Mass and form

Dutch Seniors on Bikes!!!

Learn more.

YouAreHere: Collaborative Map of Toronto

http://www.futurefarmers.com/survey/collaborativemap.php

Urban Ruin

cities : before and after

chelsea sent this our way

http://www.oobject.com/12-unrecognizable-before-and-after-views-of-cities/afghanistan-before-and-after-3/6648/

John Lorinc on HISTORICAL REDEVELOPMENT

http://spacing.ca/wire/2009/12/07/john-lorinc-its-more-than-an-architecture-fetish/

Toronto Internment Hotel

15, 2009

Mr. David Miller, Mayor
Toronto City Hall,
2nd Floor, 100 Queen St. West,
Toronto ON M5H 2N2


Dear Mayor Miller:
Re: CNE Hotel and Stanley Barracks Site


It is our understanding that the Toronto City Council recently approved the development of a hotel facility on
the grounds of the Canadian National Exhibition. It is generally appreciated that a hotel on this site will
enhance the use and enjoyment of these grounds.
I am writing to bring to your attention the fact that the hotel will be built adjacent to the Stanley Barracks. This
site is recognized as an historic site, and was used as an internment camp for "enemy aliens" during Canada's
first national internment operations of 1914-1920 where thousands of Ukrainians and other Eastern European
were unjustly interned. Recently the government of Canada recognized this tragedy and a trilingual historical
marker
was placed at Stanley Barracks to commemorate this unfortunate episode in our nation's history.
As one of the communities that were subjected to the internment operations, the Ukrainian Canadian community is concerned about the impact this hotel development may have on this historic site. I would be most grateful if you would let me know how this hotel development will take into consideration the existence of the Stanley Barracks historic site and internment camp area.
We would be pleased to appoint a representative of our community to work with your office and the developers of this hotel to ensure that the development pays due respect to the site, by, for example, not overcrowding it, or perhaps by incorporating it into the hotel design, to make it part of the attraction of the site for visitors. It is
important to maintain appropriate access to the site for purposes of commemorative ceremonies and educational
activities which will be developed by the Canada First World War Internment Fund, recently established by the
federal government.

I look forward to your early reply.
Yours truly,


Paul Grod, National President
paul.grod@ucc.ca
(905) 625-9900 x225
cc: Joe Pantalone, Councillor Ward 19, City of Toronto
Gloria Lindsay Luby, Councillor Ward 4, City of Toronto

i've been mapping things with sound waves

simon evans : "the world"

proselytizing ON. planning

zoning is a tool used to organize spaces for the lives of most people

it achieves this by limiting how intensely and for what purpose land can be used

this to me sounds like a very vague and blunt domain, if planning is to be sensitive to the way large-scale physical considerations interact with human development on the individual scale. It is perhaps time that zoning starts to incorporate further innovations on connecting the micro and macro scale.


FoR CONSIDERATION:

Maurice Godelier on what is economic
the economic can be characterized as a system [a group of structures interlinked by certain rules (laws)] that is made up of structures [a group of objects by certain rules (laws)]. The economic system is also part of a larger totality, namely social life.

errr...

according to plato and classical economists, it is the material wealth of society. In other words, it is the production distribution and consumption of goods. However this definition of what constitutes economics excludes an enormous part of the reality of the economic field, namely the production and exchange of services. An alternative definition of economics states that it is the science of human behaviour that studies the relation between ends and scarce means that have alternative uses. In this way it is the science of rational action, where coherent ends are defined and rational means are used to attain these ends. Defined in this way, economics means all purposive actions are economic in principal, but no action is economic in fact. (is the relation between mother and child economic, because rational means are used to obtain objectives [health, educations etc]?) therefore, Godelier defines economics as the theory of the production distribution and consumption of goods and services, as long as one does not reduce the significance and function of service to its economic aspect, or deduce that significance and function from this aspect. It is a matter of operating on multiple levels: the economic is both a domain of activities (production distribution and consumption of material goods) as well as a particular aspect of all human activities that do not belong in its entirety to this domain, but the ‘functioning of which involves the exchange and use of material means.’


how does this attempt at defining economics differ from the logic of corporate capitalism?
This definition is an attempt at finding a place for economics within human relations that respects its immensity but restrains it by incorporating porosity and also a negative space into its parameters.
Godelier perhaps envisions the economic sphere as separate from the cultural sphere or political sphere. to what extent is this true?

