When the cool of the pond makes you drop down on it
When the smell of the lawn makes you flop down on it
When the teenage car gets the cop down on it
That time is here for one more year
jonathan richman, that summer feeling*
(for illustration only; what we're actually Drinking now is la clarine on the fifth day.)those visiting the motherland for the first time often ask me for advice. fortunately, the best places to eat in singapore are the ones which have been around for years (the wave of new food has been generally trumped up but mediocre). even so, i routinely consult my agents on the ground for Hot Tips about the latest and greatest.
minzhi: must your 4 friends go for chinese fine dining? can't they go to chin lee and have great teochew food?it is important to always have the right priorities.
vt: i suggested liang kee also. chin lee's better? never been.
mz: when are these people coming?
vt: they are in town already.
mz: what?! then what are these people feeding on NOW? this is terrible! they could be eating all the wrong things this very moment!!!!
this long but worthwhile video documents ford hallam's meticulous reconstruction of the lost half of a pair of tsuba by hagiya katsuhira. nearly every stage is embedded in the workmanship of risk: the further along, the more stands to be lost by the commission of even a small error in work.
slow is always better ... you have to feel what's going on. this is why i reject power tools. they're simply far too fast. you can't feel the irregularities. the tool simply takes over.
las vegas
chada
san francisco
kiss; quince; minako; greens; food inc (for their tuna niçoise sandwich on either a sunny day or a rainy one); pagolac; chapeau!; firefly; jackson fillmore; pancake sunday 5.13.07
berkeley
chez panisse; the cheeseboard
cambridge
hungry mother; bondir; cooking with fire and clay; morning coffee at hirise
malden
biryani park
palo alto
bay leaf cafe (yellow lentil sambar soup, on a wet day); homma's (outside on a warm summer night)
new york
shopsin's
lenox
nudel
boulder
the kitchen
marfa
cochineal
new orleans
galatoire's, the parkway bakery
osaka
hon-kogetsu
tokyo
gesshinkyo; tsuru ni tachibana (with updates from our japanese correspondent)
kyoto
mo-an
singapore
green pasture; fuli seafood
copenhagen
frederiks have; kødbyens fiskebar; noma; ved stranden 10
järpen
fäviken magasinet
washington dc
minibar
In short, men will find out that the men of our days were wrong in first multiplying their needs, and then trying, each man of them, to evade all participation in the means and processes whereby those needs are satisfied; that this kind of division of labour is really only a new and wilful form of arrogant and slothful ignorance, far more injurious to the happiness and contentment of life than the ignorance of the processes of Nature, of what we sometimes call science, which men of the earlier days unwittingly lived in. They will discover, or rediscover rather, that the true secret of happiness lies in the taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life.on which, also see david pye and t.h. white.
william morris, "the aims of art"
i came to las vegas on monday night and spent much of yesterday and today walking around the old downtown, outside the region covered by the downtown project. in a 3-hour, 4-mile walk this morning, i counted over 40 small law practices, numerous bail bond shops, and an improbable number of motels. there was one grocery store and a handful of 7-11s. this town makes me wonder what people were thinking as they decided to set up shop here. on the other hand, there is an abundance of great thai food and a truly spectacular taco.
i am a stranger here myself. i was born and grew up in singapore, and lived for a while in california and colorado. but this is home. to the law enforcement agents, first responders, and medical staff who were outside all night and all day while i was safe inside: thank you for protecting my town.
Monday, 4/22/2013; 10am to noonBaker Library 102, Harvard Business School [map]
Amy Edmondson (co-chair), Christopher Winship (co-chair), Jeffrey T. Polzer
Intentional ambiguityVaughn Tan
Organizations increasingly operate in uncertain external environments which are not only risky (uncertain in quantifiable ways) but also ambiguous (unquantifiably uncertain, featuring unclear reality, causality, or intentionality). Though the two types of uncertainty have different implications for decision-making and action, organizational theory and practice generally neglect ambiguity by conflating it with risk. How should an organization respond when the uncertainty in its environment comprises both risk and ambiguity? And what are the intended and unintended effects of these organizational responses?
