest detail that never existed in the Rockies. Granted, Vail has always been a little bit different from other ski resorts in its focused effort in establishing itself as a European-style ski oasis in the middle of an area that until relatively recently was dominated by mining and frontier settlements. Yet the architecture of old Vail Village is more suggestive than literal in evoking central European vernaculars. Judging from the renderings, the new Lionshead village (or Arrabelle as it is called) goes beyond literal copying, achieving an almost exaggerated celebration of the central European vernacular.

It used to be that resorts fulfilled functional needs of tourists: it provided a place to enjoy oneself physically, whether by swimming at the pool, relaxing in the spa, or by sunbathing lazily. So long as those physical needs were met, the International style of architecture was appropriate, as its emphasis on mass dwellings, flexibility in generating new building types and ease of construction responded to the rapid growth of post-war tourisms. Now, the tourists have brought an additional need: psychological gratification. The need to escape from the everyday world, a service often provided by novels, plays, and films is now being sought from built environments. It seems that the trend in American resorts is toward fulfilling the visitors’ longing for a world beyond their daily realities, as from time and place as possible. Wishing to return to a time and place that is familiar without having actually having to experience what life was really like for people of that time is a powerful force influencing the design of places today. Modernism was never about escaping reality. Rather it was about coming to terms with it in the driest and most objective way to such a degree that it appears oppressive to many. Few everyday people dream of escaping to some Modernist utopia for rest and recreation. Such environments are often seen as austere, even surreal.

Though the use of historicism in resort areas is of no surprise given the expectations of the tourist, I find that similar forces are at work in the design of urban spaces intended for everyday use. Locales with little to no history now want to instantly erect town centers evocative of a time and place that never was part of the municipality to begin with. The diligent imitation of Victorian era town squares and American Main Streets offer the chance to mentally escape from the fact that one lives in modern times and has adapted to a completely different set of notions about time and space.

Architecture has become as much about experience than the meanings of the built form itself. The five senses have always crucially influence the way humans experience a building, but such stimuli, I find, are heavily altered by memory and self-delusion. We see what we want to see, feel what we want to feel, etc. When the contrary happens, in which we see what we don’t want to see, the experience is jarring and a violation of our senses, something the Modernist avant garde often seemed to forget. When one goes for a ski vacation, one wants to pretend he or she is in an Austrian alpine village and anything less is but a revelation that skiing is simply a physical activity, not an all-encompassing cultural experience. When one goes to the New Urbanist town center to shop, one pretends the area will be animated in ways similar to town centers one hundred years ago, ignoring the reality that there are far fewer number and types people that actually live and work in this area than once was the case in the past.

This yearning to escape mundane reality by building fantasy implies, in my opinion, a loathing of the present and insecurity about the future. The present is unsatisfying and the future is alienating, and inventing new forms and stretching untested possibilities seem to be not worth the effort (and maybe not as marketable). Psychological need and nostalgia shields us from the difficult spiritual exercise of the creating art and ascertaining the distinctive aesthetic expression of our contemporary society. Somehow, seeking refuge in the reconstruction of the past seems cowardly in the face of present and future architectural problems.