Traffic Circle

in-between-city article

http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/article/728286--the-in-between-city-slouches-ahead

Field Trip Documentation: Hamilton, ON, Thurs., Nov. 19, 2009

A quick cut of footage captured from a recent field trip to Hamilton.

Lost Rivers

Sous les pavés la plage:
Beneath the concrete the creak



http://www.lostrivers.ca/index.htm

Financial Engineering: Building Global Cities

Tara Perkins

From Wednesday's Globe and Mail Published on Wednesday, Nov. 18, 2009 12:00AM EST Last updated on Thursday, Nov. 19, 2009 2:47AM EST

One month after he released Ontario's 2008 budget, Finance Minister Dwight Duncan met with chief executives from the country's major banks, insurers and pension plans at the Toronto Club.

He told them he was concerned about job losses in Ontario's manufacturing industry, and wanted to help offset the pain by strengthening Toronto's financial sector.

The fruits of that discussion are being released Wednesday, at a time when Bay Street leaders say Canada has a brief window of opportunity to capitalize on its new reputation as a relative haven for banks and financial stability.

The so-called Toronto Financial Services Working Group – which was struck after the meeting and is led by Janet Ecker, president of the Toronto Financial Services Alliance, and Don Drummond, chief economist at Toronto-Dominion Bank – had asked Boston Consulting Group (BGC) to come up with a strategy.

The resulting report, to be made public Wednesday, makes a series of recommendations that BCG says could create up to 40,000 jobs and add $5-billion in annual gross domestic product over five years.

The goal, the report says, is to transform Toronto into one of the two most important financial centres in North America and one of the top 10 globally by 2015. The city currently ranks 13th.

“This is the time,” Ms. Ecker said in an interview. “We need good-quality jobs, and this is a good way to get them. Secondly, we have global attention.”

The report focuses on four priorities: creating a global Toronto-based institute for risk management; entrenching Canada's position as the leading hub for mining, metals, and energy financing and trading; becoming a global leader in retirement finance; and building skilled financial services activity clusters.

The working group is already seeking to dampen possible criticism that the recommendations are beneficial to banks and the country's most populous city at the expense of other sectors and regions.

“This economic impact will be a net benefit to Canada – this is not about shifting jobs between provinces,” the report notes.

Between 2003 and 2008, it says, manufacturing employment in the Toronto region fell 3.5 per cent a year, while financial services jobs grew 4.3 per cent. The sector now employs 220,000 people directly, and a total of 350,000 indirectly, making up more than 12 per cent of the jobs in the region.

That growth generated a gain of $6.2-billion in GDP over five years, more than compensating for the $3.8-billion lost from manufacturing, the report says.

Many of the factors that caused Ontario to become an industrial power have shifted away, Mr. Drummond noted. But Toronto is home to two of the top 10 global life insurers and three of the world's 25 biggest banks.

A key recommendation of the report sees the establishment of a global risk management institute that would serve as a think tank and an educational centre, potentially offering academic degrees in risk management.

Another would see Toronto beef up its position when it comes to financing the resources sector. About 7,000 Canadians, including investment bankers, research analysts and traders, are employed in this sector.

The report sets a goal of grabbing 70 per cent of the world's market share when it comes to energy, mining and metals listings. Canada's stock exchanges currently have 43 per cent of energy listings and 55 per cent of mining listings.


//////////////////////////////////

BCG is a leading business and image consulting group with offices in over 60 countries around the world.

Janet Ecker WAS the Education Minister and Minister of Finance under Mike Harris and Ernie Eaves respectively. She is currently the president of Toronto Financial Services Alliance.

What are the social, economic and cognitive pathways that establish the GLOBAL REPUTATION of a city, how is this measured? How concrete or speculative is this?

What are activity clusters? What happens at the TORONTO CLUB, and why isn't we present at their meetings?