I answer these questions by analysing data collected over four years from observations at nine high-end avant-garde culinary groups and 80 interviews with respondents working in the industry. My findings suggest that external ambiguity can be managed through costly internal processes that make it more likely that a group and its members can detect and respond to changes in the environment—processes that result from intentional internal ambiguity of member roles and group goals. I then describe a general mechanism by which intentional internal ambiguity supports group adaptability.
My findings complement the risk-management view of managing uncertainty by re-stating the distinction between risk and ambiguity and documenting organizational responses that are specific to the latter and not the former. I suggest that an appropriate approach to managing the unquantifiable uncertainty of ambiguity is to increase the likelihood that a group can adapt as ambiguous conditions change and show that this can be done by incorporating ambiguity into the internal operations of the group.
The final shape of any one particular oak tree is unpredictable ... And a town which is whole, like an oak tree, must be unpredictable also.
The fine details cannot be known ahead of time. We may know, from the pattern language which is shared, what kind of town it will be. But it is impossible to predict its detailed plan: and it is not possible to make it grow according to some plan. It must be unpredictable, so that the individual acts of building can be free to fit themselves to all the local forces which they meet.
The people of a town may know that there is going to be a main pedestrian street, because there is a pattern which tells them so. But, they cannot know just where this main pedestrian street will be, until it is already there. The street will be built up from smaller acts, wherever the opportunity arises. When it is finally made, its form is partly given by the history of happy accidents which let the people build it along with their more private acts. There is no way of knowing, ahead of time, just where these accidents will fall.
This process, exactly like the emergence of any other form of life, alone produces a living order.christopher alexander, the timeless way of building
jens stoltenberg, who is still the prime minister of norway, had this to say after the 2011 bombing and shootings in oslo and utøya, before the identity of the culprit was discovered:
We do not know who attacked us, many are dead and injured. Norway will stand together in a time of crisis, we suffer with the wounded. I have a message to whoever attacked us, you will not destroy us, you will not destroy our democracy, and our ideals for a better world. We are a small nation and a better nation. No one will bomb us to silence, no one will shoot us to silence. Our answer to violence is more democracy.this is the correct response.
There is one timeless way of building ... But though this method is precise, it cannot be used mechanically. Indeed it turns out, in the end, that what this method does is simply free us from all method ... To purge ourselves of these illusions, to become free of all the artificial images of order which distort the nature that is in us, we must first learn a discipline which teaches us the true relationship between ourselves and our surroundings. Then, once this discipline has done its work, and pricked the bubbles of illusion which we cling to now, we will be ready to give up the discipline, and act as nature does. This is the timeless way of building: learning the discipline—and shedding it.
We have a habit of thinking that the deepest insights, the most mystical, and spiritual insights, are somehow less ordinary than most things—that they are extraordinary. This is only the shallow refuge of the person who does not yet know what he is doing. In fact, the opposite is true: the most mystical, most religious, most wonderful—these are not less ordinary than most things—they are more ordinary than most things. It is because they are so ordinary, indeed, that they strike to the core.christopher alexander, the timeless way of building
at 150 w 25th st, in the heart of the manhattan floral district, you can find the H.I.T deli and korean diner. the bibimbap ($8.95) is superior but i cannot yet say the same about the other menu options. for instance, it is a good idea to order the ramen ($5.95) only if you have successfully exited your startup and wish to recall fondly the days, now thankfully long-past, when you survived mostly on cup noodles. rock star, on the second floor, will satisfy many of your commodity and non-commodity geological needs. for instance, the need for kunzite, a heart stone that spreads around it an irresistible aura of calm and healing ($4/gram).
a coily bronze snake from ancient greece, exact provenance and age uncertain. and gudea of lagash, whose diorite hat and stony gaze are cool.
now that my friends have children, i sometimes find myself at the met on a saturday morning observing little people playing african instruments under a ceramic relief of striding lions from ancient babylon. i left when i could no longer bear the thousands of people gazing cowlike at ancient statuary. (about 20 minutes.)
