Again the Fulton Street Transit Center is over budget (remember bugmenot to spare yourself the registration fuss). I can’t say I’m surprised. Anything related to transit always goes over budget. They should just factor that into the budget at the start. Come up with your estimate, then add 20% just because.

I wonder if it’s an educational failing. Perhaps in all those civil engineering and urban planning programs, they don’t teach enough about finances. Ya know if I could go back in time and do college all over again I would have studied urban planning. That is a topic I would love to learn about. Years ago sometime in sixth through eighth grade I was prodded along by my brother to consider urban planning as a career. I liked the idea but lost interest once I took astronomy in high school. Oh the road not taken…!

But I digress. Fulton Street is over budget by $50 million and MTA Capital Construction is blaming rising real estate prices. I’m confused as to why that still matters this late into the project. I know construction has already begun and I’m pretty sure this plan goes back to 2004. After two years, why is the MTA still trying to acquire property in the area? Isn’t that sort of thing done before building starts?

Now because of the budget problem the MTA has to shrink that signature glass dome they’ve been touting every time this project is mentioned. I don’t know where to begin with my complaints about this project. For some reason the MTA is obsessed with telling people this station transfer point will be “light and airy”. What should have been an ordinary task to simplify the transfer passageways between four subway lines has turned in a monumental architecture project.

Why in the world does a subway line transfer point need a signature building? It seems like such a waste of real estate to me. It’s been a long time since I’ve been to Fulton Street but isn’t the area populated by mid-size, ten to twenty story, buildings? How tall can a glorified subway station with a dome get? I would think it wouldn’t get past four stories but that doesn’t even matter. If the building is going to have a “light and airy” dome, it can’t have anything on top of it. So really the MTA is building a one story building in lower Manhattan. What an excellent use of expensive land.

I would really like to see a much more practical design. Axe the glass dome first. There are plenty of ways to make an interior space appear open. Off the top of my head here, I’m thinking you can keep the dome idea, just not one made of glass. Make the space two stories tall and well lit. That will keep it from feeling claustrophobic. Once you lose the glass you’re free to build a normal building that can be useful to the neighborhood.

The dome itself can be covered with art. Personally I would prefer more work than just a simple paint job. I happen to prefer carvings such as these:

That doesn’t mean the building has to look ancient. You can take old ideas like those and tweak them for the modern age. For example instead of natural stone carvings like those, you can use a variety of stones for color or how about covering them in mosaic glass? They would really sparkle then. If that’s too much money, we could forget the carvings and line the dome in mosaic glass. The mosaic could be anything. It could be symbols of NYC’s past. The first subway stations were designed with that idea. It could be major events in NYC’s history like the Empire State Building and Brooklyn Bridge’s construction. It could be a repeating skyline of the city at different years (1850, 1900, 1950, etc.). If that plan proves too costly as well, fine then we could do an ordinary painting on the ceiling. After all, this worked out well for that church in Italy.

This weekend disaster struck! For the past week my home computer has been wigging out on me. It would freeze up if I left it idle for a time. I had planned to make a backup last Saturday but unfortunately my computer had scheduled its death for that day also.

I spent all Saturday attempting to resurrect it and I managed to cobble together a new system. However it will take some time before it is running on all cylinders. Now here’s the point of this posting. It will probably take me a few days to get everything just so. So I’ll probably be too busy to make my usual fascinating and insightful observations here.

So if any of you reading this have fallen behind, you have a few days now to catch up.

When I read about a scandal involving a Louisiana congressman, I wasn’t the least bit surprised. Corruption is as much a part of Louisiana as gumbo is.

What actually did surprise me was Dennis Hastert’s response. The politician being investigated by the FBI is a Democrat, while Speaker of the House Hastert is a Republican. I was really expecting him to get a cheap shot in about dirty democrats. But no, Hastert only questioned why the FBI raided Jefferson’s office. Apparently this is the first time the FBI has ever raided a congressional office.

Later Nancy Pelosi crawled out of her hole to also denounce the raid. Isn’t it amazing how quickly Congress can unite when one of their own is threatened?

In case your wondering, Jefferson’s scandal is quite interesting. The FBI says he accepted $100,000 to help an American company get established in Nigeria. Jefferson was supposed to use that money to bribe Nigerian officials on behalf of this company. What a patriotic way to be corrupt!

This item comes from the Greenpoint Dog Log Blog.