Excerpts of Ivan Chtcheglov - Formulary for a New Urbanism

This is an ESSENTIAL TEXT!

written by Chtcheglov as a member of the Lettrist International at the age of 19, always considered by Guy Debord as visionary and foundational text for the urban vision they were going to continue to develop in the future with the Situationist International.
\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

SIRE, I AM FROM THE OTHER COUNTRY

We are bored in the city, there is no longer any Temple of the Sun. Between the legs of the women walking by, the dadaists imagined a monkey wrench and the surrealists a crystal cup. That’s lost. We know how to read every promise in faces — the latest stage of morphology.

***

And you, forgotten, your memories ravaged by all the consternations of two hemispheres, stranded in the Red Cellars of Pali-Kao, without music and without geography, no longer setting out for the hacienda where the roots think of the child and where the wine is finished off with fables from an old almanac. That’s all over. You’ll never see the hacienda. It doesn’t exist.

The hacienda must be built.

All cities are geological. You can’t take three steps without encountering ghosts bearing all the prestige of their legends. We move within a closed landscape whose landmarks constantly draw us toward the past. Certain shifting angles, certain receding perspectives, allow us to glimpse original conceptions of space, but this vision remains fragmentary. It must be sought in the magical locales of fairy tales and surrealist writings: castles, endless walls, little forgotten bars, mammoth caverns, casino mirrors.

These dated images retain a small catalyzing power, but it is almost impossible to use them in a symbolic urbanism without rejuvenating them by giving them a new meaning. There was a certain charm in horses born from the sea or magical dwarves dressed in gold, but they are in no way adapted to the demands of modern life. For we are in the twentieth century, even if few people are aware of it. Our imaginations, haunted by the old archetypes, have remained far behind the sophistication of the machines. The various attempts to integrate modern science into new myths remain inadequate. Meanwhile abstraction has invaded all the arts, contemporary architecture in particular. Pure plasticity, inanimate and storyless, soothes the eye. Elsewhere other fragmentary beauties can be found — while the promised land of new syntheses continually recedes into the distance. Everyone wavers between the emotionally still-alive past and the already dead future.

* * *

We will leave Monsieur Le Corbusier’s style to him, a style suitable for factories and hospitals, and no doubt eventually for prisons. (Doesn’t he already build churches?) Some sort of psychological repression dominates this individual — whose face is as ugly as his conceptions of the world — such that he wants to squash people under ignoble masses of reinforced concrete, a noble material that should rather be used to enable an aerial articulation of space that could surpass the flamboyant Gothic style. His cretinizing influence is immense. A Le Corbusier model is the only image that arouses in me the idea of immediate suicide. He is destroying the last remnants of joy. And of love, passion, freedom.

* * *

Darkness and obscurity are banished by artificial lighting, and the seasons by air conditioning. Night and summer are losing their charm and dawn is disappearing. The urban population think they have escaped from cosmic reality, but there is no corresponding expansion of their dream life. The reason is clear: dreams spring from reality and are realized in it.

LISBOA

We crossed from Almeira, the red X’s of the Ponte 25 d’abril shuttering. Lisbon sprawled in a soft gray and terracotta. Elegant lights emboldened the presidential palace and other monuments from a glory now clearly past. The waves of the Tejo lapped not softly but from this vantage point looked like a most common element, sparkling but no less gray. The dimming light of the day pulled my eyes along the river to its mouth. It dawned on me then that the hill before was suffused with stucco erections when this was a civilization, and the gold from all the colonies glittered innocently in the present.

Where can we place this great civilzation of conquerors and explorers now? The recent graduates of the most esteemed university in the land sat drinking beer at 10am, the escapades of the night before lingering in their easy and drunken conversation. They have turned their ship around and swallowed it, navigating the dark channels of the mind and body not guided by something so universal as the stars, but by the swirling illusions of tradition in a world culture that no longer emanates from them.

Somewhere Urbanism

Chance arrangements of twigs, pine needles, and a murky puddle have been traced to compose a crude map developed for a city without topography or history.