My secret as an interviewer was that I was actually impressed by the people I interviewed ... awed by people who take the risks of performance[,] I become their advocate and find myself in sympathy.
roger ebert, life itself
Animal-drawn plows varied from country to country and even from one farm to the next. They had to be coordinated with the type of soil, the moisture content, the kind of planting, the draft animals used, and the farmer's own movement. When animals were replaced by mechanical power, plows were simplified, the differences between them became less, and the variations between plows used in some areas disappeared completely. With mechanical power, it was no longer necessary to design each plow individually. General plows were designed to work almost any kind of soil. The farmer was freed from the constraints of his environment. He no longer had to understand his plow in relation to his soil composition.
christopher and charlotte williams, craftsmen of necessity
worthwhile, and the opening pages about pattern should be required reading for organizational behaviorists.
... no pattern is an isolated entity. Each pattern can exist in the world only to the extent that is supported by other patterns: the larger patterns in which it is embedded, the patterns of the same size that surround it, and the smaller patterns which are embedded in it. This is a fundamental view of the world. It says that when you build a thing you cannot merely build that thing in isolation, but must also repair the world around it, and within it, so that the larger world at that one place becomes more coherent, and more whole ...
christopher alexander and collaborators; a pattern language
interviewer: What would you like to tell people?
andrei tarkovsky: I don’t know … I think I’d like to say only that they should learn to be alone and try to spend as much time as possible by themselves. I think one of the faults of young people today is that they try to come together around events that are noisy, almost aggressive at times. This desire to be together in order to not feel alone is an unfortunate symptom, in my opinion. Every person needs to learn from childhood how to spend time with oneself. That doesn’t mean he should be lonely, but that he shouldn’t grow bored with himself because people who grow bored in their own company seem to me in danger, from a self-esteem point of view.
"Renunciation," I said, "even at this late date, can work." "I'd agree with that," said Arkady. "The world, if it has a future, has an ascetic future."
bruce chatwin, the songlines
saturday, before dinner at 900 degrees in manchester, NH—a pizza parlor with no similarities to this new york museum of pizza diversity other than the name—we saw japanese swords at the nearby currier museum of art, which also contains a stunningly difficult laminated desk by jere osgood.
The narrow view of natural farming says that it is good for the farmer to apply organic material to the soil and good to raise animals, and that this is the best and most efficient way to put nature to use. To speak in terms of personal practice, this is fine, but with this way alone, the spirit of true natural farming cannot be kept alive. This kind of narrow natural farming is analogous to the school of swordsmanship known as the one-stroke school, which seeks victory through the skillful, yet self-conscious application of technique. Modern industrial farming follows the two-stroke school, which believes that victory can be won by delivering the greatest barrage of swordstrokes. Pure natural farming, by contrast, is the no-stroke school. It goes nowhere and seeks no victory.more fukuoka here. context is important: the pizza would have been better had greatness not been keenly anticipated.
it continues to be my privilege to be acquainted with the entire staff of kat ran press. this week, i paid a too-short visit to its tastefully appointed, digitally warmed offices on myrtle street in cambridge, ma—a visit which demonstrated that while bad taste is ubiquitous, the exception proves the rule. the kat ran checklist you see above, under a copy of dogs are OK, is a catalogue raisonné containing a tough-minded, superb essay on design that does not exist online.
a good time was had by all. or, at least, by me.
It seems to me that there was no need for American Airlines to undertake such a change, but many people do not understand the difference between Design and Styling, and believe in change for the sake of change. Design cannot cover the mistakes of bad management, but styling can.vignelli is not infallible, but he is worth thinking about. design is an inextricable part of good management, whether it is the design of an organization or the organization's visual identity. and crucially, styling can cover the mistakes of bad management but not when it is poor styling.
this is important.
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time. A schedule is a mock-up of reason and order—willed, faked, and so brought into being; it is a peace and a haven set into the wreck of time; it is a lifeboat on which you find yourself, decades later, still living.more dillard here; more harrison here and here.
annie dillard, the writing life.
It is a somewhat shattering moment when we realize that our lives are made up of the particulars of what we do every day.
jim harrison, "cooking your life" in the raw and the cooked.