I do not understand the complaints. I think the building is great! I am so glad to see someone in Greenpoint choose something besides vinyl siding for their homes. The neighborhood is awash in dingy vinyl. 198 Green breathes new life to the area. I hope others follow suit and do something architecturally daring with their own homes.

I was very sad to hear my aunt caved in and resided my old home with vinyl. She replaced a material that is unknown to me and as far as I know was there since the house was built in 1899. It’s hard to describe. It was sort of like a rectangle covered in tar. Then you sprinkle lots of tiny, sand-sized colored pebbles on to it so they stick. Our house was a mix of white and green. Then you nail these rectangles to the house. Now I know they couldn’t be made of tar and pebbles. The tar would melt in the summer heat if that were the case. It was something like that though. Somehow colored sand was stuck to the wall. Perhaps this siding was common in the past, but it was rare by the time I was alive and I loved how unique it was. If I owned the building I would have kept it around forever!

I am not sure how this happened, but recently I have taken to watching repeats of the Golden Girls. I’ve watched several during the past week and I’m left surprised at how unwholesome the show is for something from the 1980s.

When I think of 80s sitcoms, the adjectives formulaic and sappy come to mind. Yes the Golden Girls follows a formula and has its sappy moments. As part of the formula the sappy moment usually takes place during or after a cake scene. Yet the show has so much more going on that flies in the face of Reagan-era values.

First on the list: Blanche is a whore. The show never misses a chance to remind us viewers that Blanche sleeps with everyone who has a penis at least once. She may get bored with a guy and get rid of him, but only after she’s done him.

The language is another thing that surprised me. “Slut” and “whore” are peppered throughout the series. Sophia also says some pretty cruel things. She’s lobbed a few lines at Blanche that I would have said only if I were trying to make a woman cry.

The show’s topics have really floored me. You would expect a show about four old ladies to be fairly staid. However in the week of watching I’ve done, they have had shows about gay marriage, in-vitro fertilization, and crossdressing. The gay marriage episode amazed me because it was still so relevent nearly 20 years later! They even tried a sexual abuse episode with Rose’s dentist feeling her up while she was under the gas. That was stretching the bounds of reality too much though. Honestly, who would want to feel Betty White’s boobs? The thought makes my dick shrink up inside myself like a frightened turtle.

The writers really must have been afraid of being pigeonholed as the old lady show. And to think I watched this show as a kid with my Mom. No wonder I can’t remember anything besides a vague recollection of the opening credits. My mind has probably blocked out all the awkwardness of a 10-year-old sitting with his mother watching a show about a dear departed crossdresser.

The show still manages to stay funny though. Pointless St. Olaf stories and Dorathy picking on Rose’s stupidity are timeless I guess. So many years have passed…I wonder which of the Golden Girls are dead? The oldest one must be dead by now. I feel fairly certain I’ve seen Betty White and Beatrice Arthur. Rue McClanahan might be dead though. I know I haven’t seen her since the show was new.

I only heard about the New York Culinary Festival yesterday but coincidentally I bumped into a review of it today.

The Story of a Disaster

I guess my title gives the gist of the story away but it’s still worth a read. I guess foodies are bad organizers. I’d be pissed if I paid $20 for that.

A Perfect New York Moment

Here’s a quickie. I found this story notable because I have never in my life heard of pistachio soft serve. Vanilla and chocolate are the only two flavors I’ve seen. That green cone just looks so good. I’m just yearning to try it. Moments like this make me wish I was in New York.

The name doesn’t make a catchy song, but Gotham is a pretty bad-ass name for a state. It’s certainly better than the Free City of Tri-Insula. I would expect to hear that in a Star Trek episode.

If Peter Vallone, Jr. has his way New York City will part ways with the state that shares its name. He introduced a bill to the city council to call for a referendum on creating a commission to study the effects of NYC becoming a separate state. That’s a fairly convoluted bill. Why not just have the council approve a committee to study the effects? Then after we have the facts, the city can have a referendum on whether or not to go ahead with secession. It makes me think this move is really more about trying to scare the state into settling the education funding issue. Plus it doesn’t help that Vallone introduced this bill in 2003 and 2004 and it went nowhere.