Mapping and Liminal Spaces

Here at Body Cartography we think of mapping as a “creative enterprise that describes and constructs the space we live in” and cartography, as a practice of diagrammatically representing the physical and social world,

It is important to understand the map as a tool that mediates ones engagement with some unknown or partially known complex (the world, a city, buried infrastructure, social networks). As such it is necessarily selective; information is chosen to communicate a clearer picture of relevant elements that narrow choices and enable actions. As J. B. Harley notes, in traditional cartography, the method for narrowing and re-presenting the world in graphic form is rational and scientific; the goal being to translate as accurately as possible elements of the physical world. He challenges this claim to objectivity by arguing that maps are texts, not objective truths, stating that you must read in between its lines to see clearly the political and historical use of maps as a custodian and weapon of power in the form of knowledge (Harley). To this end, he writes “the freedom of rhetorical manoeuvre in cartography is considerable: the mapmaker merely omits those features of the world that lie outside the purpose of the immediate discourse.” (deconstructing the map) In this spirit, it is important to emphasize the voids in mapping and the map itself in order to reveal its ideological framework: how these ask us to see the world as well as live in it.

the creation of space

The big social groups (consisting of classes, parts of classes, or institutions ... ) act with and/or against each other. From their interactions, strategies, successes, and defeats grow the qualities and “properties” of urban space.

—Henri Lefèbvre

PRAGA

REDEVELOPMENT/DEVELOPMENT

WARSAW

BEACH HOUSES

alex's mind map for bodies in the city

Unplanned Neccessity

Teddy Cruz - What adaptive architecture can learn from Shantytowns

Ted Cruz is an architect who looks at boarder territories for inspiration. The above link will take you to an article that contrasts two types of urbanism, San Diego vs. Tijuana. They are geographic neighbors but their built environments seems to be polar opposites. San Diego is made out to be highly planned, with Tijuana being free form and adaptive. 

Shared Worlds: Fantastical Cities

Shared Worlds
5 science fiction authors each choose a city that astounds thems.


-each author offers an evocative description of place, including the materials of the built environment, and the sound scape.

Vancouverism

alicia and cara saw this and thought it was so great

http://www.leonadrive.ca/

Utopian Urbanism : News from Nowhere

News From Nowhere or An Epoch of Rest Being Some Chapters From a Utopian Romance
Which was published in 1890, and is a significant contribution to utopian Urbanism. Charles Morris was an English architect, furniture and textile designer, artist, writer, socialist and Marxist associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the English Arts and Crafts Movement. Morris wrote and published poetry, fiction, and translations of ancient and medieval texts throughout his life. Of considerable importance to us is the Arts and Crafts movement which would have major political and aesthetic offspring in years to come. The Arts and Crafts movement was inspired by John Ruskin. This aesthetic and social movement was primarily a reaction to Industrialization, and the monotony of mass production together with the new lifestyles this was facilitating and creating. Notable members of this movement were Charles Rennie Macintosh, Frank Lloyd Wright amongst others who's work I am not really familiar with...

In the book, the narrator, William Guest, falls asleep after returning from a meeting of the Socialist League (an early revolutionary socialist organisation in the United Kingdom) and awakes to find himself in a future society based on common ownership and democratic control of the means of production. In this society there is no private property, no big cities, no authority, no monetary system, no divorce, no courts, no prisons, and no class systems. This agrarian society functions simply because the people find pleasure in nature, and therefore they find pleasure in their work.
Anyhoot:

XII. Concerning the Arrangement of Life

"Well," I said, "about those `arrangements' which you spoke of as taking the place of government, could you give me any account of them?"

"Neighbour, " he said, "although we have simplified our lives a great deal from what they were, and have got rid of many conventionalities and many sham wants, which used to give our forefathers much trouble, yet our life is too complex for me to tell you in detail by means of words how it is arranged; you must find that out by living amongst us. It is true that I can better tell you what we don't do than what we do do.

"Well?" said I. "This is the way to put it," said he:

"We have been living for a hundred and fifty years, at least, more or less in our present manner, and a tradition or habit of life has been growing on us; and that habit has become a habit of acting on the whole for the best. It is easy for us to live without robbing each other. It would be possible for us to contend with and rob each other, but it would be harder for us than refraining from strife and robbery. That is in short the foundation of our life and our happiness." "Whereas in the old days,"

said I, "it was very hard to live without strife and robbery. That's what you mean, isn't it, by giving me the negative side of your good conditions?"

"Yes," he said, "it was so hard, that those who habitually acted fairly to their neighbours were celebrated as saints and heroes, and were looked up to with the greatest reverence.

"While they were alive?" said I.

"No," said he, "after they were dead."

"But as to these days," I said; "you don't mean to tell me that no one ever transgresses this habit of good fellowship?"

"Certainly not," said Hammond, "but when the transgressions occur, everybody, transgressors and all, know them for what they are; the errors of friends, not the habitual actions of persons driven into enmity against society."

"I see," said I; "you mean that you have no `criminal' classes."

"How could we have them," said he, "since there is no rich class to breed enemies against the state by means of the injustice of the state?"

Said I: "I thought that I understood from something that fell from you a little while ago that you had abolished civil law. Is that so, literally?"

"It abolished itself, my friend," said he. "As I said before, the civil law-courts were upheld for the defence of private property; for nobody ever pretended that it was possible to make people act fairly to each other by means of brute force. Well, private property being abolished, all the laws and all the legal `crimes' which it had manufactured of course came to an end. Thou shalt not steal, had to be translated into, Thou shalt work in order to live happily. Is there any need to enforce that commandment by violence?"

"Well," said I, "that is understood, and I agree with it; but how about the crimes of violence? would not their occurrence (and you admit that they occur) make criminal law necessary?"

Said he: "In your sense of the word, we have no criminal law either. Let us look at the matter closer, and see whence crimes of violence spring. By far the greater part of these in past days were the result of the laws of private property, which forbade the satisfaction of their natural desires to all but a privileged few, and of the general visible coercion which came of those laws. All that cause of violent crime is gone. Again, many violent acts came from the artificial perversion of the sexual passions, which caused over-weening jealousy and the like miseries. Now, when you look carefully into these, you will find that what lay at the bottom of them was mostly the idea (a law-made idea) of the woman being the property of the man, whether he were husband , father, brother, or what not. That idea has of course vanished with private property, as well as certain follies about the `ruin' of women for following their natural desires in an illegal way, which of course was a convention caused by the laws of private property."

"Another cognate cause of crimes of violence was the family tyranny, which was the subject of so many novels and stories of the past and which once more was the result of private property. Of course that is all ended, since families are held together by no bond of coercion, legal or social, but by mutual liking and affection, and everybody is free to come or go as he or she pleases. Furthermore, our standards of honour and public estimation are very different from the old ones; success in beating our neighbours is a road to renown now closed, let us hope for ever. Each man is free to exercise his special faculty to the utmost and every one encourages him in so doing. So that we have got rid of the scowling envy, coupled by the poets with hatred, and surely with good reason; heaps of unhappiness and ill-blood were caused by it, which with irritable and passionate men - i.e., energetic and active men - often led to violence."

I laughed, and said: "So that you now withdraw your admission, and say that there is no violence amongst you?"

"No," said he, "I withdraw nothing; as I told you, such things will happen. Hot blood will err sometimes. A man may strike another, and the stricken strike back again, and the result be a homicide, to put it at the worst. But what then? Shall the neighbours make it worse still? Shall we think so poorly of each other as to suppose that the slain man calls on us to revenge him, when we know that if he had been maimed, he would, when in cold blood and able to weigh all the circumstances, have forgiven his maimer? Or will the death of the slayer bring the slain man to life again and cure the unhappiness his death has caused? "

"Yes," I said, "but consider, must not the safety of society be safeguarded by some punishment?"

"There, neighbour!" said the old man, with some exultation. " You have hit the mark. That punishment of which men used to talk so wisely and act so foolishly, what was it but the expression of their fear? And they had no need to fear, since they - i.e., the rulers of society - were dwelling like an armed band in a hostile country. But we who live amongst our friends need neither fear nor punish. Surely if we, in dread of an occasional rare homicide, an occasional rough blow, were solemnly and legally to commit homicide and violence, we could only be a society of ferocious cowards. Don't you think so neighbour?"

"Yes, I do, when I come to think of it from that side," said I.

"Yet you must understand," said the old man, "that when any violence is committed, we expect the transgressor to make any atonement possible to him, and he himself expects it. But again, think if the destruction or serious injury of a man momentarily overcome by wrath or folly can be any atonement to the commonwealth? Surely it can only be an additional injury to it."

Said I: "But suppose the man has a habit of violence - kills a man a year, for instance?"

"Such a thing is unknown," said he. "In a society where there is no punishment to evade, no law to triumph over, remorse will certainly follow transgression."