Forgetting the reality of politics for a moment, lets think about NYC as the 51st state. It would be impractical for strictly NYC to be a separate state. I think Long Island and Westchester should be brought in to the hypothetical state of Gotham (or Greater New York as Vallone’s bill names it) because they are so closely tied to the city. Vallone’s major argument is that this region puts in more tax than it receives in services. It also has more people than several US states.

Gotham would be viable, but what would that do to new New York state? It would lose a significant portion of its tax revenue. That’s a given. Would that be balanced out by not having to provide support to the south of the state? Some think so, namely the Upstate New York secession movement. Upstate is more conservative than NYC and they could better create their own identity as a separate state. Some expect lower taxes would be a result. On the surface that seems to fly in the face of NYC’s tax argument. However you need to consider it’s possible Upstaters might be happy if the state government did less for them. Less government lowers costs and that can be passed on through lower taxes. Plus Upstate New York would be able to lower its business tax separate from NYC. This could reinvigorate its dying economy.

Secession does leave us with the petty, but emotional issue of who keeps the New York state name. New York City already has the NY in it already. However that never stopped Kansas City, Missouri from being more successful than Kansas City, Kansas. There is nostalgia for the Sinatra song that would no longer make sense otherwise, but that lessens with each passing generation. Would Upstate New York really create its own identity if it stayed with the New York name? They shouldn’t call themselves the Empire State after secession either.

Even with those points I would rather see Gotham as the new state’s name. It’s just so kick-ass. Yeah in the end I do support NYC statehood. It works financially for the city and it does recognize a cultural split between Upstaters and Downstaters. I just don’t see what harm could come from this.

Every so often a piece of technology comes across that I go ape over. Today is another one of those days. It’s notable because this time I got news of it from Popular Science. Usually by the time I see a gadget in there, I’ve known about it for 3 to 6 months already. I was so totally caught off guard I stared at the magazine for a few seconds in disbelief.

Kodak has announced the V610! I was pretty excited about the V570, the first of their dual lens camera system. However at 5 megapixels and a 3x optical zoom, I wasn’t so enamored with it. Those specs seemed adequate for two years ago, so I had an easier time resisting the urge. However the V610 takes care of those concerns and more.

It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say the V610 has me thunderstruck! The camera steps up to 6 megapixels, a nice but not ground-shaking improvement. However Kodak has given this camera a sweet 10x optical zoom (it also has 4x digital zoom but I don’t count that because digital zoom sucks). This being Kodak’s dual-lens camera, this tiny camera (2.2 inch by 4.4 inch) has focal lengths of 38-380 mm. But wait there’s more! Not only can the lens of this camera capture the widest shots of any compact camera, but it has a built in panorama function. This isn’t like other cameras that let you stitch together images with their software. The V610 will connect those images internally and let you preview the results as you take the pictures.

The V610 has built in bluetooth you can use to transfer to any other bluetooth device including computers, printers or cell phones. Even better you can reduce the resolution of the image you send. Say I took a picture at 6 MP and I wanted to send it to your cell phone. What cell phone display could use an image that large? It’s a tremendous waste of space. So when I send your cell phone my picture I can down size it to just 1 MP. Plus using the scene button, you can quickly switch from 22 different presets. That makes it much easier for the novice to account for light conditions in their shots. It also has jitter control.

In short, I frickin want this camera. I know I don’t need it. I rarely take pictures. I still have a perfectly functional digital camera. It is old but it still works. Damn though the V610 is so excellent. Here’s a very detailed review.

Chaos must be an essential part of Mexican culture. A simple arrest turned into a massive riot in a town near Mexico City. As I expect this sort of thing to happen, I normally wouldn’t bother to write about it. However I was recently considering a trip to Baja California.

I didn’t have any specific destination in mind, but I was thinking somewhere in the center, not at the end of the peninsula where the ultra-touristy Cabo San Lucas is. I was even thinking of renting a car and driving down the peninsula. I must have been delirious when I thought of that. Thankfully those rioting Mexicans have snapped me back to reality.

I have to blame an episode of House Hunters International for this lunatic idea. If it weren’t for that I never would have considered how nice it would be to relax at an empty beach. I was even looking at available properties there. This is a quarter acre of beachfront land for $165,000. Look at that view! You can stand there at the water and feel like you’re the only person in the world. So peaceful. If the beach doesn’t do it for you, there is this home in Mulege for only $65,000. It’s gotta be on the beach for me though. Without that there’s really no point in buying. I would love to step out of my house to this scene. Oh my God, I sold myself on this again!!