"And lesser outbreaks of violence," said I "how do you deal with them? for hitherto we have been talking of great tragedies, I suppose?"

Said Hammond: "If the ill-doer is not sick or mad (in which case he must be restrained until his sickness or madness is cured) it is clear that grief and humiliation must follow the ill-deed; and society in general will make that pretty clear to the ill-done if he should chance to be dull to it; and again,, some kind of atonement will follow, - at the least, an open acknowledgement of the grief and humiliation. Is it so hard to say, I ask your pardon, neighbour? - well, sometimes it is hard - and let it be. "

"You think that enough?" said I.

"Yes," said he, "and moreover it is all that we can do. If in addition we torture the man, we turn his grief into anger, and the humiliation he would otherwise feel for his wrongdoing is swallowed up by a hope of revenge for our wrongdoing to him. He has paid the legal penalty, and can `go and sin again' with comfort. Shall we commit such a folly, then? Remember Jesus had got the legal penalty remitted before he said `Go and sin no more,' Let alone that in a society of equals you will not find any one to play the part of torturer or jailer, though many to act as nurse or doctor.

"So," said I, "you consider crime a mere spasmodic disease, which requires no body of criminal law to deal with it?"

"Pretty much so," said he; "and since, as I have told you we are a healthy people generally, so we are no likely to be much troubled with this disease."

"Well, you have no civil law, and no criminal law. But have you no laws of the market, so to say - no regulation for the exchange of wares? for you must exchange, even if you have no property."

Said he: "We have no obvious individual exchange, as you saw this morning when you went a-shopping; but of course there are regulations of the markets varying according to the circumstances and guided by general custom. But as these are matters of general assent which nobody dreams of objecting to, so also we have made no provision for enforcing them: therefore I don't call them laws. In law, whether it be criminal or civil, execution always follows judgement, and some one must suffer. When you see the judge on his bench, you see through him, as clearly as if he were made of glass, the policeman to emprison and the soldier to slay some actual living person. such follies would make an agreeable market, wouldn't they?"

"Certainly," said I, "that means turning the market into a mere battlefield, in which many people must suffer as much as in the battlefield of bullet and bayonet. And from what I have seen, I should suppose that your marketing, great and little, is carried on in a way that makes it a pleasant occupation."

"You are right, neighbour," said he. "Although there are so many, indeed by far the greater number amongst us, who would be unhappy if they were not engaged in actually making things, and things which turn out beautiful under their hands, - there are many, like the housekeepers I was speaking of, whose delight is in administration and organisation to use long-tailed words; I mean people who like keeping things together, avoiding waste, seeing that nothing sticks fast uselessly. Such people are thoroughly happy in their business, all the more as they are dealing with actual facts, and not merely passing counters round to see what share they shall have in the privileged taxation of useful people which was the business of the commercial folk in past days. Well, what are you going to ask me next?" XIII. Concerning Politics Said I: "How do you manage with politics?" Said Hammond, smiling: "I am glad that it is of me that you ask that question; I do believe that anybody else would make you explain yourself, or try to do so, till you were sick of asking questions. Indeed, I believe I am the only man in England who would know what you mean; and since I know, I will answer your question briefly by saying that we are very well off as to politics, - because we have none. If ever you make a book out of this conversation, put this in a chapter by itself, after the model of old Horrebow's Snakes in Iceland."

"I will," said I.

Historical Geography, Oct. 25, 2009

MAP office

www.map-office.com
1.click 'on'
2.click 'works'
3.explore

Lecture: Historical Geography, Oct. 25, 2009

Hello everyone, welcome to Historical Geography: 416

The point of this discussion is to cultivate a mutual understanding of a psycogeographical historical perspective, which we will explain and establish consensus. I would like to start by surveying what you all thought i.e. Methods and foundation

Q. How would you define historical geography?

A. The history of geography.

In the sense of the the actual history of the discipline, or how geographical thoughts developed.

Rocks? Geography of how the earth formed? There has been an emphasis on natural geography as separate from cultural geography, and they use different methods. Cultural geography collects data about people in a landscape (read Social Science) a common thread in-between all of these academic disciplines. Part of that is a method, a way of being critical about the evidence you collect.

Engles!

Fredrick Engles: The Science of History

The essence of history consists in the fact that "nothing happens without a conscious purpose or an intended aim," to understand history it is necessary to go beyond this... -- Lukacs

Q. How can history be scientific?

A1. Methodology?

A2. History repeats itself... every time photosynthesis stops working the leaves of desigious trees change colours... so that becomes a truth in terms of this reading..

Science attempts to establish facts between different parties. In history you have a slightly different problem because the way you access information is not by experimentation. And it is subjective dependant upon who is documenting. I always think that there are lots things in history that were never documented... So these things that we don't know it happened... How do we establish some sort of factual basis that we can discuss commonly? The facts you can get for history are limited, personal accounts (i.e. letters), political documents, geography, importantly the history of buildings, i.e. what ruins remain, etc. A settlement was clearly here because of these stone foundations, etc.

Architecture is communication between generations because often, contemporary building is a bit different, a building is created and then the next generations continue to inhabit that building.

Part of histories task is to make accounts of these events to keep records. But also history attempts to analyze and interpret these events. We've understood these trends, we've documented them, we have this period of time with the beginning and the end, and that we can look at and start filling in those spaces. This is what Engles is trying to get at with this quotation.. Nothing happens without a conscious purpose, or an intended aim.

I don't agree with that... We should debate it.

I think a lot of things happen without a conscious aim...

So... the many individuals wills active in history quite regularly produce effects quite others then those intended. Often quite the opposite. Their motives in relation to the total result are likewise only of secondary importance...

There is consciousness action but there is also something else at work other than rational, intention, or consciousness

This is probably part of a broader conversation... I don't think rational and consciousness are the same thing... you can plan but it doesn't necessarily mean that it is thought out that it is conscious.

All of this is relating back to us back as movers...

I know that you're not Engles...

That would be the account side... trying to account for conscious action... is making historical records...

What driving forces stand behind these motives... History should pay special attention that set in motion great masses whole peoples and whole classes of people that initiate action for lasting transformation

Very convoluted for me...

Particular interest, in great masses, consciousness coming together to change things on an inter-subjective level.

What does inter-subjective mean? The relationships between subjects? Empathy, is an inter-subjective thing. My subject is being broached by your subject, then vise versa to understand something (read synthesis)

The contradiction... arises from inter-subjectivity... individual conscious actors, all acting in the same time and different spaces... in one sense the same space... existence... cooperate with each other for history to progress... a truism... the main contradiction... the individual vs the group? (reluctant) yes. But the real point I am trying to make is that there are multiple contradictions... Dualities in life... There is a movement to contradiction... a contradiction involves a synthesis... any kind of contradiction that is resolved is a synthesis... There are a million people. we are all doing are own thing. sometimes they mesh up with others and sometime they don't. In contradiction to the way this

There are other ways in academy...As you are looking up Positivism... I'm going to get more hot water...

SR

Taking Off Taking

I knew we were

close to the 401 but the bright lights quickly approaching me weren’t even
moving. The engines of the 767 shocked the hull of the plain into a state of
great potential energy, like a vibrating cell phone floating across the table.
Waiting. My body inquired about its own readiness for takeoff by measuring the
distance between my shoulders and the back of my economizing chair. Through the
porthole window, focus was nearly impossible so that the whole content of my thought came to be an anticipatory vibration. With my eyes open, I began to envision Poland from a
patchwork of memories collected during a similar trip a few years now past,
together with the varied grays of the tarmac. After prolonged revving, the
plane lurched into its forward drive, at normal speeds first, now breaking the
pace of any vehicle grounded to the earth, accelerating through intuition. In a
tenuous moment, no-one can tell for sure whether we have lifted off the ground
before it is confirmed by the flaps and a sudden lift.





The city lay

before me in plain view. There was not even one cloud in the sky, not even
those wispy bits of cotton through which you can still see the earth. The
northerly roads trailed off into a rounded and charcoal horizon. The grids, cul
de sacs, industrial parks and highrises all flickered unconsciously over this
continuous urbanism like a living blanket covering the dirt. Arterials along
the lake abruptly retain the city along the oil black lake. Seeing the city
like this is not like seeing a city at all. I felt like a neon negative of
Borges’ map had wrapped itself suddenly around my face, the grand structures of
life offering themselves up to be scrutinized and revered.